Chapter 12 - The Trapped Exit
The sharp, mechanical click of the front door deadbolt engaging echoed clearly down the narrow hallway, freezing everyone in our tracks.
Mark scrambled to his feet, ignoring the throbbing pain in his bandaged-up hand, and bolted out of the kitchen toward the front entrance. "Hey! Wait!" he shouted, sprinting down the corridor as fast as he could.
Agent Vance drew his weapon once again, moving with tactical precision behind Mark, while Sarah, Clara, Arthur, and little Toby huddled together in the center of the gutted kitchen, too terrified to move another inch.
When Mark reached the front door, he grabbed the brass doorknob and wrenched it hard. It spun uselessly in his grip, clicking loudly as the internal mechanism held fast. He slammed his shoulder against the wood once, twice, three times, but the door wouldn't budge. The brand-new screws we had marveled at just twenty minutes ago now held a deadbolt that had been remotely thrown from somewhere deep inside the house's hidden infrastructure.
"We're locked in," Mark shouted back down the hallway, his voice laced with panic. "The front door is jammed from the inside again!"
"Step away from the door, Mark," Vance ordered sharply as he reached the entryway. The federal agent holstered his gun and pulled a small, multi-tool knife from his pocket, inserting the thin steel blade into the narrow crack between the door and the frame. He worked the pick with practiced skill, his eyes narrowed in concentration as he searched for the electronic bypass relay.
"How is this even possible?" Sarah cried out, walking slowly down the hallway with Toby still clutched tightly in her arms. "The power company shut off the main line three years ago! There shouldn't be any electricity to run automated deadbolts or hydraulic bunker doors!"
"Auxiliary generators," Arthur murmured, walking slowly into the hallway to join us. His hand gripped the wall for support as he stared at the floorboards near the front closet. "David spent six months rewiring the entire sub-panel during the summer of 2017. He said he was preparing for a grid failure, but he installed a commercial-grade solar array on the roof hidden beneath the shingles."
Vance grunted as his multi-tool slipped with a metallic scrape against the internal strike plate. He stood up, shaking his head with a frustrated scowl. "The override isn't mechanical. It's digital. Someone on a local intranet is controlling every single smart lock in this house from a terminal."
As if on cue, the overhead smoke detector in the hallway gave a single, loud chirp, and a small red LED light mounted beside the alarm began to flash in a rapid, rhythmic sequence.
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Mark looked up at the detector, his eyes widening in horror as a faint, computerized voice emanated from the speaker unit above our heads, speaking in a flat, synthesized monotone: 'Perimeter security compromised. Initiation of total property purge in ten minutes.'
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