Nothing.
I push deeper, muscles straining against current. My shoulder strikes concrete. My claws scrape along the floor channel. Something soft brushes my arm. Blanket.
Then fingers.
I seize them.
Al is wedged beneath a section of conduit and pinned against the old heater base. His face is underwater. Blood streams from a wound across his scalp, turning black in the murk. His artificial eye flickers uselessly.
No.
I plant both feet against the floor and pull.
The conduit does not move.
I feel bone in his hand shift under my grip.
Stop.
I change angle, wedge one shoulder beneath the conduit, and drive upward with everything I dare use in confined space. Metal screams. Old bolts pop from concrete. Pain flashes through my back as the edge gouges beneath my collarbone. The conduit lifts.
I drag Al free.
His body is limp.
I break the surface with him in my arms and hear Maren scream.
The chamber is louder now. Water. Voices. Metal buckling. Rain hammering through an overhead maintenance grate that has cracked open under pressure. I carry Al to the ledge and lay him on the highest dry strip left.
He is not breathing.
The world goes silent around that fact.
Then my training finds my hands.
“Move,” I order.
People scramble aside.
I tilt his head, sweep his mouth clear of filth, and begin compressions with two fingers because my hands would crush him. His ribs creak. Too fragile. Too old. Too human.
“Come on, you irritating old bastard,” I snarl. “Breathe.”
Maren kneels beside me, sobbing. “Kauss?—”
“Do not say it.”
I breathe for him.
Filthy water spills from his mouth.
Still nothing.
I compress again, controlled, precise, furious. The chamber blurs at the edges, not with panic but with a grief so familiar it knows every route through me.
Not this one.
Not another body.
