Chapter 85 - The Frozen Cradle
The icy spray turned into a torrential wall of black river water as the back-flow surged up from the blocked intake channels. The water was already sloshing around the bottom of the suspended cage, chilling Lily’s screams into breathless sobs.
"I'm coming, Lily! Keep your feet up!" I yelled, securing the cable around the cleat with a desperate three-point hitch.
I climbed over the railing, hooking my boots into the rusty links of the suspension chain, and began to slide down toward the cage. The friction burned through my leather gloves, setting my nerve endings on fire, but I didn't slow down. I slammed onto the top of the cage just as a secondary support wire snapped with a terrifying twang.
The cage lurched sideways, submerging the lower half completely in the freezing torrent.
Reaching down through the twisted steel bars, I unzipped the canvas duffel. Lily's pale, tear-streaked face looked up at me, her lips turning a dangerous shade of blue from the glacial mountain runoff.
"I've got you, baby," I whispered fiercely, grabbing her beneath the arms and hauling her upward against my chest. "Hold onto my neck! Wrap your legs around my waist and do not let go!"
She buried her face in my soaked coat, her small arms locking around my throat with astonishing strength.
Above us, on the platform, Marcus had broken free. His face was a mask of feral hatred, half his face bruised purple, his silver hair plastered to his forehead with blood and water. He wasn't running toward the escape train anymore. He was limping toward the iron cleat where my cable was anchored, holding a heavy fire ax wrenched from the emergency bulkhead.
"If the bloodline cannot be pure," Marcus screamed over the deluge, "then it will not be at all!"
He raised the ax high, aiming directly for the strained cable that held us suspended twenty feet above the drowning turbine room.
"Marcus, don't!" Clara shouted, her submachine gun clicking dry. She hurled the empty weapon at his head, but it only grazed his shoulder.
The ax fell. A sickening thud vibrated down the wire. Three strands of the seven-core cable severed with high-pitched pings. The cage dropped three feet, plunging Lily and me waist-deep into the swirling, freezing vortex.
"Julian!" Clara lunged across the slick platform, tackling Marcus's knees just as he raised the ax for the second strike.
Both of them tumbled toward the lip of the platform. The ax clattered into the churning water below, narrowly missing my head. Marcus roared in animal fury, gouging his thumbs toward Clara's eyes, but Clara gripped his lapels and rolled backward, using his own momentum to pivot them toward the open edge.
"No!" Marcus shrieked, realization finally cutting through his madness.
"For every mother you broke," Clara hissed into his ear.
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With a final, desperate twist, Clara kicked Marcus away from her, launching him over the edge of the platform. He hit the churning water with a dull smack, caught instantly by the vicious undercurrent of the half-open bypass channel, and was dragged screaming down into the dark, churning depths beneath the mountain.
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