Chapter 8
The water reaches my waist before the first guard asks Julian whether he should disobey him.
The question breaks through the speaker, the alarm, and the roar beyond the wall.
“Sir, the level is rising faster than the system shows.”
The alarm brings Julian back without Leo. Mara grips his sleeve and says the boy is shaking upstairs.
“Try the pumps first,” he says.
The guard looks down at me. “The door would be faster.”
“I said wait.”
Water pins my coat to my body. My father’s compass knocks against my hip, each strike small and solid inside the rising dark.
Another contraction closes around me. I try the breathing rhythm I was taught, but cold steals it.
“Julian.”
He comes to the railing, and hope rises automatically. Four years of marriage trained me to turn toward him before remembering what he has chosen.
“The door,” I say. “Open it now.”
Mara speaks before he can answer. “She grew up around these systems. She knows exactly how high the water can go.”
I look from her to black water surging through an intake that should be closed.
“How do you know what I know?”
Her fingers tighten on Julian’s sleeve.
Owen’s voice bursts through the guard’s radio. “The drain is blocked. Manual intake is open. Get Claire out now.”
The guard reaches for the release.
Julian stops him. “Who opened the intake?”
“We can ask after she’s outside,” Owen shouts.
Mara pulls his sleeve again. “Leo needs you now.”
Julian looks at the water covering my ribs, then tells the guard, “No one touches the controls until security records everything.”
He lets Mara lead him away. I watch the doorway after he disappears, waiting for footsteps to return, for the order he should have given before the water reached my knees. Only the alarm answers. The last of my hope feels colder than the water when I stop calling Julian’s name.
I fight toward the ladder, but my shoes slide over the concrete. At the first rung, pain tears through my abdomen and opens my grip.
I fall sideways into the water.
Cold closes over me with the muffled alarm. My coat twists around my legs until the compass strikes my hip again.
I follow its weight, push against the floor, and break the surface choking.
Someone above me shouts for the emergency release, but the guard says he still needs authorization. His radio answers with static.
I reach for the ladder again. Warmth spreads between my thighs, and blood moves across my raised palm in thin threads.
Our daughter does not kick.
I press one hand over my stomach. “Please.”
I do not know whether I am speaking to her or to the husband who still has not opened the door.
Then Owen appears on the platform carrying a fire axe.
The guard moves between him and the emergency cover. “Mr. Harrow ordered us to wait.”
Owen swings before he finishes.
The cover shatters. On the second strike, the release drops and the gate jerks open. Two guards wade in, but my hands no longer obey me.
Someone lifts me while the broken gate bangs against the wall. Julian is still inside the house with Mara.
I wake beneath ambulance lights. One paramedic cuts away my dress while another searches for our daughter’s heartbeat.
“There,” someone says. “Faint, but there.”
The ambulance doors close without anyone from the Harrow family inside.
At the hospital entrance, a doctor runs beside the stretcher and presses hard against my bleeding abdomen.
“The placenta is separating,” she says. “We have to operate immediately.”
I try to ask whether my baby will live, but the mask fills with the taste of plastic and blood.
The doctor looks directly at me.
“Claire, I need you to understand. We may not be able to save both of you.”