Chapter 7 - The Incident
A freak autumn squall had hit the New York coast, bringing hurricane-force winds.
The emergency backup lights flickered on, casting a dim, eerie glow across the library. My radio, clipped to my belt, crackled to life. It was Daniel.
“Mr. Graves! The main power grid is down. The backup generators in the basement haven't kicked on. The server room is going to overheat in less than ten minutes if the cooling systems don't reboot, and we’ll lose the entire estate’s security grid!”
“Where is the maintenance chief?” I barked into the radio.
“Stuck on the road! The storm dropped a tree across the main gate!”
I looked at Annie. She wasn't panicking. Her eyes were already scanning the room, her engineering brain shifting into high gear.
“The generators are pneumatic start, right?” Annie asked rapidly.
“Yes,” I said.
“If they didn't kick on, the pressure valve in the main line probably seized from the temperature drop,” she said, grabbing her flashlight from her cleaning cart. “I know where the manual override is. I can fix it.”
“Annie, no, it’s down three flights of concrete stairs in the sub-basement. Your leg—”
“My leg is fine!” she interrupted, a fierce, undeniable fire burning in her eyes. “If that server room overheats, the fire suppression system will deploy halon gas. It’ll destroy millions of dollars of your equipment. Follow me!”
She didn't wait for my permission. She bolted out of the library, moving faster than I had ever seen her move, her heavy limp echoing down the marble hallway.
I ran after her, awe and terror warring in my chest.
We reached the heavy steel doors of the sub-basement. Annie threw her weight against the handle, pushing it open. We descended into the dark, echoing cavern of the generator room. The air was already growing stiflingly hot as the servers above us struggled without cooling.
“There!” Annie shouted over the roar of the wind outside. She pointed to a massive steel manifold near the ceiling. “The pressure valve is stuck shut! I need to manually release the pin!”
She scrambled up a metal maintenance ladder.
“Annie, be careful!” I yelled.
She reached the top, grabbing a heavy wrench from a nearby toolkit. She slammed it against the pressure valve. Once. Twice.
With a loud hiss, the valve released. The massive diesel generators roared to life beneath us, the lights blazing back to full power, the cooling fans spinning instantly.
She had done it.
“Got it!” she yelled down, turning to climb back down the ladder.
But as she put her weight on her prosthetic to step down, the frayed strap finally gave out.
The locking pin sheared completely in half with a sickening snap.
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Annie cried out as the prosthetic detached entirely. She lost her balance, tumbling backward off the ladder.
I dove forward, catching her just before she hit the concrete floor. The impact knocked the wind out of me, but I held her tight, shielding her head from the ground. Her broken prosthetic clattered to the floor a few feet away, useless, shattered carbon fiber.
