Chapter 4 - The Siren’s Call
The wail of the municipal sirens echoed down into the subterranean data vault like the ghost of a dying city.
Arthur Sterling stood frozen in the center of the room, his mouth hanging open, listening to the sound that meant his multi-million-dollar real estate development project, his municipal bonds, and his corrupt corporate empire were about to be crushed under an avalanche of federal regulatory investigations and public panic.
"You... you actually did it," Arthur whispered, his voice hollow and broken, all the fight draining out of his posture in a single second. "The city's evacuating. Look at the traffic feeds. The bridges are jamming up. They're shutting down the schools."
On the secondary monitoring wall, live traffic camera feeds showed the downtown streets erupting into a chaotic, swarming river of yellow school buses, blaring police cruisers, and thousands of panicked citizens pouring out of office buildings and apartment complexes, heading for the open parks and designated seismic assembly zones.
"Good," I said, sinking back into my ergonomic chair, the immense, crushing weight of the past finally lifting from my chest. "Let them run. Let them get to the parks."
Marcus Vance picked himself up off the floor, dusting off his tactical blazer, his face twisted into a snarl of pure hatred. "You think you're a hero, Clara? When the seismographs show this was a false alarm—when the ground doesn't shake and the valley stays right where it is—the city council will sue this institute into oblivion, and you'll be locked in a psychiatric ward before sunset."
I looked at Marcus, offering him a calm, pitying smile.
"A false alarm, Marcus?" I asked softly. "Look at the deep-bore strain gauges again. Look at the real-time GPS displacement data from the mountain peaks."
Marcus frowned, turning his head reluctantly toward the master telemetry screen.
The amber and red lines had stopped fluctuating. They had locked into a solid, unyielding spike.
CRUSTAL RUPTURE DETECTED: DIABLO FAULT SEGMENT 4
MAGNITUDE ESTIMATE: 7.8
EPICENTER: 14 MILES NORTHWEST OF METROPOLITAN VALLEY
ARRIVAL TIME: 11:42 A.M.
The color drained entirely from Marcus’s face. He stepped backward until his spine hit the concrete wall, his eyes widening in sudden, paralyzing horror.
"That's... that's impossible," Marcus stammered, his voice pitching up into a terrified squeak. "The historical models said the fault was dormant for another century!"
"Historical models don't account for deep-crustal fluid injection from the fracking operations your corporate sponsors paid to hide three miles north of the fault line," I said, my voice dropping into an icy, unyielding register. "You didn't just build high-rises on a fault line, Arthur. You primed the pump."
May you like
The grandfather clock in the institute's ground-floor lobby struck 11:00 AM.
Forty-two minutes until impact.
