From Billionaire to Lab Rat: My Cyborg Life

The Flood

The Flood

Damian was cornered in the server room, 5,950 meters under the White Sea, and things were looking grim. Guards were practically tearing the door down, their plasma cutters screeching, and he could hear the faint roar of task force jets landing way up top. His legs were shot from that insane fall in the elevator shaft, his shoulder ached like someone had taken a bat to it, and his head was ringing like a busted bell. Plus, he was starving. But he wasn’t done yet. He hunched over the terminal, fingers flying across the keys. “Let’s mess with their heads,” he muttered, rebooting the central server without touching his unlocking device. The whole point was to trick everyone—guards, task force, the whole lot—into thinking the crisis was over.

The server hummed back to life, lights flickering on, and the room buzzed with energy. The alarms went quiet, and outside, the guards stopped cutting, their voices muffled but confused, like, “What’s going on?” Damian didn’t wait to find out if they’d buy it. He spotted a maintenance hatch in the corner, half-hidden behind a server rack. He limped over, wincing with every step, and used his unlocking device to pop it open. The thing beeped, and the hatch swung free, revealing a dark crawlspace. He glanced back at the door—still holding, but not for long—and dove in, pulling the hatch shut behind him.

Up in the head of operations’ office, Rhea Corvin was sweating bullets. She stood across from Klaus Müller, the taskforce leader, who looked like he could stare through walls. His face was all business, and his fancy HUD goggles were scanning data non-stop. “Explain,” he said, voice flat but sharp. Rhea’s stomach was in knots—she knew NeuroDyne would have her head if she didn’t fix this mess. “It was one worker, Number 46,” she stammered. “He shut down the server, cut us off from the network. I don’t know how, but—” Before she could finish, the lights snapped back on, screens rebooting with a hum. Klaus raised an eyebrow. “And now?” Rhea blinked, thrown off. “I… I don’t know why it’s back on.”

Before she could check her console, a new alarm blared, loud enough to make her jump. “WARNING: STRUCTURAL BREACH DETECTED. EVACUATE.” Klaus’s eyes narrowed. “What is this?” he demanded. Rhea scrambled to the console, her hands shaking. The screen showed alerts flooding in—structural damage, water pouring into the lower levels. Her face went white. “This can’t be happening,” she whispered. Klaus leaned in, his voice like ice. “Get me answers, Corvin. Now.”

Back in the crawlspace, Damian was already at work. He’d found a utility area next to the server room, packed with high-pressure water conduits that cooled the servers and powerhouse. The pipes were huge, built to handle the insane pressure of the White Sea outside, 5,950 meters down. He’d worked on systems like this back when he was designing weapons for Zahox, so he knew exactly how to break them. “If I can’t shut it down, I’ll break it open,” he said to himself, spotting a control panel on one of the conduits. He used his unlocking device to c***k it open, then grabbed a wrench and wire cutters from a nearby toolbox, his hands shaking from hunger and pain.

The plan was crazy but simple: overpressurize the conduit until it blew, cracking the server room’s thick outer walls and letting the ocean do the rest. He rewired the valve’s regulator, bypassing its safety limits, and cranked the pressure way past what it was built for. The pipes started groaning, water spraying in tiny jets. He set a quick timer on the panel—ten seconds—and bolted back toward the crawlspace. He barely made it inside when the explosion hit, a deafening boom that shook the whole facility. The server room’s wall shattered, and a torrent of White Seawater roared in, flooding the lower levels like a tsunami. Guards outside screamed, abandoning their search as they ran for their lives.

Damian wasn’t sticking around to watch. The utility area was starting to flood, water lapping at his feet, but he spotted a disabled task force drone wedged in a corner, its rotors gleaming despite the earlier server shutdown. It was one of the heavy-duty ones, built to carry gear, not people, but he didn’t have a choice. “You’re my way out,” he said, dragging it to a dry spot. His hands were killing him, but he got to work, splicing wires with the cutters to bypass the battery’s control chip. He’d built stuff like this before—well, not exactly, but close enough. He rerouted power directly to the rotors, and they sputtered to life, whining like a jet engine.

He tore a strip from his shredded jumpsuit and tied himself to the drone, wrapping it around his waist. The water was rising fast now, splashing his legs, and he hit the makeshift switch he’d rigged. The drone lurched upward, nearly yanking him off his feet. It was wobbly, the rotors straining under his weight, but it climbed the utility shaft, a narrow, 5,950-meter tunnel of pipes and cables. The walls blurred past, and he clung on, his shoulder screaming, his head pounding. Debris—bits of metal, loose bolts—rained down, and he had to jerk the drone to dodge them. The shaft was shaking, the flood’s pressure rattling the whole facility. He gritted his teeth. “Don’t quit on me now,” he told the drone, like it could hear him.

After what felt like forever, he saw a maintenance hatch up ahead, leading to the landing platform. His hands were numb, but he managed to aim his unlocking device at the hatch’s lock. It beeped, and the hatch popped open, the drone barely squeezing through. He landed hard on the platform, crouching behind a stack of crates as the storm outside roared, rain and wind blasting through the open hangar doors. The place was chaos—guards were piling into hovercraft, task force operatives were shouting orders, and jets were powering up, everyone freaking out about the flood. Nobody noticed him, at least not yet.

Damian spotted a task force jet parked a bit away from the others, its pilot still inside, probably running checks. He crept forward, using the crates for cover, his legs barely holding him up. The jet’s hatch was locked, but his unlocking device made quick work of the biometric scanner, spoofing the pilot’s profile like it was nothing. “Come on, Iron Sheep, don’t choke now,” he muttered, slipping inside just as the pilot stepped out, distracted by the chaos. The cockpit was a mess of screens and switches, way more complicated than he’d hoped. He strapped in, hands shaking as he figured out the controls. The engines roared to life, louder than the storm outside.

He taxied toward the hangar doors, rain hammering the cockpit, making it hard to see. The platform was clearing out, hovercraft zipping away, but someone must’ve caught on, because alarms started blaring again. Over the comms, Klaus Müller’s voice cut through, cold and pissed. “Number 46, you’re not getting away.” Damian’s heart sank—a task force jet was already lifting off behind him, its lights cutting through the storm. He slammed the throttle, and his jet shot forward, lurching into the stormy White Sea sky. The turbulence hit like a truck, shaking the whole cockpit, but he held on, not sure where he was going, just knowing he had to keep moving.