My husband carried his dying mistress into my emergency room while I was thirty-one weeks pregnant,

The pipe ruptured with a deafening, metallic shriek.

A hyper-pressurized cloud of sub-zero liquid halon exploded into the hallway, engulfing the space between us in an instant blizzard of freezing fog and whiteout condensation. The ambient temperature dropped forty degrees in two seconds.

Bell shrieked as the freezing gas hit his exposed skin, blinding him instantly. The dead-man's trigger slipped from his numb, frostbitten fingers, clattering onto the freezing tiles.

I didn't close my eyes. I squinted through the blinding white mist, tracking the rectangular glow of the infant pod's LED display.

I drove my shoulder into Bell’s ribs with the force of an oncoming train. The impact sent him sprawling across the wet concrete. The titanium pod flew from his grip, sliding along the ice-slick floor toward the dark rim of the open drainage shaft.

"No!" I screamed.

I dove across the freezing tiles, the skin of my bare arms searing with frostbite as I skidded across the halon puddle. My fingertips brushed the titanium handle—once, twice—and then I clamped down, dragging the pod back toward my chest just as its edge tipped over the yawning black abyss of the city sewer main.

Behind me, Bell scrambled to his feet, pulling a compact suppressed pistol from his coat. "You arrogant bitch! You'd kill us both!"

Before his barrel could level with my forehead, a deafening shot cracked through the fog.

Bell’s eyes widened behind his frost-covered spectacles. A clean, round hole appeared in the center of his forehead. He collapsed backward into the darkness of the drainage pit, his body disappearing into the churning black water forty feet below.

Through the clearing mist stepped Julian, a smoking tactical sidearm in his hand, his shoulder dislocated, his tactical shirt torn to shreds. Behind him hobbled Marcus, using a lead pipe as an improvised crutch.

"Lauren!" Julian dropped to his knees beside me, his hands trembling as he reached for my face. "Are you hit? Are you bleeding?"

"The pod," I gasped, my teeth chattering uncontrollably from the halon exposure, my fingers frozen stiff around the handle. "Julian, unlock the latch. She’s sedated. Unlock the latch!"

Julian grabbed the emergency manual release, twisting the valve. The airtight seals hissed open.

The cold, sterile air gave way to the faint, sweet scent of baby lotion and clean skin. I pulled Maya out of the harness, tearing the blue transdermal patch from her neck, and pressed her against my bare skin beneath my scrubs, wrapping my arms around her limp, warm body.

"Wake up," I whispered into her hair, my tears falling warm onto her cold forehead. "Maya, please. Mommy's here. Breathe. Come on, sweet girl. Breathe for me."

For five agonizing seconds, the tunnel was silent except for the hiss of leaking gas.

Then, a tiny, ragged gasp escaped her lips. Maya opened her dark, wide eyes, looked straight into mine, and let out a furious, indignant, full-throated cry that shattered the silence of the underground vault.