Chapter 10 - Forty-Five Seconds
The digital countdown glowing on the side of the detonator flickered relentlessly: 00:42... 00:41...
Clara’s heart pounded against her ribs like a trapped bird as she stumbled through the thick, toxic smoke toward the mainframe. The heat was scorching her skin, and every breath felt like inhaling glass. She dropped to her knees, coughing uncontrollably as she reached behind the heavy steel server rack to find the master power cable.
Her fingers frantically patted the cold, soot-covered metal. Wires crisscrossed everywhere like a spider's web.
00:30... 00:29...
"Come on, damn you," Clara muttered through clenched teeth, her eyes stinging and tearing up from the dense smoke. She finally felt the thick rubber insulation of the main cable. Without hesitation, she wrapped both hands around it and pulled with all her might. The plug refused to budge, welded shut by the intense heat of the electrical fire.
Above her, through the shattered ceiling joists, she could hear the distant sounds of sirens wailing in the distance, cutting through the afternoon air. But forty-five seconds was an eternity when you were running out of oxygen.
She needed leverage. Clara cast a desperate look around the burning cellar, spotting a heavy iron crowbar resting against a wooden crate a few feet away. She scrambled across the floor on her hands and knees, ignoring the blistering heat radiating from the walls. Grasping the crowbar with both hands, she raced back to the server rack just as the digital display ticked down to a terrifying single digit.
00:08... 00:07...
Clara wedged the tip of the crowbar into the gap behind the server's main circuit board, planted her boot against the concrete base, and threw her entire body weight backward with a guttural scream.
With a deafening shriek of tearing metal and snapping copper, the entire server rack sheared off its bolts and crashed backward into the wall. A shower of blinding white sparks erupted into the air, followed by an abrupt, absolute darkness.
The digital timer blinked out. The red light died.
Silence rushed in to fill the underground vault, broken only by the crackling of residual flames near the ceiling and Clara’s own ragged, sobbing breaths. She collapsed onto the soot-stained floor, dropping the crowbar as her arms gave out entirely. She had done it. The data was destroyed.
Suddenly, a heavy footstep echoed from the top of the basement stairs—stairs she hadn't even realized were there.
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"Well, well, niece," a familiar, raspy voice echoed down into the dark cellar. "It seems you're even more stubborn than your grandfather."
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