Chapter 234: Anton’s Battle

The water was a freezing, suffocating coffin. Anton plunged into the dark, the roar of the flood becoming a muted, thunderous rumble. His lungs burned, starved and full of foul water at the same time. He flailed, disoriented, the current spinning him. Which way was up? The darkness was absolute.

Then his back scraped against rough stone. The wall. He pushed off, kicking toward what he prayed was the surface. His head broke into air with a ragged, sucking gasp. He was in a narrower space—a corridor partially collapsed, the water churning through it like a river in a cave. The smoke was thinner here, but the air was still thick with dust and the smell of wet, burnt things.

He was on Sabatine’s side of the split. But Sabatine was nowhere to be seen.

“SABE!” His voice was a hoarse croak, lost in the watery din. No answer.

Panic, cold and sharp, threatened to rise. He shoved it down. Panic was death. He had to move, to find a way out, to find him.

He was in a service corridor, one he vaguely remembered from their initial infiltration. The water was chest-high and flowing with a powerful current toward a distant, roaring drain—likely the lake tunnel, now acting as a giant siphon. If he lost his footing, he’d be swept away.

He braced against the current, using the wall for support, and began to slog forward, away from the antechamber’s cataclysm. The water was numbing, sapping the last of his body heat. His shoulder was a block of agony, every movement sending lances of fire down his arm.

He rounded a bend and saw light ahead—not firelight, but the grey, pre-dawn glow filtering down a stairwell. An escape. Hope, frail and desperate, flared in his chest.

He was ten feet from the stairwell entrance when two figures emerged from a side passage, blocking his path.

They weren’t Kaine’s analysts or technicians. These were the guards from the lower levels, the ones who had been bypassed or left behind. They looked ragged, soaked, and panicked, their tactical gear askew. But they were armed. One held a pistol, its muzzle shaking slightly. The other had a collapsible baton, extended and gripped tight.

They saw him—a lone, battered figure staggering in the floodwater—and their panic found a target.

“Stop!” the one with the pistol yelled, his voice shrill. “Don’t move!”

These weren’t cool professionals like the teams in the tower or the warehouse. These were men trapped in a drowning building, their command structure gone, their world ending. They were dangerous precisely because they were scared and cornered.

Anton raised his hands slowly, his mind racing. He had no weapon. The wrench was gone. He was exhausted, injured, and freezing. But giving up meant being dragged back to Kaine, or shot here in this flooded corridor. It meant never finding Sabatine.

“I’m not your enemy,” Anton said, his voice calm, forcing a steadiness he didn’t feel. “The building is coming down. The water’s rising. Our only chance is up those stairs.”

“Shut up!” the baton-wielder snarled, taking a step forward through the water. “You did this! You and your fucking spy!”

They were looking for someone to blame. Anton represented the cause of their ruin.

The man with the pistol took a step closer, his aim settling on Anton’s chest. “On your knees. Hands on your head.”

Anton’s eyes flicked past them to the stairwell. Freedom was so close. He could almost feel the cold, clean air. He looked back at the shaking gun. If he complied, he died. Or he disappeared into some black site. Either way, Sabatine would be alone.

A strange, cold clarity settled over him. The same clarity he’d felt in the plaza with the knife at Sabatine’s throat. There were no more boardroom tactics, no more strategic retreats. This was elemental. Survive. Find him.

He let his shoulders slump, feigning defeat, his hands going toward his head. “Alright… alright. Just don’t shoot.”

As his hands neared his head, he suddenly changed trajectory. With a guttural cry, he lunged forward, not at the man with the gun, but at the one with the baton, who was closer and more aggressive.

The move was so unexpected, so contrary to the behavior of a cowed captive, that it worked. The baton-man flinched, bringing his weapon up in a clumsy, hurried swing.

Anton ducked under it. The baton whistled over his head. He drove his good shoulder into the man’s midsection, forcing him back into the chest-deep water. They went under in a tangle of limbs.

The world became a freezing, chaotic struggle. Anton’s injured arm was useless, a screaming liability. He wrapped his legs around the man’s torso, pinning his arms, and used his good hand to claw at his face, his eyes. The man thrashed, dropping the baton, trying to grab Anton’s wounded shoulder.

