Then I leaned down, shining my flashlight into the shaft.
At first, there was nothing.
Then—
A faint, broken sound.
“…Daddy?”
My blood ran cold.
I pushed the light deeper into the darkness, revealing a narrow vertical drop, slick brick walls, and at the bottom—a crumbling ledge above black, stagnant water—and there, barely visible, was a flash of yellow fabric.
Madeline.
She was trapped, shaking, clinging to the wall, her small body pressed into the darkness as if trying to disappear.
“Madeline!” Daniel screamed, collapsing beside me.
Hannah broke through the crowd, saw the scene, and collapsed into shock.
Everything exploded into chaos—sirens, shouting, people crying—but when the firefighters arrived and assessed the situation, the truth hit like a hammer.
They couldn’t break the grate.
The wall would collapse.
No adult could fit through the opening.
The only way to reach her…
Was someone small enough to go down.
The silence that followed was suffocating.
Every eye turned—slowly, unwillingly—toward Celeste.
“No,” Daniel said immediately, pulling her back. “No, you’re not sending her down there.”
But below, the ledge cracked.
“She has minutes,” one of the firefighters said grimly.