Chapter 7 - Impact and Asphalt
The cable snapped with the sonic crack of a rifle shot.
Clara felt the sickening weightlessness of freefall for half a heartbeat before Althea’s training took over. With a guttural shout, Althea twisted their bodies midair, firing an emergency secondary grappling hook into the reinforced brick facade of the hospital’s third-story parking ramp.
The high-tensile wire caught with a bone-jarring jolt. The harness dug viciously into Clara’s ribs, knocking the wind from her lungs, but her arms remained clamped around the swaddled baby like iron vices. They swung inward, crashing through a plastic safety barrier onto the concrete deck of the second-floor parking garage.
They hit the slick asphalt hard, rolling together in a tangle of limbs and wet nylon. Clara took the brunt of the landing on her hip and shoulder, grunting in agony as her postpartum body screamed in protest.
"The baby!" Clara gasped through the pain, rolling onto her back.
Althea was already on her knees, her hands frantic as she peeled back the water-repellent jacket shielding the infant. The baby was crying—a loud, furious, healthy wail that pierced the roar of the pouring rain.
"She's intact," Althea breathed, her voice cracking as a single tear escaped her hardened eyes, vanishing into the rainwater streaming down her face. "Her skull is protected. No trauma."
Clara looked at Althea, seeing not a competitor for the child's soul, but another terrified mother whose world had been reduced to the survival of this single heartbeat.
Above them, through the open edge of the parking structure, the fourth floor of the hospital burned against the dark sky. Orange flames licked at the rain, black smoke billowing into the low storm clouds. Shouts and secondary detonations echoed from the maternity wing where Marcus had remained behind.
"We have to go back for him," Clara pleaded, trying to stand, but her trembling legs buckled beneath her. "Althea, Marcus is still up there!"
"If we go up, his sacrifice means nothing," Althea said coldly, though her jaw twitched with suppressed anguish. "Marcus bought us four minutes. Julian’s ground team is already sweeping the perimeter."
Right on cue, the squeal of heavy tires echoed from the lower ramp of the garage. High-beam headlights cut through the gloom, casting blinding white beams across the concrete pillars. A heavily armored black SUV tore up the ramp, its engine roaring like a predator in an enclosed cage.
"Get behind the pillar!" Althea hissed, drawing her sidearm.
The SUV didn't slow down. Instead of stopping to deploy shooters, the vehicle accelerated, aiming directly at the concrete column where the two women and the child were pinned.
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"Althea!" Clara screamed.
Just as the SUV was ten yards away, the driver's side window shattered from the outside. A massive construction forklift, parked near the garage's ongoing renovation zone, smashed out of the shadows, its heavy steel tines plunging through the SUV's engine block with a catastrophic roar of crushing metal.
