“I know. But you need to get to a hospital, too, Connor. Those cuts on your chest are infected. And you've got a bad bone-bruise in your leg. You're not going to be standing when that morphine wears off.”
Connor nodded. “You know what I've done, Frank?”
“I know.”
Connor felt a sadness. “I’m sorry, Frank. I know that ... the computer was more than just a machine to you.”
“GEO was never a living thing, Connor.” Frank's face brightened, stronger. “It was only a machine.”
“But it was part of Rachel.”
“Remembered love is enough, Connor. It has to be.”
They nodded together.
As the Sea Patrol lifted Barley's gurney, the C-4 that Connor had strapped to the limestone walls of the elevator shaft detonated like a volcano. And, awakened from his morphine stupor, Barley shouted at the thunderous blast and lifted a hard fist in the air. His bellow of victory carried across the compound.
Connor laughed, knowing that the C-4 had completely closed the shaft by sending over a million tons of granite and stone and dirt thunderously to the bottom where it buried the vault in a mountain of stone. In moments the cavern was completely sealed from the world — the computer, the dead, the Dragon and the heroes that had defied it.
Startled by the explosion, a representative of Stygian Enterprises, someone Connor didn't know but recognized by his air of authority, ran up. The little man staggered to a halt beside Connor, staring in horror at the sulfuric dust roiling from the exit of the shaft. He glanced to the side and seemed to catch something in Connor's haggard, angry face.
“What happened?” the man whispered.
“I blew it,” Connor said. “I buried it.”
Pandemonium roars echoed from deep inside the cavern, and the thunder continued a long time until silence finally overcame all there was — a sea of silence that left the shaft as dead and buried as Hell itself.
“Mr. Connor!” the man shouted. “I represent Stygian Enterprises – the company which owns that facility! I want to know immediately who gave you the authority to destroy the elevator shaft!”
Connor stared. “Nobody.”
The company man staggered.
“So …” He gasped, “So how could you destroy it? It’s going to take years! It's going to take a fortune to dig it out!” He stepped back, pointing a finger. “You're in big trouble, Connor! Big trouble! That was a billion-dollar facility!”
Connor laughed as he turned away.
“Send me a bill,” he said.
* * *