When my boss, Victor Kroll, learned I had stage II lymphoma, he didn't offer sick leave.
The screams from the dockhouse echoed across the darkened basin. I heard them from Gabriel’s offices, the sound chilling me to the bone. The structural collapse, the strange, cold sparks—it was all wrong.
“Victor’s trapped,” I said, the words heavy in my mouth. My body felt like lead, a dull ache throbbing behind my eyes, a consequence of the early, partial treatment I’d managed to scrape together before Victor’s freeze. My vision blurred for a second.
Gabriel grabbed my arm. “Sloan, you can’t. The structure’s unstable. And it’s Victor. He put you in this position.”
He didn’t know. He didn’t know the DNA report.
“He’s trapped,” I repeated, pulling free. “I have to.”
I ignored the searing pain that shot through my compromised body, the sudden weakness in my knees. The air inside the dockhouse was thick with dust and the acrid smell of ozone, but no smoke, no heat. The eerie cold sparks still flickered around the fallen beam.
Victor lay twisted, his face pale and grimacing, trapped under a massive iron beam. He looked up, his eyes wide with a mixture of pain and disbelief as I crawled toward him.
“Dempsey? What are you doing?” His voice was hoarse.
I spotted it: a heavy-duty hydraulic hand jack, usually used for cargo adjustments, lying discarded nearby. My hands trembled as I grabbed it, dragging its surprising weight toward the beam.
“Get ready,” I grunted, positioning the jack. Each pump of the lever sent a jolt of pain through my chest, but I pressed on, adrenaline pushing me past my physical limits. The beam creaked, slowly lifting a few precious inches.
“Now!” I yelled, my voice ragged.
Victor, with a monumental effort, pulled his legs free just as the structure above gave another sickening groan. The roof was giving way.
We scrambled, half-crawling, half-stumbling, through the debris, just as a section of the ceiling crashed down where Victor had been moments before.
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