Chapter 14 - Sealed Tight
Mark shoved Sam off the floor, grabbing her by her tactical vest and hauling her behind a row of steel deposit boxes just as a tear gas canister bounced down the concrete stairs.
Psssshhhh.
White smoke spewed out in dense, suffocating clouds, rapidly filling the narrow corridor.
Mark coughed violently, his eyes burning instantly. "Go! Back corner!"
"There's no back way!" Sam screamed through a fit of coughing, pulling her shirt over her nose. "It's a vault, Mark! It's built to lock people out!"
"Or lock people in," Mark growled.
He lunged toward the main power breaker on the left wall, using his memory of the room to guide his hand through the blinding smoke. He grabbed the heavy iron lever and yanked it down with all his weight.
Sparks flew with a sharp CRACK.
The auxiliary emergency shutters overhead dropped like guillotine blades, slamming down over the upper staircase with a loud, echoey steel thud.
The smoke kept rising, but the shooters upstairs were cut off.
For now.
Mark slumped against the breaker panel, his lungs burning, his hands slick with gray ash and soot. In the pitch blackness, he could hear Sam's rapid, desperate breathing five feet away.
"We have maybe ten minutes of oxygen in here," Sam said, her voice small, stripped of all her previous edge.
May you like
"Good," Mark spat, pulling his spare magazine out and clicking it into his Glock. "That means they have ten minutes to figure out how to get to us."
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