Deep Vault Core

POV: Malia

The air down here tasted like rust and old secrets.

We were eighty feet beneath the streets of Melbourne, moving through a subterranean tunnel that hadn’t seen a human footprint in over a decade. The concrete walls wept moisture, and the silence was so heavy it felt like a physical weight pressing against my eardrums. My flashlight beam cut through the dark, catching the dust motes dancing in the dead air.

​"Keep tight to the wall," Jarrah whispered. His voice rumbled low behind my shoulder.

I didn't need to be told twice. I could feel the heat radiating off him, a steady, solid presence in the freezing corridor. My heart was a frantic drum against my ribs, beating a rapid rhythm of pure adrenaline. We were completely off the grid. No backup, no comms to the outside world, just a tip from a dead man that Alastair’s physical evidence the crates that could bring down his entire empire were buried in this forgotten bunker.

​"Do you see the inner door?" Jarrah asked, his tactical rifle raised, scanning the shadows ahead.

​"Not yet," I muttered, sweeping my light forward. "The blueprints said it’s at the end of this chute. A heavy-duty blast door. Old school tech. No digital keypads, just raw wiring and hydraulic locks."

​"Good. You're better with wires than code anyway."

​I shot him a look over my shoulder, catching the hard edge of his jaw in the ambient glow. There was dirt smeared across his cheek from our drop through the ventilation shaft, and a fresh cut over his eyebrow, but he looked incredibly focused. Wild, almost. The kind of dangerous that made my stomach tighten in a way that had absolutely nothing to do with fear. I forced my eyes back to the front. Now was not the time. We had been dancing around whatever this was between us for months, existing in a suffocating state of near-misses and lingering touches. But if we didn't get through the next hour, none of it would matter.

My boot hit a raised grate on the floor. It gave a hollow clank.

Instantly, the corridor lit up.

Not with overhead lights, but with a grid of thin, blood-red laser tripwires slicing through the darkness, illuminating the narrow space. I froze, my foot hovering millimeters from a beam that crisscrossed directly at my shin.

​"Malia, don't move," Jarrah said, his tone dropping an octave, deadly serious.

​From the ceiling above us, a harsh mechanical grinding echoed off the concrete. The sound of rusted gears forcing themselves into motion. Panels in the ceiling, hidden by decades of grime, slid open. Two heavy, barrel-chested automated turrets descended on rusted hydraulic arms, their lenses glowing a bright, angry yellow.

​"Motion sensors," I breathed, panic rising hot and fast in my throat. "They’re ancient, Jarrah. Military surplus. If we trip a laser"

​"They tear us apart in a hallway no wider than a closet," he finished for me.

​"We need to go back."

​"We can't." He pointed a gloved finger behind us. A heavy steel shutter had already dropped silently over our entry point, blocking the path back. "It's a one-way kill box. The only way out is forward."

The turrets swiveled, their tracking servos whining, scanning for a target. The yellow lenses swept over us, paused, and the light snapped from yellow to a blinding, vicious red.

​"Down!" Jarrah roared.

​His hand clamped onto my tactical vest, yanking me backward just as the corridor exploded into deafening noise. The turrets opened fire, the muzzle flashes blinding me. Chunks of concrete ripped from the walls, spraying dust and shrapnel everywhere. Jarrah tackled me to the ground, shielding my body with his own as the air above us shredded. I squeezed my eyes shut, burying my face into the crook of his neck. He smelled like sweat and gunpowder, his heavy muscles tense against mine as he took the brunt of the falling debris.

​"The door is thirty yards ahead!" Jarrah shouted over the deafening roar of gunfire. "When I say go, we low-crawl. Fast as you can. Don't stop for anything!"

​"They'll track our heat signatures!" I yelled back, my voice tearing.

​"I've got a flashbang! It'll blind the optics for five seconds. That's all we get!"

He shifted his weight off me, pulling a canister from his belt. His dark eyes met mine, intense and completely stripped of any hesitation. "I'm right behind you, Malia. I won't let them touch you. Ready?"

I nodded, my chest heaving. "Ready."

​He ripped the pin. "Cover your eyes!"

​He lobbed the grenade down the hall. I buried my face in my hands. A blinding white flash penetrated even through my closed eyelids, followed by a concussive CRACK that made my teeth rattle. The turrets' firing stuttered, their tracking systems temporarily fried by the intense light and sound.

​"Go!"

​I scrambled forward on my elbows and knees, scraping my forearms raw against the rough concrete. The air was thick with smoke and the harsh smell of cordite. Behind me, I could hear Jarrah moving, his breathing heavy. The turrets whirred angrily, firing blindly into the smoke. Bullets chewed into the floor inches from my boots.

