by L. B. Carter
Air shoved from his lungs in a thunder of bubbles, and his eyes rose to the light of the surface above as they rolled back, the wafting fan of her singed hair that floated across his face fading to black.
Chapter Thirteen
The impact with the water was awakening, revamping Henley’s system like an electrical jolt from a defibrillator in a hospital room. Her ears remained muted, a mixture of residual ringing and the dampening effect of water. She opened her eyes to find only murky blue and bubbles—lots of bubbles, as her body turned over, and she tried to get her bearings.
Surface, she needed the surface.
But movement was a sharp stab of agony. Even the water was ruthless, cooling as it was after the heat that had faded as it burned through her nerves, and her adrenal gland thrust a blanket over it with an urgent and potent dose. It had all faded at that point.
She peered around, acknowledging gratefully that her eyes still worked. The smoke and fire had not destroyed that sense. Henley finally noticed light and, with horror, watched it darken. It was not a rapid sunset. She was sinking, stiffness from reluctance to move and, simply, physical damage to her body were limiting her ability to swim.
She willed her arms to move, but they didn’t respond. No, that wasn’t true. She peeked over, sight blurry, almost afraid to look. She lost a few more bubbles at the relief of seeing her hand there though the coloring was bright like a tomato, and her skin was already bubbling, even missing in some places. That hand was making a meager attempt at circular motions, her crisped fingers splayed wide, doing little to propel her upward. The other hand was unresponsive to her brain’s triggers.
That wasn’t right. With her new invention, its workings were protected from water damage. It must be that the little charge had worn out. Perfect timing, Henley thought sardonically, humor coming in to give her gallows horror an ungentle pat to the head like a child, new to interactions with dogs.
Wait, where was Buster? She knew he’d grabbed her. The Bus would plow through something as inconsequential as a fireball to get what he wanted. Why it was Henley she didn’t know. He’d come back for her, chased her down, directly into a raging forest fire. Oh God—
No. She was not thinking about that yet.
Henley twisted her body around in the water column without moving her joints or limbs much. The currents dragged the ragged scraps of her clothing across raw flesh. She didn’t dare look down to appraise that destruction. Before all rational thought had shorted out, her brain had made the connection of her grand mistake: she had still been wearing her dirty shirt from the past several days of travel—the one she’d been wearing while hidden under Jen’s totaled car, staring at Reed and Nor’s feet as the ruptured gas line dripped into the cotton.
There. Dark material swirled just below and to the side of Henley, sinking much more rapidly than she, either due to his increased density over hers, or else her pitiful limbs were doing a better job of keeping her afloat than his.
Why wasn’t he swimming? Even if he didn’t learn, he was smart and could figure out how to traverse in any fluid medium; he knew about buoyancy and friction and fluid dynamics.
She moved to reach for him with the hand that didn’t hurt, remembering as it stretched limply, almost in parting rather than rescue, that it was not functioning.
A glint caught her eye as her brain started to send more urgent requests for oxygen to her lungs, and she clamped sore lips tighter. Drifting her hand closer to her face, she made out several little holes in the black material through which wires and metal workings peeked.
As if she’d swum into a pocket of iced water, she realized her hand hadn’t run out of juice. The fire had eaten through her waterproof coating, and she’d electrocuted him.
Buster was unconscious, and she was handicapped, just like seventeen years ago.
Because, even with four years and eleven months of some of the best schooling, she had not taken into account her own experiences, having shoved them so deep in her mind when designing her project’s functionalities. BTI’s newest, thinnest, most flexible, and cheapest waterproof material, in which she’d managed to add nerve receptors to give their tech safety and improved capabilities, was, in fact, just like any human’s skin.
Humor had wandered off, as did her resistance to death, while depression leaked in at the irony. In reality, she’d matched her design to her original hand. Her goal had always been to eliminate her handicap. Well, she’d done it, and in so doing, proved that her fabricated ‘skin’ was just as susceptible as her organic flesh at deteriorating under the vicious bite of fire.
