Eva hoped the overturned boat would have trapped air in the cabin, but it hadn’t. It must have turned over too slowly, allowing water to fill the cabin space before it capsized. She thought air might be trapped deeper inside, but it was dark and she had no light. She swam quickly back to the surface.
She checked on Visitor.
“Nothing. Sorry,” she told him, speaking English. He still hung unconscious from the railing where she’d attached him. “You stay with me, okay? I’ll find something.” But she knew she wouldn’t. Or couldn’t.
Being under the capsized boat, being in a small, dark, confined space, felt too similar to other small, dark spaces where Eva had been confined. She couldn’t go back.
“You’re a useless agent, Eva Gilliam,” she said and leaned her head against the hull of the boat and looked at Visitor.
His hair wasn’t as dark as his sister’s; it was more a dirty brown. His eyes were dark when opened. They often looked at her with a mature intensity that made him seem older than he looked. Which was about twenty-four or twenty-five. That made Eva three or four years older than he was, unless she counted the two and a half years she spent traveling.
Eva had turned thirty and hadn’t even been awake for it!
Or maybe she’d turned thirty while she was in prison. That would have been a wonderful birthday. Had she had her birthday?
She suddenly felt lost in time. She had no idea what time it was on Earth. And did time dilation come into effect? Astronauts were milliseconds younger than if they’d stayed on Earth. She’d traveled all the way to Hrwang, wherever it was. It was a lot farther than Mars. Had she aged a little less?
She allowed her mind to wander. She didn’t want to go back under the boat.
“You have to, Eva,” she finally told herself after staring at the burning island for a while, no longer worrying about how old she was, relative or absolute, no longer thinking about anything, or caring about anything. “You can’t hang on this upside down boat forever.”
She couldn’t.
She’d get tired. She needed water. She’d need sleep.
They couldn’t climb up on the hull because it was too steep. Visitor couldn’t climb on anything, anyway. He was still unconscious.
She put her ear close to his mouth. He breathed, but it felt shallow and sounded raspy. He needed treatment.
Had there been a radio on board?
She couldn’t remember one. She wouldn’t be able to use it anyway, even if there had been one. And there might not have been. It was such a small boat and the Hrwang’s maritime capabilities seemed to lag Earth’s significantly. The boat didn’t have a lot of the safety features, like simple GPS navigation, that she’d recalled on the boat she’d gone sailing on in college.
Even the drunken idiots who’d owned that boat had been more prepared for a problem than Visitor was.
When was it going to get dark?
She had to go under again.
Just do it, she told herself.
She closed her eyes, breathed consciously for a moment, opened her eyes and put her hand gently on Visitor’s face.
He rescued her and she wanted to return the favor.
She took a deep breath and ducked under the water.
She had to do everything by feel. There may have been lights in the cabin, but she hadn’t entered it when the boat had been right side up. She had no idea what it looked like or what to expect. She wasn’t sure she’d know what a light switch looked like even if she saw one. The aliens did everything differently.
Eva began feeling dizzy. She swam back down, then up, and hit her head on the deck.
She was trapped.
She almost gasped in fear. How close she was to death terrified her. Which direction did she swim? Everything was dark. If she swam the wrong way, she’d have to go the length of the boat before she could surface for air.
She kept swimming in the direction she thought she’d been swimming. She put her hands out in front of her and went up again, feeling the boat, then feeling it end. She surfaced, panting for air.
She’d never realized before how dangerous it was to swim under a capsized boat.
It took Eva a while to gather the courage to try again. She moved down the hull to about the point the cabin entryway was, then ducked under again. She felt her way quickly to the entryway and went in. She decided that if no air had been trapped in the cabin, she’d never find anything, so she’d focus on determining that.
She felt her way along the ceiling; the floor actually, she reminded herself. She also focused on keeping herself oriented. She had to know the way back out or she’d trap herself again. She’d avoided death in a dark, confined space twice, the Agency safe house and the Hrwang prison, and she wasn’t going to die in one now.
Her hands suddenly felt different.
She moved a little deeper into the cabin and it definitely felt like they were free of the water. She cautiously poked her head up. She had to angle her face, she felt like she was kissing the deck, but she could breathe. The boat had trapped a little air.
They had a chance now.
She searched the cabin methodically in the dark, constantly worried about how much air she had. Would she breathe all of it, replacing oxygen with carbon dioxide, and asphyxiate? What would the symptoms be?
She tried to remember from scuba training.
Irritability.
Check.
Panic.
Check.
Confusion.
Check.
It was hopeless. She’d never know if she was asphyxiating.
She continued searching in the dark, feeling her way through the cabin between breaths. She opened cupboards, rooted through compartments, and tried to guess what she was touching. She found another life vest and several plastic bottles that she hoped held water. She found a bag.
She didn’t find flares.
Having had enough of the dark confinement, Eva took a deep breath and made her way carefully toward the cabin entryway, towing the bag with the bottles and her life vest in it.
She panicked a little when she stumbled at the entryway. She already felt light-headed. She dove down to get out from under the boat. When she thought she’d swum far enough, she kicked strong, panic gripping her again. She surfaced and gasped.
She was on the other side of the boat from Visitor. She’d swim to him, get her life vest on, get a drink from one of the bottles and try to help him drink, then figure out a way to get them somewhere useful. Even though from her viewpoint, the entire island looked ablaze, it couldn’t be that bad. Something had to be left. Someone had to have survived.
With both of them having life vests, she could tow Visitor to the island. It would take hours, but they couldn’t just hang out in the ocean. They had to get to land.
All her calculations changed when she saw the Hrwang combat craft hovering in the air above them.
Eva swam quickly toward Visitor as a hatch cycled on the side of the craft and someone’s arm stuck out.
