The darkness on the Bridge wasn't just an absence of light; it was a physical weight. When the Warden flipped the Blackout Protocol toggle, the transition was so violent it felt like being struck. One moment, Sarah and Donny were bathed in the triumphant, blinding white of the helicopters' searchlights; the next, they were suspended in a void of reinforced glass, forty feet above a concrete courtyard that was suddenly screaming for blood.
"Mendoza! Jenkins! Status!" Sarah's voice didn't shake, but it carried a lethal edge. She had already dropped the megaphone, her hand instinctively flying to the grip of her sidearm.
"The electronic locks are dead, Sarge!" Mendoza's voice came from the gloom behind the gurney. A second later, the sharp, narrow beam of a tactical flashlight cut through the dark, dancing off the dust motes in the air. "He didn't just cut the power; he tripped the Solenoid Bolts. These doors are rated for a Level 5 riot. Without the central console, we're sealed in a coffin."
Donny felt the vibration of the locks engaging through the floorboards. It was a deep, metallic clunk that resonated in his bones. He leaned heavily against the gurney, his breath coming in ragged hitches. The sudden darkness had sent his vestibular system into a tailspin—the post-traumatic vertigo from the brain surgery making the Bridge feel like it was spinning in space.
"He's not just locking us in," Donny rasped, his eyes straining to adjust. He looked up at the ceiling, where the heavy industrial vents hummed with a different frequency. "He's clearing the board. If we're trapped here, we're targets."
The Breach of the South
Below them, in the cavernous gut of the South Block, the silence that followed the blackout lasted exactly four seconds. It was the silence of a predator realizing it had been lured into a trap.
Lou stood at the bars of 403, his massive hands gripping the cold steel. When the lights died, he didn't scream. He looked up at the Bridge, seeing the tiny, flickering beam of Mendoza's flashlight. He saw the "Gold" being extinguished.
"They're killing them," Lou said, his voice a tectonic rumble that carried through the entire tier. "The North just pulled the plug on the King."
Johnny, in the cell next door, was already moving. He didn't have a key, but he had three days of redirected rage and a heavy-duty floor buffer handle he'd liberated from the janitor's closet during the morning shift.
"THE DOORS!" Johnny shrieked, the sound tearing at his throat. "THEY'RE IN THE DARK! BREAK THE LINE!"
It started with a single cell door. In South Block, the locks were old—mechanical backups to an aging electrical system. If enough weight was applied at the right angle, the pins would shear. Lou stepped back, his chest heaving, and then he launched his three-hundred-pound frame into the steel.
CRACK.
The sound of the lock-pin snapping echoed like a gunshot. Lou didn't stop. He did it again. And again. On the third hit, the door groaned and swung wide.
"SOUTH BLOCK!" Lou bellowed, stepping out onto the catwalk, his silhouette framed by the orange glow of the fires outside. "WE ARE THE WALL! GET TO THE BRIDGE!"
The tier turned into a sea of moving shadows. Men who had spent years hating each other were suddenly a single, cohesive engine of destruction. They didn't have guns, but they had the numbers. They swarmed the guard stations, the few North Block "observers" fleeing into the service tunnels before the wave could reach them.
Johnny met Lou at the base of the stairs. "The Bridge is sealed from the outside, Lou! We can't get through the North doors!"
"We aren't going through the doors," Lou said, looking up at the underside of the glass walkway. "We're going through the floor."
The Shadow in the Vents
On the Bridge, Sarah felt the temperature drop. The HVAC system had been reversed—a standard procedure for smoke clearance during a fire, but now it was being used to mask the sound of movement.
Cling. Cling.
The sound came from above. Someone was in the crawlspace.
"Mendoza, light on the ceiling!" Sarah barked.
The beam swept upward, illuminating a row of heavy metal grates. One of them was already vibrating. A second later, it fell, clattering onto the linoleum with a deafening ring. A man dropped through the hole—black tactical gear, no badge, his face obscured by a gas mask. He was carrying a suppressed submachine gun.
He didn't say a word. He raised the weapon.
Sarah didn't think. She tackled Donny, throwing her body over his on the gurney just as a burst of suppressed fire shattered the glass behind them. The reinforced shards didn't fall; they spiderwebbed, turning the view of the neighborhood into a distorted, crystalline mess.
"FIRE!" Sarah screamed.
Mendoza and Jenkins opened up. The cramped space of the Bridge became a nightmare of muzzle flashes and screaming metal. The North Block "Clean-Up Crew" had been sent to ensure the King and the "Shadow Warden" never saw the sunrise.
Sarah reached into her holster, pulling her service weapon. She didn't fire blindly. she waited for the muzzle flash of the assassin. When it came, she leaned out from behind the gurney and squeezed the trigger twice.
The man in the gas mask tumbled backward, his body hitting the floor with a heavy thud. But more were coming. Three more grates hit the floor.
"They're surrounding us!" Jenkins yelled, his voice strained.
Donny, pinned under Sarah's weight, felt the hot brass of her spent shells hitting his neck. The pain in his head was a white-hot spike, but the adrenaline was doing what the doctors couldn't—it was rewiring his brain. He saw a second assassin leveling a weapon at Sarah's head.
Donny's hand shot out. He didn't have a gun, but he had the heavy metal IV pole still attached to the gurney. He swung it with every ounce of strength he had left, the base of the pole catching the assassin in the knees.
The man buckled, and Sarah finished him with a single shot to the chest.
"Stay down!" she hissed at Donny.
"I'm not... staying down... for this," Donny panted.
Outside, the neighborhood was reacting to the sound of the gunfire. The flares were being thrown over the walls. The "Silence" was dead. The war had officially moved inside.
Suddenly, the floor beneath them shuddered. A massive, booming impact echoed from the bottom of the Bridge. Then another.
BOOM. BOOM.
"What is that?" Mendoza gasped, reloading his magazine.
Sarah looked down through the glass floor, past the shadows and the blood. She saw the South Block inmates. They had dragged a heavy, motorized industrial cart into the courtyard and were using it as a ram against the Bridge's support pillars.
"It's the neighborhood," Sarah whispered, a mixture of terror and pride in her voice.
"They're bringing the Bridge down to get us out."
The Bridge groaned—a long, agonizing sound of twisting steel. The spiderwebbed glass began to pop and hiss under the structural stress.
"Sarah," Donny said, grabbing her hand. His eyes were wide, the pupils blown in the dark.
"If this thing goes, we're forty feet in the air."
"Then we better kill these bastards fast," Sarah said, leveling her gun at the last vent. "Because we're either going to be the heroes of this story, or the biggest pile of scrap metal in the state."