The helicopter crashed into the canal, creating a towering plume of water that detonated above it like a mushroom cloud.
On impact, her body was thrown out of the side sliding door.
Her trajectory was an inclined cannonball into the canal, her body shot into the deep, cocooned in bubbles.
She came to rest a hundred yards from the helicopter, which floated for a few seconds on the top of the water. It then twisted to one side and sank down, its bulk making an agonized scream as it plunged into the depths. Inside, there was no movement. No sound.
Sara hung, face down, suspended in the water, far below the surface. Lifeless. Her hair floating around her head like seaweed drifting with the tide. A head wound stained the water crimson around her hair like a halo.
Her half-open eyes were glazed, inert: her mouth still open from her last silent scream.
Beneath her semi-closed eyelids, a sense of submission washed over her. Ice-cold water was seeping into her extremities, her fingers and toes becoming numb. The sensation spread through her body, up her legs and down her arms towards her torso.
A gentle resistance came over her, as she found herself drifting down on to the sandy bed of the canal floor. The dust shifted to accommodate her, and she sank into it, sliding down as the canal claimed her.
It covered her like a soft lid.
And in that second, a memory hit her.
The thump of the corkboard as it covered the bath, entombing her child-self in darkness. The dirty, lukewarm water puddling around her. The sense of panic that gripped her chest. Her child sense that she should do what the adults told her. And deep down, another feeling, a certainty that what was happening to her was wrong.
That feeling spread within her now, and a series of sparks ignited in her brain, and for one brilliant second, they illuminated everything, like lightning flashing a landscape seen from a hilltop, every memory, every thought and feeling came back to her. Phoebe, Christian, the dim figures of men next to her mother, the chaos and the joy, and then the tailspin of her escape. Baz returned, as did Lionel Dobbs. And then Phoebe was sitting by the bathtub again, doing her best to protect Sara in the only way she knew. Sara saw this all as she was suspended in that moment, teetering on the edge of permanent sleep. For that second of bliss, she felt whole, reunited with the scattered parts of her self.
A sharp intake of breath sluiced water into her lungs, and her entire body shook. Her eyes opened wide, and she kicked hard, shaking her body, and then twisted around, locating the surface. Now she was fighting, her muscles pushed back, her lungs screamed for air. She kicked her legs with her last remaining energy and clawed her way to the light above her.
She broke the surface with a loud gasp. As she coughed and spluttered, her body violently trying to expel the water from her, her feet wildly kicked out to remain above water.
She remembered everything.