My hearts stop for one brutal instant.
Then training takes over.
“Everyone above the red line!” I shout.
My voice hits the chamber hard enough to silence some of the panic.
Faces turn toward me through rainwater dripping from overhead seams and spray bursting from a cracked pressure valve.
“Move now,” I command. “West ladder. Maren, stay there. Juno, cut him free and send him to me. Doreen, do not move.”
Someone sobs, “The gate’s open!”
I look toward the north runoff channel.
The secondary floodgate is fully raised.
It is never fully raised.
Water surges through the opening in black, violent sheets, full of street filth and harbor runoff. The manual control box beside it hangs open, wires cut, override lever jammed upward with a length of pipe.
Sabotage.
The word lands cold.
Not accident. Not neglected infrastructure. Deliberate.
Something old and terrible inside me opens one eye.
Not yet.
People first.
I plunge into the water.
It hits like ice and sewage, foul enough to sting my eyes and fill my nose with rot. The current shoves at my thighs. I brace against it and grab the man clinging to the overhead pipe.
“Let go,” I tell him.
“I can’t swim.”
“You do not need to.”
He looks at me with wild eyes.
I reach up, break the pipe bracket beside his hand to free the angle, and pull him down into my arms before he can decide fear outranks obedience. He yells once when the water hits him. I lift him high against my chest and drive through the current to the west ledge, where two others reach for him.
“Take him up,” I say. “Do not wait for belongings.”
“But my bag?—”
“No belongings!”
That command is pure soldier, sharp enough that the whole chamber hears.
Good.
I turn back.
