Chapter 12: Fever and Loyalty
By morning, the stress of the escape caught up with Lily. She woke up shivering under her wool blanket, her skin flushed with a low-grade fever from the damp tunnel air and the bitter night drive. Elena was instantly by her side, pressing a cool, damp cloth to the child's forehead while I stoked the dying embers of the hearth fire. Lily barely murmured, her small fingers clutching the edge of her pale yellow dress as she drifted in and out of a restless, shallow sleep.
Throughout it all, Atlas refused to budge from her side. The massive black Cane Corso lay stretched out like a velvet shadow directly across the floorboards next to her makeshift bed, his heavy chin resting between his front paws. Whenever Lily stirred or let out a faint, distressed sigh, the dog would let out a low, vibrating huff of breath and gently nudge her small hand with his cold, wet nose, instantly soothing her back into quiet stillness.
"She needs pediatric antibiotics, Arthur," Elena whispered, looking up at me with deep anxiety etched into her features. "The nearest pharmacy is in the valley village, twenty miles south. If you go down there in daylight, you're walking right into their patrol zone."
"I have to go," I said, pulling on a heavy canvas hunting jacket and checking the concealed holster beneath it. "There's no other choice. Stay inside, keep all the shutters bolted, and do not open the door for anyone unless you hear my specific three-knock signal."
"Be careful," Elena said, her voice tight with unexpressed fear.
The drive down the winding mountain road was tense, every oncoming pickup truck or sedan making my fingers tighten instinctively on the steering wheel. The village was quiet, wrapped in the gray chill of a late autumn morning. I parked three blocks away from the small family-owned apothecary, walked in with my collar turned up against the wind, and paid cash for the necessary prescriptions without drawing any notice from the elderly pharmacist behind the counter.
When I returned to the cabin an hour later, I found Elena standing by the frosted window, watching the tree line with a heavy wrench in her hand. Atlas was standing beside her, his ears perked forward and his muscular body rigid as stone.
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"Did you see anything on the way back?" Elena asked as I stepped through the heavy timber door and quickly threw the iron deadbolt.
"Nothing," I said, rushing over to Lily and kneeling beside her to administer the first dose of medicine. "The roads are clear. But our window is closing fast. Friday is tomorrow. We have to execute the data leak tonight, or we lose our only leverage."
