Garibaldi said, “I thought you told us Mrs. Garcia was in the safest place, locked up in that isolated chamber. Or was that just lip service?”
Anxious to get out of the claustrophobic guard room, Pulaski pushed against the exit door, but it didn’t budge.
“Leave it alone, Senator!” Victoria snapped. “The lockdown’s still in place, and we’d need to go through the full shutdown protocol before we exit. There are… other countermeasures out there.” She sounded as if she knew much more about this place than she should.
Pulaski made a rude noise. “And look where that got us! We’re stuck down here, and that poor woman is trapped in a chamber full of radioactive waste.”
“Waste that you assured us was safe,” Garibaldi said again.
Victoria spoke with an acid tone. “We’re all in this mess because you couldn’t resist using your phone. You leave this portal and you’ll trigger more countermeasures.”
Pulaski reddened. “Bullshit. You heard the site manager. He’s turned off the microwaves—”
“Ms. Doyle is right, Senator,” Adonia said. “Rob switched off the active-denial measures, but legacy defenses could still be active, systems that were installed before Valiant Locksmith was put in place.”
Victoria continued, “This portal was designed as a last line of defense to prevent a malicious insider from reaching the lower level of the Mountain. That’s why two guards are usually stationed here, and why the back and front exits can’t be open at the same time. If you do that, you’ll trigger more countermeasures—”
“And probably reboot the system,” Garibaldi interrupted, “which will set the clock back another six hours.”
Pulaski jerked a thumb to the rear of the portal. “The back exit isn’t open, so we’re good to leave.” He scrutinized the LED control panel, spotted the door’s emergency release. “I want to meet the rescue team at the main door as soon as they get inside.”
Adonia intervened. “Senator, we just need to ride this thing out. It’s not that long to wait.” She had never seen anyone so blatantly ignore a directive and place so many people in jeopardy. “Stay put.”
Defiantly, he pushed against the metal crash bar. She grabbed his arm and tried to stop him, but Pulaski used his weight to shove harder, ignoring the chorus of angry shouts. But when he opened the door, no screeching alarms activated, no blast of heat from millimeter waves filled the guard room.
With a huff, Pulaski spread his arms into the surprising silence. “See? Are you going to follow me up to the exit, or am I the only one who’ll be rescued?” He stepped gingerly outside the portal and slowly shuffled up the tunnel.
He had taken three steps when, with a loud whoosh, a torrent of dull, bloodred liquid gushed down from conduits in the ceiling just outside the portal. Upon contact with the air, the fluid immediately coalesced, fusing into a hard, crystalline froth, like whipped cream turning into cement.
The viscous foam doused the Senator, splattering his head, his shoulders, and his shoes. He lurched backward, tried to stagger into the guard room, but the sticky material glued his foot to the ground. He flailed his stiffening arms, tugged at his jacket. A look of terror filled his face as he tried to fall into the portal chamber. “I’m stuck!”
Adonia smelled the overpowering scent of starch as red foam crawled into the portal, expanding like a flood of crystalline suds. Once, when she had been alone for the first time in a college apartment, she had added too much soap into a dishwasher, and the resulting storm of froth had filled half of the small kitchenette; now, the red foam grew unchecked, gushing from the spray outside in the tunnel and expanding layer upon layer, hardening in seconds.
Shawn shouted, “Pull him in! It’s sticky foam. He may suffocate if he’s covered!”
The Senator clawed at his face, peeling the hardening material away from his eyes and nose. When Adonia grabbed his arm, her fingers curled around the foam, and her own hand was stuck as she pulled. The foam swelled into the portal, covering everything, like hardening red meringue. The mess filled the tunnel outside and roiled into the guard shack as it expanded through the open door.
Shawn seized Pulaski’s shoulders and pulled as hard as he could, yelling for Adonia to do the same, but even together they could not yank him loose from the flash flood of sticky foam. The bubbly sludge crawled forward like a B-movie blob, setting as it was exposed to the air.
Looking wildly around the cramped portal, van Dyckman grabbed for the scattered tools that had spilled from the box. He snatched the box cutter in one hand, a screwdriver in the other, and started hacking away at the hardened foam, slicing off chunks that had set around the Senator’s legs. “Try it now!”
“Pull!” Shawn said. Pulaski’s feet came free with a loud sucking sound, and all four of them stumbled into the crowded guard shack, where Garibaldi and Victoria caught them.
But with the door now jammed open, the sticky foam oozed into any available space. The red liquid continued to gush from nozzles on the tunnel wall and ceiling, and the sticky foam swelled, bubbled, coalesced, engulfing the chamber.
Behind her, van Dyckman shouted over the noise and commotion. “We’re trapped! It’s going to suffocate us! We’ve got to get out!” Crouching, he held out the box cutter as if to ward off the advancing foam.
Garibaldi batted away at the encroaching substance that covered his chest. “Can’t breathe. No place to go.”
“Move to the back of the room!” Shawn fought through the billowing mountains of hardening foam. He grabbed the open door and tried to pull it shut, but the petrified airy material blocked the hinge pistons and the jamb. He kicked at it, tried to clear a path, but more foam filled the gap, cementing the door open.
Adonia knew that if they didn’t get out of the cramped portal, they would be swallowed in deadly foam within seconds.
At the opposite side of the guard chamber, Garibaldi looked through the mesh-embedded window of the second door. “The lower level’s clear of foam! We have to go out the other side.”
“Don’t!” Victoria tried to pull him away. “You’ll trigger another system! We have to close the other door first—”
“Not possible,” Shawn said, exhausted. “The foam’s blocking it.”
As the waves of sticky foam kept gushing into the small chamber and the people were crushed backward, Garibaldi threw his full weight against the emergency release of the back door. The rear exit swung open and slammed against the rock wall.
Instantly, another alarm started clanging, and a rotating magenta light flooded the cramped portal. Adonia’s ears popped, and a rush of cool air swept into the guard chamber from below.
Garibaldi tumbled out into the lower tunnel, and the others struggled after him to escape.
Van Dyckman, Doyle, and Pulaski fought their way to the exit, their shoes sticking in the expanding foam. Shawn and Adonia were the last to tumble out into the relative safety of the passageway that led into the lower level of Hydra Mountain.
Bright LED lights in the ceiling filled the passage with a sharp, intense glow. Senator Pulaski still pawed at the thick residue of foam that covered him like chewing gum. He peeled his jacket off and cast it aside in disgust, then picked at the hardened globs on his face and in his hair. He took several steps, but the gunk coating his wingtips kept adhering to the concrete tunnel floor.
“Take off your shoes,” Adonia said, indicating her own bare feet. Her red dress was also caked with the hardened foam.
The Senator dithered over which was more unpleasant, but opted to take off his shoes, leaning on van Dyckman’s shoulder while the other man used the box cutter to slice off chunks of shell-like spume. The laces were cemented together, but van Dyckman cut them, one at a time, and then peeled off the man’s shoes.