𝐀𝐈𝐍'𝐓 𝐍𝐎 𝐆𝐑𝐀𝐕𝐄 ( tlou.. )

002 | 𝘼𝘽𝙊𝙐𝙏 𝙎𝙐𝙍𝙑𝙄𝙑𝘼𝙇..

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📻 — CHAPTER TWO ..
' about survival '

          SKYDIVERS LIKE TO SAY, "It's not the fall that gets you, but the sudden stop at the bottom". While falling draws with itself several factors which determine by the field between seconds odds of survival, really its just a matter of how the contact is made with the final surface and what sort of surface will brace the impact. 

Wendy's half advantage was the fact that the initial impact with the ladder had been strong enough to knock her out cold, consciousness concretely insufficient in presence for her to act on the comprehension of quickly descending into abysmal darkness. 

Taking out the ability to tense her muscles and get them susceptible to ruptures in tissue that would incapacitate her, as well as the overall prevention of a series of bad instincts one might have during a free fall on an unknown distance, the first hit was the most important part of the nightmare that followed.

Survival, per say, is an instinct shared by all living things and humans are no exception to its display, making self-preservation a cornerstone to why ten years after the CBI changed the face of the world humanity was not yet wiped out of existence. But a human mind benefits from consciousness, morality, complex cognitive behaviors that can question the rapid action of a survival instinct, even deconstruct the righteousness behind it based on a series of fear factors which bottom line, might turn the goal of survival around. 

To survive in this world required a certain level of unconsciousness. 

From that haze which followed the hit, Wendy now remembered in a distant, absent throaty groan only fragments of different levels of pain. At some point, she could picture the sharp tip of a rod standing out of the hole's wall. The cold chill on her arms confirmed that she had lost her jacket to it, while a sting at the back of her scalp told her the rod may have collected some superficial skin too while decelerating her fall substantially. 

Without being able to picture what happened in between, her awakening brain filled the gap with the most plausible assumption: since her jacket was not fully zipped up, her weight dragged her down and out of it.

Then, the haze of unconsciousness clearly recalled a wooden pallet and a violent splash of water. A spasm in her left arm stood witness to the fact that a wooden pallet floating in the underground sewage system has played sponge to her fall. 

The final stage to waking up was the inevitable inhale which marked the opening of her eyes, at which point, water got trapped in Wendy's nose and all her unconscious state has shielded her from came crashing in not one by one, but all at once: the current of the water stream, the bottom of the sewer system facing her, the spasms in her oxygen deprived body and the blood cloud growing thicker and surrounding her right leg.

Before taming her instincts, they took over and Wendy let out a scream of terror. Water diluted only a nuance of its intensity while air bubbles surrounded her face in a mockery of all the oxygen she just lost. 

Frantically looking down Wendy saw the metal which pierced through her muscle. With hands desperately grasping at it at first, the decision was instantaneous to bite her tongue and push her palms into the littered ground and with the help of her good left leg, pull her right one off the metal.