Chapter 25 - Cold Water
The shock of the salt water hit Sebastian like a wall of concrete. The Atlantic was barely forty degrees, a bone-chilling cold that instantly seized his muscles and stole the breath from his lungs. The heavy rain on the surface churned the water into a blinding, bubbly murk, lit only by the fading magnesium glow of the flare sinking far to his left.
Sebastian forced his eyes open against the burning brine. Darkness surrounded him. The weight of his tactical vest and saturated coat pulled him down toward the harbor floor, but he kicked with desperate, violent strokes.
*Where are they? Where are they?*
Ten feet below him, a faint blue glow cut through the murky depths. The emergency battery light of the incubator was still functioning, slowly sinking like a falling star. Beside it, bubbles escaped Claire’s lips as she fought the terrifying suction of the undertow, refusing to let go of the glass box.
Sebastian swam harder, his heart pounding in his ears like a war drum. His lungs burned for oxygen. He reached Claire just as her conscious movements began to slow. Her eyes were fluttering shut, her body locking up from hypothermic shock, but her fingers were frozen tight around the incubator’s frame.
Sebastian wrapped one massive arm around Claire’s waist, pulling her flush against his chest. With his free hand, he gripped the handle of the incubator. He reached down to his waist, finding the quick-release buckles of his tactical vest and heavy boots, ditching forty pounds of dead weight into the abyss.
With powerful, agonizing kicks, he fought the dragging current, driving toward the faint ripple of moonlight on the surface.
They breached the water with a violent gasp. Claire choked, spitting out bitter seawater, coughing uncontrollably as Sebastian hauled her toward the slippery, barnacle-encrusted wooden pilings beneath the pier.
"Breathe, Claire! Breathe!" Sebastian shouted, shoving his shoulder under her arm to keep her head above the rolling swell.
Claire gasped for air, her teeth chattering so violently she could barely speak. "The... the baby! Is the seal... intact?"
Sebastian hauled the portable incubator onto a floating wooden maintenance platform moored between the pilings. He scrambled up onto the raft, dragging Claire out of the water after him.
The glass dome was fogged with internal condensation, but the hermetic silicone seal had held. The infant inside was not wet, but he was completely motionless. The low-temperature alarm was blinking erratically: *Body Temp: 89.2°F*.
"He's in severe hypothermic bradycardia," Claire wept, her soaked hands trembling as she popped the latches of the incubator lid. "His heart... it's barely beating, Sebastian! We need warmth right now! If his core doesn't rise, he will go into cardiac arrest!"
Above them, on the pier, the sound of the zodiac’s twin outboard engines roared to life. Antonio was escaping across the bay, leaving behind a trail of diesel exhaust.
Sebastian ripped open his soaked shirt, exposing his bare chest. "Skin to skin. Just like the first night at St. Jude's."
"You're freezing too!" Claire sobbed, stripping the damp outer blanket off the tiny infant.
"My core is burning," Sebastian said fiercely, pulling the pale, limp five-pound child against his broad, scarred chest, wrapping his massive hands around the baby’s back and curling his torso forward to create a human barrier against the wind. "Claire, blow warm air into his mouth. Two fingers on his chest. Work on him while I get us out of these pilings!"
Claire leaned over, placing two trembling fingers over the infant’s sternum. Beneath Sebastian’s skin, she could feel the thinnest, faintest flutter—a life hanging by a spider's silk.
"Come on, little one," Claire begged, warm tears mixing with salt water on her cheeks as she delivered a microscopic puff of air into the baby’s mouth. "You didn't survive twenty-eight weeks in a broken womb to die in a harbor. Breathe for me. Breathe!"
Sebastian reached into the maintenance locker attached to the pier piling, snapping open an emergency kit left for dockworkers. Inside was a dry wool blanket and a flare pistol. He wrapped the dry wool tightly around Claire and the baby resting against his chest.
Suddenly, a loud metallic clank echoed from the shadowed ladder leading down to the water.
Sebastian’s hand snapped to the flare gun, aiming it directly into the fog.
"Hold your fire, boss!" a voice shouted through the rain. Marco scrambled down the rusted iron rungs, his tactical gear dripping, followed by two armed loyalists. "We tracked the zodiac’s heading! He’s heading for the old coastal refinery! But boss... we found something else in the nursery wreckage back at the estate."
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"What?" Sebastian demanded, never loosening his grip on the dying infant against his heart.
Marco dropped onto the raft, holding out a sealed waterproof envelope recovered from Antonio's fallen mercenary. "Antonio didn't act alone. The hospital administrator at St. Jude’s—Doctor Jonathan Crane—was the one who disabled the power grid tonight. And Crane just arrived at the refinery with your other two children."
