I thought I knew real panic. Not even close. As I plummet towards the water, the panic that surges through me is knife-point sharp.
I’m face up, windmilling my arms. Harlan is still leaning out of the plane, still reaching for me, as if his arm is going to extend and catch me. Then I’m falling, and I find that my mind is capable of only one thought, repeating over and over, Harlan’s voice in my head. Water that cold, it’ll shut your body down in thirty seconds.
I have to stabilise myself, brace for landing, do something. But my tracer instinct, so strong a few moments before, has vanished.
When I hit the water, it’s with a thud so loud that it feels like it cracks my skull open.
It’s as if someone has flicked the switch, turning out all the light in the world. I try to breathe, and suck in a mouthful of seawater. It’s foul, as cold as space itself, but forcing it back out is almost impossible. Somewhere, very distant, the muscles in my back are screaming at me. My lungs are on fire. I’m panicking, thrashing in place. I don’t even know which direction to swim in.
Light. A tiny glimmer, no more. It takes me a good three seconds to get my muscles to push me in the right direction. My chest has turned into a supernova, and with every foot I swim, my vision gets smaller, shrinking down to a tiny circle.
My sight is almost gone when I break the surface.
I breathe too soon, before I’m fully out. I suck in a mouthful of water, coughing and spluttering. My eyes open so wide that it feels like they’re going to tear right off my face.
The water is so cold that it’s as if it’s burning me, scourging my skin. It’s slate-grey, spattered with white foam, hissing like an angry monster. There’s a black shape rising out of it, an uneven jumble of contours.
Fire Island. I have to get there, and I have to get there now.
It takes every ounce of effort I have to keep my body above the icy water, but I manage it, kicking hard to stay afloat. More than once, the panic grips me, like a tentacle threatening to pull me under. I have to fight it off, willing myself to keep kicking, using my hands and forearms to push through the water.
I’m not going to last much longer. The muscles in my back are dull and useless, and the cold is shutting my body down, robbing me of energy. A chemical reaction in my cells. Prakesh would know…
The thought of him makes me force my exhausted arms to keep going. Prakesh is just over the horizon, and Carver, and Okwembu, and I did not come all this way just to drown here.
Kick, stroke, breathe. Kick, stroke, breathe.
Soon, the only sensation I can feel are my trembling lips. I can hear the teeth behind them chattering, my tongue a dead slab of flesh in my mouth.
And then something changes. I try to make a stroke, and my hand bounces back at me.
I keep going. My forearms slam into dirt, and I’m raised up on my knees. I start crawling, and when I fall, face crunching into the dirt, I pull myself along with my hands.
I don’t know how long it is before I stop moving. But I can feel another sensation now: grains of sand, rubbing against my lips.
I’m out of the water. I’m on land. Wonderful, amazing, solid land.
I blink. Or I try to, anyway. The second I close my eyes, I discover that I don’t want to open them again. They feel like they’re welded shut, and what’s behind them is too sweet to turn away from.
Don’t.
It’s the voice–the one at the back of my mind, the angry one, except this time it’s not angry. It’s distraught, crazy with fear, pleading with me. You have to get up.
It’s like waking from a deep sleep, where you’ve stayed in one position all night and your arm or leg has gone dead. I have to focus on my fingers, slowly clenching them into a fist, then pull backwards until I’m resting on the forearm.
I raise my head. A muscle in my shoulder twinges, sending a sharp, shooting pain down my back. I push a clenched, angry noise through gritted teeth and open my eyes.
Black sand gives way to jagged rocks, sloping steeply away from me. I can see plants pushing up between the rocks, but they’re withered and stunted, barely alive. There are a few trees further inland, their branches bare. The sky beyond them is ash-grey, and the only sound is the pounding of the ocean, the steady swish of water around my ankles.
My clothes are soaked. Streams of water fall off me, soaking into the sand. The wind has picked up, and it’s like a blast from an open freezer, chilling me to the bone.
I look at the rocks again. There’s something there, something splayed across them.
Finkler’s neck is broken, his arms twisted at unnatural angles. The shocked expression is still on his face.