Chapter 233: The Split

They stumbled from the vault chamber into the antechamber, the world behind them a roaring, collapsing inferno. The seamless door, warped by the blast, groaned shut on protesting hydraulics, muting the cataclysm to a deep, angry thunder. For a moment, there was only the harsh symphony of their own coughing, the sting of smoke in their eyes, and the terrifying, echoing silence of the stone staircase ahead.

The air in the antechamber was already thickening with acrid smoke seeping around the door’s edges. The single, weak bulb flickered, casting jumpy shadows.

“The stairs,” Sabatine gasped, pushing Anton toward the spiral iron staircase. “Down. Back to the tunnel. The lake.”

But the explosion had rewritten the building’s anatomy. As they reached the head of the stairs, a deep, grinding shudder vibrated through the stone under their feet, more profound than the individual blasts. A structural settling. A death rattle.

From somewhere above them, in the levels between the vault and the surface, came a sound like a giant’s fist punching through plaster and timber—a wet, crushing crunch, followed by a torrential roar. Not fire. Water.

One of the shaped charges must have blown open the bank’s original, decommissioned main water reservoir, or a major municipal line. A geyser of pressurised water was now flooding the upper floors, seeking the path of least resistance.

That path was the spiral staircase.

With the force of a firehose, a solid column of filthy, freezing water erupted from the stairwell opening below their feet. It wasn’t a flood; it was a vertical tsunami blasting up the shaft, carrying with it splintered wood, chunks of ceiling tile, and swirling clouds of plaster dust.

The wall of water hit them like a truck.

Anton was ripped from Sabatine’s grasp. The world dissolved into a churning, deafening, icy chaos. He was tumbling, weightless, slammed against the iron railing, then the stone wall, then tumbling again. He couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t tell up from down. The wrench was torn from his hand. The only constants were the brutal cold and the crushing pressure.

Then, as suddenly as it hit, the pressure shifted. The upward blast met resistance from above and began to fountain out horizontally into the antechamber, its force dissipating into a raging, waist-deep torrent that filled the small space.

Anton surfaced, choking, spitting foul-tasting water. He grabbed the twisted remains of the iron railing, his fingers numb. The antechamber was now a swirling pool, the water rising fast, lit by the flickering, half-submerged bulb. Debris—a wooden desk, a filing cabinet, pieces of the vault door’s shattered mechanism—swirled around him like ghastly boats.

“SABATINE!” he screamed, his voice raw and thin against the water’s roar.

He saw a shape, ten feet away, clinging to the doorframe of a collapsed supply closet. Sabatine. Alive. His face was a pale mask in the gloom, his eyes wide, scanning the churning water between them.

“THE STAIRS ARE GONE!” Sabatine shouted, pointing down the shaft, which was now a boiling maelstrom, a whirlpool sucking debris downward. Their planned escape route was a drowning machine.

“THE TUNNEL!” Anton yelled back, gesturing wildly toward the other end of the antechamber, where the corridor leading back to the main vault complex—and from there, to the lake tunnel—should be. But that way was blocked by a collapsed section of the ceiling, a jagged pile of stone and twisted rebar submerged in the rising water. They’d have to swim under it, into absolute darkness, with no guarantee the tunnel beyond was even intact.

Before they could move, decide, or speak, the building groaned again. This time, it was a long, deep tearing sound from directly above the antechamber.

A section of the ceiling, waterlogged and compromised by the explosions, gave way.

It wasn’t a clean collapse. It was a slow-motion avalanche of shattered timber, broken pipes, and several tons of wet concrete aggregate. It fell in a diagonal slice, crashing into the centre of the antechamber with a sound that dwarfed the water’s roar.

A mountain of debris erupted from the floodwaters, sending a massive wave crashing against the walls. Anton was hurled back, his grip on the railing torn free. He was underwater again, tumbling, his head striking something solid.

When he fought his way back to the surface, gasping, blood hot and salty in his mouth, the world had changed.

The new debris field formed a jagged, unstable island in the centre of the chamber. And it had split the space in two. Sabatine was on the far side, near the blocked lake tunnel entrance. Anton was on the near side, pinned against the wall by the relentless inflow from the stairwell. Between them was a chaotic barrier of submerged beams, tangled wire, and shifting concrete blocks. The water, now swirling around the new obstacle, was creating a vicious current that pulled at Anton’s legs, trying to drag him back toward the sucking vortex of the stairwell.

