Chapter 7 - Severed Links
Before the guard could pull the trigger, a sharp crack echoed from the darkness of the service tunnel. The gunman’s head snapped back, and he collapsed limp onto the concrete.
Lucas looked back. Clara stood near the mouth of the tunnel, holding the discarded service weapon Lucas had emptied earlier—now reloaded with a magazine she had stripped from the fallen mercenary on the stairs. Smoke drifted from the barrel. Her hands shook, but her gaze was dead steady.
""Told you I wasn't dead weight,"" she whispered.
""Get on the train!"" Lucas yelled, scrambling to his feet.
The diesel engine roared, thick black exhaust spewing toward the vaulted ceiling as the rail car lurched forward along the rusted tracks. Eleanor had engaged the manual throttle from inside the cab.
Lucas sprinted, his boots biting into the platform edge. He reached the rear boarding rail, grabbed the steel rung with one hand, and reached back out into the open air. ""Clara, jump!""
Clara abandoned the weapon, running with everything she had left. She leaped across the narrowing gap as the train cleared the platform. Her fingertips brushed Lucas's hand, slipped on sweat and blood, and for a terrifying fraction of a second, she hung over the spinning iron wheels.
Lucas locked his grip around her wrist with iron force, hauling her upward by pure adrenaline and military conditioning, slamming her safely onto the rear metal grating.
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Behind them, the dark platform faded into the gloom. Ahead, the rail car rattled violently, speeding into the abandoned tunnels beneath the city’s industrial waterfront.
The steel door to the cab slid open, and Eleanor Cross stepped out onto the narrow gangway, a nickel-plated automatic pistol leveled at Clara’s face.