​I hit solid metal.

​The inner security door. It was massive, a solid foot of reinforced steel. Beside it, a gray junction box was bolted to the wall, covered in rust.

​"Open it!" Jarrah yelled, sliding in next to me and raising his rifle, firing a burst at the ceiling to try and damage one of the turrets' servos. It only pissed the machine off. The gunfire redirected toward us, chewing through the concrete pillar we were huddled behind.

​I yanked my combat knife from my boot and jammed it into the crack of the junction box, prying the cover off with a violent twist. Inside, a mess of rotting, color-coded wires stared back at me.

​"It's an electromagnetic seal!" I shouted, my hands shaking so badly I could barely separate the red wire from the blue. "I need to reverse the polarity to blow the lock, but the system is drawing too much power! If I cut the wrong one, the fail-safe drops a secondary blast door over it!"

​"Just do it, Malia! The smoke is clearing! Their optics are coming back online!"

​I gritted my teeth, sliced the casing off the main power line, and crossed it with the ground wire. Sparks showered over my hands, burning my skin, but I didn't let go. A loud, heavy CLUNK echoed from inside the steel door. The magnetic lock disengaged.

​The massive door cracked open, exactly two inches.

​Then, the emergency fail-safe triggered. The hydraulic rams kicked in, groaning in protest as they tried to force the door shut again to seal the breach.

​"It's closing!" I screamed, yanking desperately at the heavy metal handle. It wouldn't budge. "The hydraulics are overpowering the manual release!"

​Jarrah dropped his rifle. He grabbed the edge of the steel door with both hands, planting his boots on the concrete frame. His entire body coiled like a spring, and with a guttural roar, he pulled.

​The veins in his neck bulged, his jaw clenched so hard I thought his teeth would shatter. The heavy steel groaned against his brute strength. Slowly, agonizingly, he forced the gap from two inches to a foot. The hydraulic motors whined, fighting him, the pressure so intense the metal actually started to buckle.

​"Get in!" he grunted, his face flushed dark red with the strain. "Malia, go!"

​"I'm not leaving you!"

​"I can't... hold it... much longer!" His arms were shaking violently, the muscles tearing under the impossible weight of a door designed to withstand a bomb blast.

​I dove through the gap, scraping my back against the steel. The second I was on the other side, I grabbed his tactical vest and hauled backward with everything I had. Jarrah let go of the door and threw his body forward.

​The hydraulic rams snapped violently, free of his resistance. The solid steel door slammed shut behind us with the force of a thunderclap, sealing flawlessly into the frame.

​The deafening gunfire from the corridor was instantly cut off. Absolute, terrifying silence rushed in to fill the void.

​We were in total darkness.

​Jarrah was breathing hard, lying on the floor beside me. I could hear the rough scrape of his boots on the floor as he pushed himself up. I reached out blindly, my trembling fingers finding the heavy fabric of his sleeve, then moving down to his bare hand. I gripped it tight.

​"You okay?" he rasped, his voice rough.

​"Yeah," I whispered, my heart hammering against my ribs. "Are you?"

​"I'm fine." He squeezed my hand back, his thumb brushing over my bruised knuckles in the dark. It was a small touch, but it sent a jolt of electricity straight to my chest.

​I fumbled for my flashlight, clicking it on. The beam sliced through the darkness, illuminating the space we had just almost died to get into.

​The Deep Vault Core.

​It was massive, lined with steel shelving, stretching back into the shadows. And sitting right in the center of the room, exactly as the dead man had promised, were three heavy wooden crates stamped with the crest of Alastair's shell corporation.

​We had found it.

​But as the beam of my flashlight hit the wall next to the door, my stomach dropped into my shoes. There was no handle on the inside. No junction box. No keyhole. The steel was perfectly smooth.

​I stepped closer, running my hand over the cold metal, a new wave of horror washing over me.

​"Jarrah," I said, my voice trembling.

​He moved up behind me, the warmth of his chest brushing my shoulder. "What is it?"

​I turned to look at him, the flashlight illuminating the grim realization on his face.

​"There's no release mechanism on this side," I said, the words tasting like ash in my mouth. "We got in. But we're trapped."

​Before Jarrah could respond, a low, mechanical hum vibrated through the floorboards beneath our feet. A red emergency light flickered to life above us, casting the vault in a bloody, sinister glow.

​Then, the air vents above our heads let out a sharp hiss, and the vents slammed shut.