Chapter 22 - The Midnight Countdown
The shockwave from the explosion hurled me down the drainage pipe, tumbling through icy sludge, rusted rebar, and stagnant water. The blast sealed the concrete vault behind me with hundreds of tons of collapsed earth and rock, cutting off the pursuit completely.
I crawled out of the culvert into the rain-drenched ravine, gasping for air, bleeding from multiple lacerations, my ribs throbbing with every ragged breath. But I was alive.
Half a mile down the ravine, parked beneath the shelter of an abandoned highway overpass, the taillights of Sterling’s backup truck glowed red in the fog.
I dragged myself up the muddy embankment, coughing through the rain, and stumbled toward the truck. Vance swung the passenger door open, hauling me inside.
"You're out of your mind," she breathed, looking at my bruised and bloodied face with disbelief.
"Did you... did you get her?" I wheezed.
In the rear cabin, wrapped in dry blankets, Lily was sleeping, but her breathing was becoming dangerously shallow. Sterling was hunched over her with a portable defibrillator and a syringe of stabilizing saline.
"Her pulse is spiking," Sterling said, his voice laced with panic. "The peptide cascade has reached the blood-brain barrier. We have less than three hours before midnight. If we don't administer the master cipher enzyme by 12:00 AM, the neural damage will be irreversible."
"Where is Thorne?" I asked, gripping Vance’s shoulder.
"She’s at the private airfield twelve miles north," Vance said, her eyes blazing with determination. "Aethelgard’s airborne command plane is preparing for departure. Thorne brought the master cipher and the mobile laboratory there to oversee the extraction."
"Then we aren't running anymore," I said, wiping blood from my brow. "We’re attacking the airfield."
"David, it’s a fortified private hangar," Vance warned. "She has private security contractors crawling all over that tarmac."
"I don't care if she has an entire army," I growled, looking back at Lily’s pale, sweat-streaked face. "My daughter turns nine tonight. And she is going to live to see ten."
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Vance stared at me for three long seconds, then slammed the truck into gear. "Hold on."
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