My heart slammed against my ribs.
In the darkness, my mind painted horrors of bodies dumped in the channel or ghostly hands reaching up from the muck.
Whatever it was brushed against me again.
It was smaller this time.
And quick.
Rats.
It was only rats disturbed by my passage. They swam past me toward whatever hole they called home.
I let out a shaky breath and kept moving.
The water was at my chest now.
The channel had dipped, or I had.
Suddenly the cold was everywhere.
It pressed against my lungs, making each breath a battle. My teeth chattered so violently I could hear them over the flowing water. My fingers had stopped hurting, which meant they were going numb, which meant frostbite, which meant I was definitely running out of time.
Ahead, I caught a faint gray smear.
Light.
The end of the channel.
I pushed toward it, fighting the water, fighting my own body’s desperate desire to stop.
Ten meters.
Five.
The gray smear resolved into a concrete lip, a culvert opening crowned by a slice of star-filled sky.
I hauled myself up onto the lip and collapsed. I lay there shivering, gasping, feeling nothing below my waist.
Get up, a distant voice in my mind urged.
I couldn’t.
Get up, or die here.
My head fell back and rested against icy stone.
Get up or never see Will again.
Will.
Dusty hair and bright blue eyes filled my mind’s eye. He smiled, and his lips moved as though he spoke. I could almost hear his voice, hear him calling my name, hear him saying, “I love you,” over and over.
Then something in my mind shattered, and I heard him wail, a terrible, agonizing echo in my head.“Thomas, please.”
The sound of his grief nearly crushed my soul.
“I’m coming,” I said to the night. “Will, hold on. I’m coming home.”
