Chapter Text
The call comes in just after noon.
A two-car collision on a narrow access road near one of the lakes outside the city. At first it sounds almost Routine enough to dispatch the 118, but nothing that makes Bobby’s voice sharpen with immediate dread when he repeats the address back to dispatch.
Then dispatch adds, “One vehicle is partially submerged and continuing to slide.”
The cab goes silent.
Bobby is already reaching for the radio. “Copy that. 118 en route.”
Buck feels the shift happen in all of them at once. That tiny snap from ordinary emergency to the kind that can go catastrophically wrong in seconds. Beside him, Eddie is already pulling his gloves tighter, face set. Chim’s mouth thins. Ravi sits straighter. Hen, in the passenger seat, is listening to the dispatch updates with that razor focus she gets when she’s already three steps ahead.
“Additional info,” dispatch says. “Sedan was struck from behind. Vehicle is nose down into the lake, being pinned by the second car. Driver trapped. Possible child in the back seat.
Engine 136 from the neighboring district is also responding and en route to your location.”
Buck’s stomach drops.
“Copy,” Bobby says again, more clipped this time.
By the time they pull up, Buck understands why dispatch’s voice had sounded so strained.
The access road slopes down toward the lake, the bank muddy from recent rain. One dark blue sedan has gone over the edge far enough that its front half is already submerged, the hood vanished beneath the green-gray surface. Another vehicle—a pickup with its front bumper crushed, angled into the sedan’s rear quarter, the force of the impact having shoved it halfway into the water and kept it there. It’s unstable. The whole thing looks wrong, balanced on the edge of giving way.
A sheriff’s deputy is trying to hold back bystanders. The driver of the pickup is on the ground a few yards away, dazed and bleeding from the forehead, attended by a pair of EMTs from unit 136 that must have arrived seconds earlier.
And inside the Sedan...
A woman is visible in the driver’s seat, brown hair plastered to her face, one arm pinned awkwardly, mouth open in a scream Buck can hear even over the engine and shouted orders. Behind her, in the back seat, a little girl hangs limp in her harness, head tipped at an awful angle against the window.
“Buck, Eddie, Chim, Ravi!” Bobby’s voice cuts through everything. “Water rescue setup, now!”
They move.
There’s no hesitation, no wasted motion. Buck is already pulling gear as Ravi helps Bobby anchor the harness lines. Chim grabs the med bag and rescue equipment. Hen is with Bobby for one look at the vehicle, one look at the rate the water is rising.
“It’s not staying there,” she says.
“No,” Bobby agrees grimly.
The woman sees them and starts screaming louder.
“My daughter! Please, please, my daughter!”
Buck’s chest tightens. The water is already pressing hard against the front of the car. Driver’s side door jammed by the angle and collision damage. Front entry would be a nightmare with the water pressure.
Bobby takes it in in one sweep and points. “Back windows. You go in through the rear. Reduce pressure change in the front cabin as long as possible. Chim, Ravi, line support. You pull on my order only. No freelancing.”
“Copy,” Chim says.
“Buck, Eddie, child first. Then the mother.”
Buck nods, eyes set in determination. “Got it.”
The woman is sobbing now, water at her waist. “Please save her, please save my baby!”
“We’re gonna get to her!” Buck shouts back. “You hear me? We’re getting her out!”
Bobby catches Eddie’s shoulder before he heads into the water. “You have maybe two minutes once you’re inside before I call you back. Maybe less if that bank shifts.”
Eddie gives one short nod.
Then they’re moving.
The water is shockingly cold when it hits Buck through the suit. Mud sucks at his boots as he and Eddie wade out on their lines, Chim and Ravi feeding harness cable from the bank. The sedan groans softly, metal under strain. The lake water sloshes through the rear wheel wells and trunk seams. The entire car gives a small, sickening shift.
“Easy,” Buck Mutters.
He reaches the back passenger window first. It’s spiderwebbed but not fully broken. Eddie plants himself on the other side. With two sharp strikes from the rescue tool, the glass caves in and collapses inward. Water immediately surges harder into the rear footwell.
Inside, it’s chaos.
The little girl is maybe six, dark curls soaked and stuck to her cheeks, unconscious in her booster seat. Water is already pouring across the floor under her shoes. The mother twists in the front as far as she can, panic raw in her face.
“Riley! Riley baby, wake up!”
“Ma’am, look at me,” Eddie says sharply. Hands reaching to stop her from moving around too much.“Look at me.”
Her gaze jerks to him.
“We are getting your daughter out first, then you. I need you to stay as still as you can. Can you do that for me?”
She’s crying too hard to answer properly, but she nods.
Buck hauls himself through the broken rear window, careful of the jagged edges. Eddie follows. The cabin smells like lake water, blood and gasoline.
Buck gets to the little girl first. He does the fastest check he can. Head supported, airway visible, no obvious chest penetration, unconscious. Eddie’s hand lands on the girl’s neck, two fingers, brief and sure.
“She’s got a pulse,” Eddie says, relief clear in his voice.
Buck lets out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.
“Go,” Eddie tells him. “I’ll stabilize.”
Buck is already cutting.
The harness straps are wet and tight and stubborn under tension. His fingers slip once before the blade catches and slices through. He can feel the car shifting minutely with every passing second. Water climbs over his knees in the back seat.
