Chapter 8 - The Ascent
Smoke began to billow beneath the burning door, filling the enclosed room with dark, suffocating clouds.
Hannah pulled off her apron, soaked it in a pitcher of water standing on the side table, and tied it tightly over her mouth and nose.
She pulled two heavy wooden trunks toward the center of the room, stacking them on top of each other beneath the ceiling vent. Wobbling on the makeshift tower, she reached up and grabbed the brass edges of the vent cover.
Using Nico’s heavy silver pocket knife, which she had kept in her pocket since the night of the attack, she wedged the blade into the screws holding the grate in place.
Twist. Snap.
The first screw gave way. The smoke was rising fast now, reaching her waist, making her eyes burn terribly.
Twist. Snap.
The second screw popped off. She ripped the brass grate away, exposing the dark, metallic shaft of the ventilation system.
Using every ounce of upper body strength she possessed, Hannah hauled herself up into the narrow metal tube just as the flames engulfed the wooden trunks below.
The air inside the duct was tight and dusty, but free of deadly smoke. Crawling on her hands and knees, guided only by the faint light streaming through the distant vents, Hannah navigated the labyrinth of metal shafts above the second floor.
She knew the layout of the ducts from studying the mansion’s blueprint maps in the domestic maintenance office. She crawled toward the central security hub—the room where Marco was likely controlling the mansion’s internal comms to block any emergency calls from reaching Nico.
After five agonizing minutes of crawling through the cramped space, she reached a vent directly above the security control room.
Looking down through the slatted metal grate, she saw Marco standing at the main console, holding a radio.
"Julian," Marco was saying into the radio. "The maid is handled. The fire will look like an accident. Is Nico dead yet?"
A staticky voice came over the radio: "He’s surrounded at the docks. He won't survive the hour. Get the child ready. Once Nico is down, we bring Sophia to the port to secure the family assets."
Hannah felt a surge of righteous fury. They were going to kill Nico and kidnap Sophia.
She looked around the narrow duct. Passing beside her was a heavy steel fire damper cable—a safety mechanism designed to drop heavy metal shutters to isolate fires.
With a tight grip on Nico’s pocket knife, Hannah slammed the heavy blade against the mechanical release mechanism of the fire damper.
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CLANG!
The heavy steel shutter dropped instantly with the force of an anvil, severing the mansion’s main power lines and plunging the security control room into pitch darkness.
