Chapter 12 - Race Against the Tide
Freezing seawater was already pouring into the lower companionways as Dante unhooked the main medical restraints around Elena. He carefully disconnected the primary intravenous feeds, keeping only the portable oxygen canister strapped to her transport gurney.
""Dante... the water..."" Elena whispered, her senses returning slowly as the adrenaline cut through the sedatives. She looked around the trembling steel chamber in horror.
""Look at me, Elena,"" Dante commanded gently, lifting her frail body into his arms. She was light as a feather, weakened by years in captivity, but her eyes held the same fierce spirit he remembered. ""Keep your arms around my neck. Do not let go, no matter what happens.""
""I won't,"" she breathed, burying her face into the curve of his neck, clinging to him with all the strength left in her limbs.
Dante kicked open the emergency exit hatch leading to the vertical service ladder. Below, the lower bilges were already churning with black, icy seawater. The ship was groaning, listing five degrees to the port side as thousands of tons of ocean rushed into the compromised hull.
Carrying Elena against his chest with his left arm, Dante used his right arm and legs to haul them up the narrow iron rungs of the vertical trunk. Every muscle in his sixty-eight-year-old body screamed in protest. Plastered with sweat and saltwater, his wounded forearm burning with fire, he climbed through sheer, unbreakable paternal will.
A sudden shudder ripped through the vessel. An explosion rocked the engine room below, and a geyser of scalding steam hissed up the ladder shaft, missing them by inches.
""Dante!"" Elena cried out as the ladder violently shook beneath their weight.
""I have you!"" he roared, driving his boots into the rungs, surging upward through the final maintenance hatch.
He burst out onto the main deck.
The scene was absolute chaos. The crew had already abandoned ship, lowering lifeboats into the raging sea. The Leviathan’s bow was dipping dangerously low, water cascading across the container stacks like a waterfall. The rain beat down violently, illuminated by the flashing red beacons.
There was no lifeboat left on the starboard side.
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Dante rushed to the bridge wing, looking down at the churning black waves forty feet below. There was no way Elena would survive a jump into the freezing, turbulent ocean.
Then, through the howling gale, the deep, rhythmic thrum of twin turbine engines cut through the storm.
