Chapter 68 - The Last Stand of the Archon
Sterling was on his feet.
He was leaning against the master power terminal, his face a mask of shattered bone and dripping blood, but his hand was resting on the manual override breaker for the facility's geothermal cooling system.
"You think... you won?" Sterling wheezed, a hideous gargling sound accompanying every breath. "You broke the kinetic strike, Frank. But you forgot where you are."
He pulled the heavy mechanical breaker downward.
Alarms, far louder and more urgent than any that had preceded them, began to shriek in alternating dual-tones through the vault. The overhead lights switched to a blinding, rhythmic amber.
*WARNING: GEOTHERMAL VENTING TERMINATED.*
*CORE TEMPERATURE EXCEEDING NOMINAL THRESHOLD.*
*CONTAINMENT BREACH IN 00:04:00.*
*FACILITY EVACUATION MANDATORY.*
"This entire bunker is powered by a subterranean superheated steam borehole," Sterling spat out a mouthful of crimson onto the polished console. "Without the cooling pumps, the pressure chamber underneath our feet becomes a five-megaton subterranean bomb. We’re four hundred feet below the ice sheet, Frank. When the bedrock fractures, three billion tons of glacial ice will drop into this hole like a stone down a well."
"You lunatic," I said, raising my weapon. "You're killing yourself."
"I died ten years ago, General," Sterling whispered, his hand sliding off the breaker as his legs finally gave out. He slumped against the base of the terminal, his eyes glazing over with the cold embrace of death. "A general doesn't surrender his command. He buries his battlefield."
His head rolled to the side. Arthur Sterling, the grand architect of America's shadow betrayal, drew his last, shallow breath and moved no more.
"Dad!" Abigail was already at Claire Vance’s side.
The older woman was barely breathing, the loss of blood from her shoulder and the physical trauma dragging her toward the threshold of death.
"Leave her, Abigail," I said coldly. "We have less than three minutes to reach the surface before the geothermal core breaches."
Abigail looked down at the woman who had orchestrated her torment. She looked at Claire’s pale, trembling face, the eyes fluttering with wordless, pathetic terror.
"No," Abigail said firmly.
I stopped. "She tried to have you murdered. She funded the syndicate that nearly burned this country to the ground."
"And she’s going to answer for every single bit of it," Abigail replied, her voice ringing with the clarity of a true soldier. "If she dies down here in the dark, she dies a martyr to whatever shadow cabal is left in the woodwork. She stands trial, Dad. In an American court. In front of the American people. I want her to hear the gavel fall."
I looked at my daughter. The pride that swelled in my chest was greater than any medal ever pinned to my uniform.
"Grab her other arm," I ordered.
Together, we hauled Claire Vance’s dead weight between us, dragging her toward the secondary emergency egress tunnel marked on the facility’s schematic—a vertical lift shaft designed to bypass the primary blast doors.
Behind us, the floor was already buckling.
Plates of six-inch armor-grade steel were warping upward like sheets of tin, superheated steam hissing violently through the expanding fractures in the concrete. The temperature in the amphitheater was skyrocketing—ninety degrees, one hundred, one hundred and twenty.
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"The lift!" Abigail shouted, hitting the call button on the emergency personnel hoist.
The heavy steel cage slammed down with a mechanical groan. We threw Claire onto the grating, piled in beside her, and I hit the emergency ascent lever.