She stubbornly towed her bag with her even though it slowed her down.
She wondered briefly if the craft was friend or foe. She decided it didn’t matter. If they were on the side of whoever dropped the meteor on Visitor’s island and were at the boat to finish the job of killing them, there was nothing she could do about it. If they were here to rescue them, then Visitor could get to a hospital and they were saved.
A man jumped into the water.
She raced now, her heart pounding, and reached Visitor’s side before the man. She wanted to move between Visitor and the man from the combat craft, but she knew she was in no condition for a fight in open water. She clung to the hull, tensing.
“Hello,” he called out in Est when he was about ten feet from them. He wore a light gray vest and goggles. Eva coul
dn’t see rank anywhere, but he still looked military.
“Thank you for saving us,” she gushed. As soon as she said the words, she felt anger at herself. She couldn’t help it. She always tried to manipulate men. It had become a bad habit. She resolved to turn off whatever charm she had left as a bald woman with a square scar on her head and face.
It didn’t look like he was ever any closer as he swam until he was right next to them.
She shook her head. She was tired.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
She nodded.
“And him?”
“Still breathing.”
Talking in Est again felt strange, a little awkward, after she’d spent so much time speaking in English. It was as if she had to mentally shift gears in her head from first to reverse.
The man got next to Visitor, pushed his head up to get a look at his face, and swore.
At least Eva thought he was swearing. She didn’t understand any of the words he said.
He began frantically waving at the craft, and a basket stretcher appeared at the hatch and began lowering down.
“Stay right here,” he said and swam to where the basket would land in the water.
He grabbed it and the vehicle moved, allowing him to tow the stretcher back to Visitor.
“Help me unhook him.”
Eva nodded. She began undoing the top buckle, the one that held the harness strap that she’d looped through the railing.
“Hold him,” the man instructed when Visitor was free. He pushed the basket stretcher underwater and maneuvered it under Visitor. “Try to stretch him out.”
Eva did the best she could. Water rescues looked a lot easier on film.
They finally managed to lay him on the stretcher with his head above water, and the rescuer strapped him in. He pushed off from the hull. Eva watched as he signaled again, and the cable attached to the stretcher began winding in. When the cable was taut, the man climbed up on the side of the stretcher and signaled again.
The cable rose.
Eva put on her life vest while she watched the slow motion rescue, the basket stretcher turning as it was raised to the Hrwang combat craft.
In the movies, the water at a rescue was always choppy as helicopter blades beat the air. The Hrwang combat craft didn’t put out nearly as much turbulence.
She pulled a bottle out of her bag. Water. Relieved, she drank until it was half empty.
The stretcher reached the craft.
The rescuer climbed through the open hatch, then hands reached out to grasp the stretcher. Rescue helicopters had their winch above the doorway, making it easier to bring stretchers and people inside. The Hrwang craft had its winch inside, meaning the stretcher would become trapped under the vehicle.
A pole came out of the hatch and pushed against the stretcher. It came away from the vehicle and level with the hatch.
They pulled it inside.
The hatch closed.
“Umm,” Eva complained. Were they going to leave her?
She thought about waving to make sure the pilot remembered her, when the hatch cycled open again and the cable was dropped in the water once more. Something, not the stretcher, was attached to the end. Eva began swimming as quickly as she could, still stubbornly towing her bag behind.
She thought about dropping it, but couldn’t. She didn’t own a thing on this world, and the bag was all she possessed.
It took too long to get to the end of the cable, and she almost let go of the bag, but talked herself out of it. They could wait.
She hoped.
Finally reaching it, she recognized a simple sling harness. She put her arms through it, held her bag on the other side, and gave a thumbs up. The harness tightened around her and she felt it tugging uncomfortably. It pulled her up.
Eva was not afraid of heights and had rappelled from helicopters before. But she didn’t like the sensation of being hoisted up by the flimsy harness to the Hrwang vehicle. Higher and higher, the capsized boat hull growing smaller, and Eva could finally hear the whine of the engines.
Hands grabbed her and pulled her inside the hatch unceremoniously.
“Thank you,” she said, crawling inside on hands and knees.
Visitor lay in a corner of the craft, still on the stretcher, something over his face. Two men worked on him. The hatch closed behind her and another man led her to a jump seat.
“Did anyone else get off the island with you?” he asked when she was settled.
Eva shook her head, no. She pulled the bag up on her lap, hugging it. It was a simple, tan-colored, woven, oversized beach bag, but it was her only possession in the world now.
“How did you get off so quickly? You wouldn’t have had much warning.”
Eva shook her head again.
“We were already off the island.” What did she call him? Her designation of Visitor would mean nothing to them. “He took me sailing.”
“We looked for survivors,” the man said. Eva saw genuine pain in his eyes. He looked away from her. “Every building was flattened by the blast. It must have been an airburst.”
“It was a meteor,” Eva said. She bit her tongue before adding, “like the ones you dropped on my planet.”
He nodded.
“I’m told sometimes they don’t impact the ground, but explode in the air instead,” he explained.
“Oh,” Eva replied.
“I don’t think anyone lived. After we drop you off at the hospital, we’ll keep searching.”
“Thank you,” Eva said again.
He nodded back, then looked over at Visitor.
“Was he drowning?” he asked.
Eva nodded.
“We thought so. He has water in his lungs. But you saved him.”
Eva smiled a little. She had saved him. And they had saved her.
He stood and retrieved a blanket. He handed it to her.
“It is winter in this hemisphere. You’ll be cold.”
Eva took it and wrapped it over her shoulders.
“Will he be okay?” she asked.
“We think so.” He teared up a little. “Thank you.”
“Lady,” he added.
Eva nodded again.
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