The Espionage Effect(100)
The plane.
Lungs burning, I opened my eyes, located the faint glow of blue amid all the darker water surrounding me, and swam toward the surface, following the bubbles, scissoring my legs with the force they had to give regardless of the incredible pain in my hip.
The second I broke the surface, I gulped in a lungful of air, then another. I treaded water but was impeded by the loose fatigue shirt I still wore. I unbuttoned it halfway, dunked underwater, and swam backward out of the material. Then I swept my arms in two wide breaststroke arcs back up.
Bobbing on the surface, slowly up, then down on a rolling wave, I rotated toward land about a half mile away. A dark plume of smoke mushroomed up into the air off to my left.
I blew out a hard breath, unable to pull any immediate satisfaction from the destruction, survival taking precedence. After a quick three-hundred-sixty-degree scan, I failed to spot Alec. Only empty shoreline straight ahead and endless water all around.
Legs already tiring, and that incessant hip ache dulling from an attention-grabbing nine on the pain scale down to a more manageable throbbing four, I began a slow freestyle stroke toward shore.
Too many things hovered on the edge of my thoughts to dissect which ones to worry about, but first came my survival, which was all that remained in my fragile control.
And yet, burning welled behind my eyes as I searched across the surface of the water with every breath, alternating sides as I swam. Every so often, I’d stop entirely and rotate around in a complete circle, methodically searching every degree before me. To no avail.
Nothing. My chute had sunk, likely pulled down by the weight of the harness.
Had Alec’s sunk too? With his weight in it?
I pinched my eyes shut and resumed stroking, refusing to give further thought to the notion.
Alec couldn’t be dead. A man so alive, so vibrant—the one who’d taught me how to live—couldn’t be gone.
Familiar agony assaulted me, ripping off old scars from the past. Of someone stolen away from me by circumstances beyond my control.
But had they been this time?
I was the one who’d suggested—practically ordered—the plane to become a weapon.
After another few strokes, a crushing weight began to press in on me.
The real world taunted me with vivid sensations. Salty ocean water coated my lips. The cloudless blue sky radiated warmth. A single gull’s cry instigated half a dozen replies in kind. With the rise and drop of each swell, I caught glimpses of activity unfolding in lazy beach time. Although I couldn’t see detail from this distance, my mind filled in the gaps: waitstaff carrying trays laden with drinks and bowls of colorful fruits, resort guests in bright swimsuits lounging on beach beds angled toward the sun.
The oblivious world kept on with the charade…
As if a global threat hadn’t been thwarted.
As if a beach house a quarter of a mile south wasn’t being engulfed by flames.
As if two evil masterminds, father and son, hadn’t been killed, their plan destroyed.
“As if a great man hadn’t sacrificed himself for them…for me,” I murmured, disgusted by it all. That I still lived, in spite of the chaotic mess. That I still lived…
A choking cramp seized my throat. A sob tore free. Hot tears streamed down my cheeks as I mourned the incredible loss. Of my sister. Of my parents. My friend, Anna. Alec.
I was no longer oblivious. The darkest lie was the one I’d conned myself into believing. That I could swath myself in darkness and be the wiser wolf on a planet full of ignorant sheep. But I’d really been a sheep in wolf’s clothing, kidding myself into being unaffected by it all. I suffered. I bled. And if I stumbled unsuspecting into a river too deep, I’d drown.
Heart heavy with anguish, I swam into a colder patch of water and stayed there, soaking in the deeper blue that soothed me like the darkness had always done. On a defeated exhalation, I let my strongly treading limbs slow, let the cold seep in, let bleaker thoughts take hold.
What if I didn’t keep swimming? Would it be so hard to succumb to the pain? Could the satisfaction of vengeance be enough? What did I have to live for, anyway? Who waited for me? What new set of lies would I be buying into if I chose to go on?
Long seconds ticked by before I exhaled a heavy breath, ready. Nothing remained for me.
A colder current licked across my thighs seconds before something brushed against me.
A shark?
How poetic. I would die at the hands of a natural predator. But in the circle of life, I welcomed a species governed by pure instinct, a creature unable to deceive.
A splashing sound slapped the water. I closed my eyes and relaxed, bracing myself for impact. I tipped back, floating, submerging the backside of my head, my ears. Water lapped over my face. Sounds faded to the background, muted by the deep mass of the ocean and rushing blood that pulsed through my veins past my eardrums.
Another second passed.
Another.
Nothing happened.
Was that how life ended? Peaceful…but unremarkable?
Despair coursed through me. In a world where everything turned out to be against me, I couldn’t even seem to die right.
“You okay?”
Am I dead?
No reply came to my mental question.
I startled upright, then sputtered out water I’d sucked into my lungs. A coughing fit followed. After my third lung-clearing hack, something hard thwacked my back. My teeth rattled from the jarring impact.