Chapter 5 - THE DESPERATE ESCAPE
"Self-destruct mode activated. Facility lockdown in fifteen minutes."
The automated, emotionless voice of the prison AI echoed through the speaker system, accompanied by flashing crimson lights and deafening klaxons.
Panic instantly consumed the cell block. Inmates began screaming, beating against the outer gates, frantically looking for an exit.
"He's going to burn us alive!" Lexi screamed, pulling at the reinforced steel doors that led to the outer yard. "The gates are locked! We're trapped!"
Maya ran to the main control panel on the block wall. She ripped off the plastic cover, exposing the mass of wires inside. She quickly identified the blue and white fiber-optic lines—the primary security override feeds.
"Martha! Lexi!" Maya called out, her voice loud and commanding over the blaring sirens. "Listen to me! The warden has locked down the main ventilation and exit routes. He's going to collapse the subterranean levels using explosive charges installed in the support pillars!"
"How do you know that?!" Martha cried.
"Because I built the security protocol for this facility five years ago when I was still working for the Department of Defense!" Maya revealed, her hands working lightning-fast to hotwire the panel.
The crowd of inmates gasped. The truth was finally out. She wasn't an inmate. She was the architect of their prison's digital security infrastructure.
BEEP! CLICK!
The heavy steel emergency fire doors at the end of the corridor unlocked with a pneumatic hiss.
"The laundry chute leads to the underground drainage pipes!" Maya ordered, pointing down the hall. "Get everyone through that door! Move! NOW!"
Roxie and Lexi immediately took charge, guiding the panicked crowd of inmates toward the escape route. "Move it! Keep moving! Don't push!" Lexi yelled, helping older inmates along.
Maya turned to go toward the lower level stairs, but a small hand grabbed her sleeve.
It was Tina. "Maya... aren't you coming with us?"
Maya looked down at the young girl, her expression softening for a brief moment. "I have to go down to the server room. If I don't retrieve the hard drive, the men who built this place will walk free, and they will build another hellhole just like this one."
"It's a trap!" Tina cried, tears streaming down her face. "The warden is down there! He has guns!"
"I have something better than guns, Tina," Maya said, pulling a heavy tactical knife from her belt that she had taken off one of Kruger's mercenaries. "I have a promise to keep."
She handed Tina a small metal keycard. "This opens the outer perimeter gate at the end of the sewer line. Get the women out. I'll meet you on the other side."
Without waiting for an answer, Maya turned around and sprinted down the dark, smoke-filled stairwell leading to the deepest levels of the facility.
The air grew hotter with every step she took. Smoke was filling the corridors as pre-planted thermite charges began to detonate in the lower support structures. The floor shook violently under her feet.
BOOM! BOOM!
Dust and concrete debris rained down from the ceiling.
Maya breached the heavy blast doors of the server room. The massive room was filled with racks of glowing blue servers, but half of them were already ablaze.
Standing near the main terminal was Warden Sterling, holding a heavy submachine gun, along with the man in the charcoal suit, who was finishing a manual data wipe on a laptop.
Two heavily armed private military contractors stood guard beside them.
"I told you she would come," Sterling sneered, raising his weapon and aiming it directly at Maya's chest. "You just couldn't let it go, could you, Vance? You had to be the hero."
Maya stood in the doorway, blood dripping from her knuckles, her eyes fixated on the silver laptop.
"It's over, Sterling," Maya said quietly. "The inmates are escaping. The news helicopters will be over this facility in ten minutes. You can't hide a prison collapsing on national television."
"They won't see a prison collapsing," the man in the charcoal suit laughed coldly. "They will see a tragic inmate riot that caused a fatal gas explosion. And you, Agent Vance, will be listed as the primary casualty."
The man in the suit pressed a button on his remote.
TICK. TICK. TICK.
A timer on the wall began counting down from three minutes.
"Kill her," Sterling ordered.
The two contractors raised their assault rifles. But before they could pull the triggers, Maya threw her tactical knife with terrifying speed and force.
THWACK!
The blade buried itself deep into the throat of the first contractor, who dropped his rifle and collapsed to the floor.
Before the second contractor could react, Maya swept under his field of fire, seized his rifle barrel, twisted it upward, and drove a savage knee into his ribcage, shattering his armor and taking him out of the fight instantly.
Sterling opened fire frantically. RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT!
Maya dove behind a metal server rack as 9mm rounds chewed through the concrete wall behind her. Sparks exploded into the air, lighting up the smoky room in brilliant flashes of orange and blue.
"You can't win, Maya!" Sterling screamed, firing blindly. "This building is dying!"
Maya pulled a flashbang grenade from the vest of the fallen contractor, pulled the pin, and cooked it for two seconds.
"Neither can you, Warden," she whispered.
She tossed the grenade over the server rack.
BANG!
A blinding flash of light and a deafening 130-decibel sound shockwave filled the room. Sterling shrieked, dropping his gun, clutching his bleeding ears and blinded eyes.
Maya moved like a shadow through the smoke. She appeared right in front of the man in the charcoal suit, snatched the encrypted laptop from his hands, and delivered a spinning back kick that sent him flying through the glass window of the control booth.
Sterling was on his knees, staggering, trying to reach for his dropped gun.
Maya stepped on his hand, crushing his fingers under her boot.
Sterling looked up, his eyes bloodshot and terrified, seeing the ghost operative standing over him like an angel of death.
"Please..." Sterling begged, coughing on the dense smoke. "I was just taking orders! The director... the senator... they made me do it! I have a family!"
Maya picked up the silver hard drive from the laptop slot and tucked it into her vest.
"You should have thought about families before you turned human beings into livestock," Maya said, her voice completely devoid of mercy.
She didn't shoot him. She didn't have to.
Maya turned her back and sprinted toward the emergency exit tunnel just as the structural ceiling began to cave in.
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BOOM!
A massive concrete slab collapsed right over the control booth, burying Sterling and his secrets beneath tons of rubble.
