Chapter 198

Charlotte turned around. Michael looked up at her. In his eyes—shaped just like hers—something stirred from the depths of that hollow darkness. It wasn’t courage. It wasn’t impulse.

It was something far more primal.

The instinct of someone who had been trapped for ten years, finally catching a glimpse of light through a narrow crack, desperately trying to reach that light with every ounce of strength.

Charlotte crouched down. She placed her palm over Michael's fingers that was still clutching the edge of her clothes.

“I’m going in to bring people out,” she said quietly. “Not to send you back in.”

Michael’s grip loosened. Slowly, he lowered his head. His nails had already scratched a small tear into the blanket’s edge.

Charlotte stood up. For a brief second, her legs faltered—the bruise on her knee sending a sharp pulse of weakness through her balance.

"Michael."

He didn’t respond.

"Wait for me to come back."

She turned and walked toward the door. Three steps.

"247918."

Michael's voice came from behind her.

Charlotte froze.

“Even if they changed it, the last four digits won’t change,” he said, his voice trembling but steady. "They only change the first two. I heard it over and over. The first two sounds were different sometimes, but the last four were always the same.”

First two digits change, last four stay fixed. A six-digit code becomes a two-digit code. Two digits, from 00 to 99, one hundred possibilities.

Charlotte turned back slightly. Michael had curled into himself again, his face buried in his knees, his shoulders shaking. But this time, he didn't reach out to grab her clothes again. He had let go.

Charlotte stepped out of the hospital room. Her hand lingered on the door handle as she closed it.

In the hallway, Charles was already waiting, leaning against the wall.

"Fourteen hours," he said.

Charlotte's hand released from the door handle. "That's enough."

Her phone vibrated—an encrypted message from Felix: Another one's here.

The fourth refrigerated truck had entered the Bowers Villa.

Cold river water crept up to Charlotte’s ankles.

Charlotte knelt at the entrance of the drainage pipe. The iron grate was worse than expected—rust-eaten, brittle. Three of the lower bars had snapped off, leaving a jagged gap barely wide enough for a person to squeeze through. The stench in the air was stronger than that time in Emberfall City. Thick, oily residue clung to the pipe walls, glistening sickly green under the beam of her flashlight.

Charlotte put on her mask. Felix's voice came through her earpiece.

“Fiber optic access point confirmed. Northeast distribution room. Two main fiber cables, one backup copper cable."

“Stand by for my signal.”

"Copy."

Charlotte glanced back.

Across the riverbed, half-hidden among the rocks, Charles stood in shadow. He wore the bulletproof vest Randal gave him, his right hand held a silenced pistol, steady as stone. His left shoulder injury made his stance slightly tilted, but his gun hand was unnaturally steady. He was taking painkillers, at least three pills. Before getting in the car, Charlotte had smelled the bitter taste of undissolved pills in his mouth.

“03:05. Wayne's car enters the cargo passage." Charles's voice came through the earpiece, hoarse and breathy. “03:08, fiber cut. You have sixty seconds.”

"Got it."

"Charlotte."

"What?"

"Your brother said the last four digits don't change. 9918. If the first two changed, start trying from 00. Each attempt takes one point five seconds; trying all one hundred combinations would take two and a half minutes."

"I've done the math."

"Sixty seconds isn't enough to try them all."

Charlotte tucked the flashlight into her boot. "So I won't try them all."

She turned sideways and forced herself into the pipe.

Ice-cold water soaked through her clothes instantly. The pipe wall pressed against her shoulders—the space was even narrower than the Emberfall City drainage pipe.

When her left shoulder scraped the rough concrete, the edge of the butterfly bandage tore loose. Pain. Dull, continuous, burning from her collarbone all the way to the bottom of her shoulder blade. She clenched her teeth and kept moving.

Darkness swallowed everything. The flashlight wedged in her boot only illuminated a small area behind her feet. She didn't dare take it out—the pipe was too narrow to lift her arms. Her left hand slid along the wall, tracing the texture—counting distance, mapping by touch. The pipe had a downward slope change at twenty meters, marked on the blueprints. Michael hadn't corrected it, meaning this location was accurate.

