Chapter 25 - The Mother’s Gambit
The shockwave tossed Arthur backward through the air, slamming his back against the damp concrete wall of the dry dock.
Massive boulders pulverized the metal walkway, severing the path between the gantry and the submarine's boarding hatch.
Through the blinding cloud of powdered stone and smoke, the hum of the stealth submarine’s twin waterjets reached a deafening crescendo.
"Maya!" Arthur coughed, waving his arm through the gray fog as debris continued to rain from the shattered vault ceiling.
"I'm here!" she shouted from beneath the twisted wreckage of a steel staircase, her arm covered in white dust.
Arthur scrambled over to her, hauling away a bent steel girder to pull her free before the entire ceiling collapsed into the pool.
The black submarine was already sliding out of the docking slip, gliding silently into the subterranean sea cave leading toward international waters.
"She’s getting away," Maya coughed, spitting dust onto the concrete. "We can't follow her without a vessel."
Arthur’s eyes darted across the subterranean basin, landing on a pair of high-speed diver propulsion vehicles strapped to a recharging rack.
"We don't need a vessel," Arthur said, pulling two closed-circuit rebreathers from the emergency locker on the wall. "We just need to catch the hull."
"Are you insane?" Maya asked, strapping the oxygen mask over her mouth. "That sub will dive to three hundred meters once it clears the reef."
"Then we have three minutes before it hits deep water," Arthur replied, clipping his harness to the underwater sled.
They hit the icy water together, the silent electric motors of the propulsion vehicles whining as they surged forward beneath the surface.
The dark mouth of the sea tunnel opened ahead of them, illuminated only by the faint blue wash of the submarine’s rear running lights.
Arthur throttled the sled to its maximum limit, his goggles pressing hard against his face as the water pressure spiked.
The immense black silhouette of the submarine grew larger in the gloom, a leviathan gliding through the subterranean trench.
Arthur aimed his sled toward the upper deck casing of the submarine, reaching out with a heavy magnetic climbing clamp.
The magnet slammed onto the hull with a metallic thud, nearly ripping Arthur’s shoulder from its socket as the vessel dragged him along.
He grabbed Maya’s harness, hauling her onto the hull beside him as the underwater current fought to tear them into the dark abyss.
Above them, the submarine's dorsal airlock was visible, its manual emergency release wheel locked beneath an inspection hatch.
Arthur pulled a titanium crowbar from his belt, jamming it into the wheel's locking pin with all his remaining strength.
The pin snapped with a dull underwater crack, and Arthur began turning the wheel against the crushing resistance of the sea.
The hatch suddenly swung open, water rushing inward with terrifying velocity, dragging Arthur and Maya down into the flooded airlock chamber.
The heavy steel door slammed shut behind them under automatic pressure seals, trapping them inside the belly of the beast.
As the water drained rapidly from the chamber through the floor grates, Arthur pulled his mask off, gasping for air.
Through the reinforced observation window in the airlock’s inner door, he saw Eleanor Vance staring directly back at him.
She wasn't panicked; she was smiling with a chilling, triumphant warmth that made Arthur's stomach plummet into ice.
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"Welcome home, Arthur," Eleanor’s voice came through the airlock's intercom speaker. "I was hoping you wouldn't drown so easily."
***