Just like seventeen years ago… except this time, she’d hurt someone else, too.
∆∆∆
Henley was roused with the sudden rebelling of her insides, her eyes flashing open to see bright sky before spit and regurgitated saltwater leaked across her face, and she shut her lids again as she coughed and choked on her lungs’ rejections, trying to heave oxygen into her body and instead re-inhaling her spit-up.
A hand roughly turned her head to the side, and she vomited and coughed up water a few more times, edging in short, quick inhalations between that cleared the dizziness in her head but scraped up her esophagus like knives, shredding her organs from the inside while on the outside the rough ground on which she lay scratched acidly on her charred skin.
Finally, she stopped expelling and managed to gasp a few shallow breaths that scorched her windpipe like the air was being dragged down into an abyss and using fingernails along the walls to fight the pull. “Wha—” she croaked, the word a hoarse rasp.
“Don’t talk. I can assure you that inhaling saltwater does a lot more damage to your throat than you’d think, even if my kiss of life roused thine lady like sleeping beauty. If only we had a notebook.”
The words were faintly muffled, but Henley’s hearing was returning. Henley tilted her head slightly. Blue eyes.
Nor was kneeling next to her, looking worried even as he joked, more his brother than he’d like to admit, probably.
“Not sure she’s up for writing either,” Sirena’s voice pointed out from somewhere on Henley’s other side.
Her hands! Buster. “Bu—” Like squeezing glue through a semi-solidified opening, she shoved just enough air through her larynx to get half his name out.
“Where is he? Is he in the water too? I didn’t see him.” Nor spoke fast, too fast. “I didn’t even know you had gone in. It’s lucky Stew decided to try to blow the chopper and failed miserably, forcing us all to dive off the bridge.”
Henley ignored his ramble. “Un—con—shu’.” Henley closed her eyes again, not wanting to see Nor’s face. She weakly lifted her hand.
There were audible gasps.
“I didn’t know—” Sirena cut herself off.
“Shock,” Henley explained hoping they understood that she meant he was shocked, not that they were likely shocked to see her hand without the glove that hid her secret. She painfully swallowed down the urge to cough, knowing it would be even more awful. She was trying to move as little as possible.
“We might be too late. I can’t get him to the surface fast enough. Rena—” Nor broke off, his voice brightening with an idea.
“No,” she said.
“Rena,” he pleaded.
There was a long silence. Henley presumed there was some facial conversation ongoing because Sirena gave a few huffs and negative noises.
“I can’t,” she insisted, a little give squelching around her adamant bravado. “I’ll kill him.”
“You won’t. You didn’t kill me.”
“That was different.” Her voice was rising, losing its edge as panic turned it to pliable jelly. “You were different.”
“So is this. This time you need to do the reverse.”
“The—?” Sirena gasped. “The reverse! I—I don’t know if I can. I’ve never… never done that before. Never saved anyone.”
“It’s now or never, Rena. I believe in you. Believe in
yourself.”
Her breath whooshed in and out freely.
Henley was jealous. Each expansion and contraction of her lungs was hell for her ribcage and her airway. She wanted it all to go away. But she was grasping at alertness to hear of Bus’s fate.
“Go,” Nor added. “I’ll be right here waiting for you to get back. Focus on that.”
There was a rustle—Sirena standing since her voice next came from farther away. “You’d better be.” The threat was neither light-hearted nor vicious with her apprehensive warble.
“Or else I get another punch to the nose, I know.”
Sirena let out a soft laugh.
Then there was more silence. Or perhaps Henley had fallen asleep. She was very tired, her body frayed and broken, nerves wrung out, muscles depleted, brain empty. Heavy eyelids dripped down, closing the sky. As painful as the shivers were, which could either be attributed to shock or the dampness of her clothes, as they grated tender areas on chafing gravel and jerked resistant joints that were locked and begging for lubrication, they did nothing to invigorate her consciousness.
