Chapter 4 - The Animal InstinctThe sweet, chemical scent of the gas grew thicker, heavy and cloying in the small, sealed room. Leo was already slumping sideways in his chair, his consciousness fading fast. Viktor rushed to his son, untying the thick zip-ties binding his wrists, but his own limbs were beginning to feel heavy, like they were filled with molten lead.
"Dad... we're... we're going to die here," Leo whispered, his eyelids fluttering shut.
"No," Viktor growled, though his vision was starting to blur at the edges, the concrete walls beginning to spin. He pounded his fist against the reinforced glass until his knuckles split and bled, but it didn't even crack. "Not like this."
Down on the floor, Shadow was acting strangely. While humans succumbed to the heavier-than-air anesthetic gas settling near the ground, the scruffy dog didn't pass out. Instead, Shadow began digging furiously at a drain grate in the corner of the cell—a narrow, rusted drainage pipe barely wide enough for a medium-sized dog.
Lily dropped to her knees beside the frantic animal, coughing as the fumes hit her lungs. She grabbed Shadow's collar. "Is it there, boy? Can you get through?"
Shadow barked once—a sharp, high-pitched yip—and squeezed his head and shoulders into the dark, filthy pipe, wriggling his body with desperate strength until he vanished into the dark interior.
"He's... he's gone," Leo muttered, his head dropping against his chest as he lost consciousness entirely.
Viktor slid down the concrete wall, his breath coming in shallow, ragged gasps. The room was spinning faster now. The shadows were closing in. He looked at little Lily, who was kneeling beside his unconscious son, tears cutting clean tracks through the grime on her cheeks.
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"Why..." Viktor coughed, blood tasting copper-rich on his tongue. "Why did you follow us... little one?"
Lily turned her head, looking him dead in the eye through the haze of the gas. "Because Julian Vance killed my father three years ago in these same docks. And tonight... monsters don't win."
