They would forget about me for the moment. Or, more specifically, they were more worried about the people coming in than the problem they already had locked up. That was their first mistake. The second mistake was structural—fail-safes and overrides tied into a system now tripping over itself. When the main grid glitched, the magnetic locks defaulted for a half-second into a standby state.
Half a second is nothing.
If you’re slow.
If you’re me, though, it was plenty of time to begin my escape.
I counted the siren pulses. One. Two. Three. Watched the red light flicker along the seams of the door. On the fifth pulse, the light dimmed for a fraction of a heartbeat as some engineer somewhere toggled the system over to backup power.
That was my moment.
The lock buzzed and I was already moving. I yanked the door at the exact moment the magnetic hold went from full strength to weak.
It gave.
Not by much. A centimeter. Maybe two.
I yanked it again. Harder.
The door flew open with a vicious metallic screech. I stumbled forward into the corridor, momentum stealing my balance, bare feet catching on polished concrete.
And then I was out.
Alarms shrieked up and down the hallway, drowning out everything else. Red lights flashed overheard. Somewhere down the hall, a disembodied voice was giving orders I couldn’t hear clearly over the siren’s wail.
I sucked in a breath that didn’t taste like stale bleach and recycled air and sighed with relief.
“About time,” I muttered as I shut the door behind me.
Suddenly, boot steps pounded from the far end of the corridor. One pair. Running hard.
I dropped back against the wall, flattening myself into the shallow recess where two doorframes met and where there was just enough shadow to hide in if the runner was focused straight ahead.
He was.
It was old tray guy guard, huffing down the hall with a gun in his hand and panic in his eyes. He rushed toward my cell, swearing under his breath, fumbling with something in the pocket of his vest with his free hand.
A grenade. Compact. Non-standard. Probably Revenant’s own design.
He didn’t hesitate. Didn’t even check the room.
He yanked the pin, muttered, “Commander’s orders,” and shoved it through the food slot into the cell I’d just recently vacated.
I didn’t feel anything at first. Just a cold, quiet sort of curiosity.
Then instinct grabbed me by the throat and I lunged for him.
“Hey!” I shouted.
He turned just as the grenade detonated.
The blast sucked the air out of the corridor for a heartbeat. Flame and concussive force bloomed inside the cell, bursting the windowless space in a roar of sound that rang in my teeth. The door flew open, smoke and dust billowing out like the room had exhaled its own death.
The guard staggered from the shockwave, knocking into the wall.
I was already on him.
He didn’t even have time to raise his weapon. I hit him low, tackling him around the midsection, driving him into the opposite wall. His skull cracked against concrete and the rifle clattered from his hands. I grabbed it, flipped it, and drove the butt of the rifle into his face with a clean, satisfying impact. He went limp, sliding bonelessly to the floor.
