Chapter 52 - The Escape
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Instantly, with a loud, resounding THUNK, the massive, gasoline-powered generators powering the construction site’s temporary grid were violently severed.
The emergency floodlights illuminating the 40th floor instantly died, plunging the entire exposed concrete expanse into absolute, terrifying, pitch-black darkness.
"What the hell?!" Thorne yelled, the sound of his heavy chair scraping violently against the concrete.
I didn't hesitate for a fraction of a second. I threw myself sideways, diving hard against the rough concrete floor just as the sharp, terrifying pfft-pfft-pfft of Thorne’s suppressed pistol echoed through the dark. Concrete splinters exploded in the exact spot where my head had been a second earlier.
I scrambled aggressively on my hands and knees, desperately crawling behind a massive, solid concrete support pillar.
"You think the dark can save you, David?!" Thorne roared into the blackness, his footsteps echoing ominously as he stalked across the open floor. "There is only one elevator! You are trapped up here with me!"
I pulled my lockbox firearm from my holster, my breathing ragged. I couldn't see anything. The darkness was absolute, save for the faint, distant ambient glow of the city skyline miles away.
Suddenly, a massive, blinding spotlight clicked on from the street level forty stories below us, sweeping aggressively up the side of the skeletal building. Julian had hijacked a construction floodlight.
The blinding beam of light swept across the 40th floor, momentarily illuminating Thorne standing just twenty feet away, his gun raised, desperately searching for me.
He fired twice blindly into the light, shattering a stack of abandoned glass panes near the elevator shaft.
I didn't shoot back. I didn't want a prolonged firefight. I wanted to escape.
Using the momentary distraction of the sweeping spotlight, I sprinted from behind the pillar, making a desperate, terrifying dash toward the exposed, unfinished emergency stairwell.
Thorne heard my boots hitting the concrete. He spun around and fired rapidly. A bullet grazed the heavy fabric of my jacket, the kinetic force nearly knocking me off balance, but I threw my body through the open stairwell door, tumbling violently down the first flight of raw, jagged concrete stairs.
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"You can't run forever!" Thorne screamed from the top floor, his voice echoing menacingly down the cavernous shaft.
I didn't answer. I just picked myself up, my knees bleeding and my breath burning in my lungs, and began the agonizing, terrifying forty-story descent into the dark.
