“We’re not going out the way we came. We’re going down.”
Under the earth, in total darkness, they swam. The crude oil clung to their skin like death. Lungs burned. Eyes stung. One of the engineers, a young man named Phelps, started to panic and thrash. Korr grabbed him, pressed his own regulator—the one from his emergency oxygen tank—into the man’s mouth. He shared the last of the air. Hidden Strike
They found the engineers in a sub-basement control room, huddled behind a blast door. The four of them—two women, two men, all in oil-stained coveralls—looked less like valuable assets and more like terrified rabbits. Their leader, a sharp-faced woman named Dr. Amira Halabi, didn’t thank him. She just said, “About time. The backdoor isn’t in our heads. It’s in a chip we hid in the refinery’s main server.” “We’re not going out the way we came