Chapter 98: Descent into White

The fragile truce held for as long as it took the medic to slap a field dressing over Sabatine’s soaked bandage and pronounce him stable enough to be moved. The gallery was now a cordoned-off disaster zone, crawling with forensic specialists and higher-ranking officials whose expressions grew graver by the minute. The story of a contained corporate incident was irrevocably shattered; they now had a dead suspect, a live accomplice, a stolen WMD-level prototype, a possible war criminal, and an international billionaire at the center of it all.

Anton could see the gears turning. They were assets, but they were also massive liabilities. The Swiss authorities would be methodical, thorough, and agonizingly slow. And in that slowness, Silas’s unseen network, Marcus’s dispersed allies, would have time to regroup, to spin new lies, to vanish the truth into a maze of legalities and whispers.

They were seated on a cold bench in a servant’s hallway, under the watch of two stone-faced officers, when Sabatine leaned his head close to Anton’s, his whisper a ghost of breath against his ear.

“We can’t stay here.”

Anton didn’t turn. He watched an official in a crisp overcoat arguing with the lead tactical officer. “They’ll separate us. For questioning.”

“They’ll arrest me,” Sabatine corrected, his voice flat. “The moment they run my name through the right channels. And you’ll be held in protective custody until they decide which version of events is most convenient. We’ll be stuck while the real story gets rewritten.”

Anton knew he was right. The law was a system, and systems could be manipulated. He had manipulated plenty himself. The pen’s recording was a shield, but it needed to be wielded from a position of freedom, not from a sterile interrogation room.

“The forest,” Sabatine murmured, his eyes scanning the hallway. A service door, marked with a symbol for snow disposal, stood at the far end. “It slopes down behind the villa to a service road. I saw it on the satellite thermal.”

“You can barely stand.”

“I can run if I have to.”

The plan was insane. Fleeing from Swiss authorities would compound every charge, paint them as guilty fugitives. But staying felt like a slow, bureaucratic death.

The decision was made not with words, but with a look. Anton gave an almost imperceptible nod. His hand found Sabatine’s, squeezed once—a pact.

Their chance came minutes later. A junior officer arrived, flustered, whispering to their guards about a discrepancy in the evidence log from the study. The two guards exchanged a glance, hesitated, then one stepped away down the hall for clarification.

One guard.

Sabatine moved. It wasn’t a dramatic leap. He slumped forward with a pained groan, curling around his injured shoulder. The remaining guard took a concerned step forward. “Was ist—”

Anton was already up, not attacking, but creating a clumsy, blocking movement, as if trying to help Sabatine. “His wound, it’s opened again, he needs—”

The guard reached for his radio.

Sabatine’s good arm shot out, not a punch, but a precise, debilitating pressure point strike to the man’s inner thigh. The guard gasped, his leg buckling. Anton brought the heel of his hand up in a sharp, short arc, connecting with the man’s jaw. It wasn’t meant to knock him out, just to stun, to steal a precious second. The guard crumpled against the wall, dazed.

No words. Sabatine was already at the service door, shoving it open. A blast of freezing air and a swirl of snow greeted them. The howl of the wind outside swallowed the guard’s groans.

Then they were out, swallowed by the blinding, moonlit whiteness.

The forest behind Whispering Peaks was a monochrome labyrinth of ancient pines, their boughs heavy with fresh snow. The world was reduced to the gasp of their breath, the crunch of their footfalls, and the distant, rising clamor of shouts from the villa as their escape was discovered.

“This way,” Sabatine hissed, leading them on a plunging diagonal path away from the building. He moved with a loping, pained grace, his body tilted to protect his right side. Anton followed, his city shoes instantly soaked and slipping, his lungs burning with the thin, icy air. The glamour of Geneva was a distant dream; this was a raw, primal struggle for survival.

A shout, closer than expected. A beam of light sliced through the trees, sweeping erratically.

“They’re using the perimeter lights,” Sabatine grunted, pulling Anton behind the thick trunk of a pine. They pressed against the rough bark, snow showering down on them. The light passed, but boots crunched nearby.

Then, the sound they dreaded: the staccato crack of a gunshot, followed by the sickening thwip of a bullet carving through pine needles inches from Anton’s head. A warning shot. Or a missed one.

“They’re shooting!” Anton breathed, the reality a bolt of terror.

“They’re panicking,” Sabatine corrected, his eyes scanning the slope below. “Trying to flush us. We need to get below the light line.” He pointed to a steeper drop-off where the tree cover thickened into near darkness. “There. Go. Now.”

He didn’t wait for agreement. He shoved Anton forward, sending him stumbling and sliding down the incline. Anton fought for balance, arms wheeling, grabbing at saplings that bent and snapped. He heard Sabatine’s heavier tread just behind him, then a sharp, bitten-off curse.

