Chapter 68 - The Severed Hand
The firefight raged in the heart of the bunker. Bradley took a round to the left shoulder, grunting in pain as he dropped to one knee, but kept firing his sidearm with his right hand, pinning down the remaining mercs on the upper tier.
I didn't stop moving.
I vaulted onto the dais, sliding across the blood-slicked glass desk, and slammed my shoulder into the maintenance hatch beneath the master console. Inside, a tangled nest of fiber-optic cables pulsed with blinding blue light.
The Tartarus core was drawing emergency power from a dedicated geothermal tap beneath the Potomac. It couldn't be shut down by software. It had to be physically uncoupled.
"Elena! Behind you!" Bradley roared.
I spun around just as the last mercenary lunged at me with a combat blade. The steel flashed toward my throat. I caught his wrist with my left hand, the kinetic force driving me back against the console, but my right hand was already moving. I drew my combat knife and drove it up beneath his ceramic breastplate, straight through the gap into his heart.
He choked, his weight collapsing against me. I shoved his corpse to the ground, turned back to the exposed core, and grabbed the primary optical bus with both hands.
"Elena, don't!" Eleanor's voice screamed from the intercom, panic finally cracking her pristine veneer. "The thermal load will incinerate your nervous system!"
"You said it yourself, Mother," I gasped, my muscles tearing as I braced my boots against the steel housing. "You raised me to bleed!"
I hauled backward with every ounce of strength in my body.
The fiber-optic cables snapped with an ear-splitting crack of raw electrical discharge. A blinding surge of kinetic feedback arced through my arms, scorching the sleeves of my combat uniform, burning the flesh of my palms down to the fascia.
Agony—pure, unadulterated fire—rushed through my veins.
I screamed through clenched teeth, throwing my full body weight into the final severed strand.
With a deafening mechanical thud, the master quantum terminal died.
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The holographic displays vanished. The blinding lights flickered and died, plunging the massive underground command deck into pitch-black darkness, illuminated only by the faint, dying amber glow of emergency auxiliary indicators.
Across the chamber, the heavy hydraulic blast door of Eleanor’s escape module slammed shut.
