Chapter 17 - The Desperate Gamble"He doesn't know," Maria gasped, covering her mouth with her hands as she stared at the screen. "Ethan thinks it's a normal test run!"
"We have to warn him," Jax said, pulling out his encrypted radio. "Command, this is Jax—do you copy? Command, respond!"
Only static answered. The radio had been completely fried by a localized electromagnetic pulse.
Lily stared at the glowing console in front of her. Her mind raced back to her father's words: When a machine starts talking to you in the dark, you don't run away from the noise. You find the source.
"Mom, Jax," Lily said, her voice suddenly dropping to a calm, icy stillness that commanded absolute attention. "Listen to me."
Maria turned, her eyes wide with fear. "Lily, what can we possibly do? We're locked in a vault!"
"We're not locked in a vault," Lily said, pointing straight down at the floor grating beneath the desk. "We're standing directly above the primary hydraulic cooling line that feeds the engine core. If we can manually trip the emergency pressure release valve from this room, we can vent the core's energy before Sterling reaches one hundred percent."
Jax stared at her in disbelief. "Kid, that line carries superheated steam at three thousand PSI. If you open that valve from up here without proper gear, the backpressure will blow this entire floor sky-high."
"If we don't do it," Lily replied steadily, "the whole city goes sky-high in three minutes."
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Jax looked at Maria, then back at the ten-year-old girl. A slow, grim smile touched the corner of the veteran's mouth. He unclipped a heavy-duty tactical multi-tool from his belt and handed it to Lily.
"Show me where to cut, kid."
