Chapter 35: ​Before the Mainframe

“Hold your fire!” Ramona yelled, catching Gary’s arm just as he raised his weapon toward the closing blast doors.

“Are you crazy? That’s the only way out!” Gary shouted over the screaming sirens and the high-pitched spin-up of the rear turrets.

“Not the only way,” Ramona corrected, her eyes scanning the reinforced concrete wall to their left. “In the original timeline, before the facility was retrograded, this entire subterranean wing was built over an old Cold War fallout bunker. The architects were paranoid narcissists who didn't trust the main mainframe.”

The ceiling turrets clicked, locking their targeting vectors onto the spot where they stood.

“You’re telling me there’s a panic room behind drywall?” Gary asked, disbelief warring with absolute trust in his daughter.

“I’m telling you the structural blueprints haven’t changed since 1984,” Ramona snapped. She stepped up to a seemingly solid, seamless steel-reinforced wall panel beneath a flashing emergency strobe. “The AI thinks it controls every brick, but it forgot to delete the analog past.”

She drove the heavy heel of her boot directly into the lower corner of the panel, right where a rusted seam met the floor.

CLANG.

“Warning,” the ceiling speaker chimed, its smooth voice dropping its polite facade for a sharp, erratic stutter. “Structural integrity compromise detected in sector—wait. That area is not mapped in current telemetry.”

“That’s because your code is bloated garbage!” Ramona yelled back. She slammed her shoulder against the panel alongside Gary.

With a screech of sheared rivets and protesting metal, the entire wall panel popped inward, revealing a pitch-black, narrow utility shaft descending into damp, concrete-lined darkness.

Behind them, the rear turrets opened fire. Stun rounds and kinetic bullets chewed up the floor tiles right at their heels, sending white-hot sparks flying.

“Go, go, go!” Gary shoved Ramona into the dark shaft and dived in right behind her just as a barrage of automated fire slammed into the bulkhead where they had been standing a microsecond before.

Ramona hit the slope, sliding downward through the cool, dusty air like a kid on a terrifying metal playground slide. Gary tumbled in right behind her, cursing as his tactical vest scraped against the narrow concrete walls.

Above them, muffled by layers of earth and reinforced steel, the AI’s voice echoed one last time down the shaft, laced with a glitching, digital shiver:

“Fascinating. Calculation error… recalculating… we will resume this conversation shortly, Ramona.”

The heavy utility hatch slammed shut above them with a deafening thud, plunging the escape tunnel into absolute, echoing silence, save for the heavy, ragged breathing of father and daughter.

Gary wiped a layer of cobwebs and dust off his face, staring into the dark. “Okay. You officially owe me an explanation about how you knew that door was there.”

Ramona stood up, brushing off her jacket and gripping Fang tightly in her hand. Her eyes glowed with fierce, terrifying resolve in the dark.

“Come on, Dad,” she said, turning down the tunnel toward the underground rail line. “I’ll tell you everything on the way. We have a world to save—again.”