Chapter 2

My left leg smashed into a jutting rock.

Pain exploded through my bones.

I heard the sharp crack of my shin bone breaking. But I couldn't make a sound.

The moment I opened my mouth, icy muddy water flooded my throat, choking me.

The suffocating sensation gnawed at my consciousness, mercilessly tearing it apart.

I instinctively reached for the spare oxygen canister at my waist, only to grasp at thin air.

Right. The oxygen was with Yara.

That was the one Robert had personally sheltered—his first love, Yara.

Just then, a sharp, stabbing pain tore through my lower abdomen.

It was the agony of flesh and bone being ripped apart, a pain countless times worse than my broken leg.

The pain made my whole body spasm, draining every last ounce of strength from me.

Warm liquid gushed from between my legs, only to be swept away in an instant by the cold, merciless river.

My child. The one who never even saw this world, whose father never even knew they existed. Gone. Just like that, he turned into nothing but a streak of blood in the dark river.

When you're in that much pain, you can't even cry—your tears just won't come.

I sputtered and choked, water flooding my lungs as blood and mud swirled together, turning everything into a blur.

Down in the abyss, Robert cut not my safety rope, but the last thread in me that still loved him.

From that moment on, the Sylvia whose whole world revolved around Robert drowned in that dark river.

I had no idea how long I'd been tossed around by the river.

Relying on muscle memory from my cave rescue training, I clung desperately to a huge stalagmite jutting out of the water, right before everything went dark.

The water finally stopped rising, but I was trapped in an utterly dark underground cave, with not a hint of light anywhere.

It was a frigid four degrees Celsius.

No lights, no communications, not a scrap of food.

My left shin was crushed to pieces.

My lower abdomen kept spasming, and the blood loss from the miscarriage left me soaked in cold sweat, my body weak and shaky.

All around me, the only sound was water dripping, like a countdown to my death.

If no one reached me within seventy-two hours, I'd die of hypothermia or infection.

Robert said he'd lead the rescue team to find me.

But I knew him too well. After something this serious, his priority would be to comfort Yara.

Then he'd go through the tedious approval process to report it to headquarters.

And only after all that would he remember me, the one who was "the expert at self-rescue, the one who never died."

I couldn't wait for him. Waiting for him was waiting to die.

I bit my lip hard—hard enough to break the skin and draw blood.

The raw, metallic tang of blood forced my fading nerves to stay awake.

Groping blindly in the darkness, I tore out the shredded lining of my jacket.

With the first aid splint and survival rope I always kept on me, I strapped my left leg down as tightly as humanly possible.

Every tiny movement sent agony shooting through me as the shattered bones in my leg ground against each other, making my whole body shudder.

Cold sweat and muddy water seeped into my eyes, burning with sharp pain.

"Sylvia, survive!" I rasped into the empty darkness.

Relying on touch alone, I slowly felt my way along the rock wall, inch by inch.

Dragging my shattered leg, I climbed upward like a desperate beast, struggling through the darkness.

When thirst hit, I drank water seeping from the rock wall, its muddy, earthy taste filling my mouth.

When hunger struck, I gnawed on the ration biscuits I kept in my pocket.

Snapshots from the past five years kept swirling through my mind.

All because Robert once said, "I don't want my wife teetering between life and death every day." I retired from National Team One and moved to his private rescue team in this mid-sized city, working behind the scenes.

For him, I stayed up night after night, drafting plans and clearing every obstacle in his path. I fought tooth and nail to make him captain.

And what did I get for all that? He sacrificed me without a second thought, tossing my life into the abyss for Yara.

Those seventy-two hours were nothing short of hell.

By the time I crawled through the last suffocating crack in the rocks, all ten of my fingernails had been split and bent backwards, broken and mangled.

My hands were mangled pulp of blood and flesh, white bone gleaming through.

When the first weak beam of a flashlight finally touched my face, I heard the barking of National Team One's rescue dogs.

Someone shouted, "There's someone here. God, she's alive."

I closed my eyes and finally let myself drift into the endless darkness.