Chapter 6 - The Ghost in the Architecture
The beam of my flashlight illuminated the damp concrete of the tunnel I had designed a lifetime ago.
This was the prototype access shaft that Whitmore Civil Systems claimed had structural flaws.
It was the cornerstone of the lie they used to ruin my reputation.
Everett touched the wall, his face pale in the artificial light.
He realized exactly where we were and what it meant.
Camille asked why I would lead us into a dead-end shaft.
I told her the blueprints were officially registered as a dead end to satisfy a zoning technicality.
But as the chief engineer, I always built an emergency ventilation egress into my designs.
There was a hidden hatch at the end of the corridor that led to the surface.
We began walking deeper into the mountain, the air growing stale and thin.
The silence was oppressive, broken only by the crunch of gravel beneath our boots.
Blake walked far behind me, too ashamed to look me in the eye.
Everett walked beside his son, an old man stripped of his power and influence.
I kept my focus on the structural integrity of the walls.
Despite what the fake reports had claimed thirteen years ago, my engineering was flawless.
Not a single crack marred the concrete archways.
We reached the end of the main corridor after twenty minutes.
A heavy steel bulkhead blocked the path, exactly where I had placed it in the blueprints.
I approached the access panel to manually crank the door open.
My flashlight beam caught something strange wired to the locking mechanism.
It was a block of military-grade plastic explosive.
A digital timer was glued to the front, glowing with red numbers.
Marcus Vance had known about my hidden egress.
He had wired the tunnel to ensure there were no survivors if the flood did not work.
The timer was not currently counting down.
But as soon as my hand brushed the metal door handle, a green light flashed.
A loud beep echoed through the tunnel.
The red numbers instantly changed from static zeros to a sixty-second countdown.
Camille gasped and backed away.
Everett began to panic, shouting that we needed to run back.
I told him running was useless because the entrance was buried under thousands of tons of rock.
We were trapped in a concrete tube with a bomb.
I stared at the explosive, my mind racing through my old schematics.
I had forty-five seconds to bypass a lock I had designed myself.
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But if I cut the wrong wire, I would not just kill the Whitmores.
I would leave my daughter to face Marcus Vance completely alone.
