Chapter 1: Code Black

The world was a symphony of screaming, and Leo Vance was its unwilling conductor. The shriek of tortured metal was his percussion, the howl of the wind through the mangled superstructure his strings, and the panicked cries of the living and the dying his choir. Through it all, the strobing red and blue lights of two dozen emergency vehicles painted the chaos in frantic, repeating strokes, reflecting off the slick, wet asphalt and the churning black water below.

This was Leo’s world. His orchestra.

“I need a C-collar and a backboard over here, now! Ma’am, can you hear me? Squeeze my hand if you can hear me.” Leo’s voice was a raw bark, cutting through the din with the authority of a man who had seen hell before and knew its language. Rain plastered his dark hair to his forehead, mixing with sweat despite the biting November cold. He moved with a practiced economy, his mind a fortress of checklists and triage protocols—the only defense against the overwhelming tide of human suffering.

The I-5 bridge collapse was a Code Black event, the kind of mass casualty incident you train for in sterile classrooms but pray you never see. A fifty-foot section of the northbound span had simply given way during peak storm conditions, dropping a dozen cars into the Duwamish River. More vehicles, a tangled mess of steel and glass, teetered on the precipice.

“Vance!” It was Henderson, a firefighter with soot staining his face. “Dispatch says we’ve got one more unaccounted for. Edge of the north span. A kid. The structure’s unstable; they can’t get the ladder truck close.”

Leo’s head snapped up, following Henderson's pointing glove. There, angled precariously over the chasm like a morbid see-saw, was a blue sedan. Its rear wheels hung in empty air, spinning uselessly. The front was pinned by a buckled guardrail, the only thing keeping it from joining the others in their watery grave. It was groaning under its own weight, a wounded beast ready for its final plunge.

He ran. Every footfall on the buckled asphalt sent a tremor through the structure. He could feel the vibrations in the soles of his boots, a constant reminder that the whole thing could go at any second. You can’t save them all, the first rule of the job echoed in his mind. But a different, more stubborn voice answered back. But you have to try for this one.

He reached the car and saw her through the spiderwebbed windshield. A little girl, no older than seven or eight, her face a pale mask of terror in the strobing lights. A cheap plastic unicorn charm dangled from the rearview mirror, swaying hypnotically.

He crouched down, forcing his voice into a calm, gentle tone—a tool he wielded as precisely as a scalpel. “Hey there,” he said, making sure she could see his face clearly. “My name’s Leo. I’m a paramedic. I’m going to get you out of here, okay?”

The girl, whose name he’d later learn was Mia, sobbed and nodded, a tiny, jerky motion. “It’s stuck,” she whispered, her voice barely audible over the storm. She pointed a trembling finger at the seatbelt stretched taut across her chest like a vise.

Leo leaned in for a closer look, the car groaning in protest at the slight shift in weight. He assessed the situation in a fraction of a second. The impact had crushed the buckle mechanism; it was completely jammed. But he also saw the bigger, more terrifying problem. The taut strap, the very thing trapping her, was also the only thing anchoring her small body to the heavy, vinyl seat. It was a critical point of tension, a part of the car's fragile, suicidal counterbalance.

His training screamed at him. Extrication 101: Never compromise the vehicle’s stability. Wait for the Jaws of Life. Wait for the heavy rescue team with their winches and cables.

“It’s slipping!” the girl cried, her eyes wide.

He could hear it, too. A high-pitched metallic tearing, like a zipper being slowly, fatally, undone. There was no time. The fire department was ten minutes away from securing the scene. This car had ten seconds. It was him. Now.

He made the calculation. The impossible, desperate calculus of a no-win scenario. The risk. Cut the belt, haul her out, and pray the shift in mass wasn't enough to send it over. It was a gamble against gravity and fractured steel. It was the only one on the table.

“Alright, Mia. This is going to be loud,” he said, pulling a strap cutter from the pouch on his belt. The small, hooked blade felt absurdly insignificant. He met her terrified eyes. “Don’t look down. Look right at me. I’ve got you. I promise.”

He leaned in, the car groaning a final, terrible warning. He hooked the blade under the nylon belt. He took a breath, held it, and pulled with all his strength.

For a beautiful, heart-stopping half-second, it worked. The belt parted with a sound like ripping canvas. He lunged, his fingers brushing the fabric of her jacket—

And the entire balance of the car gave way.

The sound wasn't a groan anymore. It was a gunshot shriek of shearing metal as the last retaining bolts failed. The front of the car, free of the downward tension, lifted slightly, and the rear end plunged toward the abyss.

Mia didn't even have time to scream. Her eyes went wide, a universe of shock and a child’s broken trust reflected in them. The unicorn charm swung violently, catching the light one last time.

The car was gone.

Leo’s hand closed on empty, rain-slicked air. His mind fractured. The roar of the wind, the sight of the blue sedan disappearing into the blackness, the absolute, crushing finality of his failure.

“NO!”

The scream was ripped from his soul, a raw denial of the physics he had just unleashed. He stumbled forward, lunging for an edge that was no longer there. His balance lost, the world tilted into a nauseating spin of red and blue and black—

Then, silence.

Whiteness.

An absolute cessation of everything. The sensation of falling was replaced by a strange weightlessness, a deafening quiet that was more profound than any noise.

He gasped, a lungful of air that felt impossibly clean and warm. The roaring in his ears was gone, replaced by a stillness so deep it felt sacred. He wasn't cold and wet anymore. He was… comfortable.

He pushed himself up, wincing not from pain, but from the sheer alien softness beneath him. His hands sank into a bed of impossibly vibrant green moss that felt like crushed velvet. The air smelled of rich, damp earth and a thousand unknown blossoms, a heady perfume that was both intoxicating and disorienting.

He scrambled to his knees. Towering trees with bark like polished silver formed a canopy hundreds of feet above, their leaves a shade of deep, dreaming indigo.

And hanging in the sliver of purple sky between them, serene and colossal, were two moons. One was a perfect, luminous pearl. The other, a chipped crescent of brilliant sapphire.

He was in a forest, wearing the tattered remains of his paramedic uniform. The bridge, the rain, the sirens, the failure—all gone.

He was physically unharmed, but a new, more profound terror began to dawn. He was utterly, terrifyingly alone.