Chapter 11
The beam of Bryce’s flashlight cut a harsh white swath through the damp gloom of the utility tunnel, illuminating the dust motes dancing in the stagnant air. He stopped twenty paces away, his posture entirely relaxed, standing with one hand casually tucked into his dark jacket pocket while the other held the heavy-duty tactical light steady.
"You really found the right door, Maya," Bryce said, his voice echoing cleanly off the curved concrete ceiling without a trace of breathlessness. "Too bad the district hasn't serviced these pneumatic seals since nineteen-eighty-two. That wheel isn't going to turn unless you have a hydraulic breaker."
"Shut up, Bryce!" Marcus shouted defensively, shielding Leo with his own body as the taller boy leaned heavily against the damp concrete wall, gasping for breath. "You're done! The live stream captured everything before the server room went dark! The whole school knows what you did!"
Bryce chuckled softly, a dry, dismissive sound that sent a chill straight down Maya’s spine. "Do you honestly believe anyone cares about a glitchy student-run live stream, Marcus? By morning, the school board's public relations team will have scrubbed the footage and released an official statement claiming a localized electrical fire caused a system hallucination. As for you three... well, missing persons reports in old utility tunnels take weeks to resolve."
Maya ignored his psychological games, her hands raw and bleeding as she gripped the heavy iron wheel valve of the bulkhead door again. She planted her boots firmly against the rusted steel frame, ignoring the shooting pain in her ribs, and threw her entire body weight into a counter-clockwise torque. The internal gears ground together with a harsh, metallic shriek that vibrated through the floorboards, but the seal stubbornly refused to budge.
"Maya, move!" Marcus yelled, glancing back as Bryce slowly unclipped a small, metallic canister from his belt—a high-intensity thermite breaching charge designed to cut through industrial-grade steel in seconds.
"I almost have it!" Maya strained, her muscles trembling with sheer exhaustion as she pushed past her limits.
With a sudden, violent crack that sounded like a gunshot, the heavy internal locking pins of the bulkhead door sheared away from the rusted housing. The wheel spun freely under her hands, and a massive rush of stale, pressurized air hissed out from the seal, blowing a cloud of ancient dust directly into their faces.
Bryce’s expression flickered for a fraction of a second, losing its detached composure as he realized she had actually broken the seal. He unclipped the safety pin on the thermite charge and raised his arm to throw it directly toward the bulkhead opening.
"Get down!" Maya screamed, tackling Marcus and Leo backward through the newly opened hatch just as Bryce hurled the breaching charge.
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The thermite canister hit the floor of the tunnel inches from the open bulkhead door, erupting into a blinding blinding wall of white-hot molten metal and sparks that hissed viciously against the steel frame. The concussive blast blew the heavy bulkhead door halfway off its remaining hinges, sealing the tunnel behind them in a wall of fire and molten slag.
Maya, Marcus, and Leo tumbled hard across the dusty concrete floor of the fallout shelter, the heavy steel door slamming shut behind them with a definitive, echoing thud that cut off the outside world entirely.
