Chapter 54 - The Sins of the Father
"He took the maintenance hatch!" Thomas shouted, pointing toward a small steel door swinging open in the far corner.
Claire sprinted back to the console, her boots slipping on spent brass casings.
Julian was already on his feet, typing furiously into the central terminal despite the lingering smoke.
"Did he get the drive?" Claire demanded, grabbing Julian by the shoulder.
"No," Julian answered, his fingers flying across the keys. "The biometric sequence was never initiated. But he did worse."
"What did he do?" Thomas asked, limping over while clutching his side, where a graze was bleeding through his uniform.
"He rerouted the purge command," Julian said, his face pale beneath the grime. "He’s heading down to the lower reactor floor."
"Why the reactor?" Claire asked, checking the chamber of her rifle.
"Because Cheyenne Mountain isn't just a communication relay, Claire," Julian said, turning to look her directly in the eyes.
"Explain," Claire ordered, her patience wearing paper-thin.
"Your father built this place during the Cold War to survive a nuclear strike," Julian said. "He installed a self-contained geothermal reactor."
Julian tapped the monitor, bringing up a glowing schematic of the underground complex.
"If Hayes overloads the geothermal cooling lines, the pressure will blow the granite cap off this entire peak," Julian warned.
"He’d commit suicide?" Thomas asked, his voice thick with disbelief.
"No," Julian replied, pulling up a secondary blueprint. "There's an old subterranean railway track leading out through the eastern ridge toward Colorado Springs."
"A getaway train," Claire realized, her teeth grinding together.
"He blows the facility, erases every shred of Black Sun evidence, and leaves us buried under two billion tons of rock," Julian said.
A crackle of static suddenly burst from the room's primary communications array.
A cold, familiar voice echoed from the speakers, cutting through the wail of the alarms.
"Claire... can you hear me?"
Claire froze, recognizing the aristocratic, measured cadence instantly.
"Margaret?" Claire said, stepping closer to the radio console.
"Thank God the mountain relay is still transmitting," Margaret’s voice came through, strained and accompanied by the distant sound of sirens.
"Where are you?" Claire demanded.
"Federal marshals were moving me to a black site in Virginia," Margaret said, her voice shaking with rare, genuine panic.
"Were moving you?" Thomas repeated into the microphone.
"Hayes’s syndicate ambushed the convoy ten minutes ago," Margaret confessed, the sound of automatic gunfire rattling in the background of her transmission.
"He's cleaning house," Claire said coldly, feeling no sympathy for the woman who had cast her aside.
"Listen to me, Claire!" Margaret pleaded, her polished veneer completely shattering over the radio. "Hayes never meant for either of us to walk away from this."
"You made your bed with him, Margaret," Claire said, ready to cut the connection.
"He took your father's journal!" Margaret screamed through the static. "The one with the coordinates to the original vault!"
May you like
Claire's finger hovered over the switch as Margaret delivered the final, devastating blow.
"Your father didn't die in that study, Claire... Hayes took him alive."
