Chapter 14 - The Bridge Out

Outside, Officer Ortiz's evacuation convoy reached the river bridge and stopped.

A delivery truck had been parked sideways across both lanes. Its driver was gone. Families crowded the road behind the fire engines, watching smoke roll out of town.

“Keep the kids in their cars,” Ortiz ordered. “Nobody walks onto that bridge.”

Her radio filled with frightened questions. The state police had finally acknowledged the leak, but their nearest units were forty minutes away. In forty minutes, the treatment system could already be running.

Marcus reached the bridge on a borrowed motorcycle and saw the problem immediately. The truck was carrying sealed containers stamped with Asterion's logo. Somebody had left them where the river ran closest to the drinking-water intake.

“Don't touch anything,” he told the fire chief. “Have the crews move back.”

They guided the convoy onto a narrow service road. One family stalled on the slope. Marcus and two volunteers pushed the car until it caught, then watched its taillights disappear into the woods.

“Why are you helping?” Ortiz asked as he returned, exhausted.

He looked at the town below them. “Because I signed papers when I should've asked questions. I'm done doing that.”

Back at the estate, Voss watched the public broadcast spread across local phones. His smile was gone. He slammed a fist onto the control panel.

“Start the system early.”

A technician went white. “The reservoir isn't ready.”

“Make it ready.”

The wall clock jumped forward. MUNICIPAL RELEASE: 01:00 A.M.

Clara saw the change from the elevator leading to the core. It was twelve fourteen.

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June read it aloud. “Forty-six minutes.”

Then the elevator doors opened, and Clara saw the core for the first time: a room larger than a stadium, filled with suspended glass chambers, every one marked for disposal.