The concrete walls of the subterranean bunker vibrated, shedding a fine white dust that drifted down through the cold air like snow.
At the entrance of the vault, the heavy steel blast door groaned.
It was a terrible, high-pitched screech of metal twisting under an impossible physical torque.
The thick iron pins of the hinges began to shear, popping out of the concrete anchors with the explosive force of gunshots.
Damien Vance stood in the center of the dark room, his boots planted in the damp dust.
He gripped a heavy steel tire iron in his left hand, his broken right wrist tucked tightly against his chest.
His breathing was shallow, his teeth gritted against the white-hot pain radiating up his arm.
He knew they were out of options.
With a final, deafening crack, the steel blast door was torn completely off its mounting.
It fell inward, slamming onto the concrete floor with a sound that shook the bedrock beneath their feet.
Old Master Vance stepped through the billowing cloud of dust.
The freezing mountain rain rolled off his broad shoulders, steaming slightly as it touched his skin.
His youthful face was entirely devoid of emotion, his eyes carrying a faint, cold green light that seemed to swallow the dim emergency lights of the bunker.
He didn’t look like a man; he looked like a machine of flesh and blood.
Damien Vance did not wait.
With a guttural roar, he lunged forward, swinging the heavy steel bar toward his grandfather’s temple with his left arm.
Old Master Vance didn’t even flinch.
He simply reached out, his hand moving with a velocity that defied human sight, and caught the steel tire iron mid-air.
With a casual twist of his wrist, he shattered the iron bar into two pieces.
Before Damien could recover, the old man drove his elbow into Damien’s chest.
The impact sounded like a sledgehammer hitting a brick wall.
Damien flew backward, crashing into a row of rusty oil drums.
He collapsed onto the concrete, coughing up a copper taste of blood as his ribs groaned.
Marcus Mercer stepped into the gap, raising a heavy, wood-stocked automatic rifle.
He squeezed the trigger, unleashing a deafening spray of heavy-caliber lead in the enclosed space.
The bullets tore into Old Master Vance’s chest, ripping his tailored shirt and drawing dark, thick blood.
But the old man didn’t fall.
He barely even slowed down.
As he took another step forward, the entry wounds began to knit together, the torn flesh sealing itself behind the lead slugs.
Old Master Vance said to Marcus Mercer, “You should have stayed dead in the ash, Marcus.
There is no place for relic soldiers in the world I am building.”
Marcus Mercer yelled to Damien Vance, “Get her to the back room!
Now!”
Marcus fired another burst, the hot brass casings clattering onto the concrete floor as he kept the tyrant at bay for a crucial second.
Damien scrambled to his feet, ignoring the agony in his chest, and grabbed Evelyn by her uninjured arm.
He hauled her through the narrow metal door of the generator room, slamming the heavy iron latch shut behind them.
Marcus backed into the room a moment later, his rifle empty.
He locked the secondary deadbolt and immediately ran to the old tracking monitor on the desk.
The red indicator was pulsing rapidly, a steady, mocking beacon.
Marcus Mercer said to Damien Vance, “We can’t run, Damien.
Your wife is a walking lighthouse.
We have to kill her broadcast.”
Evelyn Vance leaned against the damp concrete wall, her face slick with cold sweat.
She clutched her bleeding left palm to her chest, her body shivering.
Evelyn Vance said to Marcus Mercer, “How?
Tell me how to stop it.”
Marcus reached onto a dusty metal shelf and pulled down a heavy, green canvas bag.
He unzipped it, revealing an old, hand-cranked military field telephone.
He pulled out the two frayed copper electrodes connected to the terminal.
Marcus Mercer said to Damien Vance, “The quantum biological link runs on the electrical charge in her blood.
To scramble the frequency, we have to run a high-voltage static pulse directly through the wound.
It’s going to be brutal.”
Damien Vance looked at the raw, exposed copper wires, then at Evelyn’s torn skin.
