DN - 2.3 seconds

When the reactor does an emergency scram to avoid a meltdown, there will be a break in the current while the system switches over to backups. I’ll have 2.3 seconds to punch my way through nine inches of armored steel. I’ve picked out the section I’m going to attack and carefully pulled the drywall down.

***

“Five, four, three, two…”

On one I dig into the lattice and push off.

Calamity is saying mark at the same time a shudder goes through the building.

The hallway rushes and blurs around me. The power fails and the switchover begins as my fist hits the wall with everything I have behind it. It sounds like if you hid inside a dumpster and someone beat on the outside with a cinder block, but louder, much louder. Shock waves of tight-packed pain shoot through my knuckles and up my wrist. The wall buckles inward, a shrieking floor-to-ceiling dent a foot deep. A tenth of a second later, my other fist hits, and joins its song to the tremendous, incredible noise. My fists blur like hummingbird wings, a rolling cacophony shakes loose ceiling tiles, and then I’m through. The armored walls fall away, and I burst into the main computer core.

- Dreadnought, Chapter 35