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The two hours stretched into three, then four, as the storm showed no signs of abating. If anything, the weather seemed to be getting worse, with winds that howled like living things and rain that came down in torrents that would have made Noah nervous. Rudhra stood by the window of what had once been a classroom, now serving as their temporary shelter, watching the landscape transform before his eyes.
"The river's rising faster than we calculated," reported Sergeant Kumar, the team's communications specialist, though his radio had been reduced to mostly static for the past hour. "From what I can make out, there might be a dam breach upstream."
Rudhra felt his stomach drop. A dam breach would mean a wall of water that would make their current situation look like a gentle spring shower. "How long do we have?"
"Unknown, sir. Communications are almost completely down. Could be minutes, could be hours."
Looking around at the twenty-three people still waiting for rescue, Rudhra made a decision that would have made his parents proud and his uncle Prabhakar furious. "Right, we're not waiting for the helicopter. We need to move to higher ground immediately."
"Sir, in this weather, with elderly people and children, that could be just as dangerous as staying here," Dr. Rashid pointed out, but his voice lacked conviction. They all knew that staying put was no longer an option.
"Then we make it work," Rudhra said with that trademark optimism that had carried him through three years of impossible situations. "We've got rope, we've got strong people, and we've got each other. Plus, I still have those terrible jokes to keep everyone motivated."
The evacuation to higher ground was like something out of an action movie, if action movies included a lot more slipping in mud and considerably more creative cursing in multiple languages. Rudhra found himself carrying elderly Mrs. Sharma on his back while cracking jokes to keep her from panicking about the thirty-foot drop on one side of the mountain path.
"You know, Mrs. Sharma," he panted as they climbed, "my mother always said I needed to exercise more. I don't think this is what she had in mind, but I bet she'd appreciate the irony."
"Beta," Mrs. Sharma wheezed back, "your mother sounds like a wise woman. Also, please don't drop me while making jokes."
"Ma'am, I have never dropped anyone while telling a joke. During a joke, yes, but never while telling one. There's an important difference."
Even in the midst of disaster, he could hear people chuckling, and that sound was worth more than gold to him. Fear was contagious, but so was hope, and hope was a much better survival tool.
They managed to reach a small plateau about fifty feet higher up the mountain, where an old stone structure – probably a shrine of some kind – offered partial shelter from the elements. It wasn't much, but it was definitely more secure than where they'd been, and the view allowed them to see the valley below.
What they saw made everyone fall silent.
The water was rising with terrifying speed, already covering what had been the ground floor of their previous shelter. Trees that had stood for decades were being uprooted and carried away like twigs. And in the distance, they could see what looked like a brown wall of water advancing down the valley – the dam breach they'd feared.
"Okay," Rudhra said, his voice steady despite the fact that his heart was probably beating fast enough to power a small generator. "Good news and bad news time. The good news is we're high enough to be safe from the flood. The bad news is we're going to be here for a while."
"How long is a while?" asked Mr. Gupta, a schoolteacher who'd been helping keep the children calm.
"Well, that depends on how quickly the rescue teams can get to us once this weather clears," Rudhra replied. "Could be tomorrow, could be a few days. But hey, think of it as an adventure camping trip that nobody planned for."
It was then that they heard it – a sound that cut through even the storm and the rushing water below. A dog's bark, followed by the unmistakable sound of a child crying.
"Did you hear that?" Dr. Rashid asked, though everyone clearly had.
The sound came again, more desperate this time, and Rudhra could see movement in the partially collapsed house below – the same building they'd evacuated from earlier. Somehow, someone had been left behind.
"That's impossible," Sergeant Kumar said. "We did a complete sweep. There was nobody left."
But the crying continued, and now they could all see a small figure moving in what remained of the upper floor of the building – a figure that was definitely too small to be an adult.
"There's a child down there," Rudhra said, his voice tight with a combination of determination and dread. "And from the sound of it, they're not alone."
"Sir, even if there is someone down there, there's no way to reach them," Dr. Rashid said, though he was clearly as torn as everyone else. "The water level is rising too fast, the building is structurally unsound, and in this weather..."
"There's always a way," Rudhra interrupted, and there was something in his voice that made everyone look at him more closely. "I've got climbing gear, I know the building layout, and I'm probably the lightest person here who's capable of making the descent."
"Absolutely not," Dr. Rashid said firmly. "Rudhra, I've worked with you long enough to recognize that look. You're about to do something heroically stupid, and I cannot, as your friend and your medical officer, allow that to happen."
Rudhra looked around at the faces of the people he'd sworn to protect. Twenty-three people who'd trusted him to get them to safety, who were counting on him to make smart decisions. And somewhere below, a child was crying for help.
"Doc, do you remember what I told you when we first started working together?" he asked quietly.
"That you judge the success of any mission by the number of people who go home to their families at the end of it."
"Exactly. And right now, there's at least one person who isn't going home unless someone goes down there." Rudhra was already checking his climbing gear, his movements quick and efficient. "Look, I'm not being reckless. I know that building, I know my capabilities, and I know how to minimize risk."
"The building could collapse at any moment!"
"Or it could hold for another few hours. We don't know. But what we do know is that there's a child down there who's going to die if nobody tries to help." Rudhra's voice carried the quiet authority of someone who'd made his decision and wouldn't be swayed. "This is what my parents would have done. It's what they raised me to do."
The argument might have continued, but the crying from below intensified, joined now by what sounded like a dog's whimpering. The sound made the decision for everyone.
"Fine," Dr. Rashid said, defeat clear in his voice. "But you're taking a radio, safety lines, and if that building so much as creaks in a way I don't like, you're coming back up immediately."
