Chapter 43 - Into the Maw
The entire deck lurched violently to the left, throwing everyone off balance. Deep beneath their feet, inside the massive submerged pylons of the offshore platform, explosive charges were detonating in sequence. The sound was not a bang, but a terrifying, grinding groan of thousands of tons of metal tearing under the crushing pressure of the Atlantic.
"He's running!" Clara cried out, pointing toward the far wall.
Marcus Sterling had pried open the yellow maintenance hatch beneath the primary gantry. He slipped into the shaft like a rat abandoning a drowning ship, slamming the iron hatch shut behind him.
"Let him go," Naomi said, her breathing steady despite the chaos. "The lower decks are already flooding. If he goes down there, he's sealing his own tomb. We need to go up."
"Up?" Ethan looked at the shattered glass ceiling. "The gunships are circling above us! It's suicide!"
"The gunships are positioning for a perimeter sweep, which means their blind spot is directly above the rotor wash," Naomi explained rapidly as she reloaded the captured MP7 with a fresh magazine from a fallen Cleaner. "The roof has an auxiliary helipad with an emergency winch line to the deep-sea diving tender docked on the south pylon. If we reach the tender before the rig capsizes, we survive."
A burst of automatic fire pinged off the metal deck near their feet. Two more Cleaners, having rappelled down from a second gunship, stepped through the smoking debris of the observation window.
"Move!" Naomi pushed Ethan and Clara toward the emergency stairwell behind the server core.
Vanessa tried to trail behind them, hobbling on one broken heel, but one of the Cleaners raised his weapon without hesitation. A sharp triple-burst echoed through the chamber. Vanessa gasped, stumbling backward against the steel bulkhead, her hands clawing at her chest as scarlet blooms spread across her designer dress.
She slid down the wall, her wide, disbelieving eyes staring at the vaulting ceiling as the alarms blared their final countdown.
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"Operative 09," a voice rasped from the lead Cleaner's comm-unit as he stepped over Vanessa's dying form. "The Oversight Committee sends its regards. You were supposed to die in Philadelphia."
Naomi stepped into the mouth of the stairwell, her eyes locked with the operative's visor. "Philadelphia was an ambush," she said quietly. "This is an execution."
