Chapter 9 - The Breach at the Bulkhead
The heavy steel bulkhead door groaned in agony as massive hydraulic pistons pressed against its exterior frame from the hallway outside. Rivets popped like rifle shots, ricocheting off the damp stone walls of the archive and clattering across the concrete floor.
"Get back!" Marcus roared, shoving Leo and Iris behind a massive oak sorting table just as the center of the steel door caved inward with a tremendous crash.
Thick plumes of white hydraulic fluid hissed into the chamber, smelling sharply of burning oil and ozone. Through the dissipating fog, two heavy, bipedal enforcement units stepped into the room. They were towering mechanical enforcers, their armored carapaces stamped with the familiar crimson eye-and-lightning symbol of the Syndicate. Their twin optical sensors glowed a baleful, unblinking red as they scanned the room for thermal signatures.
"Subject Leo located," a cold, synthetic voice echoed from the lead enforcer’s external speaker. "Surrender the biological unit immediately or face immediate neutralization."
Leo pressed himself flat against the stone wall, clutching the brown puppy so tightly to his chest that the little animal whimpered in protest. He looked frantically around the room for an escape route, but the only other exit was a narrow ventilation grate located twenty feet up the wall—completely out of reach.
"Marcus, what do we do?" Iris asked, her voice surprisingly steady despite the overwhelming danger, though the luminous amber veins on her arms were pulsing with an intense, blinding brilliance.
"Keep the kid safe," Marcus grunted, pulling a heavy, cylinder-shaped EMP charge from his coat pocket. "I am going to buy us ten seconds. When I throw this, run for the upper pipe."
"No, Marcus, you can't take on two enforcers alone!" Leo shouted, tears springing to his eyes as he watched the towering mechanical frames raise their plasma rifles toward the oak table.
"I am not taking them on, kid. I am burying them," Marcus replied with a grim, defiant smile. He flicked the activation switch on the cylinder, and the device began to emit a high-pitched whine that set Leo’s teeth on edge.
With a powerful heave, Marcus hurled the EMP charge directly between the two enforcers.
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A blinding flash of electric-blue light filled the subterranean chamber, accompanied by a deafening shockwave that threw Leo off his feet and plunged the entire archive into absolute, pitch-black silence.
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