The rain began to come down in painful sheets like bullets from the sky, stinging any bare skin vulnerable to the harsh conditions. It angered the ocean, made it trash and twist in ways that didn't seem possible, trying its damndest to throw the lone speedboat skipping along its waves over any way it could manage. In the distance, an island grew bigger and bigger as the boat neared, but the mountainous silhouette against the flashes of lightning were the least of the passengers' concerns; instead, they were focused on the small army just on their heels.
Theodora glanced over her shoulder, knuckles pale around the grip of the steering wheel, as Sam and Nathan loaded fresh clips of lead into the pistols from their holsters, shielding their eyes from the lamps swinging from the approaching boats. Shouts from strangers were just audible over the shotgun-crack of thunder rippling over their heads and the howling of the ocean beneath them.
"Just keep goin'," called Sam when he saw her looking. "Don't stop for anything. We can't let them get there first."
As if on cue by his words, a round of bullets sprayed themselves into the side of their boat and the flush of a muzzle announced itself to the right. One of the waves dropped low and revealed one of the Shoreline boats had snuck up on them without warning. The brothers ducked beneath the side and Theodora lowered her head, keeping her gaze just high enough to see where she was going. She had no idea how to drive a boat, only that the jerks she gave the wheel turned it slow and the stick beneath her other grip made it go faster. She made quick use of it when Sam and Nathan let their own rounds fly and the driver of the other boat dropped.
One of the windshield wipers was torn off its tiny hinge when a monstrous wave crashed against the boat and all three stumbled, trying to catch their footing. A Shoreline speeder peeled up on their other side and the glass on Theodora's right shattered as it took a hit or ten from an automatic; fragments shining in the bouncing lamplights looked like gems dangling from a chandelier as they slid across the deck and were thrown into the air with every bounce and wave. One sliced the skin across her hand on the steering wheel and she raised it to her mouth in attempt to swallow some of the blood.
Nathan's shout of "Heads up!" only reached her ears a split moment before another boat slammed into their left side with the force of a semi truck. Their vehicle nearly flipped onto its side and they all slipped, scrambling to recover when Shoreline mercenaries hit their deck. The sounds of fists against skin hit her just after an arm wrapped around her neck and yanked her back from the wheel. She gasped for air and her boots stamped against the floorboard as she fought, the boat wavering off course with no one steering it; only the waves guided it now, back and forth toward the approaching island.
Theodora reached a blind hand back and found the face of the man restraining her, fingers curling around his nose, eyes, anything she could get a hold of. His free hand threw a rock-solid punch into her side and she thrashed violently, bucking her hips up and out, like a child throwing a tantrum. Her grip caught something on his belt and she pulled it back, bringing it into view; she had pulled a hand grenade from its pin on his belt. His own hold on her neck loosened and she panted for breath, turning on her hip and shoving the live explosive into his hands, then shoved with all her night and sent him tumbling backwards into the ocean. Just a second or two later, the sea gave a great boom and spewed a fountain of water and fragments into the air.
"Oh, my god!" said Sam.
She followed his gaze, sliding back to the wheel, and at once began to scramble the other way. The biggest boat they had seen yet, the little sister of some goddamn ice breaker, came emerging from the grey mass of sea and salt directly towards them from the right. Its hull made contact with the speedboat and absolutely shredded it, sending the rest of it hurdling up and back. The trio were thrown off their feet and tumbled off in all different directions into the churning ocean.
Theodora fell into the water and at once felt as though she were a sock in a washing machine; unable to see a thing, being pulled this way and that. Eyes burning something awful, she kicked her way back up to the top and forced them to open against the stinging pain. She saw nothing through her heavy eyelashes but the dark, swirling sky and the waves attempting with all their might and then some to yank her back under. They succeeded, and the rolling wake of one of the boats dragged her beneath the waves like she was nothing but a pebble tossed into a roaring river.
Inhaling a lungful of water, her body screamed bloody murder and she felt her heart pick up even further, if that was possible, as panic was pumped through her veins. She didn't know which way was up nor down, and she was trying so hard, too hard, to find it. Energy ran out and her limbs tingled with outlandish-feeling pins and needles as she kicked with whatever she had left. It wasn't much.
Theodora felt her head pounding as hard as the ocean waves somewhere above her and the thunderstorm bearing witness to the violent assault. Her limbs got harder and harder to move, no matter how hard she tried, and eventually her body relaxed against what she attempted to tell it. But then she couldn't tell it anything, she couldn't think anything, because there was nothing.
Nothing.
Except a light.
A dim light above her somewhere, over her head. Over her body. Voices she recognized talking nonsense from everywhere and nowhere. In her head. Laughter and shouts, and there was something so warm, so comforting about it, that she forgot all about the sinking sensation surrounding her.
YOU ARE READING
lie to me → s.d.
Fanfiction" aren't you supposed to be dead?" " aren't you supposed to be my girl? " in which theodora thatcher must come to terms with the fact that her ex, after a tragic accident, is still alive and begging her to save his life one mo...
