Chapter 13 - The Blackout
From above, the violent crash of their home’s front door being shattered by a hydraulic ram reverberated down the steel stairwell. Heavy, tactical boots pounded across the hardwood floors of the foyer.
Clear right! Hallway secure! Locate the primary breach in the master bedroom!
"We can't fight them," Mark said, his voice dropping into frantic calculation. He grabbed Elena by the arm, pulling her off the console. "We have thirty seconds before they reach the stairs. Is there another way out of this facility?"
Elena stared at him, dazed, the reality of her collapsing web of lies paralyzing her nervous system. "No... this was built as a fallout command post in the sixties. There's only the main shaft."
"Think!" Mark grabbed her face, forcing her to look into his eyes. "David came down here three months ago! You said he tried to destroy the reactor. How did he get in without you knowing?"
Elena blinked, the fog of panic clearing slightly. "The drainage line. The overflow valve you opened... it connects to the storm drainage canal behind the municipal reservoir. But it’s flooded!"
"I just opened the main pump," Mark countered. "The water level dropped six feet in three minutes! If the drain line is clear, it’s an exhaust tube!"
He darted across the room, scooping Lily up into his arms. The little girl was completely rigid, her skin radiating an unnatural, burning heat, her eyes fixed on the ceiling as if she could see through forty feet of earth and concrete.
"Lily, can you hear me?" Mark pleaded, shaking her gently.
"The men with the white masks are on the stairs, Daddy," she whispered, her voice overlapping with an eerie, harmonic double-tone that made his skin crawl. "They have the silver needles. They want to turn off the music."
"Nobody is turning off anything," Mark swore through gritted teeth.
He ran to the main power panel near the doorway. The massive industrial breaker bar was locked with a padlocked steel bar. Without hesitating, Mark pulled the spent revolver from under the console, pressed the muzzle against the brass padlock, and pulled the trigger.
The padlock shattered. Mark hooked his fingers into the heavy iron switch and threw it downward with all his strength.
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Every single light in the underground bunker died.
Total, impenetrable darkness swallowed the facility. In the distance, at the top of the steel spiral stairs, the tactical flashlights of the strike team suddenly flared, slicing through the blackness like white laser beams.
