#### **Chapter 24: Zero Point**
"Download complete. Drive is wiped," Kuro's voice cut through the chaos. "I've found our way out. An old geothermal vent shaft, three hundred meters west of your position. It will be… hot. Go. Now!"
As Valerius's men stormed the corridor leading to the lab, Renji was already gone, slipping through a collapsed wall into a parallel service tunnel. He ran, the exhaustion from the prolonged ICC activation finally catching up to him. His muscles screamed. His vision swam. He was running on fumes and sheer will.
He met Kuro and Hikari, who had been moving towards the extraction point from a different direction, at the junction.
"They're right behind us," Renji grunted, leaning against a wall to catch his breath.
"I have one last parting gift," Kuro said, a grim smile touching his lips for the first time. He slammed his hand down on a ruggedized tablet. "Overloading the facility's primary power conduit. Three… two… one…"
The entire facility shuddered. The lights exploded in a shower of sparks, plunging everything into absolute darkness. A deep, groaning sound echoed from the core of the building as generators overloaded and concrete began to crack under the strain.
They sprinted through the darkness, guided by a map on Kuro's watch, the sounds of the facility tearing itself apart behind them. They reached the vent shaft, a circular hole in the floor belching waves of sulfurous steam. Below them was a dark, precipitous drop.
Just as they prepared to descend using grapnel lines, the doorway behind them was filled with silhouettes. Valerius and his last two soldiers stood there, their weapons raised.
Before they could fire, Renji moved. It wasn't the fluid grace of the ICC. It was a desperate, final surge. He grabbed a loose piece of rebar from the floor and threw it like a spear, striking the already-damaged ceiling above the soldiers.
With a final, deafening roar, the ceiling gave way. Tons of concrete and steel crashed down, burying Valerius and his men and sealing the corridor permanently.
The three siblings descended into the warm, humid darkness of the earth, the thunder of the collapsing facility their parting salute. They had the truth. They had survived. And they had left the ruins of their past to burn in the frozen heart of Siberia.