CHAPTER 168
HARRY'S POV
Eight hours of digging through collapsed stone and twisted metal had left my hands bloody and my back screaming, but the sound of Addison's crying from somewhere beneath the rubble kept me moving. Every few minutes, we'd stop to listen, making sure both mother and daughter were still alive in their underground prison.
"Another two feet and we should break through," the Romanian rescue engineer said, his headlamp illuminating the narrow tunnel we'd been carving through the debris. "But the structure is unstable. One wrong move and the whole section could collapse further."
"Then don't make any wrong moves," I said grimly, continuing to clear rubble with my bare hands despite the rescue team's insistence that I let the professionals work.
Through my earpiece, I could hear Lucas coordinating medical preparations while Jax monitored communications with Skylar. Every few minutes, one of us would check in with her, making sure she was still conscious and responsive.
"How are you holding up?" Jax's voice was gentle as he spoke into the radio.
"Tired," Skylar's reply was weak but steady. "Addison's sleeping finally, but I think I'm losing too much blood. Everything feels... distant."
My heart clenched with fear. Postpartum hemorrhaging was one of the leading causes of maternal death, and we had no way to provide the medical intervention she might need.
"Stay with us," I called into the radio. "We're almost there."
"I'm trying. But Harry... if something happens to me..."
"Nothing's going to happen to you."
"Just listen. If something happens, I need you all to promise me that you'll raise Addison together. Not separately, not taking turns, but as a real family. She needs all of you."
"You're going to raise her yourself," Lucas's voice cut in. "Stop talking like you're dying."
"I might be dying. And that's okay, because she's alive and safe and you're going to make sure she grows up knowing how much her mother loved her."
The rescue engineer held up his hand, signaling for silence. In the sudden quiet, we could hear something that made my blood run cold - the sound of shifting stone and creaking metal that suggested the tunnel we were digging was about to collapse.
"Everyone back," the engineer ordered. "Now!"
We scrambled away from the tunnel entrance just as several tons of debris crashed down, filling the space we'd been working in and cutting off our access route to Skylar and Addison.
"No!" I lunged toward the collapsed opening, trying to claw away the new rubble with my hands.
"Harry, stop," Jax grabbed my shoulders, pulling me back. "You'll bring down more debris."
"We have to get to them!"
"We will. But not by getting ourselves killed in the process."
I wanted to argue, to fight, to do something other than stand helplessly while the woman I loved potentially bled to death in a stone tomb. But Jax was right - reckless action would only make the situation worse.
"Alternative access routes?" Lucas asked the rescue engineer.
"We could try coming in from the eastern wall, but that would take another twelve hours minimum. Or..." he paused, studying the building schematics. "There's an old drainage system that runs under this section of the castle. Medieval construction, probably dates back six hundred years."
"Is it intact?"
"Unknown. Could be completely blocked, could be flooded, could have structural damage that makes it impassable."
"How long to check it out?"
"Two hours to locate the entrance and assess viability."
I looked at the faces of my teammates, seeing the same desperate calculation I was making. Skylar might not have two hours, let alone fourteen. But the drainage system was our only realistic option.
"Do it," I said.
"Skylar," Jax called into the radio, "we're trying a different approach. How are you feeling?"
The silence that followed was too long, too complete.
"Skylar, respond," Lucas said urgently.
Finally, her voice came through, weaker than before. "Still here. But I'm really tired, and everything's getting fuzzy. Addison's okay though. She's perfect."
"Stay awake," I ordered. "Talk to us. Tell us about Addison."
"She's so small. And she has this tiny frown when she's sleeping, like she's concentrating on something important. Her fingers are perfect - ten little fingers and ten little toes."
As Skylar described our daughter, I could hear the love and wonder in her voice despite her obvious weakness. She was using her last reserves of strength to paint a picture of the child we hadn't yet been able to see.
"What color are her eyes?" Jax asked.
"Hard to tell in this light, but I think they're going to be dark. Like yours, Harry. And she's got Lucas's stubborn chin already."
"What about her hair?"
"Dark like mine, but curly. She's going to be beautiful when she grows up. Strong and smart and capable of anything."
The rescue team had found the entrance to the medieval drainage system, a narrow opening partially hidden by centuries of accumulated debris. It looked barely wide enough for a person to crawl through, and that was assuming it wasn't blocked further down.
"I'm going in," I announced.
"Harry, that's insane," Lucas protested. "You don't know if it's structurally sound, if it connects to the right location, if you'll even be able to fit through the passage."
"I know that Skylar and Addison are going to die if we don't try something."
"Then we all go."
"No. If the tunnel collapses, at least two of us need to survive to take care of Addison. This is a one-person mission."
Before anyone could argue further, I was crawling into the drainage tunnel, my headlamp cutting through darkness that hadn't seen light in centuries. The passage was cramped, damp, and filled with the smell of stagnant water and decay.
But it was moving in the right direction.
"Harry," Skylar's voice was barely a whisper through my earpiece, "I can hear something. Sounds like... scraping?"
"That's me, sweetheart. I'm coming to get you."
"You found a way in?"
"I found a way in. Just hold on a little longer."
The tunnel seemed to go on forever, twisting and turning through the castle's foundations. Several times I had to squeeze through openings that barely accommodated my shoulders, and twice I had to backtrack when passages ended in solid stone.
But finally, impossibly, I saw light ahead.
"I can see the control chamber," I called into my radio. "I'm almost there."
As I emerged from the drainage tunnel into the debris-filled room where Skylar had given birth to our daughter, I was struck by two things simultaneously.
First, that both mother and baby were alive, though Skylar was pale and weak from blood loss.
Second, that in the hours since Addison's birth, Skylar had used her time to document everything about Henry's network on the control room's remaining computer systems.
Even while bleeding and caring for a newborn in a collapsed building, she'd been working to ensure that every piece of evidence would be preserved.
"Hey there," I said softly, kneeling beside her. "Ready to get out of here?"
"More than ready," she whispered, lifting Addison toward me. "Meet your daughter."
As I held our child for the first time, feeling her tiny weight and seeing her perfect features in the glow of my headlamp, I realized that everything we'd endured had been worth this moment.
But looking at Skylar's pale face and seeing the amount of blood on the floor around her, I knew we still had one more battle to fight.
The battle to get them both home alive.
Log in with Google Account
Chapters
Favorite
Settings
