Chapter 1
The underground river breached its banks, water levels surging. The load-bearing rope groaned, on the verge of snapping.
Robert Goodman's combat knife pressed cold against my harness.
Below us churned a bottomless, pitch-black whirlpool.
On the other end of the rope was his screaming first love, Yara Green.
Robert said to me, "Sylvia, you're experienced. You can hold on, right?"
His voice trembled, but his eyes held reckless desperation for Yara.
I hadn't told him I was pregnant. Even less had I told him that I had just given my spare oxygen to Yara.
I looked at him calmly. "Go ahead, cut it."
"Robert, save me. I don't want to die here, please." Yara's desperate, piercing cries echoed through the sealed underground cavern.
Her voice was so sharp that not even the raging underground river could drown it out.
The underground river at Skypit suffered a sudden flood. The water rose a full 16 feet in just ten minutes.
Right now, the three of us dangled in mid-air, like grasshoppers threaded on a string, clinging to the main support rope.
This was a static rope, rated for a maximum load of 440 pounds.
But the anchoring rock above was already starting to loosen from the water seeping in.
The crackling snaps of breaking stone echoed like the reaper's countdown, hammering in our ears.
Only one of us could be pulled up by the rope. If we tried for more, we'd all die.
Robert was suspended between Yara and me, his hand clenched around the sharp combat knife.
The cold, pale glow of the cave headlamp fell on his face.
I could clearly see the struggle and panic in his eyes, and then, the final, unwavering determination that settled there.
That determination was aimed at me.
"Sylvia..." Robert's voice was hoarse, the blade already pressed against the backup rope hooked to my harness. "Yara knows nothing. She has no professional training.
"But you're different. You used to be the lead climber for the national team. You know how to make it out of situations like this."
I looked down.
Below, an underground whirlpool swirled with jagged rocks, loose gravel, and muddy silt, the current tearing by at ten feet per second.
If I fell, I'd be swept away into the labyrinth of underground rivers; no trace of me would be found then.
I lifted my head slowly and looked at Robert.
This was the man for whom I'd walked away from all my national team glory, the man I'd spent five years living a quiet domestic life with, pouring my heart into him.
And now, when it came down to life and death, the reason he gave for saving the other woman was simply that I was "too strong."
Love or not, when one was staring death in the face, not even a second of pretense mattered.
"Robert," I met his eyes, my voice steady and calm. "The rope can't take all three of us, but I can climb up myself. Just give me three minutes."
"There's no time. The rocks are about to give way," Yara cried out from below, her voice shaking, tears streaming down her face as she clung desperately to the rope. "Sylvia, please, let me live. Robert, I'm terrified. I don't want to die."
Hearing Yara's desperate, fragile sobs, any trace of hesitation in Robert's eyes was gone for good.
His grip tightened on the knife. The cold blade pressed down hard against the nylon rope. "Sylvia, you've got the experience. You can handle this, right?"
He sounded like he was asking me, but really, he was frantically trying to convince himself.
I suddenly found it utterly ridiculous.
I didn't tell Robert I'd taken a pregnancy test that morning and seen two lines.
Even less did I tell him that, just ten minutes earlier, to calm Yara during her panic attack, I'd tucked my only small spare oxygen canister into her backpack.
I stopped resisting and closed my eyes. "Go ahead. Cut it."
The rope was sliced through with a harsh, tearing sound. It was the sound of my five years of blind, hopeless love being torn to shreds.
Robert shouted, "You're the survival expert. You'll make it. Just find a safe spot down there and hang tight. I'll get Yara out first, then come back with the rescue team for you."
His cold, matter-of-fact voice quickly faded away above me.
Guess he thought I was some kind of superwoman.
Maybe he believed I could close my eyes and stroll through that raging river like it was nothing.
The sensation of weightlessness hit me in an instant. I fell like a tattered leaf, plummeting straight into boundless darkness.
With a bone-chilling crash, the icy underground river swallowed me whole.
The impact slammed into my chest like a hundred-pound iron hammer, knocking the breath right out of me.
Every bit of air in my lungs was forced out in a split second.
The current was a mad beast, ripping at my body with savage fury.
I was sucked into the whirlpool, battered relentlessly against razor-sharp stalactites and submerged rocks.