Chapter 106 The Blue Trap

Chapter 106 The Blue Trap
Marcus

"Jump!" I screamed, my voice cracking in the small, dark metal box.

The blue light beneath our boots grew blindingly bright. It wasn't a gentle glow, it was a fierce, humming current that made the fillings in my teeth ache. The execution grid was charging up, ready to turn the metal floor into a frying pan.

Jax groaned, his face white from his bleeding shoulder, but he managed to lift his feet. Sarah scrambled onto a wooden packing crate in the corner, pulling Lily tightly against her chest. I snatched Maya up into my arms and leaped onto a metal tool chest bolted to the side wall.

"Three!" the computer voice boomed from the ceiling speaker.

"Marcus, the cables!" Jax yelled, pointing upward. He was hanging onto a steel handrail, his boots dangling just inches above the glowing floor. "If the grid hits the frame, the whole box fries anyway!"

My heart hammered against my ribs. My skin felt hot, the gray lines on my arms prickling with a dangerous, heavy static. I had used up my internal battery to blow that pipe on Mason's face, but the raw terror of watching my friends get cooked alive forced my brain to find another spark.

"Two!" the voice warned.

I didn't think. I reached up and grabbed the main power line hanging from the elevator ceiling. The rubber coating was thick, but I dug my bleeding fingernails straight through the insulation until I felt the bite of the raw copper wire.

A sharp, agonising jolt of electricity shot straight up my arm, making my vision go completely white. I didn't let go. I became the wire. I channelled the loose current from the ceiling grid directly into my own body, bypassing the elevator's automated brain.

"One!"

The floor didn't explode with lightning. Instead, the bright blue light beneath our feet flickered once, hummed loudly, and died out in a shower of small, yellow sparks. The elevator shivered, its braking pads clamping down hard on the steel guide rails with a deafening screech.

We stopped dropping. We were stuck in the dark, halfway down the shaft.

"Did you do it?" Sarah panted from her wooden crate, her breath coming in short, ragged gasps.

I dropped from the tool chest, my legs buckling the moment my boots hit the cold, safe metal floor. My right arm was completely numb, smoking slightly from the wire bite. "The grid is dead," I choked out, coughing on the smell of burnt rubber. "But we are trapped. The doors are locked from the outside."

Sarah

I set Lily down on the crate and climbed off. The darkness inside the lift was thick, broken only by the tiny red emergency light blinking on the wall panel. I could hear Jax breathing heavily in the corner, his hand pressed firmly against his torn shoulder.

"We aren't dying in this box," I said, my jaw tightening. The anger inside me was a solid, hot stone. Mason Thorne was still up there, blinded and screaming, but his machines were still working. He had tried to turn us into ash. I wanted to see him pay for that. I wanted to make sure he never hurt anyone else.

I looked down at the crimson cylinder I had stolen from the hallway floor. It was still pulsing with a faint, evil red light.

"Marcus," I said, stepping closer to him. "This is the core extractor Mason wanted to use on Maya. Can it open the doors?"

Marcus looked up, his face pale and smeared with black soot. He touched the silver casing with his good hand. "It's a high-powered magnetic syphon. If I override the safety latch, it will release a directional blast of pure force. It could blast the door locks open."

"Do it," Jax growled from the dark. "Because I can hear them."

I froze. Jax was right.

Through the thick steel of the elevator ceiling, a heavy, rhythmic sound echoed down the shaft. Thump. Thump. Thump. It was the heavy metal fists of the black war machines. They weren't waiting for the execution grid to finish us. They were climbing down the structural cables, their heavy steel bodies sliding down the dark shaft like giant metal spiders. They were coming to finish the job.

Marcus

My fingers shook as I pried open the small maintenance hatch on the side of the crimson cylinder. My right arm was still tingling with a dull, sickening pain, but I forced my muscles to work.

Just one spark, I prayed to my father's memory. Just give me enough to blow the latch.

I jammed my thumb onto the main internal capacitor, letting the residual electricity in my skin flow into the device. The crimson light instantly turned a violent, blinding white. The cylinder grew so hot it blistered the skin on my palm, but I didn't drop it.

I shoved the white-hot cylinder straight into the seam between the double steel doors.

"Get back!" I shouted.

An earsplitting CRACK rattled through the elevator box. A wave of white pressure erupted from the cylinder, blowing the heavy reinforced steel doors completely off their tracks. The doors flew outward, crashing loudly into the dark concrete hallway of the lower service level.

Cool, damp air from the slums rushed into our faces. We were looking at the dirty brick walls of the old subway terminal. Home.

"Move! Move!" Jax yelled, shoving Sarah and Lily out through the smoking opening.

I scooped Maya back into my arms and leaped through the broken doorway just as a heavy, metallic weight crashed onto the roof of the elevator behind us.

The steel ceiling of the lift caved inward with a terrifying screech. A massive, black metal arm tore straight through the roof plating, its yellow eyes glaring through the gap. The machine had found us.

But it didn't jump down into the hallway.

Instead, a tall, limping figure stepped into the light of the elevator opening, pushing the black machine aside. It was Mason Thorne. His face was covered in a thick, white chemical foam from the hydraulic leak, but one of his eyes was open, bloodshot and dripping with a murderous fury.

He didn't have a gun. He didn't need one. He was holding a small, black remote with a single glowing green button.

"You think you won, Marcus?" Mason hissed, his voice echoing through the dark terminal like a demon. "This terminal is wired to the main gas line of the entire lower sector. If I press this button, your whole precious home becomes a crater."

Mason has his finger on the ultimate kill switch for the entire lower sector! Surrounded by his war machines, will Marcus find a way to stop the explosion, or will their home burn to the ground?