Read Chapter 20: The Floodgate Opened

The blast wave hit Finn a half-second before the sound did, a fist of pressure that drove the breath from his lungs and threw him sideways into the channel wall. His wounded arm screamed as he caught himself, the bandage dark and slick. Water surged past his knees, rising fast, and somewhere ahead the old south floodgate was no longer a barrier. It was a mouth.

“Back!” he roared. “Get back to the jetty! Now!”

The low-zone water wasn’t supposed to come this fast. Danny’s chart had promised a slow bleed, a controlled release that would take hours to fill the basin. But Danny had never blown the gate with military-grade charges. The high-zone troops had done the work for them—just not the way anyone wanted.

Around Finn, the narrow channel turned to chaos. Boats collided, hulls grinding against brick and rusted railings. Somewhere a woman screamed a name over and over. A scavenger capsized trying to turn too sharp, and the current took him under before two others could grab his coat. Finn shoved off from the wall, half-swimming, half-wading toward the wider cut where the main basin opened into the low zone’s heart.

The water wasn’t just rising. It was coming with force, a green-brown surge rolling through the alleys and under the walkways like something alive. The high zone had blown the gate deliberately. They hadn’t been trying to stop Finn’s people. They’d been trying to flush them out—and they’d done it early, using the old gate’s collapse as the trigger.

“Split!” Finn shouted to the boatmen nearest him. “Get to the high floors! Tell everyone—abandon the streets!”

The crowd he’d rallied hours ago had been waiting in the open, ready to move on his signal. Now they were scattering, and Finn watched his fragile coalition shatter into hundreds of individual panics. Some ran for the stairs of the tenements, pushing past each other. Others threw themselves into boats that were already overloaded. A few just stood in the rising water, staring.

The chart was still in Finn’s hand, Danny’s ink bleeding in the spray. He stuffed it inside his coat and struck out for the nearest cluster of rescue boats, grabbing a line and hauling himself aboard.

“You!” He pointed at a woman at the tiller. “Take these people to the old mill, highest floor. Don’t stop for anything.” She nodded, already turning the boat toward the mill’s dark silhouette against the grey sky.

Finn didn’t wait to watch them go. He dove back into the water, swimming hard toward the sound of a child crying.

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The child was on a collapsed walkway, a wooden plank wedged between two buildings and already half-submerged. A young woman clung to the railing beside him, her other arm wrapped around a bundle she refused to drop. The current pulled at them both.

Finn got to them just as the walkway groaned. He grabbed the boy first—small, maybe six, with a shock of dark hair plastered to his face—and handed him up to a man leaning down from a second-floor window. Then he turned back for the woman. She was losing her grip, her fingers white-knuckled on the rusted rail.

“Let go!” he called. “I’ve got you.”

She shook her head. “He’s still in there.” She nodded at the bundle. A roll of cloth, tight-wrapped. Finn didn’t have time to ask. The plank shifted again, and the woman’s hand slipped. He lunged, caught her wrist, and pulled her into the water beside him. She gasped, swallowed a mouthful, and then he was dragging her toward the building, the bundle still clutched to her chest.

Someone hauled them both through a broken window. Finn landed hard on a concrete floor, his wounded arm cracking against the edge of a desk. The pain was a white flash behind his eyes. When it cleared, he was looking up at the woman, who was unwrapping the bundle to reveal a sleeping infant.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

Finn nodded, not trusting his voice. He pushed himself up, felt the warmth of fresh blood soaking through his sleeve. “Get higher. This floor might not be enough.”

He moved to the window. The water below was already past the ground-floor doors, creeping up the walls. Bodies moved in the current—some swimming, some not moving at all. He counted boats. Not enough. There were never enough.

Then he saw the boy he’d pulled from the walkway. The child was standing at the window of the building across the channel, held by a man Finn didn’t recognize. The boy’s face was pressed to the glass, watching the water rise.

