Chapter 6 - The Hour of Impact
11:41:00 AM.
The subterranean data vault went dead silent.
The humming of the server racks seemed to drop an octave. The fluorescent lights overhead flickered once, twice, and then stabilized on auxiliary battery power.
I stood by the reinforced steel pillar in the center of the room, my feet planted shoulder-width apart, my hands gripping the cold concrete edge.
"Everybody brace!" I shouted across the vault. "Drop, cover, and hold on!"
11:42:00 AM.
It didn't start with a sound. It started with a sensation—a deep, visceral, sub-audible groan that vibrated straight through the soles of our shoes, rattling our teeth and shaking the bedrock beneath the North Ridge mountains.
Then came the roar.
It was the sound of a million tons of granite grinding against granite, a freight train moving at the speed of sound through the belly of the earth.
BOOM-R-R-R-R-R-T!
The floor heaved upward with a violent, concussive jolt that threw Arthur Sterling and Marcus Vance out of their chairs and onto the concrete floor. The walls groaned and shrieked as the seismic waves hit the foundation of the institute. The ceiling tiles rained down in a gray blizzard of fiberglass and dust.
Monitors popped and sparked, shooting blue electrical arcs across the dark room. Alarms shrieked from every corner console.
The rolling shockwave built in intensity, tossing equipment carts across the room and shaking the steel reinforcement bars within the concrete pillars until the entire subterranean vault felt like a ship caught in the middle of a category five hurricane.
I held my ground, gripping the steel pillar with both hands, my eyes fixed on the seismic telemetry graphs spiking off the top of the chart.
Magnitude 7.8.
The exact parameters I had predicted. The exact rupture zone I had mapped.
The shaking lasted for one minute and forty-two seconds—an eternity of violent, chaotic motion that felt like the world was tearing itself apart at the seams.
And then, slowly, agonizingly, the roaring subsided. The floor settled back into a heavy, trembling stillness. The emergency backup generators kicked in, flooding the dusty room with a dim, amber glow.
Coughing filled the air as dust motes danced in the light of the emergency lamps.
"Is... is everyone alive?" Sarah Jenkins called out shakily from beneath a heavy oak workbench, wiping white plaster dust from her glasses.
May you like
"We're alive, Sarah," I called back, pushing myself off the concrete floor, brushing dust from the shoulders of my sweater.
I looked over at Arthur Sterling and Marcus Vance. They were curled up in fetal positions on the floor, clinging to each other in sheer, unadulterated terror, their bespoke suits ruined by soot and grime.
