Chapter 9
The flash drive skidded across the frosty floor, coming to a rest against the scorched metal casing of a downed server rack. Maya gasped for air, her ribs aching from the violent impact against the doorframe, but her eyes remained locked on the small piece of plastic containing the evidence that could tear the school board apart.
Bryce didn't immediately lunge after the drive. Instead, he stepped over the threshold, blocking the exit entirely, his expression remaining coldly analytical as he looked down at her.
"You're remarkably persistent, Maya," Bryce said softly, his voice echoing in the narrow corridor. "Too bad persistence doesn't override physics. The automated purge sequence for this sector is locked in. We have less than four minutes before the chemical foam flash-freezes this entire hallway, turning everything inside it into brittle glass."
Maya ignored him, her mind racing as she calculated the distance between her position and the flash drive. She pushed herself up onto her hands and knees, ignoring the searing pain in her side, and lunged forward across the slick floor, grabbing the drive just as Bryce's boot came down where her hand had been a second earlier.
She scrambled to her feet, ducking beneath his outstretched arm and bolting out into the ruined hallway. The air was thick with acrid smoke and the lingering metallic tang of the exploded transformer, but the heavy blast doors at the end of the corridor remained jammed open just enough for a person to squeeze through.
"Maya! Wait up!"
She paused for a fraction of a second, glancing back toward the shadows near the server racks. Marcus was dragging himself out from beneath a fallen cable tray, coughing violently and clutching his arm in obvious pain. A few feet away, Leo was stirring, groaning as he tried to push himself up from the soot-stained concrete, his blue and yellow varsity jacket blackened and torn. Chloe was nowhere to be seen.
"Get up!" Maya yelled back, her voice cutting through the hiss of the failing ventilation system. "Bryce is coming! If we don't reach the maintenance stairs right now, we're not getting out of here!"
Leo blinked sluggishly, his eyes bloodshot and wide with confusion and terror. He looked at Maya, then past her to where Bryce was stepping out of the server room with slow, deliberate strides. The reality of how thoroughly he had been manipulated finally seemed to register in Leo’s expression, replacing his arrogance with deep, crushing remorse.
"I'm sorry..." Leo choked out, his voice cracking as Marcus hauled him to his feet. "Maya... I didn't know..."
"Save the apologies for later, just run!" Maya shouted, turning toward the gap in the blast doors.
She slipped through the narrow opening first, entering the dark, cavernous maintenance tunnel that led deeper beneath the campus foundations toward the old fallout shelter. The tunnel was lit only by intermittent emergency battery packs casting sickly yellow beams across rusted pipes and exposed wiring. Behind her, she heard Marcus and Leo stumbling through the gap, their hurried footsteps echoing off the concrete walls.
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Footsteps echoed sharply behind them—fast, heavy, and closing the distance at an alarming speed. Bryce wasn't running; he was maintaining a steady, relentless pursuit, treating the chase like a routine extraction protocol.
Maya gripped the flash drive tightly in her hand, pushing herself forward into the darkness as the tunnel branched off into a confusing labyrinth of underground utility corridors, with no clear indication of where the path would lead next.
