Chapter 7 - THE BLACKOUT
The room smelled of cordite, burning insulation, and ozone.
Red emergency strobe lights began to pulse from the corners of the ceiling, casting grotesque, jerking shadows across the smoke-filled room.
"Get the backup generators online!" Dr. Vane’s voice screamed from somewhere near the diagnostic console. "Lock the vault doors! Don't let anyone out!"
I didn't wait for her men to react.
The explosion had cracked the main power box mounted on the concrete pillar directly beside my chair. High-voltage sparks were raining down onto my left arm, searing through my jacket sleeve.
I ignored the agony of the heat, twisting my torso sideways, forcing my leather wrist strap directly into the stream of shower sparks.
The leather sizzled, smoked, and caught fire.
I pulled with all my strength, screaming through my teeth as the burning leather snapped with a sharp pop.
My right arm was free.
I immediately reached down, unbuckling the foot restraints and the left wrist buckle, tumbling out of the steel chair onto the cold, dusty floor just as a man in a black suit emerged from the smoke, pointing a tactical shotgun into the dark.
I swept my leg across the floor, catching him behind his ankles.
He went down hard, his head bouncing off the edge of the steel prep table. I grabbed his fallen shotgun before he could recover, racked the slide with a heavy, mechanical clack, and fired two rounds straight into the main hydraulic junction box on the vault door.
BOOM. BOOM.
Hydraulic fluid sprayed across the room in a hot, pressurized cloud. The heavy steel vault door, which had begun to slide shut, froze in place, stuck three feet open.
"Eleanor!" I shouted, sprinting toward her chair through the dense smoke.
She was still sitting under the silver sensor headset, her eyes open, staring blankly at the red strobe lights as if watching a silent movie. The drug had left her completely catatonic, incapable of fear or movement.
I ripped the headset from her silver hair, unbuckled her chest strap, and scooped her light, ninety-pound frame into my arms like a child.
"Stop them!" Dr. Vane’s voice screeched from the far corner.
She stepped out of the smoke holding a small chrome revolver, her white lab coat stained with soot and blood. She raised the weapon, her eyes burning with a wild, manic fury.
I didn't try to shoot back with the heavy shotgun while holding Eleanor.
I grabbed a heavy steel oxygen tank sitting beside the diagnostic tower and kicked it over, sending it rolling straight into the path of the high-voltage sparks coming from the cracked power box.
The compressed gas ignited instantly.
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A brilliant wall of orange flame erupted across the center of the basement, blinding Dr. Vane and knocking her flat onto her back as the force of the blast blew out the remaining ceiling tiles.
I turned around, carrying Eleanor through the three-foot gap in the frozen vault door, and ran into the dark, smoke-filled corridor beyond.
