Chapter 17 – Blackout (or How to Find Someone in the Dark When the World Stops Making Sense)
The lights died first. Then the sound.
Arielle blinked into blackness so complete it swallowed the room whole. Her ears rang—high, sharp, endless. The floor trembled beneath her heels. Somewhere far away, metal screamed against metal.
She tried to speak, but the word came out as air. "Dam—"
Static burst through her head like a siren. Sparks rained from the ceiling—brief flashes of blue that carved Damian's silhouette into the dark: shoulders squared, pistol drawn, eyes locked on the sealed door.
Then everything went silent again.
---
Cut to Damian.
He moved through the dark like he'd done it before. Every motion clean, calculated. He holstered the gun just long enough to yank a magnetic panel off the wall, revealing glowing circuits. The backup generator was offline—sabotaged from the inside.
Someone had been here.
He cursed under his breath, voice low, rough. "They breached the secondary grid."
---
Cut back to Arielle.
She stumbled against the cold glass wall, palms slick with fear. The hum of machines was gone; even the air felt wrong—thin, heavy, waiting.
"Damian?"
No answer. Only the echo of her own voice bouncing off steel.
Her heartbeat filled the silence like a drum.
Then—footsteps.
Not his.
Measured. Heavy. Coming closer.
She froze.
---
Damian.
He heard it too. Two sets of boots. One circling the upper catwalk, another moving toward Arielle's side of the vault. He turned off his wrist comm—no signal—and slipped into the shadows.
His hand brushed the edge of a counter. Cold metal. Tools. He grabbed one: a sleek, retractable baton charged with faint current.
The door hissed—a faint mechanical breath—and light flared red for half a second before dying again.
Someone had overridden the lock.
---
Arielle.
Her vision adjusted to the faint glimmer of emergency strips along the floor. She could just make out the faint shimmer of glass in front of her—and a shadow beyond it.
Tall. Still. Watching.
She backed away.
"Damian!"
A whisper. "Don't move."
His voice—close, urgent. But before she could locate him, something hit the glass with a violent thud. The barrier vibrated, spiderwebbing faintly.
Gunfire cracked.
Arielle screamed and dropped to the floor as fragments of reinforced glass sprayed like dust.
Then—silence again.
---
Damian.
Two intruders down. Maybe more. He moved fast, a ghost in the dark, blood buzzing in his ears. His training had drilled this into muscle memory: move, strike, vanish.
He reached Arielle just as the third shadow broke through the smoke—silent, armed, fast.
Damian caught the wrist mid-swing, twisted hard, disarmed him, and shoved him into the wall. The man crumpled, groaning.
He turned to Arielle, grabbing her arm. "Can you move?"
Her eyes were wide, glass reflecting fire. "I—think so."
He pulled her close, guiding her low to the ground as another explosion rocked the chamber—small, contained, a flash bomb meant to disorient.
White light burst across her vision. The world spun.
---
Arielle.
She could barely see—just shapes, motion, heat. Damian's voice cut through the ringing. "Stay down!"
A gun clattered. A grunt. The sound of fists against metal. Someone fell—hard.
Her vision cleared just enough to see Damian standing over one of them, chest heaving, hand bleeding.
She'd never seen him like that before—raw, human, terrifyingly alive.
"Damian…" she whispered.
He didn't look at her. He was listening—head tilted, breath shallow.
Then he said the last thing she expected:
"They weren't here for me."
---
Cut — silence.
Arielle blinked, confusion slicing through the adrenaline. "What?"
He met her gaze finally. "They were here for you."
Her world stopped. "That's not possible."
He stepped forward, close enough that she could see the tremor in his hand. "Your last name, Arielle. Sinclair. The company your father runs. He's not just a philanthropist, is he?"
She stared at him, words dying on her tongue.
Another alarm blared—sharp, fast, urgent. Red lights flared again. Damian swore, grabbing her by the arm. "We're leaving. Now."
"Where?"
"Somewhere they can't track us."
The steel hatch in the floor hissed open, revealing a narrow, glowing passage beneath.
She hesitated. "What's down there?"
He looked at her—eyes hard, voice low. "The part of my world I never wanted you to see."
And then he pushed her forward, following into the light below—just as the vault above erupted in flame.
Xoxo Eloura 😘 😘 😘