Ten minutes.
Only ten minutes.
Calista glanced at the countdown. Her heart nearly slammed out of her chest, but she forced down the surge of panic and shouted at her companions.
"Forget securing it! Get it onto the transport frame! Right now! Move!"
Daryl and Bossie reacted instantly. They stopped trying to fasten it perfectly and threw all their strength into shoving the heavy MRI component onto the transport frame. The clamps snapped into place with a sharp clang.
"Go!" Calista roared, grabbing Danny, who was still trying to use the computer to stop the self-destruct sequence, and hauling him up.
The five of them pushed the last and most cumbersome piece of equipment out of the analysis room and rushed toward the passage leading to the surface.
Behind them, the blood-red countdown that marked their approaching death kept ticking down.
9:15. 9:14. 9:13.
The piercing alarm seemed to bore into their bones, chasing the team as they tore through the corridors.
Blood-red numbers flashed mercilessly across every screen that still had power, the seconds visibly draining away.
06:22. 06:21. 06:20.
"Faster! Faster!" Calista urged hoarsely as she, Daryl, and Bossie strained to push the heavy transport frame carrying the MRI core component.
The swivel casters bumped over the debris-strewn floor, groaning under the weight.
Michonne cleared the way ahead, her katana ready to cut down any ordinary walker that dared crawl out from some corner and block them.
Danny clutched the computer containing the key data, his face pale, but he did not dare slow down for even a second.
On the way, he even grabbed a few small components from the lab tables on both sides, with no idea whether they would be useful or not, and stuffed them all into his pockets.
The corridor seemed to stretch on forever.
From above came the faint sound of intense gunfire and explosions. It was the first transport team led by Leah and Carver.
They had clearly run into the remaining ordinary walkers drawn in by the self-destruct alarm.
"Leah! Report!" Calista shouted into the communicator, her voice broken by the strain of running.
"Ran into... a small group blocking the way! Cleared them, no threat now. We're pushing toward the exit! How are you?" Leah's voice came through mixed with gunfire and heavy breathing.
"We're right behind you!"
03:15. 03:14.
They finally reached the stairwell leading up.
It had become a temporary battlefield. Several walker corpses lay sprawled on the floor, while Leah, Carver, and the others kept watch behind makeshift cover formed by the carts.
"We move together!" Calista said without stopping.
The teams quickly reunited. There was no time to talk. Everyone worked together, lifting the heavy carts up the stairs one by one.
The main haulers' muscles bulged, veins standing out as sweat streamed down their temples.
Every second felt like a tug-of-war with death. Their legs no longer felt like their own.
01:03. 01:02.
After charging up the final slope, they finally saw the light from the warehouse door they had first entered through.
Jenson, Wells, Ethan, and Merle, who had stayed behind on the surface, had been waiting anxiously. The moment they heard movement, they pushed the door open from the outside with all their strength.
The long-missed sunset stabbed into their eyes, making everyone who had grown used to the underground's dim blue and blood-red light squint instinctively.
"Get out!" Jenson shouted.
Without the slightest hesitation, the team shoved the equipment-laden carts out of Sentinel Station in a battered rush.
The instant Michonne, who was covering the rear, slipped out, Merle and Wells threw all their strength into dragging the heavy warehouse door shut behind her.
"BOOM!!!"
Almost the moment the doors closed, a muffled roar rose from beneath their feet, as if it had come from the depths of the earth.
The entire ground shook violently.
A scorching shockwave burst from the cracks around the warehouse door and the ventilation vents, nearly knocking everyone off their feet.
The tremors underfoot lasted for more than ten seconds before gradually fading.
The complex disguised as an "Ecological Observation Station" looked unharmed on the surface.
But everyone knew that everything deep below had been wiped out in that final purification, along with the secrets they had failed to take and the remaining mutants, all buried for good.
They had escaped death by a hair.
Some collapsed to the ground, while others braced their hands on their knees and gasped hard, greedily breathing in the fresh surface air.
The weakness of survival left everyone dazed.
No one had died.
After betrayal, the siege of the mutated walkers, and a race against a self-destruct countdown, that was nothing short of a miracle.
Once they had rested enough, they began loading the bulky precision equipment onto the truck.
"Let us handle it," Jenson called.
He, Wells, and Ethan ran toward the modified heavy truck.
The rear cargo bed was fitted with a simple hydraulic lifting device and a sturdy winch.
With mechanical help, their efficiency improved greatly.
The heavy liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry system and the cell culture system were slowly hoisted by the creaking winch and guided by the combined effort of the team, then steadily placed inside the cargo bed lined with cushioning pads.
The MRI core component was the most troublesome, but under Bossie and Danny's guidance, it too was carefully secured in the safest position.
By the time the last piece of equipment had been firmly fixed inside the heavy truck and covered with a tarp, the setting sun was spilling golden light across the valley.
Calista leaned against the door of a Humvee while Ethan carefully cleaned and rebandaged the wound on her left hand.
Carver watched Ethan bandage her without saying a word, then handed her an opened water bottle.
She took it with her right hand, drank a mouthful, handed it back to Carver, and touched the sealed inner pocket of her tactical vest.
Inside were several documents she had found in the archives, along with a black USB drive.
Paris, France. Île-de-France.
Those coordinates were branded into Calista's mind.
Silas Norton. Spark Biotechnology. The family doctor who had secretly injected her with the experimental vaccine. The French laboratory at the source of "Wildfire." And behind it all, perhaps a massive plan spanning continents.
Then there were those terrifying mutated walkers.
Were they the work of the U.S. government, infiltration by French forces, or the private mad experiment of Chief Researcher Dr. De La Rosa?
The truth seemed to lie in that distant land.
But between them and that truth stretched the vast Atlantic Ocean.
Rock Fortress currently had no ability to carry out international operations, let alone an ocean-crossing mission.
"Calista, everything's ready," Mike said as he walked over to report, interrupting her thoughts.
Calista looked up, opened the door, and climbed into the passenger seat. Her voice was calm and firm.
"We're going home."
The convoy slowly started up and drove out of the valley.
Behind them, the observation station gradually shrank from view, until it finally disappeared into the folds of the mountains.
One stage had ended.
They had pulled off the impossible, seizing vital resources from that nest of death.