All Chapters of The Billionaire's surrogate secret : Chapter 81 - Chapter 86

​"Canopy release in five seconds!" Julian’s voice cracked violently through the radio, competing with the thunderous roar of the wind shearing past their helmets. "Deploy on my mark... Three... Two... One... Mark!"​Lyra yanked the primary rip-cord across her chest.​The deployment was a brutal, bone-jarring shock. The small tactical canopy erupted from her back with a loud, fabric crack, instantly decelerating her body from a terminal plunge to a controlled glide. The harness straps bit deep into her shoulders and thighs, nearly knocking the wind from her lungs, but she kept her hands locked onto the steering toggles, fighting the turbulent thermal currents rising from the deep limestone canyon.​All around her, three other black canopies bloomed in the dark, hovering like predatory birds beneath the rim of the coastal ridge. Less than two hundred feet above them, the high concrete structures of the automated surface-to-air missile batteries loomed along the cliffs, their active Dopp

​The interior of the mountain smelled of old iron, stone dust, and the stale, sharp tang of ozone. The rushing roar of the waterfall outside instantly dropped into a muffled, rhythmic thrumming the moment they crossed the Threshold. Ahead of them, a long, curving transit adit angled sharply downward into the bedrock, its floors lined with rusted ore cart tracks that Silas Vane’s engineers had reinforced with heavy, high-tensile steel structural arches.​"Flashlights down," Julian whispered, his voice dropping into a tight, tactical register as he adjusted his night-vision optics. He led the way, his suppressed rifle raised, his boots moving silently over the damp wooden ties of the old mining track. "The facility’s main generators are operating on a low-power survival loop. If the automated defense grid detects high-intensity white light in the main transit corridors, it will assume a physical security breach and deploy the localized chemical suppression lines."​Lyra walked right beh

​The air hissed through the forced pneumatic valves with a piercing, high-frequency whistle that vibrated through the metal frame of the gantry. The raw pressure differential between the damp limestone cavern and the sealed capsule was immense. White vapor began to condense rapidly along the exterior edge of the ballistic glass panels, frosting over the pale faces of the children inside like a sheet of industrial ice.​"The atmospheric pressure is stabilizing, but it’s still dropping in the auxiliary sector!" Lyra shouted, her hands bracing the heavy battery unit as it vibrated against her chest. The hot, chemical stench of burning insulation began to bleed through the cracked casing of the ventilation shaft beneath her feet. "The hotwire forced the valves open, but the main vacuum pump is still running on a separate, hardened backup circuit. It’s fighting the bypass! If we don't break that circuit within the next three minutes, the pressure differential will reverse and tear the seal