Chapter 79 - The Freight Elevator to the Sky
The elevator rose through darkness, the sounds of destruction below fading into a deep, bass rumble that vibrated through the steel floor. Through the iron mesh of the cage, David could see the levels of the facility flashing past—cryo-vaults bursting into flames, laboratories collapsing beneath falling slabs of granite, the entire monstrous monument to his mother’s obsession crumbling into oblivion.
Leah sat curled in the corner of the cage, nursing the infant under her coat, her eyes fixed on David. Maya was asleep against her mother’s knee, exhausted beyond human endurance.
"Is it over?" Leah whispered, her voice trembling in the cold draft rushing down the shaft. "Is he really dead?"
David looked down at his blistered, bloody hands. The identical hands. "Julian is dead. But this place... the things they built... they had records, Leah. Other stations. Other people."
"We'll disappear," she said, reaching out to touch his knee. "We'll go where there are no roads. No records."
"There is nowhere they can't reach unless we burn every bridge behind us," David said softly.
The temperature plummeted rapidly. The thick, humid air of the subterranean complex gave way to the sharp, biting chill of high-altitude mountain air. Snow began to drift down through the iron grate above them, swirling like silver dust in the darkness.
The elevator slowed with a heavy mechanical clunk.
The iron cage arrived at the surface terminal—an open-air concrete platform perched on the jagged, windswept precipice of Black Ridge Summit.
David pushed the gate open. The winter storm was raging in full fury. Gale-force winds whipped freezing snow across the concrete pad, cutting visibility to less than thirty yards. Behind them, through the elevator shaft, a column of thick black smoke and distant orange flames signaled the total incinerating collapse of the underground installation.
They were out. They were on top of the world.
May you like
David breathed in the freezing air, feeling the sting of the blizzard on his open wounds like a baptism. He turned to Leah, reaching out his hand to help her onto the snow-covered platform. "We made it. We’re on the ridge."
Then, a sudden, blinding glare pinned them against the rock.