A gunshot exploded underwater, a muffled thump. The man with the pistol had fired, but into the churning mess, afraid of hitting his comrade.

Anton broke the surface, gasping, still grappling with the guard. He saw the pistol, now pointed shakily at the two of them, the shooter’s face a mask of indecision.

He needed a weapon. His hand flailed underwater, brushing against something hard and long—the dropped baton. He grabbed it.

With a surge of adrenaline-fueled strength, he shoved the guard away and stood up, water streaming from him, the baton gripped in his good hand.

The guard with the pistol made his decision. He fired again.

Anton felt a searing line of fire across his ribs—a graze, but it stole his breath. He didn’t hesitate. He charged through the water, the resistance making him slow, but his rage making him unstoppable.

The shooter, panicked by the sight of a bleeding, baton-wielding maniac coming at him, fired a third time. The shot went wide, poking the wall.

Anton was on him. He swung the baton in a short, brutal arc. It connected with the man’s gun hand. There was a sickening crack of bone. The pistol flew from nerveless fingers, splashing into the water.

The man screamed, clutching his shattered hand. Anton didn’t stop. He reversed the baton and drove the pommel into the man’s solar plexus. He folded with a whoosh of air, sinking into the water.

Anton turned, panting, water and blood mixing on his skin. The first guard was getting up, coughing, reaching for a knife at his belt.

There was no finesse left. No technique. Only survival. Anton waded toward him, the baton held high. As the man stood, unsteady, Anton brought the baton down on the side of his head with every ounce of strength he had left.

The man dropped like a stone, floating face-down in the rushing water.

Anton stood over them, chest heaving, the baton dangling from his trembling hand. The icy water around him was tinged pink. The roar in his ears was his own blood, his own frantic heart. He had done it. He had fought, alone, and he had won.

But it felt like no victory. It felt like shedding another layer of his old self, the one that believed violence was something that happened to other people, in other places. He was that person now. In this flooded, lightless hell, he was the violence.

He dropped the baton. It vanished beneath the dark water. He didn’t want to touch it anymore.

He staggered to the stairwell, hauling himself up the first few steps, out of the relentless current. The grey light from above was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. He collapsed on the steps, shaking uncontrollably from cold, shock, and the aftermath of the fight.

He had to move. Kaine could be anywhere. The building was still coming down. And Sabatine…

Sabatine.

The thought was a galvanizing shock. He couldn’t rest. He pushed himself to his feet, using the wall, and began to climb, each step a monumental effort. He emerged onto the ground floor of the bank, into a scene of devastation. The elegant lobby was a wreck of fallen plaster, shattered chandeliers, and ankle-deep water. The main doors were blown inward, and through them, he could see the misty grey of dawn over the Rothschild estate grounds.

And there, kneeling by the edge of the ornamental lake, one hand braced on the stone coping, retching water, was Sabatine.

Alive.

A sob tore from Anton’s throat. He stumbled out of the ruined bank, across the sodden lawn, and fell to his knees beside him.

Sabatine looked up, his face pale, water streaming from his hair, a fresh cut on his brow. His eyes, red-rimmed and exhausted, found Anton’s. They widened, taking in the new blood, the shaking, the utter devastation.

“You’re hit,” Sabatine rasped, his hand coming up to the graze on Anton’s ribs.

“I’m okay,” Anton gasped, his own hands coming up to cup Sabatine’s face, needing the solid, living reality of him. “You… the smoke… I thought…”

“The current… it pulled me through a collapse… out an old drain…” Sabatine coughed again, his body shuddering. “I thought you were… behind the debris…”

They clung to each other in the damp, grey dawn, two battered men on the shore of a lake, the fortress burning and flooding behind them. They had been split apart by water and fire, and each had fought their own battle in the dark.

And they had both, against all odds, found their way back.

The fight with the guards was over. But as Anton held Sabatine, feeling the weak, rapid beat of his heart, he knew the true battle—the one for their future, for the ‘after’—was just beginning. And the enemy was still out there, somewhere in the mist.

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