Chapter 6 The Escape
POV: Nicander
The marble column they crouched behind violently shuddered as a heavy-caliber round blew a fist-sized chunk out of its fluting. A storm of pulverized stone rained down on them.
Nicander ignored the sting of debris against his neck.
His mind, trained for decades to detach and compartmentalize under kinetic stress, instantly rendered the burning cathedral into a three-dimensional tactical grid.
Behind them, the main doors were heavily blockaded by the encroaching mercenary squad.
To the left, his own Vargos enforcers were pinned down behind the splintered pews, exchanging blind, suppressive fire with the surviving Veltri bodyguards on the right.
In the center of this meat grinder, he and Zinovia were trapped with a ticking biological time bomb freezing their veins.
He looked down at the woman pressed tightly against his side.
Zinovia’s immaculate ivory gown was ruined, slashed by glass and smeared with the blood of her fallen soldiers.
Yet, beneath the soot and chaos, her dark eyes were terrifyingly lucid.
She wasn't succumbing to panic; her pupils were darting in micro-movements, scanning the smoke, running the exact same survival calculations he was.
"The catacombs," Nicander barked, his voice vibrating with a low, commanding resonance over the deafening mechanical roar of automatic fire. "There's an iron grate behind the reliquary. It opens into a drainage culvert that feeds directly into the eastern canal."
"The eastern canal is a primary discharge artery for the botanical labs!
" Zinovia shouted back, pressing her hands against her ears as a concussive grenade detonated somewhere near the choir loft, shaking the floorboards.
"The water is a toxic stew of caustic lye, unrefined alkaloids, and heavy metals. It will strip the skin from our bones."
"It's wet, it leads out of this kill zone, and it isn't currently shooting at us," Nicander fired back. He grabbed her shoulder, his grip unyielding. "Can you run in those heels, or do I need to carry you?"
Zinovia’s eyes flashed with venomous indignation. Without breaking his gaze, she reached down, unclasped the intricate silver buckles of her silk-wrapped stilettos, and kicked them away. "Just point the gun, Vargos. I can keep up."
A sharp, humorless exhale escaped Nicander’s lungs. He ejected his half-spent magazine and slammed a full one into his pistol, chambering a round with a vicious snap.
"On my mark. Keep your head below the pew lines," he ordered.
He didn't wait for her confirmation. Nicander spun out from the cover of the column.
He acquired three targets in the billowing smoke—mercenaries in matte-black tactical gear—and fired.
Three suppressed, pneumatic coughs. Two men dropped instantly, their armor compromised at the neck joints.
The third dove for cover, suppressing their position with a wild spray of rifle fire.
"Move!" Nicander roared.
He grabbed Zinovia’s hand. She didn't hesitate or flinch away. Her fingers locked around his, small and freezing cold, as they bolted across the shattered obsidian dais.
The heat of the burning tapestries was blistering, but Nicander barely felt it.
The Requiem Toxin was already mapping its way through his nervous system.
It felt as though he had swallowed jagged ice; a deep, radiating ache was settling into the marrow of his ribs, a severe contrast to the adrenaline superheating his blood.
He could feel Zinovia’s grip tightening, her pulse hammering an erratic, terrified rhythm against his palm. The poison was hitting her too.
They reached the heavy iron door of the reliquary just as the third mercenary broke through the smoke, raising his rifle.
Nicander shoved Zinovia hard through the archway, turning his body to shield her.
A round grazed his left bicep—a white-hot slice of agony that tore through his bespoke suit jacket.
He didn't break stride, snapping his pistol up and firing twice into the mercenary’s visor before slamming the heavy iron door shut behind them and throwing the rusted deadbolt.
Immediate, suffocating darkness enveloped them.
The roar of the cathedral was instantly muffled to a dull, rhythmic thumping above their heads. The air in the crypt was freezing and smelled of ancient, stagnant dampness.
Nicander leaned against the iron door, his chest heaving. Blood trickled down his arm, warm and sticky against his skin. Zinovia stood a few feet away, her breathing ragged, illuminated only by the faint, sickly violet light seeping upward from the stone stairwell at the far end of the crypt.
"You're hit," she observed, her voice trembling slightly, though whether from fear, exertion, or the venom, he couldn't tell.
"It's a graze. Irrelevant," Nicander ground out, pushing himself off the door. "Move down the stairs. They'll blow the hinges on this door in less than sixty seconds."
They descended the slick, algae-covered steps in a tense, synchronized rush. The violet light grew brighter, casting shifting, macabre shadows against the vaulted stone walls. The smell of the canals hit them like a physical blow—an eye-watering stench of ozone, sulfur, and rotting marine life.
They emerged onto a narrow, rusted maintenance grate hovering ten feet above the water.
The eastern canal was a nightmare of industrial runoff. The dark water churned violently, glowing with a thick, bioluminescent purple slime that hissed wherever it splashed against the concrete pylons.
Above them, a muffled explosion rocked the ceiling of the crypt. The reliquary door had been breached. Boot steps thundered down the stone stairs.
Nicander looked at the toxic water, then at Zinovia. She was staring down at the glowing current, her pale skin illuminated in a ghostly, violet wash. She knew exactly what chemical compounds were floating in that water. She knew exactly how badly it was going to burn.
"Take a deep breath, wife," Nicander said, wrapping his uninjured arm tightly around her waist, pulling her back against his chest.
She turned her head, looking up at him. The sheer proximity forced them to share the same jagged breaths. There was no hatred in her eyes at that exact moment. There was only the absolute, terrifying realization of their shared doom.
"If we survive this," Zinovia whispered, the violet light reflecting in her dark irises, "I am going to kill you myself."
"Get in line," Nicander murmured.
He stepped off the rusted grate, dragging them both into the glowing abyss.
They hit the water with bone-jarring force.
The immediate sensory shock was absolute agony.
The canal was freezing, yet the chemical runoff seared Nicander’s skin like liquid fire.
The caustic water invaded his nose and mouth, tasting of battery acid and salt.
He kept his iron grip on Zinovia, kicking violently against the churning current, fighting the heavy weight of his wool coat and her waterlogged silk gown.
He broke the surface, gasping for air that burned his lungs, hauling Zinovia up with him.
She coughed violently, her hands instinctively clutching the lapels of his ruined jacket as they drifted into the suffocating darkness beneath the city.
They were burning from the outside in, and freezing from the inside out, tethered entirely to the one person who was supposed to be their executioner.