They dropped into the cage together as the ceiling above them caved in from a thermal charge.
Gravity caught them in a sickening rush of descending steel and damp concrete air.
Claire punched the manual brake lever at forty feet per second.
The cage slammed to a halt with a teeth-rattling jar against the subterranean bedrock.
Above them, the red warning lasers faded into dead silence.
Claire flicked on a titanium penlight, illuminating the glowing mural painted across the stone vault wall.
It was her handwriting from nineteen-eighty-four.
The trap was sprung.
And the real hunt was only beginning.
