Chapter 57 - The Siege of the Bluff House
"Maya, don't do it!" Liam hissed under his breath, his eyes rapidly calculating angles, blast radiuses, and tactical cover. "If you step into that glass chamber, the magnetic locks will seal. You'll never walk out alive."
"She doesn't have a choice, Captain Vance," Vespera's voice boomed through the speakers. "Ten seconds, or I manually trigger Julian's vest."
Julian looked down at the blinking timer on his chest. The countdown had dropped to 00:08:42, but the red lights suddenly began flashing with frantic, double-time urgency.
"She's overriding the timer!" Julian screamed, panic finally shattering his arrogant façade. "Vespera, you promised! You promised me the antidote to the neuro-toxin! You swore on the Council’s honour!"
"The Council honours only blood," Vespera said with ruthless finality. "And you have none worth saving."
"Eleanor, get behind the stone column! Now!" Liam roared.
In a fraction of a second, Liam didn't shoot Julian, nor did he aim at Vespera behind the bulletproof glass. Instead, he fired three high-velocity armor-piercing rounds directly into the hydraulic feed line running down the vaulted wall—the very line controlling the blast doors' pneumatic seals.
Pressurized hydraulic fluid sprayed across the stone floor in a blinding, hissing geyser. At the same time, Liam pulled a specialized thermite charge from his tactical satchel, hurled it at the base of the sealed blast door, and detonated it remotely.
A blinding flash of white-hot magnesium turned the dark crypt into midday. The heat was immense, scorching the air and cracking the ancient stone.
"Move! Up the stairs!" Liam screamed, grabbing my arm and pulling me through the searing smoke.
Above us, Vespera’s guards opened fire, bullets pinging furiously off the metal catwalk stairs and chipping concrete around our heads.
Julian, driven completely insane by terror, charged toward the stairs, trying to escape the blast radius of his own chest. "Wait for me! Take me with you!"
"Julian, stay back!" Eleanor screamed from the stairwell.
A burst of automatic fire from the guards above cut through the smoke. Two rounds punched into Julian’s shoulder, spinning him around. He collapsed onto the floor, clutching his chest harness as the timer beeped a terrifying, continuous high-pitched tone: *00:00:30.*
"Maya, run!" Liam yelled, shoving me toward the thermite-weakened blast door, which was buckling under the thermal charge.
I reached the doorway, but I looked back.
Eleanor had stopped. She was staring at Julian, who was bleeding out on the stone floor, his eyes wild with agonizing regret.
"Eleanor, what are you doing?! Come on!" I screamed.
"I can't let him die like a dog, Maya," Eleanor sobbed, her face smeared with soot and tears. "I brought this evil into our family. I opened the door for him!"
She turned back toward Julian, desperately reaching for the release latches of his explosive vest.
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"Eleanor, NO!" I lunged back down the stairs, but Liam tackled me around the waist, dragging me violently through the ruined blast door into the upper tunnel just as the thirty-second counter hit zero.
***
