CHAPTER 11 — SIXTY SECONDS
Milo crawled through the dark ventilation shaft as fast as his knees would carry him.
Below, Adrian shouted through the metal wall.
“Milo! Find the secondary relay!”
The boy opened the burned notebook beneath his flashlight.
His father had marked a small junction beside the elevator shaft.
Milo kicked through a loose vent cover and dropped into a maintenance corridor.
The countdown reached forty-two seconds.
He found the relay cabinet.
It required a key.
Milo searched his pockets.
Nothing.
Then he remembered the silver object he had taken from Grant during the struggle at Harbor Storage.
The wolf ring.
Inside the ring was a narrow metal pin.
Milo pushed it into the lock and twisted.
The cabinet opened.
Thirty seconds.
Rows of switches filled the panel.
“Which one?” Milo whispered.
The notebook showed an old circuit number.
F-17.
The modern panel had no F-17.
Only A1 through A20.
Milo looked at the handwritten note beneath the diagram.
After renovation, fire circuits moved two columns right.
He counted.
F-17 had become A19.
Fifteen seconds.
Milo reached for the switch.
Then the corridor door opened.
Marcus stood there.
His tie was gone. Blood ran from a cut near his eyebrow.
“You,” he said.
Milo backed against the panel.
Marcus raised the transmitter.
“You should’ve stayed on the street.”
Ten seconds.
Milo flipped A19.
Nothing happened.
Marcus smiled.
“Wrong switch.”
Milo looked at the notebook again.
A second note was written in tiny letters.
Reverse polarity before manual reset.
Five seconds.
Milo slammed A19 down, then up.
The entire building went dark.
The countdown stopped at one.
Marcus stared at the dead transmitter.
Milo ran.
Marcus grabbed the back of his jacket.
Before he could pull the boy down, the maintenance door crashed open.
Luis drove Marcus into the wall.
Federal agents followed.
Marcus dropped the transmitter.
Milo pointed toward the sealed control room.
“Adrian’s trapped!”
Luis looked at the heat warning above the door.
The emergency purge was overloading the old transformers.
The temperature inside the room was rising fast.
They had stopped the bombs.
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But Adrian was now locked inside a steel chamber turning into an oven.
And the system still had eight minutes before it would release him.
