Chapter 11 - Shattered Glass
The heavy red lever clicked downward with a violent snap.
Instantly, the amber emergency spotlight died. The entire underground vault plunged into absolute, pitch-black inkiness. A split second later, the sharp crack of a silenced gunshot ripped through the darkness, the bullet burying itself deep into the concrete wall right where Maeve had been standing a moment before.
“Grab my hand!” Julian’s voice shouted fiercely from somewhere in the dark to her left.
Maeve didn't think; she lunged blindly toward the sound of his voice, her hands sweeping across the rough surface of the desk until her fingers brushed against his warm, calloused palm. Julian grabbed her wrist with an iron grip, pulling her down behind the heavy mahogany desk just as a second muffled shot echoed off the server racks, sending a shower of sparks flying into the air.
“They can’t see us in the blind spots,” Julian whispered fiercely right against her ear, his breath ragged. “The backup power grid takes thirty seconds to reboot its auxiliary night-vision sensors.”
“We’re trapped,” Maeve whispered back, her chest heaving as she pressed herself flat against the floorboards beside the wheelchair. “There’s no other way out of this room.”
“There is one way,” Julian replied, his fingers tapping rapidly against the underside of the mahogany desk. “The freight elevator shaft. It’s right behind the primary mainframe rack. But the emergency hatch is rusted shut. It takes two people to wrench it open from the inside.”
Across the dark room, Viktor’s heavy leather shoes crunched against stray bits of debris. “You can’t hide in the dark forever, Julian,” Viktor’s voice mocked smoothly, echoing from near the entrance. “The night-vision goggles are coming online right now. You’re just delaying the inevitable.”
A soft, green electronic hum flickered on near the doorway—the faint glow of tactical night-vision lenses activating.
“Move!” Julian hissed.
He dropped flat from his wheelchair onto the floor, using his powerful upper body strength to drag himself forward across the concrete, pulling Maeve along with him behind the towering rows of humming server racks. Footsteps crunched closer behind them, heavy and deliberate. Viktor was entering the maze.
Maeve reached out in the dark, her hands finding the heavy steel panel of the freight elevator maintenance hatch hidden behind the server towers. Without waiting for instructions, she jammed her fingers into the narrow seam, wedging her palms against the cold metal edge.
“Help me push!” she urged, throwing her weight against the panel.
Julian slid in beside her, locking his hands onto the opposite side of the steel door. Together, straining every muscle in their bodies against the suffocating darkness, they heaved upward.
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With a deafening shriek of rusted metal popping free from its moorings, the heavy steel hatch gave way, swinging outward into the damp, vertical drop of the elevator shaft just as a pair of glowing green tactical goggles rounded the corner of the server rack three feet away.
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