Chapter 15 - THE INSIDE TRAITOR
The alarm sirens howled through the station like dying beasts. Red water hit the floorboards as structural seams began to pop open under the immense oceanic weight.
"Ethan, wait!" I screamed, but he was already scaling the steel ladder toward the bridge.
"Take Arthur to the bathyscaphe!" Ethan shouted back over the deafening groan of bending metal. "If that matrix gets out, every Navy defense grid in the Pacific goes dark!"
I grabbed Arthur under his armpits, hauling him toward the auxiliary exit corridor. His legs were weak from forty years of muscle atrophy, but he fought through the pain, leaning on my strength.
"Avery... the control room..." Arthur panted, pointing to a heavy manual blast door near the airlock. "If the main hull blows, the back pressure will crush your bathyscaphe before you can unhook!"
"I have to manual-jam the emergency bulkhead!" I realized.
We reached the blast door. The massive five-ton steel slab was descending slowly on hydraulic tracks, designed to seal off the docking bay. But the automated gear was sparking and grinding to a halt—jammed by debris!
If that door didn't close fully, the explosion from the main dome would blow straight through into our escape vessel.
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Suddenly, Victor Vance dropped from the upper bridge walkway onto the deck twenty feet away, clutching the stolen hard drive!
He pointed his sidearm directly at Arthur's head! "Nobody leaves this dome!"