“Come on, sweetheart,” he murmurs, more for himself than her. “Come on.”
Eddie has one hand braced on the seatback, the other steadying the child’s head and neck as Buck gets the last strap free. Then Buck gathers the girl carefully into his arms.
She’s too limp.
Too light.
Buck’s heart pounds against his ribs as he turns toward the broken window. Hen is already there outside, reaching in.
“I’ve got her,” Hen says.
Buck lifts. Hen takes the weight expertly, passing her upward toward Bobby on the bank. Buck sees Bobby take the girl and turn immediately toward another EMT, who’s moved in to assess. Station 136.
The mother makes a broken sound from the front seat, half scream, half sob. “Is she breathing? Is she okay? Please—”
“She’s out!” Buck yells back. “She’s out!”
He’s already turning back when he sees Eddie at the front, bent awkwardly over the center console.
The woman’s left arm is clearly broken, bent wrong and pinned against the door. Her face is pale under the wet. Blood runs from a gash in her scalp. But it’s her lower body that’s the problem.
Eddie looks over his shoulder. “Her foot’s stuck.”
Buck crawls forward through the narrowing gap between the seats. Water is nearly to the mother’s chest now. She’s shivering so hard her teeth chatter between sobs.
“Please,” she gasps. “Please don’t leave me here.”
“We’re not leaving you,” Eddie says.
On the bank, Bobby’s voice crackles over the radio clipped to Buck’s gear. “Status!"
“Mother trapped, foot pinned. We’re working.” Buck says, breathless.
“You have two minutes,” Bobby says. Then, harsher: “That is not a suggestion.”
Buck glances through the broken rear window and sees why. The sedan’s rear tires are losing purchase in the mud. The pickup pinning it has started to tilt too, its own weight shifting with every movement of the submerged car.
Eddie has one hand down by the woman’s leg, feeling through the murky water.
“She’s wedged between the console and the steering column,” he says.
Buck tries the wheel, but there’s no give. “Can you move your foot?” he asks the woman.
She cries out when she tries. “No...no, no, I can’t, I can’t—”
The water reaches her chin.
Buck feels the cold lick up his own spine.
“Eddie—”
“I know!.”
The woman’s eyes are huge now, fixed on Eddie’s face. “My daughter,” she says, voice trembling violently. “She only has me. I’m all she has left.”
Something in Eddie’s expression changes.
It isn’t panic. More as if he's just drawn a line.
Buck knows that look. He’s seen it in burning buildings, under collapsed houses, in the middle of disasters that should have broken lesser people. It’s the face Eddie makes when he decides something is going to happen because he wills it into existence.
“We’re getting you out,” Eddie says, absolute.
Bobby’s voice again, louder this time through the radio. “Buck. Eddie. One minute!”
“Copy!” Buck shouts, but his eyes are on Eddie.
Eddie disappears lower, ducking partially under the rising water to get both hands around the woman’s trapped ankle. Buck braces himself and grabs the seat frame as Eddie wrenches once, twice—
The woman screams.
Then her leg comes free.
“Yes!” Buck lunges forward. “Okay, okay”
But the second he gets his hands on her, he knows this just got worse. She can’t help them. She’s barely conscious now, head lolling, broken arm useless, one ankle clearly gone unstable under the movement. Concussion, maybe worse. No way she’s climbing out herself.
Eddie knows it too.
He looks from the rear window to Buck and makes the call instantly. “I push, you take.”
Buck nods once.
They maneuver her in the flooded cabin, every movement clumsy with the shrinking air pocket and rising water. Buck crawls backward, hauling her torso through the gap between the seats while Eddie supports from the front, practically lifting her weight with brute force.
The radio crackles again, Bobby no longer bothering to hide the urgency. “That vehicle is shifting. You get out right now! Chim, Ravi, be ready to haul them back immediately.”
“Come on, come on,” Buck grunts, dragging the woman backward.
Eddie shoves from behind, jaw clenched, water to his own chin now.
The woman slips halfway through the rear window opening. Hen again at the window, Ready to help, grabs her under the shoulders and pulls with careful force.
Buck twists, one hand on the window frame, the other reaching back for Eddie.
“Let’s go!”
Eddie is still in the front half of the car, face tipped up to the roof where only a pocket of air remains. His eyes are wide, breaths coming in faster than before. The water has almost completely filled the cabin. He reaches for Buck, their fingers intertwine—
And that’s when the whole car lurches.
A sickening, grinding slide as the mud finally gives way under the tires. The sedan shifts with brutal force. The pickup that had been pinning it slips aside just enough to let the other car drop.
Buck hears someone screaming his name.
A violent yank hits his harness as Ravi and Chim’s line system reacts. Buck is ripped backward toward the surface, his hand losing Eddie’s.
“No!”
He thrashes, trying to hold on, but the cable hauls him hard. Water crashes over his head. By the time he breaks the surface, coughing, the sedan is already going under.
The woman is half onshore in Hen and Bobby's arms. Bobby is shouting orders. Ravi has reeled back several feet, staring at the line in his hands with dawning horror.
“There’s no tension!” Ravi yells. “Cap, there’s nothing on Eddie’s line!”