Chapter 8 - THE HALON
The hiss of the Halon gas was deafening in the sudden darkness.
“Cover your mouths!” Richard yelled, pulling his coat up over his nose.
Halon fire suppression systems are designed to extinguish fires by rapidly displacing oxygen in a sealed room. Without oxygen, a fire dies.
But so do people.
The air immediately grew thin, tasting bitter and metallic.
I grabbed Margaret, pulling her down to the floor where the oxygen would linger the longest. Mark dropped to his knees beside us, ripping off his jacket and wrapping it around his mother’s face.
Through the reinforced glass of the door, I could see Cynthia Harwood laughing, her face illuminated by the emergency exit signs in the hallway. She had sealed us in a metal tomb.
“The door has an electronic mag-lock!” Mark shouted, coughing as the gas thickened. “When she smashed the conduit, it defaulted to secure lockdown!”
Richard threw his massive shoulder against the steel door. It didn't even rattle. He stepped back and kicked the reinforced glass. It spider-webbed, but held firm.
“We have about three minutes before we suffocate!” David Klein yelled, crouching near the server racks.
“Mark!” I yelled, my lungs already burning. “You do the maintenance down here! How do we manually override the mag-lock?”
Mark coughed violently, shaking his head. “The manual release is on the outside! The only way to kill the lock from the inside is to short out the backup battery in the ceiling grid!”
Richard looked up. The ceiling was a drop-grid of acoustic tiles, ten feet high.
“Which tile?” Richard demanded.
“Top right corner, above the main server stack!” Mark pointed.
Richard didn't hesitate. He grabbed one of the heavy rolling office chairs and shoved it against the server rack. He climbed onto the chair, then hauled himself up onto the top of the seven-foot metal server cabinet.
The air was thinnest near the ceiling. I could see Richard swaying, fighting to stay conscious as he reached up and punched through the acoustic tile.
He ripped the tile down, exposing a tangle of thick black and red wires and a heavy lead-acid backup battery.
“I need something metal to cross the terminals!” Richard shouted, his voice faint and raspy.
Mark patted his pockets frantically. “I don't have tools! I left them upstairs!”
I looked down at my hands. I looked at Margaret, who was gasping for air, her eyes fluttering shut.
“Richard!” I screamed, my vision blurring at the edges.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the brass name badge.
My Bellweather Hotel badge. The piece of metal that David had taken from me to appease the Harwoods.
I threw it as hard as I could toward the top of the server rack.
Richard caught it flawlessly.
He didn't hesitate. He jammed the thick brass rectangle directly across the positive and negative terminals of the massive backup battery.
A shower of blue sparks exploded from the ceiling.
The brass badge glowed red-hot, melting into the terminals.
With a loud, heavy CLUNK, the magnetic lock on the door released.
David threw himself against the heavy steel door, shoving it open.
Fresh, cold air flooded into the server room.
We scrambled out into the hallway, collapsing onto the concrete floor, gasping and coughing violently as our lungs desperately pulled in the oxygen.
Cynthia Harwood was standing ten feet away, staring at us in absolute shock. The fire ax slipped from her hands, clattering to the floor.
She turned to run.
But as she reached the end of the hallway, a dozen flashlights cut through the darkness.
“FBI! Don't move!” a booming voice echoed through the tunnel.
The local police might have been on Arthur’s payroll, but Richard Cole hadn't just called the local precinct from his cell phone earlier. He had called the federal authorities.
Heavily armed federal agents swarmed the hallway, throwing Cynthia against the wall and snapping handcuffs onto her wrists. She screamed and thrashed, but it was over.
Richard climbed slowly down from the server rack, coughing heavily, his suit ruined, his hands burned from the sparks.
He walked out into the hallway and looked at Cynthia as the agents dragged her away.
“Camera angles don't matter in the basement, Cynthia,” Richard said quietly.
I sat on the concrete floor, holding Margaret’s hand. Mark sat on her other side, his head resting against her shoulder.
A team of paramedics rushed down the hall, dropping oxygen masks over our faces.
As I breathed in the pure, sweet air, I looked down the hallway.
Emily was standing behind the line of FBI agents, her eyes wide with fear. When she saw me sitting up, she broke through the line and ran to me, throwing herself into my arms.
“Mom!” she cried, burying her face in my neck.
I held her tighter than I ever had in my life. “I’m okay, baby. We’re all okay.”
Mark looked up at his daughter. He didn't reach for her. He knew he hadn't earned that right yet. But he looked at her with tears in his eyes.
“I’m sorry, Em,” Mark whispered through his oxygen mask.
Emily looked at him, then at the old woman holding his hand.
“Is she really my grandmother?” Emily asked softly.
Mark nodded. “Yeah. She is.”
Margaret reached out a trembling hand and gently touched Emily’s cheek. “You have your grandfather’s eyes, sweetheart.”
Richard walked over to us. He knelt down beside Margaret, picking up the dented aluminum cake tin that had rolled into the hallway.
He wiped a smudge of dirt off the painted yellow flowers and handed it back to her.
“You dropped this, Mrs. Ellis,” Richard smiled.
Margaret took the tin, holding it against her heart.
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“Thank you, Ricky,” she said.
“No,” Richard corrected gently. “Thank you for the Friday cakes. They kept me alive.”
