Chapter 8 - The Escape Plan
I stared down the barrel of Thomas's assault rifle, realizing I had merely traded one monster for another.
The government didn't want to save Ethan; they wanted to turn him into a military weapon.
Sarah gripped my hand incredibly tight, her fingernails digging deeply into my skin.
I knew I had to create a distraction immediately, or we were all going to be executed in this room.
I slowly raised my hands in the air, pretending to accept our grim fate completely.
"You can have all the research data on the servers, Thomas," I bargained desperately.
Thomas shook his head, his finger resting highly dangerously on the trigger.
"My orders are absolutely absolute, Mr. Whitman," Thomas replied without emotion.
I casually shifted my weight onto my left foot, positioning myself right next to the shattered medical console.
When David had been building this lab, I had secretly installed a failsafe EMP device in the main power grid.
It was designed to completely wipe the servers if the company was ever raided by corporate spies.
I violently slammed my elbow into the large red emergency glass panel on the side of the machine.
A massive, invisible electromagnetic pulse instantly radiated throughout the entire underground facility.
Every single light bulb violently shattered, plunging the massive room into absolute, pitch-black darkness.
The tactical team's advanced night-vision goggles sparked and completely short-circuited on their helmets.
"Grab the boy!" Thomas screamed blindly in the dark.
I tackled the closest mercenary to the ground, ripping a heavy flashbang grenade from his tactical vest.
I pulled the pin and threw it across the room toward the doorway.
The grenade detonated with a deafening bang and a blinding flash of intense white light.
I grabbed Sarah's hand, snatched Ethan by his collar, and sprinted into the dark, smoky hallway.
We ran blindly through the maze of underground corridors, listening to the furious shouts of the soldiers behind us.
I remembered a secret maintenance elevator at the far end of the facility that bypassed the main grid.
We reached the heavy metal doors of the elevator just as the emergency red backup lights slowly flickered on.
I desperately pried the doors open with my bare hands, ignoring the pain in my bleeding fingers.
I shoved Sarah and Ethan inside the small, cramped carriage and hit the surface button.
The elevator violently jerked upward just as Thomas and his men rounded the corner, firing their weapons.
Bullets sparked wildly against the thick steel doors as they finally closed shut.
We were shooting rapidly toward the surface, leaving the horrors of the underground lab behind us.
Sarah hugged me fiercely, her entire body shaking with pure adrenaline.
I looked down at Ethan, who was staring intensely at the floor of the elevator.
"You saved me again," Ethan whispered softly.
I smiled, feeling like a true father for the very first time in my life.
The elevator suddenly screeched to a violent halt between floors, completely trapping us in the narrow shaft.
The red emergency lights flickered rapidly, and a cold, mechanized voice echoed loudly from the intercom speaker.
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"Unauthorized biometric presence detected," the robotic voice announced cheerfully.
"Incineration protocols have been successfully activated."
