Chapter 23 · Ward, Elias

The hatch won't give. I put my shoulder into it, throw all my weight against the wheel, and it doesn't turn — not stuck-tight, not rusted, just dead. Locked from a board I don't control anymore.

"Move." Dean's already off the valve, crossing the six feet of bunker floor like the countdown just personally insulted him. He grabs the wheel over my hands, and for one second we're both hauling on the same metal, knuckles jammed together, and it still doesn't move.

"It's not stuck," I say. "It's dead. Somebody killed the release."

"Voss."

"Voss doesn't have hatch control from his office."

"Voss has whatever he wants tonight." Dean slams the flat of his hand against the frame, and the sound cracks through the cage like a gunshot, bouncing off Faraday mesh that eats every other signal in this building except our own noise. "You are not walking into his office alone. Not with the seal doing this."

"I don't have a vote. He wants me off the board, off the record, in a room with no witnesses. I go, or Reyes' clock does the talking for both of us."

I kick the base cabinet under the dead hatch out of pure fury — it's bolted to the wall, an old supply locker nobody's opened since the last drill —