The first structural charge didn't sound like an explosion; it sounded like the earth itself was clearing its throat.
Deep within Sub-Level Zero, the air pressure spiked so sharply that Nora's ears popped. The antique servers, which had just finished humming to life, groaned as the granite ceiling shifted a fraction of an inch. Dust, ancient and thick with the scent of pulverized stone, began to rain down like gray snow.
"Nora, get the drive!" Caspian's voice was a command, cutting through the low-frequency rumble that was now vibrating the floor.
He was already at the main terminal, his fingers flying across a keyboard that looked older than the city's digital grid. On the screen, the data transfer bar was crawling—88%, 89%, 90%. Every percentage point felt like an hour.
"The voice, Caspian, the speaker!" Nora shouted over the sound of a second, much closer blast. "He said four minutes! We don't have time to wait for the download!"
"We aren't leaving the Aegis mainframe for Victor to find," Caspian growled. He didn't look at the ceiling, even as a jagged crack snaked across the reinforced granite pillar behind them. "If he gets this data, he doesn't just win; he deletes our parents from history. I'm not letting that happen."
Nora grabbed the Blackwood Ledger and shoved it into her waterproof tactical bag. She scrambled toward the server rack, her architectural mind screaming at her. She could see the stress lines forming in the stone. The Customs House was a masterpiece of Victorian engineering, but it was never designed to withstand the internal detonation of its primary support pillars.
"Caspian, the weight-bearing ratio is failing!" she yelled, pointing at a stream of water that had begun to spray from a cracked pipe in the wall. "The river is coming in! If we don't get to the transit tube now, the pressure differential will seal the hatch!"
96%... 97%...
A third explosion rocked the room, this one so violent it threw Nora against the drafting table. The glass map of Northport shattered into a thousand glittering shards, the red SOS light blinking one last time before it went dark.
"Done!" Caspian ripped the glowing silver drive from the terminal.
He didn't waste a second. He grabbed Nora's hand, his grip like a vice, and hauled her toward the back of the room where a heavy, circular steel hatch sat embedded in the wall. It looked like something out of a Jules Verne novel: a pneumatic transit tube designed for moving physical mail across the city, repurposed by Alistair Quinn into an emergency extraction point.
"Inside! Now!"
Caspian shoved Nora into the narrow, padded cylinder of the tube. It was a tight fit, the air inside smelling of stale ozone and cold metal. He climbed in behind her, his large frame nearly filling the space. He reached out, his hand hovering over the manual release lever.
"Nora, hold your breath," he whispered. His eyes, usually so cold and calculated, were filled with a raw, desperate intensity. "The tube vents into the shipyard's cooling intake. It's going to be cold, and it's going to be fast."
"Caspian—"
He didn't give her a chance to finish. He slammed the lever down just as the ceiling of Sub-Level Zero finally gave way.
The sensation was terrifying. A massive burst of pressurized air slammed into the back of the cylinder, launching them into the dark throat of the tube. Nora felt the world turn into a blur of G-force and screaming metal. They were being fired like a bullet through the subterranean veins of the shipyard, the friction heating the walls of the tube until the air inside was stifling.
Then, the sudden, violent transition to weightlessness.
The cylinder hit the water of the bay with the force of a car crash. The impact jolted Nora's spine, and for a moment, the world went black. When she opened her eyes, the tube was half-submerged in the freezing, murky water of the Northport shipyard.
Caspian was already kicking at the hatch, his face twisted with effort. "Nora! Help me!"
They pushed together, their boots slamming against the steel until the lock sheared off. The hatch flew open, and the freezing Atlantic water rushed in, an icy hand dragging them down.
Nora kicked toward the surface, her lungs screaming for air. She broke through the water in the middle of a dense fog, the silhouettes of rusted cargo ships looming over her like sleeping giants. Behind her, a muffled boom echoed across the water, and she watched in horror as the Old Customs House, a building that had stood for a century, settled into its own foundation, a plume of dust rising into the night sky.
"Caspian!" she gasped, treading water in the chop.
He surfaced ten feet away, holding the silver drive above his head like a trophy. He swam toward her, his movements slow and laboured. When he reached her, he grabbed her shoulder, his teeth chattering.
"We... we have it," he rasped. "The third key. The voice... he was right."
"He said Victor knows we're in the hole," Nora said, her eyes scanning the dark pier. "He won't just wait for us to drown, Caspian. He'll have the shipyard sealed."
"Then we don't go to the shipyard," Caspian said, looking toward a small, nondescript fishing boat that was idling near the mouth of the bay. "We go to the only place Victor Belmonte can't reach. The lighthouse."
As they swam toward the boat, Nora looked back at the ruins of the Customs House. She had lost her father's secret workshop, but she had gained the truth. And as the silver drive glowed faintly in Caspian's hand, she knew that the war was no longer about blueprints and buildings.
It was about the man on the speaker. The man who had called her "sweet girl."
"Silas is alive," Nora whispered to herself, the freezing water no longer feeling so cold. "And he's the one holding the gun to Victor's head."