Chapter 4 - The Descent into Sector 9
The staircase leading to Sector 9 was steep, cold, and shrouded in shadows. The only sound was the distant, rhythmic dripping of water and the hiss of escaping gas.
With Ella piggybacked on his shoulders to keep her above the heavier gas settling near the floor, Ethan descended into the abyss. His phone flashlight sliced through the darkness, revealing rusted pipes and abandoned machinery.
"Mommy!" Ella called out, her voice muffled by the wet cloth. "Mommy, where are you?"
"Shh, sweetie, keep your breathing slow," Ethan urged, his own throat burning from the faint traces of gas in the air.
At the bottom of the stairs, they reached a heavy steel vault door. It was labeled: RESTRICTED: CHEMICAL STORAGE.
Ethan tried his master keycard. Access Denied.
"Dammit!" Ethan hissed. The system had been locked down from the outside.
He shone his flashlight around the doorframe and noticed something caught in the latch. It was a small piece of blue fabric.
"That's Mommy's scarf!" Ella gasped, pointing at the thread. "She always wears it when her throat gets cold!"
Ethan’s heart hammered against his ribs. Scarlett was inside that vault.
"Scarlett! Can you hear me?!" Ethan shouted, banging his shoulder against the steel door.
A faint, weak thud answered from the other side.
Thump. Thump.
"She's alive!" Ethan gasped. But the air in that vault was sealed. If the chemical gas was leaking into the ventilation system, she would suffocate within minutes.
He needed a code to bypass the physical override. He stared at the keypad. It required an administrator's birthday. He tried his own. Incorrect. He tried the factory's founding date. Incorrect.
In a desperate gamble, Ethan typed in Victoria’s birthday: 08-24-1994.
Click.
The heavy locking bolts slid back. Ethan threw the door open.
Inside, slumped against a stack of wooden crates, was Scarlett Morgan. Her face was pale, her lips blue, and her breathing shallow.
"Mommy!" Ella screamed, sliding off Ethan's back and throwing herself onto her mother.
"Ella...?" Scarlett’s eyes fluttered open, glassy and weak. "What... what are you doing here? Run... you have to run..."
"We're getting you out of here, Scarlett," Ethan said, lifting her fragile frame. She was incredibly light, worn down by years of hard labor and malnutrition.
"Mr. Caldwell...?" Scarlett whispered, recognizing his face. "You don't understand... Victoria... she's smuggling..."
Before Scarlett could finish her sentence, the heavy steel door behind them slammed shut with a deafening crash.
The electronic keypad on the outside beeped. SYSTEM LOCKED. ventilation shutdown initiated.
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A voice chuckled over the wall intercom. It was cold, aristocratic, and completely devoid of empathy.
"Oh, Ethan. You always did have a savior complex," Victoria Sterling’s voice echoed through the dark vault. "But you really shouldn't have poked your nose into my business operations."