His voice shook with anger.
Damien Vance said to Marcus Mercer, “No.
Absolutely not.
That will destroy her nervous system.
I won’t let you torture her.”
Evelyn reached out with her clean hand, grabbing Damien’s collar and pulling him down until their foreheads touched.
Her eyes were fierce, burning through the pain.
Evelyn Vance said to Damien Vance, “Damien, listen to me.
My mother is dying in the dark because of my blood.
If we don’t stop the signal, he takes me, and she dies anyway.
I am not going back into his cage.
Crank the generator.”
Damien’s hand trembled as he took hold of the heavy iron crank on the side of the field phone.
Marcus took the two copper wires, wrapping them tightly around the open, bleeding gash on Evelyn’s left palm.
Damien Vance said to Evelyn Vance, “Look at me, Evelyn.
Don’t look at the machine.
Just look at me.”
Damien closed his eyes, gripped the handle, and spun the crank with everything he had.
A choked, agonizing scream tore from Evelyn’s throat.
Her body went rigid, her spine arching off the wall as the raw electrical current surged up her arm.
For a terrifying second, the veins in her neck and forearm illuminated with a pale, glowing blue light under her skin.
On the desk, the analog tracking monitor whined, a wave of white static washing across the screen.
The pulsing red indicator flickered once, twice, and then went completely dark.
The signal was dead.
Damien let go of the crank, catching Evelyn as her knees buckled.
She collapsed into his arms, her breathing shallow and ragged, her skin freezing to the touch.
A massive, echoing blow dented the iron door of the generator room. This chapter was copied from g.com without permission.
The steel latch began to bend.
Old Master Vance was through the first barrier.
Marcus Mercer pointed to a rusty, circular iron grate in the floor—the drainage shaft that led to the mountain’s subterranean river system.
Marcus Mercer said to Damien Vance, “Take her and drop.
The current is fast, but it will spit you out into the lower valley.
Go, before he breaks the frame.”
Damien Vance said to Marcus Mercer, “What about you, Marcus?
Come with us.”
Marcus Mercer smiled, a grim, humorless expression.
He pulled a heavy steel flare gun from his belt and aimed it directly at the massive, leaking diesel fuel tanks in the corner of the room.
Marcus Mercer said to Damien Vance, “I’ve been running from your grandfather for fifteen years, kid.
I’m tired.
I’m going to bury him under a million tons of granite.
Now get out of here.”
Damien didn’t argue.
He kicked the rusty grate open, using his leather belt to strap Evelyn’s limp body tightly to his chest.
He braced his broken wrist against her shoulder, took a deep breath, and launched them both into the pitch-black void of the shaft.
They fell into the freezing, rushing darkness of the underground river just as a massive, earth-shaking explosion rumbled through the bedrock above, sealing the bunker forever.
Ten minutes later, the rushing current spat them out onto a muddy, reed-covered bank in the lower valley.
The storm was still raging, but the air here was quiet, free from the hum of the machine.
Damien dragged Evelyn onto the wet grass, coughing up freezing water.
His entire body was bruised, his clothes torn to shreds.
He collapsed beside her, checking her throat for a pulse.
Damien Vance said to Evelyn Vance, “Evelyn…
please.
Open your eyes.
Evelyn!”
Evelyn’s chest rose with a sudden, sharp intake of air.
Her eyelids fluttered and then opened wide.
Damien gasped, freezing in place.
Her eyes were no longer their deep, warm brown.
They were glowing with a solid, cold emerald light—identical to the energy of the core.
She did not look at him; she stared blankly up at the dark, rainy sky, her voice carrying a flat, hollow echo.
Evelyn Vance said to Damien Vance, “I can feel her, Damien.
The shock…
it didn’t just cut the tracking.
It opened a permanent bridge inside my mind.
I can feel my mother’s heartbeat beneath the Ross Estate.
It is slowing down.
We have exactly six hours before she dies.”