Chapter Twenty Nine
“ARGH!” SHE screamed, continuing to grab at the side of her head in agony. “STOP HER!”
SHE pointed a crooked finger towards Shasa, and within seconds a guard rushed across the room and punched my sister in the face. I began to struggle in my bindings, but I couldn’t do anything to prevent the man from pummelling my older sister.
“Stop it!” we all began to cry out and, as soon as SHE had recovered and waved her hand in his direction, the guard did.
SHE composed herself, and wiped the blood from her nose.
“I forgot you could do that, Shasa. I forgot that you’re a murderer, just like me. Seems we have a lot more in common than you’d like to admit,” SHE compliment coldly, “but if you do that again, I’ll blow your brother’s brains out.” SHE clicked her fingers and I suddenly felt the freezing force of a gun barrel pushing against the back of my head.
“This is why you all disgust me. No one should have this power. No one!” Her voice was beginning to become emotional, and SHE started to spin around slowly where she stood, pointing at us all individually. “And I’m going to make sure that your successors are controlled and moderated appropriately. This entire mission has been about creating a new world, one that I will govern! And I spent years planning everything in order to kill two birds with one stone. Well, actually, eight birds with one ship.”
Mr Price began to mumble again, knowing that SHE was referring to him.
“By tomorrow morning, almost all of the Elementals will be dead, and this evening’s events, which will be blamed on Mr Price’s company and country, will begin to set certain things in motion… I have planned everything down to the smallest detail. There will be no mistakes, no slip ups. In five minutes, everything aboard this boat will be at the bottom of the Atlantic. And then, once I kill the Terra Twins, Operation ‘Kickstart’ will begin, bringing about a New Age.”
SHE walked over to Aura, barely acknowledging her presence, but clearly wanting to speak to her. “It pains me to see you like this Aura. Please remember: I loved you once. But your sacrifice will mean a better world for everyone.”
Aura scowled at her mother, years’ worth of hate seeping into a single stare.
“Why don’t you…?”
What Aura said, even though it made no logical sense, included a word that I knew was one of the rudest swear words in the English language. SHE looked confused, almost angry.
“I didn’t raise you to speak like that young lady.”
“You didn’t raise me at all.”
SHE looked hurt, but only for a split second, as she instantly changed back to her emotionless self.
“It’s time to go,” SHE ordered her guards.
The hard steel left my temple as the soldiers walked backwards towards the door, continuing to point their weapons at us. Just as SHE was at the door, she addressed us all for the final time.
“I was going to kill you all now, and give you a quick death, but I think I’ll just make you suffer. It’s the cruel thing to do.”
And with that, she was gone, and so were her guards; the door slamming shut behind them.
“We’ve got no time to lose,” Shasa began quickly; “We can get out of here, as long as we’re fast.”
“What do you mean?” Gamba wondered.
“While she was babbling on, I was thinking of a way to escape.”
“Please, please get me out of here,” Mr Price begged, having somehow slipped his gag from his mouth so that he could speak.
“Gamba, you have to send your geysers through the steel; Madz, you help to rip open a hole with your plants; I’ll move the water current to push us up to the surface.”
“What about us?” Niyol asked helplessly.
“Do whatever you can,” Shasa told him.
“Are you okay?” Visola asked the three Ventus siblings.
Sefarina shook her head, Niyol seemed to ignore the question, but Aura shrugged as best she could in her constraints. “Whatever.”
Mr Price stood to his feet, his hands still tied behind his back. His large stomach jiggled with his sudden change in position, and his gaze shifted to Shasa.
“If you get me out of here, I’ve got a motorboat, on the pier, just round the corner from where this ship was docked. The keys are in my pocket. If one of you can drive it, then we can go wherever you want, as long as I get outta this country.”
“I can drive it,” I answered honestly, “But do you really expect us to help you escape from the police after what you’ve planned to do?”
Mr Price was unruffled. “I can give you anything you want. Anything.”
Just as I was hypothetically considering what ‘anything’ entailed, the door to the room slammed open, and in walked SHE with one of her guards, who rushed over to me and returned the gun to my forehead. SHE strolled quickly over to Mr Price, and unfastened a knife from her belt, pushing it against his neck.
“There’s one thing I forgot to do.”
SHE then pulled the knife as hard as she could, and a sickening squelch rung out as Mr Price’s throat was cut open. I shut my eyes as fast as I could so that I didn’t have to see the Texan Tycoon’s fate. I heard him cry out as he gurgled loudly, choking and coughing while large streams of blood spattered against the floor underneath him, until he eventually fell to the ground with a heavy thud.
“I never liked that man,” SHE added, before clicking her fingers and once again leaving the room. This time she locked the door behind her.
I opened my eyes and tried to avoid looking down, but it was hard not to. I saw the blood, which was making its way towards me, and Mr Price’s lifeless body lying face down. If only there was some salt water in here, and if I had my hands unbound, I could try to save him…
I suddenly thought about the other person who had died today, and was incredibly upset. I could have saved Captain Harris too, if only I had found the right wound... But I didn’t, and he had died. And it was all my fault.
“Gamba!” Shasa cried out trying to be as calm as possible, “Just try to get us out of here!”
“I can’t!” Gamba screamed, “The walls are too thick! I can’t breach them!”
“But we’ll drown!” Sefarina wailed, “If the water comes in here, we’ll all drown!”
“Just hold your breath!” Shasa order her, “and trust us!”
“But we’re not like you!” Sefarina pleaded, beginning to cry again.
“Don’t worry!” Visola tried to soothe her, but it didn’t work. Aura and Niyol remained silent.
“The plan will work. We can do this.” Shasa may have been in denial, but it was worth a shot. I reached down into the depths of the sea, and tried to find some plant life. It wasn’t long before I found a huge wad of seaweed growing directly beneath us. There was also some botanic material attached to the side of the boat, which I knew that I could instantly make grow. I began to focus on the tiny molecules within the roots and stems of the thousands of individual plants, and grabbed water particles from the sea around them, encouraging and nurturing them to grow… It was a much harder task to do at such a distance, but I had been practising for a long time, just in case of an emergency.
And this was definitely an emergency.
“I’ll count to three Gamba. Then you send in a jet of water, and I’ll get us out of here. Everyone hold your breath.”
“I don’t think I can do it!”
“Yes you can! Just concentrate!”
I continued to focus on the vegetation under the ship, as everyone else braced themselves for the room to be suddenly flooded with water from Gamba’s geyser.
“One. Two. Th…”
But before Shasa could even complete her countdown, a savage quake rocked us all, sending myself and my sister to the floor. The side of my head hit the metal ground and was instantly covered in blood, which wasn’t my own. The boat continued to shake from side to side, as a huge explosion resonated around us. It was as if
we were being swallowed up by the sound and vibrations of a bomb that had been detonated, somewhere within the ship.
As Shasa and myself somehow pulled ourselves back into a seated position, I noticed it. The water. At first it was just a trickle, then a puddle, but very quickly, it was a fast flowing stream, rushing from underneath the door that was our only way out of the steel cell. Within seconds my sister and I were waist deep in freezing ocean water.
Niyol, Sefarina and Aura all began to scream, and I began to panic. Even though we could hold our breath for a long time, we were not aquatic. We had to breathe oxygen at some point.
And that’s when I suddenly realised that SHE had been right all along.
We were all going die.