Silence.
Beautiful silence.
All the calm finally drains out of Wu’s face.
Not fear of death.
Fear of exposure.
Good.
Let him feel it.
Gabriel’s voice hardens.
“Every child.”
“Every experiment.”
“Every government contact.”
“Every facility.”
Wu lunges suddenly.
Pure desperation now.
He tries reaching for Gabriel—
But Russ shoots him through the leg.
The round tears straight through Wu’s thigh.
He crashes hard onto the reactor platform with a scream finally ripped out of him.
Not calm anymore.
Not composed.
Just a dying monster.
The reactor chamber shakes violently again.
Huge cracks rip across the ceiling overhead.
Concrete starts collapsing into the chamber.
Gabriel shouts over the alarms:
“I can stop the detonation manually!”
“But somebody has to stabilize the coolant system from the lower chamber!”
Silence hits instantly.
Because we all know what that means.
The lower chamber.
