Chapter 209: What Vanya Saw

Chapter 209: Chapter 209: What Vanya Saw

The second shot took the boat instead of the water.

It struck low along the port side, and the rubber hull didn’t simply tear, it burst, air screaming out of the puncture in a violent rush, and the boat listed hard, water already pouring in over the sagging rim.

"We’re going down!" Ethan shouted.

"Grab the packs!" David hauled the crossbow and the emergency bag into his own arms, water already climbing past his ankles inside the sinking hull. "Jason, stay close to me!"

The six pursuers had closed most of the distance now, wading and splashing through the shallower stretch near the buildings, close enough that Jason could make out individual faces twisted with the particular, hungry desperation he’d learned to read as more dangerous than anything the infected offered.

"Behind the boat," David ordered, pulling both boys down into the water alongside the sinking hull, using its bulk as a shield. "Stay low."

The nearest attacker reached them first, pipe raised, and David met him with the rope coiled tight around one fist, driving it hard across the man’s jaw before he could swing. The man staggered back, and a second lunged in from the side, forcing David to twist and block with his forearm, the impact jarring visibly through his whole body.

"Dad!" Ethan scrambled to help, but the boat’s ruined hull rocked violently between them, water rising past their knees now, the whole wreck sinking faster than any of them could compensate for.

"I’ve got him," Ethan said, though his voice shook, grabbing a loose oar and swinging it two-handed into the second attacker’s shoulder. The man grunted, staggering, and David used the opening to drive a fist into his jaw, dropping him into the water with a splash.

"Good hit," David managed, breathless.

"I’ve never actually hit anyone before," Ethan admitted, still gripping the oar like it might abandon him.

"You just did. Keep doing it."

Jason kept his eyes shut even as chaos closed in around him, tracking every dot with desperate, fracturing focus. "Two more coming from the left! The gun’s reloading, he’s slow, he’s—"

A shape lunged out of the water beside him, and Jason barely twisted clear, the man’s hand closing on empty air where his shoulder had been a half-second earlier. He scrambled backward, heart hammering, and the attacker surged forward again, faster this time, close enough now that Jason could smell the rot and rain clinging to his clothes.

"I can’t hold them off and watch at the same time!" he shouted, panic finally cracking through his composure.

"Then fight!" David yelled back, still grappling with a third attacker who’d closed in from behind. "Whatever’s in your hands, use it!"

Jason’s fingers closed around the only thing within reach — a length of the boat’s own ruined rigging, still attached to a metal cleat — and he swung it blind, more instinct than skill, and caught his attacker hard across the temple. The man dropped, stunned, into the shallow water.

For one disbelieving second, Jason stared at his own shaking hands.

"I did it," he said, faint. "I actually—"

"Not the time!" Ethan shouted, already fending off another approach.

The boat gave one final, shuddering lurch and went under entirely, dumping all three of them into the flooded street, and for one terrible moment, everything became noise and cold water and the particular, blind panic of drowning chaos. Jason’s head went under, the world muffling into a roar of bubbles and distant shouting, and he kicked hard toward the surface, lungs burning, certain this was the moment everything finally ended.

Then the water beside them erupted.

Vanya’s speedboat cut through the flooded intersection at a speed none of the attackers had time to properly register, and she was already airborne before the hull had fully stopped, crossbow discarded in favor of the short blade she carried, landing directly between David and the two men closing on him.

The first died before he finished raising his pipe. The second turned to run, and Harold’s crowbar caught him mid-stride, dropping him into the shallow water without further struggle.

"Behind you!" Jason shouted, surfacing just in time to see it, and Vanya spun, catching the gunman’s wrist as he raised the weapon, twisting it free with brutal, practiced efficiency before driving her elbow into his throat. He collapsed, gasping, and didn’t rise again.

The remaining two attackers, watching their entire group fall in the span of seconds, turned and fled without another word, splashing frantically back toward the ruined storefront and disappearing into the wreckage beyond.

Silence settled over the flooded street, broken only by David’s ragged breathing and the boys coughing up water they’d swallowed in the chaos.

Harold waded over quickly, helping Jason get solid footing against a submerged curb. "Easy. You’re all right. Breathe."

Jason coughed hard, water streaming from his hair, and managed a shaky nod. "I’m okay. I think I’m okay."

"Is everyone all right?" Vanya asked, already crossing to help David upright, scanning all three of them with quick, efficient attention.

"We’re— we’re fine," David managed, coughing. "Thank you. I don’t know how you got here so fast."

That boat. Vanya’s eyes flicked once toward the sunken wreckage, old recognition settling into place. She’d seen it come and go from the gate on the twenty-first floor more than once. That family didn’t lend what they had carelessly. If they’d trusted these three with it, that told her enough on its own.

"I was close enough," she said aloud, simple, giving nothing else away.

"You don’t know us," Ethan said, still catching his breath.

"No," Vanya agreed. "Didn’t need to."

Harold waded over, crowbar still in hand, glancing between the three soaked, shaken survivors. "That’s twice this week I’ve had to fish someone out of the water."

"We appreciate the timing," David said, still visibly shaken but steadying quickly. "We wouldn’t have made it much longer."

"You held them off well enough that I only had to finish it," Vanya said, something almost approving in her tone. "That’s not nothing."

Jason, teeth chattering slightly, managed a small, exhausted smile. "I kept track of all of them. Right up until the boat went down. And I hit one. With a piece of rigging."

"You hit someone?" Vanya asked, studying him with new interest.

"Pretty hard, actually," Ethan said, a little proud on his brother-in-arms’s behalf. "He just dropped."

"Good instinct," Vanya said. "Most people freeze the first time. You didn’t."

Jason flushed slightly, exhaustion and adrenaline tangling together into something he didn’t quite know how to carry yet. "I didn’t really think about it. I just swung."

"That’s exactly what kept your father alive long enough for me to reach you," Vanya said. "Don’t undersell it."

They loaded what remained of their scattered supplies into Vanya’s boat, the ruined wreck of Kai’s craft left to sink the rest of the way into the flood, and Harold helped haul all three of them aboard, soaked and exhausted but alive.

"We lost the boat," David said, settling heavily into the stern, some of the earlier adrenaline finally draining into plain exhaustion. "Kai’s boat. He just gave it to us this morning."

"He’ll understand," Vanya said. "He’d rather lose a boat than any of you."

"We’re never going to hear the end of this from Kai," Ethan said, wringing water from his sleeve.

"No," Jason agreed, teeth still chattering. "We really aren’t."

Vanya guided the boat back toward the building, glancing once more at the two boys huddled together in the stern, something quietly thoughtful behind her expression the whole way home. She said nothing further, though the particular, careful attention she paid Jason for the rest of the ride suggested she hadn’t finished turning over exactly what she’d just witnessed — a boy who’d frozen for half a second and then hadn’t, swinging a piece of broken rigging with more courage than skill and somehow making it count.

By the time the building came into view, the rain had eased into a fine, cold mist, and David finally let himself exhale fully, one arm wrapped around each of his sons, soaked and shivering and entirely, miraculously alive.