CHAPTER TEN WHEN THE LAST CAMERA DIED
The evacuation order arrived broken by static.
“Extraction vessel unable to cross reef. Proceed to inland emergency station. Repeat—”
The message dissolved into noise.
Grant secured Cody's thigh bandage, strapped boots onto both of them, and tied the main rope from his harness to Cody's.
“Ten feet between us,” he said.
“No.” Cody shortened the line to six. “If one goes, the other reaches him faster.”
Grant looked at the knot. “That also gives less reaction time.”
“Then don't go.”
They left the grotto as the second wall hit.
Wind tore leaves from trees and hurled them like knives. Floodwater had consumed the lower trail. They moved through the jungle wearing boots, harnesses, and nothing else; clothing would only trap water and branches. Mud covered their bodies within minutes.
The outside world had become touch and rope. Visibility shrank to a few yards. Grant kept one hand on the line and one raised against debris. Cody called changes in tension: stop, climb, anchor, move.
At one washout, they crawled on hands and knees beneath the wind. Cody's rope drew taut when he slipped. Grant braced and felt Cody recover without needing to turn.
“Good?” Grant shouted.
Two pulls on the line answered yes.
Their old whistle code was useless in the roar, so they invented a new language through the rope. One pull meant stop. Two meant safe. Three meant danger. A long steady pressure meant I am here.
Grant felt that pressure again and again.
Cody's injured leg held. Grant checked him at every sheltering rock until Cody finally grabbed his face and shouted over the wind, “Trust the bandage!”
“I trust the bandage.”
“Trust me.”
Grant nodded.
They reached the ridge above the production route. The footbridge was gone. A torrent filled the ravine where the trail had been.
“Upstream,” Grant said.
They searched for a narrower crossing. Lightning opened the sky. In that white instant, Grant saw a wall of water coming through the trees.
“Run!”
They climbed. Cody reached the first trunk. Grant was one step behind when the ground disappeared beneath him.
The flood took him sideways.
The rope snapped tight. Grant struck a rock, lost his breath, and went under. He heard Cody shout his name through brown water.
Grant grabbed for the line and missed. The current spun him. His harness cut into his ribs.
Then the rope moved.
Foot by foot, Cody hauled him toward a banyan tree. Grant surfaced, coughed, and saw Cody wrapped around the trunk, one leg braced, both hands bleeding on the line.
“Help me!” Cody yelled.
Grant tried. His body did not answer.
“No. Look at me. Let me do it.”
Everything in Grant resisted. Rescue was what he gave, not what he received. But Cody's face held the same fierce authority Grant had used on a hundred victims.
Grant stopped fighting the current.
Cody pulled.
Each foot of rope came with a shock through Grant's harness. He saw Cody's silhouette above the water—small against the storm, legs locked around the banyan, body turned into an anchor.
Grant did the thing he asked terrified survivors to do and had never practiced himself. He made his body heavy. He protected his head. He trusted the person on the line more than his own panic.
The current rolled him once, then released its grip enough for Cody to gain ground. Grant reached the root with his good hand. Cody leaned down so far his chest touched the water and caught Grant's wrist.
Their hands locked.
Neither let go until both were above the flood.
The rope dragged Grant across submerged stone and into the shelter of the roots. Cody climbed down, locked an arm around Grant's chest, and hauled him onto higher ground.
They lay in the mud, gasping.
“You trusted me,” Cody said.
Grant caught the back of his neck. “With my life.”
“Get used to it.”
They found an abandoned observation shelter half a mile inland. One wall had collapsed; the roof held. Grant pushed Cody inside and began checking him for injuries.
The shelter contained a broken chair, an emergency flare already soaked through, and a laminated map nailed to the wall. Cody ripped the map free and spread it on the driest section of floor.
The inland station was closer than Grant had calculated, but the direct trail crossed two drainage channels. A longer ridge route offered higher ground.
“Ridge,” Cody said.
“Your leg adds an hour.”
“Flood adds a funeral.”
Grant touched the bandage, found it intact, and nodded. “Ridge.”
They ate half a ration bar found inside the chair compartment and forced themselves to drink. The mundane acts—chew, swallow, check capillary refill—pulled their bodies back from shock.
Only then did the fear beneath Grant's skin transform into need.
“Hands.” Grant washed the rope burns with rainwater.
“Your ribs.”
“Hands first.”
“Grant.”
“I need—” His voice failed. He pressed his mouth to Cody's palm. “I need to know you're whole.”
Cody cupped his face with both scraped hands. “I am here.”
Grant kissed every place he checked: wrists, shoulders, bruised hip, the bandage on Cody's thigh. Shock transformed touch into necessity. Cody answered with equal urgency, tracing Grant's ribs and spine, making him breathe through the pain.
“We should rest,” Grant said, even as he pulled Cody closer.
“We should.”
Neither moved apart.
Cody kissed him against the shelter wall. Rain lashed through the missing boards, cold against their overheated skin. Cody took control first, anger and terror giving his touch an edge.
“You do not get to leave me,” he said.
“I won't.”
“You cannot promise that.”
“Then let me promise this moment.”
Cody held him to it.
Their urgency was not graceful. The wall shook, mud streaked stone, and every gust reminded them how temporary shelter could be. Cody led until fear broke from him in a hoarse cry. Then Grant turned them, steadied him with both hands, and replaced panic with the undeniable fact of his living body.
Consent remained the one calm thing between them. Questions, answers, breath. They traded control because survival had taught them what trust actually meant: not certainty, but the choice to place power in another man's hands.
Afterward, Cody rested against Grant's chest while the shelter groaned around them.
“Your ribs?” he asked.
“Bruised.”
“Your head?”
“Clear.”
“Your impossible need to be responsible for everyone?”
“Terminal.”
Cody laughed weakly and kissed him.
At dawn, they continued toward the emergency station.
The compound had been stripped by wind. Satellite dishes lay twisted in the road. A mast had collapsed across the main building. They found one fixed camera still operating on backup power, its red light flickering through rain.
Before approaching it, they searched the station.
Grant called into every room. Cody checked beneath the collapsed awning and marked unstable walls with strips torn from a safety flag.
They found no crew, only signs of hurried evacuation: an open medical case, two missing survival suits, a mug broken beside the radio.
“They moved before the bridge failed,” Cody said.
“Or tried.”
Smoke rose faintly beyond the western ridge, too dark to be mist.
Grant wanted to follow it immediately. His body needed one minute first—one minute to turn uncertainty into a message someone might receive.
Grant stopped before it.
For weeks he had resented that red light. Now it might be the only way to tell the world they were alive.
Cody stood beside him, mud-covered, naked, bruised, and beautiful enough to make every prepared sentence useless.
Grant looked into the lens.
“This is Grant Holloway. Cody Mercer and I are moving to high ground. The extraction route is destroyed. We will search the inland station for survivors.” He took Cody's hand. “And for the record, he is not my partner for a show. He is the man I intend to take home.”
Cody's eyes widened.
Grant kissed him.
The red light fluttered.
For one second it steadied on their joined bodies, the rope between their harnesses, Cody's hands at Grant's face.
Then it went dark.