"Deal," Rudhra said, then turned to address the group. "Everyone, I need you to understand something. I'm going down there because it's the right thing to do, not because I want to be a hero. Heroes are for movies. I'm just a guy who can't live with the idea of not trying to help someone who needs it."
As he prepared for the descent, Rudhra found himself thinking about his parents. Devakar would have made the same choice without hesitation – his father had never been able to walk away from someone in need, whether it was a street child in Mumbai or a disaster victim halfway around the world. And Evangeline would have done the tactical analysis to figure out the safest way to attempt the rescue, just like she'd done with every GHF operation.
"You know," he said to Dr. Rashid as he checked his harness one final time, "if this goes badly, make sure my uncle Prabhakar knows it wasn't because I was being reckless. It was because I was being exactly who my parents raised me to be."
The descent was terrifying in ways that Rudhra hadn't fully anticipated. The wind kept trying to slam him against the side of the building, the rain made every handhold slippery, and the sound of rushing water below served as a constant reminder that time was running out. But as he got closer to the partially collapsed structure, he could hear more clearly what was happening inside.
A child was crying, yes, but they were also talking to what sounded like a dog, trying to keep the animal calm while clearly being terrified themselves.
"It's okay, Buddy," came a small voice that Rudhra recognized with a shock. It was Priya, the little girl with the stuffed dog from the first evacuation. But she was supposed to be safely evacuated. How was she here?
"Hello!" he called out as he reached what remained of a window. "Priya, is that you?"
"Uncle Rudhra!" The relief in her voice was heartbreaking. "I came back for Buddy! He was scared and hiding, and I couldn't leave him!"
Rudhra closed his eyes for a moment, understanding immediately what had happened. Priya hadn't been talking about a stuffed animal earlier – she'd been talking about a real dog that had been too frightened to come out when the evacuation happened. A six-year-old child had somehow made her way back to the building to save her pet.
"Okay, sweetheart, I'm here now, and we're going to get both you and Buddy out of here safely," he said, trying to project calm confidence while his heart hammered in his chest. The floor he was looking at was partially collapsed, held up by what appeared to be a single support beam that was making ominous creaking sounds.
"I can't move, Uncle," Priya said, her voice small. "My leg is stuck under some wood, and Buddy won't leave me."
Rudhra could see her now – a small figure in a bright yellow raincoat, pinned under debris but conscious and alert. Next to her, a white dog that was probably some kind of mountain breed was pressed against her side, clearly determined to protect his young human.
"That's okay, beta. Uncle's very good at unsticking things," Rudhra said, beginning to work his way carefully across the unstable floor. "You know, Buddy looks like a very smart dog. I bet he's been taking good care of you."
"He has! He kept me warm and he barked really loud so people would know where we were."
Smart dog indeed, Rudhra thought. The animal had probably saved Priya's life by signaling their location. "Well, then we definitely can't leave him behind, can we? A hero dog deserves a hero rescue."
Working in the confined space with water rising below and debris shifting above, Rudhra managed to free Priya's leg – bruised and scraped but not broken. The challenge now was getting both the child and the dog out of the building and back up to safety.
"Okay, Priya, I need you to listen very carefully," he said, attaching his safety harness to her. "We're going to go on a little flying adventure, but I need you to hold onto me very tightly and keep your eyes closed until I tell you to open them. Can you do that?"
"What about Buddy?"
"Buddy's coming too. See?" Rudhra had fashioned a makeshift harness for the dog using climbing rope. It wasn't pretty, but it would work. "Everyone goes home together, remember?"
The ascent was the longest few minutes of Rudhra's life. With Priya clinging to him and the dog secured to his gear, every movement had to be calculated and careful. Below them, he could hear the building continuing to shift and settle as the water pressure increased. Above them, he could see the faces of the people on the plateau, all of them watching with the kind of tension that made the air itself feel electric.
They were perhaps ten feet from safety when it happened.
The building let out a groan that sounded almost alive, a sound of wood and metal and stone giving up their fight against physics and water pressure. Rudhra looked down to see the structure beginning to collapse in earnest, walls buckling inward and the floor they'd just been on disappearing into the churning water below.
"Almost there!" Dr. Rashid called down, reaching out as far as he dared to help with the final few feet.
That's when the support beam that had been holding Rudhra's climbing anchor chose that moment to give way.
For a split second, Rudhra felt the sickening sensation of free fall. Time seemed to slow down, the way it does in moments of absolute crisis, and he found himself thinking with crystal clarity about what needed to happen next. Priya and Buddy were secure in their harnesses and connected to the safety line that Dr. Rashid was controlling from above. They would be pulled to safety.
But Rudhra himself was attached to the anchor point that was now falling with the building.
In that extended moment, as he fell with the debris toward the rushing water below, Rudhra found himself oddly at peace. He'd saved forty-two people today, including a brave little girl and her loyal dog. His parents would be proud. His uncle would be furious but understanding. And somewhere in the future, Priya would grow up knowing that heroes were real because one had risked everything to save her and her best friend.
"Tell Priya," he shouted up toward the plateau, though he doubted anyone could hear him over the sound of the collapse, "tell her that Buddy is definitely a hero dog!"
The last thing Rudhra saw before the water closed over him was the sight of Priya and Buddy being pulled to safety on the plateau above. The last thing he felt was satisfaction in a job well done. And the last thing he thought was that if he had to do it all over again, he wouldn't change a single decision.
After all, some things were more important than survival. Some things were worth dying for.
And in that moment of ultimate sacrifice, something vast and cosmic took notice of Rudhra Deva Caelestis. Something that existed beyond the boundaries of single universes, something that recognized the rare spark of a soul that would choose others' wellbeing over its own survival without hesitation.
The water claimed his mortal form, but his story – his real story – was just beginning.