“Rena will get him,” Nor promised, bolstering confidence against the anxious wait.
Professor Tate’s biologic creation was never finished undergoing experiments.
Oh, where was Professor Tate? Henley stamped that from her mind, the mere consideration exhausting her depleted reserves.
This was only trial one for Sirena, whatever it was she was doing. Though she might be capable as Nor believed, or at least affirmed, most studies required many repetitions and tweaks to accomplish an intended purpose, especially when it involved fragile human life. Henley wanted to hope, but in her delirium and depression, the statistical side of her mind output the possibility of Buster returning as quite low.
Unable to cope with mourning too, she powered down like one of her own technological creations.
Chapter Fourteen
Ace came to with a punch to the stomach that was familiar. The lips on his weren’t.
He inhaled, startled, and his kissing partner gave a startled squeak… but it was oddly distant like she was far away, yet he felt her right against him, his hands against her back and her legs wrapped around his waist. The shutter in his head lifted as she pressed her mouth tighter to his… blowing.
In response to his reflexes awakening, his throat sealed off and cheeks puffed slightly like accidentally releasing some of a balloon’s air back into your mouth when attempting to blow it up. His eyes opened to see the same weird blue-green that had assessed him thoroughly on the bridge before disappearing into a helicopter.
Ace jerked back, Sirena’s legs ripped from him, and steady bubbles streamed between them before she clamped off the air she’d been releasing.
Sirena. The experiment. Doing… whatever she did to him. Henley. Where was Henley? He somersaulted about, but his vision was already starting to fade on the edges. The experiment had given him some air but it wasn’t enough oxygen to revitalize him entirely.
Sirena swam in front of him and pointed up toward the surface then grabbed one of his hands and spun around, essentially wrapping his hand across her chest from behind.
Instinctively, he pulled back from the intimate touch, but she clamped on to his wrist and lifted her other hand, waiting for him to place the left one across her.
Ace spared another moment to look about, seeing only murky blue. There weren’t even any fish or other strange bodies, and the sea was surprisingly deep here, hiding the seafloor. Had he drifted in his unconsciousness?
Sirena half turned to shove another punch to his abdomen, in slow motion and weak underwater, with his other arm still clamped in her grip. She was stronger than him in his current state. She stabbed a finger upward a few more times, her eyes wide, trying to convey something. If only he could read her like he could Henley. Their minds were almost osmotic.
He presumed that’s who she was referring to. Perhaps she meant only the direction of the surface, thinking him confused.
Either way, he obliged, offering his other arm, which she crossed over the first and then began to kick, shooting them surprisingly fast through the water, given her small size and the extra dead weight she carried. He was also detrimental to her stream-lined physique.
Nevertheless, they breached, both gasping dramatic breaths, and Ace quickly let go lest he drag her under.
He treaded water for a moment, getting his bearings. The shore was a distant horizon to the left, visible as a skyline of towering pines, the right end of which was smoldering, a shadow of dark gray smoke curling lackadaisically into the sky. Below that was the edge of the bridge… or where the bridge should be.
Instead, there was a gaping hole, and several cars were also on fire. He recognized the sound of car alarms and glanced upward, seeing no helicopter. What had he missed?
He looked back to Sirena, but she was gone. She was already swimming toward shore, not waiting to see if he was all right and could keep up.
“Sirena,” he gasped, trying a slow doggy paddle after her ripples. He couldn’t tell if he was actually gaining any ground. “Sirena,” he called louder.
She pulled up and turned, treading water, only her head visible. Her eyes were wide, panicked, and her hair was a darker green now that it was wet, making her look truly mermaid-like.
“I… can’t swim,” he admitted. The functions all made sense to him, the physics, the dynamics. However, his saturated clothing and diminished energy were unsurmountable factors, it seemed. And time was of the essence to get to Henley.
She looked over her shoulder at the shore. “Nor…” She looked back and gave a little growl like a kitten. “Don’t do anything to slow me down.”
