Chapter 14 - The Ceiling Vents
A dense, sweet-smelling white mist began to vent rapidly from the ceiling registers throughout the hallway, hissing as it billowed downward in thick, billowing clouds.
"Hold your breath! Don't inhale!" Agent Vance shouted, coughing violently as he slapped his hand over his mouth and nose, pulling a small cloth mask from his pocket and snapping it over his face.
Arthur gasped, inhaling a small amount of the vapor before he could cover his mouth. The old man staggered backward from the windowsill, his knees buckling beneath him as a wave of sudden, paralyzing dizziness swept over his features. He clutched at his chest, his eyes rolling back slightly as he slid down the hallway wall into a sitting position on the bare floorboards.
"Grandpa!" Mark screamed, turning away from the broken window and diving back through the thickening white fog to reach the old man. "Grandpa, hold on! I've got you!"
Sarah screamed from outside the broken window, her face pressed against the jagged glass as she reached desperately into the room, her hands waving wildly in the smoke. "Mark! Get him out! Bring him out right now!"
I tried to pull Arthur from the other side, grabbing his arms while Mark lifted his legs, but the old man was dead weight, his breathing shallow and rattling as the chemical mist filled the hallway with blinding intensity. The air tasted of bitter almonds and burnt sugar, making my eyes sting and my throat burn with a searing agony.
Agent Vance kicked violently at the base of the interior wall near the front closet, using the heavy heel of his tactical boot to smash through the hollow drywall paneling. With a loud tearing sound, the drywall gave way, exposing a maze of thick electrical cables and a secondary mechanical control panel covered in blinking red indicator lights.
"That's the purge valve!" Vance yelled over the hiss of the gas, pointing his finger at a large, heavy lever labeled System Reset. "If we don't pull that lever in the next sixty seconds, the fire suppression system will flood this entire house with inert nitrogen gas, removing every trace of oxygen from the rooms!"
Mark looked down at his grandfather, whose eyelids were fluttering weakly, and then looked back at the open wall panel. He was trapped in an impossible choice: save his dying grandfather by dragging him through the window immediately, or risk everything by trying to disarm the house before the nitrogen flood wiped out everyone left inside.
"Go, Mark! Take him out!" I yelled, coughing up phlegm as the sweet gas burned my lungs. "I'll pull the lever!"
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Mark didn't listen. Instead of running, he lunged toward the wall panel, his hand gripping the heavy iron lever with all the fury and desperation he had held inside since the day our family fell apart.
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