WIIII-UUUU-WIIII-UUUU!The bright red emergency lights inside Block C began to flash violently, turning the concrete corridor into a bloody, disorienting maze. Heavy, automated steel security doors at both ends of the hallway were slowly sliding shut with a terrifying, mechanical roar."The block is sealing! Move your legs, now!" Corporal Titus screamed, his hand already grabbing Sergeant Okoro by the vest to push him out toward the guard station before his cover blew.Chief Solomon stumbled out of Cell 12, his expensive white senator attire instantly getting stained by the dirty water on the floor. For a man who used to command entire military divisions, he looked completely disoriented. "Adekunle, the underground maintenance door... if that steel shutter drops, we are trapped in this hallway!""Then stop talking and run, Papa!" Adekunle roared, grabbing his father by the shoulder and violently shoving him forward down the red-lit corridor.The heavy steel shutter of the utility room door was already descending. It was halfway down. Two feet left. One foot."Slide! Slide inside!" Titus yelled, throwing his entire body feet-first beneath the closing metal barrier like a baseball player sliding into home plate. He rolled over onto the slimy concrete of the utility room, turning around to hold his hands out.Adekunle grabbed Chief Solomon by the waist and threw the old man flat onto the wet floor, pushing him head-first under the descending steel gate just as it reached the last six inches. Solomon groaned as his shoulder scraped against the heavy metal edge, but he made it through.Adekunle didn't hesitate. He dived straight after his father, his back flat against the floor.SLAM!The heavy steel barrier crashed into the concrete floor, cutting off the red flashing lights of the corridor and plunging them into the suffocating darkness of the underground utility room. The only sound left was their heavy, panicked breathing and the distant, muffled boom of Sledge's fireworks still shaking the main gates outside."The pipe! Enter inside the pipe!" Titus gasped, coughing as he pulled his tactical flashlight out, illuminating the open mouth of the waste culvert where the bent iron bars were waiting.Chief Solomon looked at the narrow, dark pipe dripping with slimy black sewage, and his old aristocratic pride flashed for a split second. "You want me to crawl through that? I am a military General—""You are a dead man if you stay here, Papa!" Adekunle hissed, his eyes burning with an intense, terrifying fire that completely silenced the old man. Adekunle shoved a gas mask directly into his father's face. "The warden with Valerie's poison capsule will be inside your cell in ten minutes. If you want to die proudly in a cage, stay here. If you want your revenge against the syndicate, crawl!"Chief Solomon swallowed his pride, pulled the rubber mask over his face, and dropped to his knees. He scrambled into the dark, toxic pipe like a desperate recruit, his expensive clothes soaking up the black sludge of the prison waste.Titus went next, and Adekunle entered last, pulling the bent iron bars back behind them as much as he could to delay any guards following their trail.The crawl back through the fifty-meter pipe felt like an eternity. The concrete scraped their skin, the toxic fumes burned their eyes even through the masks, and the heavy rain outside was starting to flood the drainage line, filling the pipe with rising, cold water up to their chests."I see the light! The swamp gate is open!" Titus's voice echoed through the earpiece.They burst out of the iron culvert one by one, collapsing into the thick, freezing mud of the mangrove swamp. The heavy Lagos downpour washed the black slime off their faces, but the danger wasn't over.A high-powered military searchlight from the prison's watchtower suddenly swung around, its blinding white beam cutting through the rain and stopping exactly ten feet away from where they lay in the mud. The prison guards had realized Block C was breached, and the tower guns were turning toward the swamp.