Her knee slipped in the mud. Her body lurched forward half a meter, her right palm pressing against a sharp protrusion. Metal. A rusted bolt head. Her palm split open. Blood mixed with muddy water. No pain, or rather, she didn't have time to feel the pain.

Wayne's voice came through the earpiece: "Cargo passage, reached the entrance."

03:05.

Charlotte sped up. Knees and elbows alternating forward, each movement splashing water and mud. The pipe got narrower. At the narrowest point, both her shoulders pressed against the pipe walls, her chest compressed, breathing reduced to shallow gasps. She twisted sideways, right shoulder up, left shoulder down. The wound on her left side took the full pressure and the bandage peeled away completely. Warm blood trickled down her arm. Ignore it.

"Scanning station. Passing through." Wayne's voice.

03:08.

"Cut," Charlotte said in the pipe.

A faint metallic snap echoed through her earpiece.

Sixty seconds.

Charlotte's elbows pushed off the ground, her whole body surging forward. The pipe began to angle upward at this point. At the end—light. A trace of grayish-white light seeped through a crack at the end of the pipe.

Waste liquid processing room.

Charlotte burst out of the pipe, hitting the ground hard. The impact jarred her left shoulder, her vision went white for a moment. Three seconds to recover.

The waste liquid processing room wasn't large. Two corroded tanks against the wall, water pooling across the floor. The fluorescent tubes were off; only the emergency indicator light in the corner was emitting a faint green glow. Charlotte stood up, drawing the silenced pistol from her waist. Right hand on the gun, left hand taking C4 plastic explosive and remote detonator from the waterproof bag.

The waste liquid processing room door wasn't locked. She eased it open—just a crack. The hallway was empty but brightly lit. White tubes lined overhead in a row, the light harsh.

Charlotte slipped out, her boots nearly soundless on the floor. Left turn, ten meters. Michael said the hidden door was on the south wall of the monitoring center. The blueprints showed a solid wall, but Michael had drawn a door.

Charlotte's fingers slid along the wall surface. Cement coating, rough, uniform. Three meters. Four meters. Five meters—her fingertip touched a thin seam. Vertical, extending from the floor to a height of one point nine meters. The gap was less than two millimeters wide. Invisible to the naked eye without touching. It was the hidden door.

Charlotte's fingertip found a depression at the edge of the seam, the size of a fingernail. She pressed her thumb in. The hidden door shifted inward five centimeters.

Charlotte squeezed through sideways. Narrow passage. Wider than the drainage pipe, but only wide enough for one person. The walls on both sides were exposed red brick, with no lights overhead. Underfoot was a rough cement floor with wheel tracks—marks from a cart passing through. Michael had traveled this path, carried like cargo, from basement level two to basement level three.

Charlotte walked along the narrow passage, pistol held at chest level. Fifteen meters. The passage ended at a wall. On the right side was an iron with scratches and impact dents on its surface. A numeric keypad was embedded in the door.

Charlotte glanced at the timer on her phone. Thirty-eight seconds since the fiber was cut.

Her finger hovered above the keypad. 247918—the code Michael heard four months ago. The first two digits might have changed, the last four stayed the same. Gamble.

She started entering numbers, each attempt, one point five seconds. Her fingers struck the keypad faster and faster. Her sixty seconds ran out. Footsteps came from the end of the hallway—people in the monitoring center had discovered the communication interruption. Charlotte's left hand pressed on the C4 explosive; the detonator's safety cover was already flipped open.

089918.

As her thumb pressed the last key, her right index finger rested on the detonator button.

The indicator light on the edge of the keypad lit up. Green.

The iron door made a dull mechanical sound. The lock cylinder turned, and the door crack opened two centimeters.

Charlotte exhaled sharply, stuffing the explosive back into her waist.Her both hands braced against the door, but the iron door was heavy, at least two hundred kilograms. The door shaft made a piercing metal scraping sound as it moved. The door opened thirty centimeters. Enough. Charlotte slipped through sideways.