Chapter 37 - THE TIDAL INGRESS
"My grandfather didn't lose his war," Elena murmured softly into the humid air. "He survived men like you."
Her trigger finger contracted smoothly.
The heavy match-grade bullet struck Graves directly in his shoulder mount, shattering the hydraulic frame of his tactical harness and sending his rifle spinning out into the open water. Graves stumbled backward, clutching his ruined shoulder, cursing in agony as he collapsed against the rusted gear assembly of the pen’s main floodgate.
In his fury, Graves reached out with his uninjured hand and yanked the emergency manual override release on the tidal mechanism.
A series of ancient warning sirens wailed to life, their mechanical screams tearing through the stone vault. High-pressure hydraulic fluid burst from fractured lines as the massive, two-hundred-ton steel seawall doors began to groan and slide open.
The Atlantic Ocean was waiting.
With a terrifying, deafening roar, a wall of black water smashed through the parting steel gates, surging into the drydock with the destructive force of a freight train. The water level rose four feet in seconds, tearing away catwalks, swirling debris, and sweeping two remaining Apex mercenaries into the violent whirlpool forming at the harbor mouth.
"Captain!" Torres screamed, clinging to a structural stanchion as the freezing surge slammed into his waist. "The whole pen is flooding! If those gates lock open, we’ll be crushed against the ceiling in three minutes!"
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"Miller! Torres! Get the analysts onto the upper gantry crane!" Elena shouted, wading through the chest-deep current with her rifle held high above her head to keep the action clear of silt. "Dr. Aris, get the uplink cable into that junction box! We only have one shot to transmit before the salt water shorts out the main grid!"
Elena turned her back to the rising surge, finding footholds on the rusted iron ladder of the gantry crane. She climbed with mechanical endurance, the cold seawater drenching her tactical vest, dragging her down. Behind her, the dark shape of an armored assault boat, pulled in through the parting sea gates by the surging tide, appeared in the opening—its crew training an automatic grenade launcher straight at the transmitter tower.
