Chapter 10 - Blood in the Water
The violent drop slammed Julian down onto the steel floor right beside his paralyzed father.
The respirator ripped off Arthur's face, exposing his lungs to the thick, burning sulfur smoke.
Arthur began coughing violently, his paralyzed throat choking as toxic air invaded his body.
"Dad! Stay with me!" Julian cried out frantically, grabbing the mask and pressing it firmly back over Arthur's nose.
Up above, Marcus swung his body out of the roof hatch and grabbed the iron rungs of the shaft ladder.
Sparks showered down onto his face as the last remaining safety cable groaned under the immense tension.
Marcus climbed three rungs up, pulled a heavy steel carabiner from his belt, and slammed it into the anchor point.
"Julian! Catch!" Marcus roared, dropping a thick nylon climbing rope straight down through the roof hatch.
Julian caught the heavy rope with both hands, his knuckles raw and bleeding from the previous struggle.
He wrapped the heavy nylon strap under Arthur's shoulders and clicked the heavy titanium locking carabiner onto his chest harness.
"He's hooked! Pull him up! Pull him!" Julian screamed at the top of his lungs.
Up on the maintenance ledge, Marcus locked his boots against the steel frame and began hauling the heavy rope with all his strength.
Arthur's paralyzed body slowly lifted off the elevator floor, dangling in mid-air through the narrow roof hatch.
Just as Arthur's torso cleared the roof hatch, the final elevator cable snapped with the sound of a gunshot.
KABOOM!
The massive steel elevator cabin plummeted into the darkness below, carrying Julian down with it.
"JULIAN!" Marcus roared in agony, his hands burning as he held Arthur's rope tight against the violent shockwave.
The elevator cabin crashed into the deep sub-basement water sump sixty feet below with a deafening, echoing explosion.
Water and twisted metal rained through the dark shaft as smoke billowed upward like a volcanic eruption.
Up on the chapel floor above, Maria felt the floor beneath her heels vibrate violently.
She looked down at her security monitors, which instantly turned into static black-and-white static.
"It is done," Viktor reported coldly, checking his tablet. "The elevator has dropped to the floor of the flooded sub-basement."
"No one could possibly survive a crash from that height into six feet of concrete and water," Viktor confirmed.
Maria took a final sip of her champagne and set the crystal glass down on the wooden alter.
"Excellent," Maria purred, her eyes shining with cold, cruel satisfaction.
"Notify the press that Julian Vance tragically set fire to the mansion while trying to steal his late father's estate," she directed smoothly.
"Make sure the media paints him as a drug-addled, dangerous young man who lost his mind," she added with a laugh.
Meanwhile, deep in the dark, pitch-black sub-basement sump, water roared into the ruined, crumpled steel box of the elevator.
Thick, icy water quickly filled the wreckage, rising past ankles, knees, and waists in seconds.
Inside the twisted wreckage, buried under a collapsed metal ceiling panel, Julian coughed out a lungful of dirty water.
The heavy steel panel was pinning his left leg against the floor, trapping him as the water reached his chest.
"No... not like this..." Julian gasped, pushing against the crushing steel plate with all his remaining strength.
The freezing water reached his neck, rising higher and higher every second.
Suddenly, a dark figure plunged through the flooded hatch above, diving into the murky, freezing water.
A bright waterproof tactical flashlight illuminated the murky underwater wreckage.
It was Marcus, who had secured Arthur on the upper ledge and dived thirty feet down the shaft to retrieve Julian.
Marcus wedged his heavy iron crowbar under the crushing ceiling panel and heaved upward with raw, violent rage.
The steel plate shifted three inches, allowing Julian to pull his bleeding leg free just as the air ran out completely.
Marcus grabbed Julian by his collar and pulled him up out of the submerged cabin toward the dark ladder rungs.
They dragged themselves onto the narrow concrete ledge of the sub-basement, both gasping frantically for clean air.
Above them, tied safely to the maintenance ladder platform, Arthur's eyelids twitched uncontrollably.
The extreme shock of the drop and the intense surge of adrenaline had begun to fight the poison in Arthur's bloodstream.
A faint, microscopic twitch returned to Arthur's right index finger.
Through his blurred, tear-filled vision, Arthur looked down into the dark shaft and saw his son alive.
A single tear rolled down the old man's cheek, burning through the thick soot on his face.
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He couldn't speak yet, but his mind was burning with a single, brutal promise:
Maria was going to pay for every single drop of blood his son had spilled tonight.
