Chapter 4: The High-Voltage Breach

The invisible poison was already seeping into the pastel-blue room. Noah coughed, rubbing his eyes.

“Daddy, my head hurts,” he whimpered.

Panic, dark and absolute, threatened to paralyze me. The syringe sat in the top drawer, exactly where she said it would be. A sick, twisted part of my brain screamed to take it, to sacrifice myself so Noah could live.

But I knew the truth. Meredith was a psychopath. If I died, Noah would be trapped down here forever, completely at her mercy. I couldn’t leave him with the monster.

I had to break us out. Now.

I looked at the heavy steel door. The electronic keypad was dead on our side. Battering it down with physical force was impossible; it was commercial-grade steel embedded in concrete.

But I was an engineer. I understood systems. The door was held shut by an electromagnetic lock. Electromagnetic locks require a constant, uninterrupted flow of electricity to keep the magnet engaged. If I could overload the circuit, the lock would fail, and the heavy door would swing open on its hydraulic hinges.

I needed raw, unadulterated voltage.

I spun around, my eyes scanning the room. The lights? Too low voltage. The toys? Useless.

My eyes locked onto the small, old CRT television sitting on the dresser. Meredith had probably bought a retro one so Noah couldn’t access smart TV features or the internet. CRT televisions harbor massive, dangerous capacitors inside, holding thousands of volts even when unplugged.

“Noah, get under the bed and cover your face with your blanket! Do not come out until I say so!” I barked.

I lunged at the dresser, grabbing the heavy television. I hurled it onto the concrete floor. The thick glass screen shattered with a deafening crash.

My lungs were already burning. The edges of my vision were blurring from the carbon monoxide. I dropped to my knees among the shards of glass, ignoring the cuts slicing into my palms. I ripped the plastic casing off the back of the TV, exposing the tangled mess of wires, the circuit board, and the massive, cylindrical flyback transformer.

I grabbed the heavy power cord of the TV, using a piece of jagged glass to strip the rubber casing away, exposing the raw copper wires. I jammed the TV’s power plug into the wall outlet to ensure the board was live.

My hands were shaking violently. I took the stripped copper wire connected to the live current, and looked up at the steel door’s exposed hinge panel where the magnetic lock’s wiring ran into the wall.

I had to bridge the live, high-voltage current from the TV’s transformer directly into the low-voltage wires of the magnetic lock. And because I didn’t have insulated tools, my own body was going to absorb the residual shock.

Two minutes left.

I stood up, dizzy, stumbling toward the door. I pried the plastic panel off the door frame with my bleeding fingers, exposing the red and black wires of the lock.

I gripped the raw, live copper wire from the TV in my right hand. I grabbed the magnetic lock wires in my left.

I closed my eyes. For Noah.

I slammed the live copper wire against the lock’s circuitry.

A blinding flash of blue-white light erupted in the dim stairwell. The electrical shock hit me like a freight train moving at Mach 3. It threw me backward, every muscle in my body seizing in violent, excruciating agony. The smell of burning flesh and ozone filled the air. I hit the concrete floor hard, my vision going completely black for a terrifying second.

But through the ringing in my ears, I heard it.

POP. Ssssssss.

The magnetic lock had blown. The heavy steel door popped open an inch, the hydraulic seal broken.

I gasped, rolling onto my hands and knees. My arms were numb, my hands scorched and blistered, but I forced myself upward.

“Noah! Come here! Now!” I screamed, my voice ragged.

Noah scrambled out from under the bed. I grabbed him, throwing my jacket over his head to shield him from the sparks and smoke. I shoved the heavy steel door open with my shoulder, the metal searing hot against my skin.

We stumbled up the stairs. The moment I pushed open the second door leading into the wine cellar, a wall of heat hit us.

Meredith hadn’t just tried to gas us. When she saw the power spike on her monitor, she had set the wine cellar on fire to ensure the exit was impassable. The oak racks were ablaze, bottles of wine exploding like shrapnel in the heat.

I tucked Noah under my arm like a football, put my head down, and charged through the flames. The fire licked at my clothes, singeing my hair. We burst through the wooden door and out into the sprawling living room.

The house was filling with thick, black smoke. The fire alarms shrieked.

I kicked the heavy oak front door open, the cool night air hitting us like a wave of salvation. We tumbled out onto the front porch, coughing violently, falling onto the manicured lawn.

We had made it. We were alive.

I pulled Noah tightly against my chest, tears of relief washing the soot from my face.

But as I looked up, the red and blue strobes of police cruisers illuminated the driveway. And standing in the center of the lawn, surrounded by heavily armed officers, was Meredith.

And the nightmare wasn’t over.