Another shot. This one was closer, followed by the distinct sound of a bullet impacting wood.

Anton risked a glance back. Sabatine was no longer running. He had turned, placing his body as a physical barrier between the slope Anton was descending and the direction of the shots. He was a silhouette against the lesser darkness, making himself a target.

“Sabe, no!” Anton cried.

“Go!” Sabatine roared, the command absolute.

Anton hesitated for a fatal second. In that moment, he saw the muzzle flash from the trees above, simultaneously with Sabatine lunging forward, not away, but towards him.

The world erupted in sound and motion. Anton felt a violent impact against his side, not a bullet, but Sabatine’s body, tackling him, wrapping around him as they lost all purchase on the icy, steep ground.

They fell.

It was not a controlled descent. It was a brutal, cartwheeling plunge into oblivion. The world became a dizzying spin of black branches, white snow, and jarring impacts. Anton’s senses blurred—the taste of snow and pine, the smell of cold and Sabatine’s blood, the roar of the wind and his own heartbeat. Sabatine’s arms were a vise around him, his body a cocoon of flesh and bone taking the brunt of the rocks, the roots, the unforgiving earth.

Time stretched and snapped. A final, sickening drop, and they landed in a deep drift with a soft, profound whump. The silence was sudden and shocking.

For a moment, Anton couldn’t move. He was buried in snow, pinned by dead weight. Sabatine lay half on top of him, utterly still.

A primal fear, colder than the snow soaking through his clothes, seized Anton. “Sabe?” he choked, struggling to free his arms. He pushed at Sabatine’s shoulders. “Sabatine!”

A low groan. Sabatine’s head moved, snow falling from his dark hair. “Off…,” he mumbled. “Get off me.”

Relief was a violent, trembling wave. Anton scrambled out from under him, his own body protesting with a symphony of new bruises. He turned Sabatine as gently as he could in the deep snow. In the faint light filtering from the villa far above, he looked broken. His face was a mask of scrapes and dirt, his lips blue with cold. But his eyes were open, blinking slowly.

“The slope… broke our trail,” Sabatine managed, each word a puff of vapor. “The ravine… absorbs sound.”

Anton followed his gaze. They were at the bottom of a narrow, steep-sided gully, hidden from view from above. The fall had been terrifying, but it had delivered them to a temporary sanctuary. He could hear distant, frustrated shouts, but they were directionless, fading.

Then he saw the blood. A fresh, dark stain was spreading across the snow from beneath Sabatine’s torso, distinct from the shoulder wound.

“You’re hit,” Anton said, his voice hollow.

Sabatine shook his head weakly. “Slipped. Ribs. Maybe broken. Old ones.” He tried to sit up, gasped, and fell back. “The bullet missed. The fall didn’t.”

Anton didn’t believe him. He began patting Sabatine down with frantic hands, searching for a new wound. His fingers found the source—a deep, bleeding gash on Sabatine’s lower back, where a jagged rock had torn through his clothes and skin during the tumble. Not a gunshot, but potentially just as deadly if it kept bleeding.

He stripped off his own ruined suit jacket, then his sodden dress shirt, ignoring the biting cold that instantly attacked his skin. He wadded the shirt and pressed it hard against the wound. Sabatine arched off the ground with a strangled cry.

“I know, I’m sorry,” Anton whispered, his teeth chattering. He kept pressure, his bare arms and torso burning with cold. “We have to stop the bleeding.”

Sabatine’s hand came up, fumbling, finding Anton’s icy forearm. His grip was weak. “You’re… going to… freeze.”

“You’re going to bleed out.” Anton’s mind raced, stripping away panic, leaving only logistics. They were hidden, for now. Sabatine couldn’t move. He was bleeding and going into shock. They had no supplies, no way to call for help without bringing their pursuers down on them.

He looked up at the impossible sides of the ravine, at the indifferent stars peeking through the swaying pines. The villa, with its warmth and its dangers, felt like a distant citadel. They were in the white void, two wounded animals.

He lay down in the snow beside Sabatine, pressing his own shivering body against his side, sharing what little heat he had left, one hand maintaining pressure on the wound, the other wrapped across Sabatine’s chest, holding him close.

“They’ll… look at dawn,” Sabatine murmured, his voice fading.

“Then we have until dawn,” Anton said, his voice trembling but resolute. He pressed his forehead against Sabatine’s cold temple. “Just hold on. You got us down here. Now I’ve got you.”

The descent was over. They had reached the bottom. Now, in the silent, snow-filled cathedral of the ravine, the only task was to survive the night.

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