Chapter 6 - The High-Voltage Override
"You have thirty seconds, Aleandro!" Gabriel’s voice crackled through the speaker, mocking and triumphant. "Once the file sends, Vincent’s men will be at the gate. I’ve already disabled the perimeter sensors on the north fence. You're finished!"
Aleandro didn't answer him. He stepped back from the glass, giving Hannah room to work.
Hannah dropped to her knees in front of the grey steel junction box. She didn't hesitate. She had spent three years working as an assistant to a master electrician before taking the cleaning job at Blackwood Ridge—a necessity when every trade school in the county offered night classes to widows with young children.
She popped the two heavy brass latches on the junction box. Inside was a chaotic web of heavy black copper cables, blue relays, and thick grey insulation.
"There," she said, pointing a flashlight beam into the upper left corner.
A thick, newly spliced yellow wire was wrapped in black electrical tape, bypassing the main circuit breakers entirely, tapping directly into the heavy incoming feed from the generator house.
"If I clip this without breaking the ground," Hannah warned, looking up at Aleandro, "the arc is going to blow this panel off the wall. It’s going to be loud. And it might set off the fire suppression system."
"Do it," Aleandro said.
He stepped in front of her, using his broad, suit-jacket-clad body as a shield to protect her from the potential blast, while holding Maximus by his heavy leather collar with his left hand.
Hannah took a deep breath. She thought of her daughter, Lily, sitting at her small white desk in their little two-bedroom apartment in West Philadelphia, waiting for her mother to come home with her weekly paycheck. She thought of the cold, arrogant smile on Gabriel’s face.
She gripped the insulated handles of the heavy wire cutters.
She reached deep into the box, aligned the hardened steel jaws across the thick yellow cable, and squeezed with all the strength in her arms.
BANG!
A blinding flash of blue-white light exploded from the junction box, accompanied by a sound like a grenade detonating in a sealed room. A wave of intense heat scorched the air, smelling instantly of vaporized copper and melted vinyl.
The electric shockwave traveled down the braided cable, surging through the floorboards, straight into the hidden tap down in the shaft.
Outside the pantry, on the main kitchen counter, Gabriel’s high-tech industrial laptop suddenly spewed a fountain of bright orange sparks from its cooling vents. The screen flared violently white, melted into a distorted swirl of black lines, and burst into a small, greasy column of black flame.
"WHAT THE—!" Gabriel screamed, dropping the burning computer onto the marble floor as the internal lithium battery ruptured with a series of sharp, pop-gun explosions.
At the exact same instant, the electromagnetic lock on the heavy steel pantry door lost all power. The heavy iron bolts retracted with a loud, mechanical THUNK.
Aleandro didn't wait.
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He threw his full weight against the heavy oak door, slamming it open with enough force to shatter the frame.
Maximus went through the opening like a black bullet.
