The station groaned as it began its descent. The sound of shearing ice was like a scream that filled the room.
"Silas, don't!" Elara grabbed his arm as he stepped toward the Key. "She's baiting you. There has to be another way."
"There isn't," Silas said, his eyes fixed on the glowing blue drive. "She's right. The pressure will kill us all in minutes. Marcus and Leo are still in the extraction sub near the surface. If this station goes down, it'll create a vortex that drags them down too."
He looked at Elara. The woman he'd died for in Paris. The woman he'd lived for in Tokyo.
"I'm the Ghost, Elara. I'm already dead. You have to be the one who lives."
"No!" Elara stepped in front of him. "If you touch that thing, I'm touching it too. We go out together, Silas. That was the deal."
Cassandra laughed—a sharp, cold sound. "How touching. The Ghost and the Viper, dying for love. It's almost poetic."
"Shut up!" Elara roared.
She looked at the capacitor. She looked at the glass floor, where the dark water was pressing harder and harder against the reinforced panes.
Then, she saw it. A small, copper wire running from the console to the base of the capacitor.
"Silas... the floor. It's glass. But the frame is steel."
Silas understood instantly. "A ground-loop. If we can shatter the glass and let the salt water in, it'll short the capacitor before we touch the Key."
"But the pressure—"
"I'll hold the door," Silas said. "You take the shot."
Silas ran to the manual override lever of the blast door, using his body to keep the locking mechanism from engaging. The strain was immense; his muscles bulged, and the stitches in his side began to weep red.
"Do it, Elara! Now!"
Elara didn't hesitate. She didn't use her gun. she grabbed the heavy diamond-tipped dagger from her hair—the one that had once belonged to her father—and drove it into the seam of the glass floor.
CRACK.
The ocean didn't leak in; it exploded.
A jet of freezing water, pressurized to a thousand pounds per square inch, slammed into the room. It hit the capacitor with the force of a thunderbolt.
ZZZZZT-BOOM!
The electrical arc was blinding. Cassandra was thrown back against the wall, her body seizing as the surge traveled through the floor.
Silas was knocked off the lever. He tumbled into the rising water, the cold stealing the air from his lungs.
"Silas!"
Elara swam through the churning water, grabbing him by the collar of his tactical vest. She pulled him toward the emergency airlock in the ceiling.
She looked back. Cassandra was gone—swallowed by the dark water as the station's lower levels collapsed.
The Ares Key was floating in the water, its blue light extinguished.
Elara grabbed it and shoved it into her pocket.
They scrambled into the airlock just as the glass floor finally gave way, the entire command hub vanishing into the abyss.
They sat in the small, cramped airlock as it floated toward the surface. The silence was absolute.
Silas coughed, spitting out salt water. He looked at Elara. She was drenched, shivering, and covered in bruises.
"Did we... did we win?" he asked.
Elara pulled the Ares Key from her pocket and dropped it into the small drain at the bottom of the airlock. She watched as it vanished into the sea.
"No," she said, leaning her head against his. "We quit."