Finn knew that face. He’d seen it in a photo, tucked into a frame on Anya’s desk. Her son.

---

The search for Anya’s son took him half an hour and cost him more blood than he could afford. The boy had been with a neighbor when the surge hit, and the neighbor had gotten him to a rooftop on the far side of the channel. By the time Finn found them, the water had cut off every ground route, and the boat that had been coming for them had taken on too much water and gone under.

Finn swam the last hundred meters with a coil of rope around his shoulder. When he reached the building, he was shaking, his vision blurring at the edges. He climbed the fire escape one-handed, the rope burning through his palm.

The neighbor was a thin man with a grey beard, holding the boy tight against his chest. The boy’s name was Eli. Finn remembered it from a hundred small mentions Anya had made—never in the facility, never where it could be recorded, but in quiet moments between patrols and plans.

“I’ve got you, Eli.” Finn’s voice came out rougher than he intended. “Your mum sent me.”

Eli stared at him for a long moment. Then he reached out, and Finn took him, holding the boy against his chest with his good arm while the neighbor helped secure the rope.

The descent was slow. Every pull of the rope sent fresh fire through Finn’s wound. By the time he lowered Eli into the rescue boat below, his fingers had gone numb, and the grey at the edges of his vision had spread.

“You’re bleeding,” the boatman said, eyeing Finn’s arm.

Finn looked down. The bandage had come loose somewhere in the water. The wound was a dark, open gash, and the blood was coming in a steady pulse. He pressed his palm against it and felt cold.

“Get them to the mill,” he said. “I’ll follow.”

The boatman didn’t argue. Finn watched them go—Eli wrapped in a blanket, the neighbor beside him, the boat cutting through the debris-filled water toward the old mill’s high mooring. Then Finn turned and dove back into the channel.

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The mill was the only building in the low zone tall enough and solid enough to hold them. Its upper floors had been used for storage once, then shelter, then nothing at all. Now they were filled with the living and the shocked. Families huddled against the walls, children crying, adults staring at nothing. The water had reached the second floor before slowing. It was still rising, but slower now, spreading out across the full width of the basin.

Finn climbed to the fourth floor where the boatmen had gathered. His arm was a dull, constant scream, and he could feel the cold creeping up his limbs. He found a corner, sat down heavily, and let his head fall back against the brick.

“You look dead,” said a voice.

Finn opened his eyes. Anya stood over him, her coat soaked, a bruise darkening across her cheekbone. She looked at his arm, then knelt and began unwinding what was left of the bandage.

“Your son’s safe,” Finn managed.

Anya’s hands paused. “I know. The neighbor found me first.” She resumed her work, pulling a fresh bandage from her pack. “You swam out there anyway.”

“Had to be sure.”

She didn’t answer. Her hands were efficient, professional. By the time she’d finished, the bleeding had slowed to a seep.

“This is going to go bad,” she said quietly. “The wound, I mean. Not just the arm. You’re burning up.”

Finn closed his eyes. “How bad out there?”

“What you did—what they did—it worked.” Anya sat back on her heels. “The high zone wanted to drain the basin in twelve hours. They didn’t account for the old gate blowing early and flooding everything ahead of schedule. The water’s too high now for the main pumps to work at full capacity. They’re going to have to do a managed collapse—slow the drain, let the water recede over days instead of hours.”

“Days.” Finn let the word sit. “We bought days.”

“We bought a chance. That’s all.” She looked around the mill floor—the huddled families, the silent children, the boatmen counting their losses. “This is where we live now. The high floors, the rooftops. The low zone is just another lake.”

Finn was quiet for a long moment. Through the broken windows, he could see the water stretching out where streets used to be. The top of the market canopy peeked above the surface. A dead bird floated past, tangled in a length of plastic.

“Then we live here,” he said finally. “We live here until we don’t have to.”

Anya didn’t argue. She just sat beside him, watching the water rise and settle, rise and settle, while below them a drowned city began its slow, patient wait for the sea to give it back.