Chapter 10 - Behind the Altar
The glass balcony railing shattered into a million glittering fragments as Elena’s suppressive fire forced the unseen snipers to duck back into the shadows. Glass rained down over the gold chairs like jagged diamonds. Julian scooped up the baby with one arm, grabbing his daughter’s hand with the other, and sprinted toward the altar where Richard Vance lay groaning in a pool of his own blood.
"Clara, show me the panel!" Julian ordered, his voice commanding and sharp.
Clara stumbled to her feet, ignoring Richard entirely as she threw her weight against a heavy wooden carved panel behind the altar. With a mechanical click, a hidden door swung inward, revealing a pitch-black shaft illuminated only by a dim, green backup exit sign pointing downward.
"In! Go, go, go!" Clara yelled, shoving Julian’s daughter into the narrow shaft before scrambling in herself.
Arthur Pendelton slipped through the door next, keeping his heavy revolver aimed backward at the ruined ballroom. Elena fired two final, controlled bursts from her assault rifle toward the balcony before diving backward into the darkness just as a hail of bullets chewed up the wood framing the secret entrance.
Julian slammed the heavy wooden panel shut behind them, twisting an antique iron latch that locked the mechanism from the inside. Total, suffocating darkness enveloped them, broken only by the dim, sickly glow of the emergency exit sign overhead.
The narrow concrete stairwell echoed with the frantic, ragged breathing of five people trapped in a concrete tomb. Above them, the muffled sound of a massive explosion shook the ceiling, followed by the terrifying rumble of tons of concrete collapsing onto the ballroom they had just abandoned.
"We're trapped in the sub-levels," Arthur panted, leaning against the cold concrete wall to catch his breath. "The service elevator won't run without grid power."
"It doesn't need grid power," Clara whispered, shivering in the damp air as she pointed to a heavy industrial lever protruding from the wall. "It runs on a separate hydraulic gravity counter-weight. My father installed it for emergency evacuations."
Julian stood protectively in front of his children, his hand resting on the silver crest necklace in his pocket. He stared at Clara in the dim green light, struggling to reconcile the terrified woman standing before him with the manipulative liar who had walked down the aisle.
"If this is another trick, Clara, you won't live to see the bottom," Julian warned quietly.
May you like
Clara nodded frantically, reaching out to pull the heavy industrial lever, but before her hand touched the iron, a metallic clanking sound echoed from deep within the vertical shaft below them.
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