Chapter 7
The red emergency glow flickered erratically against the damp concrete walls of the vertical shaft, casting long, twisting shadows that danced like phantom figures in the suffocating air. Elena froze three rungs down, her boots hovering inches from a dark, motionless bundle tangled tightly in the safety netting below.
“Thomas, stop!” she whispered harshly, her voice catching in her dry throat as she pressed her back against the freezing ladder rails.
Above them, muffled through the thick steel bulkhead that sealed the top of the shaft, the dull, rhythmic thud of heavy tools against metal indicated Julian’s men were already attempting to drill through the emergency seal. Time was running out by the second.
Thomas paused several feet below her, his silver hair catching the faint red light as he looked up with a frown of annoyance. “We can’t stop, Elena. Every second we waste here gives Julian a better chance at overriding the sub-level telemetry.”
“Look down,” Elena breathed, pointing a trembling hand toward the safety netting.
Thomas descended a few cautious steps, leaning over the rusted metal frame to inspect the obstruction. As the red light shifted, the identity of the dark bundle became painfully clear. It was a standard corporate field pack, identical to the ones issued to Julian’s elite security detail, but wrapped around its straps was a heavily damaged data terminal flickering with a familiar green diagnostic light.
Cautiously, Thomas reached out and unclipped the device from the netting, bringing it closer to his face. The screen was cracked down the center, displaying a continuous, looping text file that had been manually queued to run on a continuous broadcast loop.
Elena leaned down, squinting to read the glowing characters scrolling across the shattered glass display. Her breath hitched sharply in her chest.
It wasn’t a corporate document or a security log. It was a personal message, typed out in a frantic, hurried code that only her former lab assistant, David—whom Julian had supposedly evacuated weeks ago—knew how to write.
“The transport never left,” Thomas read aloud, his voice dropping to a harsh, disbelieving whisper. “It was a decoy. The board locked everyone inside the lower medical bay twenty-four hours ago.”
Elena’s blood ran cold. The realization hit her with the crushing force of a physical blow. The transport vessel Julian had claimed was carrying her colleagues to safety had never existed. The entire district had been locked in a containment tomb while they were still alive inside.
“Julian lied,” Elena said, her voice shaking with a cold, blinding rage that completely eclipsed her fear. “He didn’t just abandon them… he sealed them in the medical bay to act as a living human quarantine zone for the pathogen.”
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Before Thomas could reply, the data terminal in his hand suddenly emitted a sharp, high-pitched error chime. The looping text vanished, replaced by a live security camera feed broadcasting directly from Sub-Level 3.
The image on the screen showed a vast, sterile white chamber filled with rows of glass containment pods. And inside the central pod, standing perfectly still while staring directly into the security lens, was someone Elena knew was supposed to be dead.
