Chapter 79 - The Surface Breach
"The charges are blowing the bedrock anchors!" Marco shouted over the sudden screech of twisting titanium. "We have ninety seconds before the lake pressure crushes this lab flat!"
"There!" I yelled, pointing to an emergency ascent pod mounted to an airlock at the far end of the chamber.
It was an old escape capsule designed by Vance Industries—a bullet-shaped sphere of reinforced steel with emergency chemical thrusters designed to punch through hundreds of feet of water to reach the surface.
We ran across the shaking acrylic floor as deep cracks spiderwebbed beneath our boots. The statue of my mother stood motionless in the freezing fog, already beginning to tilt as the foundation gave way.
We tumbled into the cramped steel interior of the escape capsule. Marco hit the manual hatch wheel, spinning it until the teeth engaged with a heavy, pressurized clunk.
"Arming thrusters!" Marco yelled, reaching for the emergency ignition levers painted in faded emergency yellow. "Hold onto something!"
Through the thick quartz porthole of the hatch, I watched the final moments of Sub-Trench Lab 04.
The titanium roof sheared completely in two. A wall of black, freezing water crashed downward with the force of an avalanche, swallowing the glass consoles, the empty stasis tubes, and the frozen form of Eleanor Vance.
Marco slammed both levers forward.
The chemical rockets ignited with a bone-jarring kick that slammed us flat against the steel bulkhead. The capsule shot upward into the vertical launch tube just as the lab collapsed behind us in a catastrophic implosion of rock, water, and shattered glass.
May you like
The G-force pressed against my chest like an anvil. The Bellini valve in Marco’s chest whined in high-RPM protest, while the sapphire mark on my wrist pulsed with an agonizing, sympathetic heat. We were screaming through the icy depths of Lake Michigan, riding a pillar of fire through two hundred feet of freezing abyss.
Then, with an explosive breach that sounded like a thunderclap, the capsule broke the surface.
