Chapter 75 - Oxygen Debt in Sector 4
"Halon gas," Elena whispered, her mind racing. "It displaces all oxygen in thirty seconds to suppress fires. If he triggers the suppression system, we won't even have time to scream."
"The bridge is three decks down, past the main engine room," Julian said, his limbs trembling as he grabbed a wrench from the bulkhead emergency locker. "The command terminal has manual override keys. If we can reach the secondary environmental console in engineering, we can isolate the bridge."
"No," Elena said firmly. "That’s what he expects. He wants us running down the main trunk line so he can trap us in a bottleneck."
She unclipped Maya’s transport pod, took out the padded tactical infant sling, and securely bound the child against her chest. She wrapped a thick, flame-retardant utility jacket over both of them, zipping it halfway to shield Maya’s head while keeping her face clear.
"We go through the maintenance bilge," Elena commanded. "The crawlways beneath the battery banks. They aren't connected to the fire suppression network—there's no halon lines in the battery compartments because halon reacts violently with lead-acid fumes."
Julian stared at her in disbelief. "The bilge is barely three feet high! It’s flooded with oily runoff and high-voltage conduits!"
"Then you’d better watch where you step," Elena said, wrenching open the deck hatch with her bare hands.
A wall of thick, humid air hit them—hot, smelling of ozone, sulfuric acid, and stale diesel. Elena dropped into the crawlspace feet first, her boots splashing into four inches of warm, oily black sludge. She held Maya tight against her sternum, one hand cradling the infant's neck, the other holding the combat knife.
"Follow me. And keep your mouth shut," she whispered into the darkness.
Above them, the ship gave a long, metallic groan as the depth gauge steadily ticked downward: *400 feet... 600 feet... 800 feet...*
Suddenly, a loud hiss erupted through the ceiling vents behind them. A dense, white vapor poured into the corridor they had just abandoned. Through the floor grating, Elena saw the air turn instantly hazy as the halon gas starved the compartment of life. A stray rat that had scampered across the upper deck convulses, twitching violently for five seconds before going completely still.
Julian swallowed hard, crawling behind her on his hands and knees, his breath hitching. "He really... he was really going to suffocate us."
"He murdered your brothers. He murdered the coast guard crew. What made you think you were special?" Elena crawled steadily forward, her knees scraping against the jagged steel rivets of the keel.
Every muscle in her body screamed with exhaustion. She had been hunted for days, plunged into icy waters, beaten, betrayed, and forced to deliver her own baby in the shadows of a madhouse. But as she felt the steady, warm heartbeat of her daughter against her ribs, a terrifying, crystalline calm settled over her.
She wasn't running anymore. She was hunting.
They reached the access hatch beneath the main turbine deck. Elena peered through the circular viewing port.
The engine room was cavernous, dominated by the massive cylindrical housing of the automated nuclear reactor and the twin propeller shafts that spun with a rhythmic, hypnotic hum.
Standing on the elevated catwalk above the spinning shafts was Alistair Montgomery.
His right arm hung uselessly, bound to his torso with electrical tape, but his left hand held a tactical submachine gun. His face was a mask of dried crimson, his eyes feverish and glazed with shock. He was leaning heavily against the master engineering console, watching the environmental monitors.
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"He's bleeding out," Julian whispered over her shoulder. "He won't last an hour."
"He doesn't need an hour," Elena replied grimly. "He only needs five seconds to open the sea-cocks and sink us all."
