Pain ripped hot under his ribs before he reached the rail. He grabbed the top bar, swung over badly because his side would not let him fold cleanly, and dropped into the channel feetfirst. The cold hit like a strike. This was not the warm decorative water of the gardens. It was runoff dragged through some deeper system, hard and clean and brutal with force.

The current seized him at once and drove him sideways. He went under, mouth clamped shut, shoulder smashing against the wall. Light broke above in jagged strips. He pushed off, surfaced, coughed water from his nose, and saw Lina fifteen feet ahead, turning in the boil as the flow pulled her toward the intake grate.

Elias shouted, “Lina!”

She did not answer. Her face flashed up once, eyes wide, hair pasted to her cheeks, then the current rolled her over again.

He drove after her with uneven strokes, one arm stronger than the other. His injured side dragged at every kick. The channel floor fell away under him, and the pull toward the grate deepened with sickening speed. He had just enough time to understand the geometry: the narrowed flow, the drop pressure, the intake bars. If she hit wrong, the current would pin her there and hold her under.

He lunged and caught cloth. It tore loose in his hand.

She slipped another body length away.

“Move!” he shouted at the people above, though he did not know toward what. “A line, a pole, anything!”

No one moved with purpose. Shapes ran along the bank now, but with the drifting, uncertain speed of people following an event rather than entering it.