Chapter 43 - Into the Churning Abyss
The world unraveled into free fall.
The concussive snap of the severed cable sent the armored transport sliding sideways across the rain-slicked asphalt, its tires shrieking against metal as it crashed into the guardrail. The blinding searchlights swung wildly toward the sky, illuminating the chaos of falling debris, shattered safety glass, and twisting steel.
Daniel locked his arms around Mason, wrapping his entire body around the child like an iron cocoon. "Take a breath!" he roared into the gale.
The drop lasted three agonizing seconds—a vertigo-inducing plunge through cold mist and darkness—before the black water of the Blackwood River slammed into them with the force of concrete.
The impact drove the air from Daniel’s lungs, a shockwave of freezing agony that threatened to rip Mason from his grasp. But Daniel’s fingers remained locked into Mason’s jacket, muscles tearing, instincts overriding pain. The violent undercurrent dragged them down into the pitch-black belly of the gorge, swirling them through submerged boulders and rusted machinery discarded from the old iron works.
Daniel fought against the river’s merciless pull, kicking toward the faint ripple of light on the surface. His lungs burned. Darkness crept along the edges of his vision. *Not here. Not like this. Mason needs to wake up in a safe world.*
With a desperate, tearing heave, he broke the surface.
He coughed out river water, gasping for air as the freezing rain lashed his face. In his arms, Mason sputtered, coughing violently, vomiting water onto Daniel’s shoulder, but breathing.
"I... I got you," Daniel wheezed, his teeth chattering uncontrollably as the current swept them toward the rocky eastern shoreline. "Daddy’s got you."
High above, burning wreckage hung from the twisted remains of the suspension bridge. Red flares drifted down from helicopters that had just breached the cloud cover—Vance Corporation gunships, their searchlights sweeping the white-water rapids like the eyes of predatory raptors.
Daniel dragged Mason out of the freezing current and onto a bank of sharp shale and mud. He collapsed beneath the skeletal overhang of an abandoned coal-loading terminal. He stripped off his soaked tactical coat, wrapping it around the shivering child, who curled into his chest, teeth knocking together in rhythmic terror.
"They... they know where we are, Daddy," Mason whispered through purple lips. He reached up, touching his neck, right above the collarbone where the red laser had focused. "The metal under my skin... it’s cold."
May you like
Daniel froze. He pulled back the collar of Mason’s damp shirt. Beneath the skin at the base of the boy's neck, just below the old scar tissue left by Vanessa’s original torment, a tiny, rice-grain-sized subdermal transponder was blinking with a faint, rhythmic green light.
***