“ANTON!” Sabatine’s scream was pure terror. He tried to push through the water toward the debris field, but a swirling current of its own, created by the new geometry of the room, pushed him back.

“I’M HERE!” Anton shouted, clawing at the wall for purchase. His fingers found a broken pipe. He clung to it, the cold metal biting into his skin. The water was at his chest now, rising relentlessly. He could feel its pull strengthening. The stairwell wanted to swallow him.

Their eyes met across the churning, debris-choked divide. Twenty feet of impassable, drowning hell.

Sabatine’s face was a study in frantic calculation, his eyes darting from the blocked tunnel behind him to the debris between them to the sucking stairwell that was claiming Anton inch by inch. Every option was catastrophic.

“THE PIPE!” Sabatine suddenly yelled, pointing above Anton’s head. “THE CONDUIT! FOLLOW IT BACK!”

Anton looked up. Along the ceiling, just above the waterline, ran a thick, insulated electrical conduit, bolted to the stone. It snaked from his side of the room, over the debris field, and disappeared into the darkness near Sabatine’s side. It was their tightrope over the abyss.

But to reach it, Anton would have to let go of his pipe, swim into the stronger current, and pull himself up. And the conduit itself was shuddering with the vibration of the dying building. It could tear free at any moment.

“GO!” Sabatine urged, his voice cracking. “I’LL MEET YOU ON THE OTHER SIDE!”

It was the only chance. Anton took a last, desperate look at Sabatine—his anchor, his love, his reason for fighting through this endless night—separated by a wall of water and ruin. He nodded, a sharp, final movement.

He let go of the pipe.

The current snatched him immediately, dragging him toward the stairwell’s maw. He fought against it, kicking with legs that felt like lead, his injured shoulder a nova of agony. His fingers scrabbled against the slick stone wall, finding no purchase.

He was going to be pulled under.

Then his hand slapped against something metal—a broken bracket from the conduit, hanging down. He grabbed it, his grip slipping on the wet metal. He hauled himself up, his other hand finding the conduit itself. He wrapped his arms and legs around the thick, insulated tube, hugging it like a lover.

The current still tugged at his lower body, a relentless force. He began to shimmy, hand over hand, along the conduit, inching out over the raging flood and the jagged teeth of the submerged debris.

The vibration was constant. The conduit groaned. Water sprayed in his face. He didn’t look down. He kept his eyes fixed on the far wall, where Sabatine was waiting, half-submerged, his arms outstretched.

He was halfway across when the building gave its final, decisive groan. A massive concrete block, dislodged from the debris island, shifted and rolled beneath the water with a deep, grinding roar.

The conduit above Anton jerked violently. A bracket sheared off with a sharp ping. The entire line sagged, dipping Anton’s lower half back into the fierce current.

“KEEP GOING!” Sabatine screamed, wading out as far as he dared, the water now at his neck. “YOU’RE ALMOST THERE!”

Anton summoned a strength he didn’t know he had. He pulled, his muscles screaming, his vision spotting. He was a meter from the edge. Sabatine’s hand was right there.

Then the smoke, which had been thickening from the sealed vault door, billowed in a thick, black cloud through a crack in the ceiling, engulfing the far end of the chamber.

Anton’s eyes, stinging from the water, filled with the acrid, blinding smoke. He coughed violently, his grip faltering.

He couldn’t see Sabatine anymore. He couldn’t see the wall. He was blind, clinging to a shuddering line over a flood, with fire at his back.

“SABE!” he choked out.

There was no answer but the roar of water and the hungry crackle of approaching fire from the other side of the vault door.

The conduit gave one last, sickening lurch. Anton’s numb fingers lost their grip.

He fell.

Not into the water, but into the black, billowing smoke that had swallowed Sabatine’s side of the room. He hit something solid—a submerged piece of debris—then the water closed over his head.

The last thing he heard before the water filled his ears was a distant, shattered scream, tearing through the chaos. It might have been his name. It might have been the sound of the world ending.

Then there was only the cold, the dark, and the silent, desperate prayer that on the other side of the smoke, Sabatine was still reaching for him.

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