Chapter 33 - Fractured Mind
The harsh crimson glare of the emergency lights bathed the bunker in the color of fresh arterial blood.
A low, subterranean rumble vibrated through the floorboards as charges deep within the bedrock began their timed countdown.
Thomas remained frozen, staring at the faded insignia on Claire’s tactical vest, his breathing turning ragged and uneven.
"My head..." he groaned, dropping the serrated combat blade as both hands clamped down violently against his temples.
The combat conditioning was tearing itself apart inside his mind, colliding directly with eight years of repressed memory.
"Thomas, we have to move now," Claire urged, stepping forward and firmly gripping both of his shoulders.
His body was trembling violently, his skin pale and clammy under the crimson strobes.
"They... they put something in my spine, Claire," he choked out, his knees buckling under the sudden weight of agony. "The clinic in Zurich... Margaret was there."
"I know, Tommy. I know," she whispered, using his childhood nickname for the first time in nearly a decade.
She hauled him upward, hooking his heavy right arm over her uninjured shoulder to bear his dead weight.
"Can you walk?" she demanded, scanning the room for secondary exits as ceiling plaster rained down around them.
"I... I killed people, Claire," Thomas gasped, his eyes wide with horrified clarity as the fog vanished. "At the docks... the federal agents..."
"You were a weapon they aimed, Thomas. We deal with the guilt later. Right now, we survive."
The first explosion ripped through the southern corridor, throwing a massive shockwave that blew the remaining windowpanes outward into the gorge.
The floor tilted beneath their boots as concrete supports buckled under tons of collapsing earth.
Claire dragged Thomas toward the servant passage behind the library, kicking aside burning timbers and falling masonry.
"The radio," Thomas wheezed, pointing toward a cracked terminal blinking weakly on a side table. "Intercepted traffic... David Vance isn't in New York."
Claire grabbed the portable hard drive plugged into the deck, ripping it free and shoving it into her tactical vest pocket.
"Where is he?" she shouted over the deafening scream of another detonation closer down the hall.
"He went to the Cape May black site himself," Thomas coughed, spitting dark blood onto the floor. "He needed the biological samples... and Hayes."
Claire’s blood ran colder than the winter air rushing in through the blown walls.
Admiral Hayes had taken David Vance's top bioweapons scientist into custody at Cape May forty-eight hours ago.
If David Vance had breached that facility, Hayes was either a hostage or a dead man, and the bioweapon was back in play.
"Hold on to me!" Claire yelled as the library ceiling began to cave inward in massive, crushing slabs.
She shoved Thomas through the narrow servant door just as a massive oak beam smashed down where they had stood a second prior.
They tumbled down a steep, spiral stone staircase cut directly into the cliffside rock, gravity pulling them downward into the dark.
Behind them, the primary mansion groaned like a dying beast, collapsing inward upon its own hollow foundations.
A wall of choking gray dust chased them down the shaft, blinding their eyes and burning their throats.
Claire hit the damp earth of the lower drainage tunnel, her boots splashing into ice-cold mountain runoff.
Above them, the final detonation roared, sealing the entrance forever beneath thousands of tons of pulverized granite.
In the sudden, suffocating dark of the tunnel, only the sound of their ragged breathing remained.
Claire flicked on her weapon-mounted flashlight, its narrow beam cutting through the swirling dust.
Thomas lay against the wet stone wall, clutching his bleeding shoulder, but his eyes were completely clear now.
"She’s heading for the naval yard," Thomas whispered, looking up at Claire through the gloom. "Margaret has a private submarine berthed under the commercial pier."
May you like
Claire adjusted her grip on her sidearm, feeling the cold steel against her palm.
"Then we aren't going to Cape May to rescue the Admiral," Claire said, her voice dropping into a tone of quiet, absolute vengeance. "We're going to hunt."