“Of course.” They had the same goal.
He resumed his position as backpack, and she started off, slower than before with the heightened friction and lower buoyancy at the surface.
After a while, Sirena began to puff, and her mouth was dropping below the water line, sputtering out seawater with each stroke that lifted her chin above.
“Veer for the bridge,” he instructed into her ear, and she hesitated only a moment, staring longingly at the shoreline where Ace presumed Nor was before adjusting a few degrees to the right.
The segmented bridge no longer permitted access from one side of the seaway to the other, a large section having dropped, sunken in just near where they’d been facing off with Professor Tate. The brittle droop produced two ramps just beyond two sets of supports that extended deep into the sea. The one toward the longer remaining fraction of the bridge was closest to them and, incidentally, less inclined than the other.
They reached the slabs of concrete, and Ace shifted his grip to a thin fracture on the edge of a block. From this view, looking up, it appeared vertical. One car perched precariously on the edge of the far side, teetering on its undercarriage, front wheels unsupported. They would have to stay to the right.
“What now?” Sirena asked, still catching her breath after her exertions, assessing their route with him.
Ace analyzed all the cracks like a rock climber planning his next footholds. “Follow me,” he told her. “But wait until I’m situated to advance to the next stopping point that I’ll call out to you, in case I need to backtrack quickly.”
She nodded.
He paused to eye her thin arms gripping the crumbling crack next to him. “I assume you’re not too tired?” he asked.
“I’ve got upper body strength,” she replied, offended. “I box,” she reminded.
Ace doubted very much that any fighting practice she’d done had lent to her strength; Jen could confirm if it was a genetic trait. He decided to go for it. They couldn’t stay where they were. This short climb would be less strenuous for her than carrying his weight the next stretch of sea to the shore.
For the moment, Ace diverted his entire focus to choosing finger holds and pulling his body upwards, the angle just enough that his stomach slid against the rough surface. He push
ed with his quads, straightening his legs to reach the next rung in his man-made, destruction-formed ladder.
He paused, his fingertips already hurting, reassessing. He hunted for his next reach, then shifted his foot to the crack he’d been using to stay above the water when they first got there. He shoved up quickly, using momentum to stretch his opposite arm to a small piece that was jutting out. His fingers wrapped around the chalky chunk for a brief second before it popped free, tumbling below. A grunt escaped him as three of his remaining fingers caught the brunt of his weight with an additional tug from the sudden release. He looked down.
Sirena was right below him where he’d left her, gazing up at him. He gave a little hop, digging his fingers and toes in deeper, adding his swinging arm to the little divot on which the other was hooked. Either he fell on the girl or the car did. He couldn’t fall.
He took a deep breath and tried again, taking time to assess more stable options. When he reached another few feet up, he called down.
“Use the same footholds, but check their robustness before leveraging your entire weight onto each one; I might have weakened them.”
“Okay,” she responded. He couldn’t look back to check her progress. She was on her own.
Another few rungs, and Ace’s biceps were shaking, his forearms aching. Climbing certainly was a unique strain on those generally unused muscles. Although, constant typing every day at BTI probably was a marginal advantage. Not like boxing… or being a superhuman genetic experiment. Or an android.
The next time Ace looked up, he almost allowed himself to feel relief. He was wise enough to keep tension and avoid slipping. He could hear Sirena’s scrapes just below him. He suspected she wasn’t staying the allotted distance behind. He used that knowledge to stay focused and not get ahead of himself.
Looking back at him were the curious faces and several phones of passengers and drivers who were now more long-term stranded on their commute than they had been due simply to the professor’s hold-up. The tipped plane he was scaling was cracking, and he could hear small hunks still breaking off and tumbling with a splash below like a glacier calving. He needed to hurry. The bystanders were just that. They clustered around the precipice, curious about the couple emerging from the sea, murmuring voices assuming that they’d escaped a sunken vehicle. None of them offered a hand to assist him the last foot.