Chapter 87 - The Mid-Ocean Citadel
The burst of pure oxygen meeting the white-hot phosphorus flame created an instantaneous, blinding fireball.
The backdraft slammed Vance backward through the flooding corridor, his clothes catching fire as he was thrown into the churning saltwater. The blast wave shattered the remaining structural supports of the torpedo bay, and millions of gallons of black ocean water smashed through the breached bulkheads.
Elena slammed the heavy titanium hatch shut, spinning the locking wheel with every ounce of strength left in her body.
*CLANK-CLANK-SEALED.*
Inside the bathysphere, the sudden silence was terrifying. The thick, six-inch walls of the titanium pod insulated them from the catastrophic death throes of the *Montgomery Sovereign*. Through the small, heavily reinforced quartz viewport, Elena watched in grim horror as the interior of the submarine vanished into a whirlpool of churning foam, twisted steel, and darkness.
Then, the pod’s automatic emergency release bolts detonated.
With a jolt that rattled Elena’s teeth, the bathysphere detached from the disintegrating submarine, plunging into the black abyss.
"We’re okay, baby. We’re okay," Elena sobbed, collapsing onto the padded floor of the tiny sphere, curling her bruised body completely around Maya. Maya nestled against her chest, letting out tiny, soft breaths against the salt-encrusted fabric of Elena’s vest.
Elena checked the instruments inside the capsule. The depth meter read: *1,300 meters... 1,400 meters...*
They weren't floating up. They were sinking deeper.
Suddenly, outside the tiny viewport, a faint, unnatural illumination began to cut through the abyssal blackness.
Elena dragged herself up to look out the quartz glass. What she saw drained every drop of color from her face.
Carved directly into the face of a massive underwater volcanic caldera was a colossal subterranean fortress. Glowing docking bays, reinforced glass domes, and sprawling industrial towers stretched for miles along the ocean trench floor, tethered to the sea floor by massive carbon-fiber cables. Above the main docking trench, glowing in ominous industrial white lights, was an emblem: an ancient leviathan entwined around a compass rose.
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Project Leviathan wasn't a ship. It was an entire covert underwater city.
And their tiny, powerless pod was drifting straight into the automated tractor-beam field of the central hangar.
