Chapter 140 - Flight from the Frozen Citadel
I ran through the listing corridors of Deck Two, carrying Clara like a shield against my chest. Water was already swirling around my ankles—freezing, black Arctic seawater that had breached the lower service trunks. The ship groaned beneath the pressure, its steel ribs screaming as the ice pack outside crushed against its damaged hull.
"Emily! Up here!"
I looked up the emergency ladder well. Vance was hanging from the catwalk of the upper hangar deck, his face pale, one arm wrapped around the railing while his other hand held a flare gun.
"Can you climb?" he yelled over the roar of the flooding below.
"Take her!" I shouted, ascending the iron rungs two at a time. I passed Clara up to him. Vance caught her by the waist, pulling her onto the staging platform with a grunt of pain that made his knees buckle. I scrambled up behind them, hauling myself over the lip of the deck just as a wall of dark water surged through the lower gangway, drowning the resuscitation suite completely.
"The helipad," Vance panted, leaning heavily against the bulkhead, his side soaked in fresh blood from his reopened wounds. "There’s an AgustaWestland search-and-rescue bird prepped on the stern. The crew abandoned it when the reactor alarms tripped. They think the ship’s going to roll."
"Can you fly it?" I asked, checking Clara’s pulse. Her skin was freezing, her lips slightly blue, but she was conscious, clinging to my arm with fierce, desperate strength.
"I can get us off this floating coffin," Vance gritted out, dragging himself toward the stern access hatch. "After that... pray there's fuel."
We burst through the exterior hatch into the screaming Arctic gale.
The cold hit us like a physical blow, driving the breath from our lungs. The deck of the *Leviathan Prime* was tilted at a fifteen-degree angle, slick with sea spray that froze instantly into black ice. Behind the ship, the great Arctic pack stretched toward the horizon, dark and jagged under the emerald glow of the northern lights.
The twin turbines of the helicopter were already idling, their blades slicing through the freezing fog with a rhythmic, thudding roar. The flight crew had fled down the gangways to the ice, leaving the machine running in their panic.
Vance threw open the cabin door, tumbling Clara into the passenger seat before collapsing into the pilot’s chair. I leaped into the co-pilot’s seat, slamming the cockpit door shut against the howling wind.
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"Hold on!" Vance screamed, shoving the collective lever forward.
The helicopter shuddered, its skids screeching as they broke free from the iced-over deck. With a violent lurch that made my stomach drop, we lifted into the black air, the searchlights of the dying icebreaker spinning away below us as the ship began its final, catastrophic roll into the freezing depths of the Arctic Ocean.
