Shadow of the Transition

Chapter 7

This time I remembered the nightmare of underwater swimming better. Maybe it was because I knew what to expect; or maybe because of my suspicions aroused by Rick's incomprehensible behavior, I did not lose my vigilance and kept looking back at him.

For the first minute or two we were swimming hard, but then the guy began to lag behind. I returned to him at once, and in the ice-cold, almost black twilight I noticed a strange expression on his pale face. It was then that I realized...

The day before, Rick already knew for sure that there was no way out of our underwater trap. Not one way. Therefore, in the face of imminent death – whether long and painful one, from thirst and hunger, or quick and easy from drowning – he had given us the last day and night of life. Of an almost normal life, with an easy chat, a meal together, sleep, a hope for the future, at least for me, and that touch of the dream for himself... That was all Rick could do. He had done even more than that. First, he had given a little bit of time to both of us; second, he could not help but try even the smallest, elusive chance to find his group; and third, he had saved me from the nightmare of choice, for he himself had chosen the way of our death, the quick one. I saw his vacant stare and the trickles of air coming out of his mouth. What did he see? What did he dream about at his last moment?

I rushed to Rick's slowly sinking body, burning the last of the oxygen in my blood, and grabbed him by the waist. Two or three familiar gray pixels flashed before my eyes, and I happily rushed to meet them. Not physically, but...

I couldn't finish this thought. The furious maelstrom of the Transition was raging around.

***

Reality greeted me with the air rushing into my lungs and ...with the offensive, undeserved pain as my body hit the stones. We were thrown onto concrete debris. I pushed myself up on my scratched hands and bruised knees and heard someone moaning behind me. Rick?!

He was lying on his back, his eyes shut. His wet white skin was not yet covered with the dust that hung in the air after our fall on this rubble of bricks and concrete; his wet pants stuck to his legs, both his palms were pressed to his side and closed the wound from a piece of rebar sticking out nearby, and blood oozed through his fingers. Yet he was alive!

I swallowed the saliva that suddenly turned bitter, and looked at him again. No signs of drowning could be seen, he didn't cough, and his spasmodic breathing could be attributed to the shock of pain. I remembered how my bruises and scratches used to disappear after falling into the zone of instability and returning to our reality. But Rick had gotten this wound in his side already here, upon landing ... I crawled closer to him on all fours along the crumbling pile of stones, and I did what I had wanted to do for so long: I ran my fingers along his stubbled cheek and his short, disheveled hair.

He opened his eyes. "Lady? Are you okay?"

I stroked his cheek, brushed away my tears and looked around. We were in a ruined multi-story building, the same as we had seen underwater, only this one was on dry land. I could see concrete stairs without railings leading up and down, a gap in the middle, and diffused daylight penetrating from above. We were in the center of this world, on the pile of stones. We were alone. There was no help to be expected.

"Lady?" Rick seized my hand with his one, smeared with blood, and pressed it to his cheek. "How glad I am to see you... You know, we Gray Divers say that there's no death. Just one day you go into the Shadow of the Transition deeper than usual, and who knows what awaits you there, on the other side?"

"No," my lips moved silently. No. No, no! I didn't want him to leave, no! The cold water from my hair was dripping onto his face, mixed with my hot tears, and my lips kept whispering: no...

At that moment, a quiet sound of steps was heard, and a muffled human voice called, "Rick? Evelyn?"

"Yes!" Rick's blood began to flow more strongly between his fingers from the effort of answering aloud. "Where are you?!"

In response, stones began to roll down almost on our heads from the top of the blockage on which we were sitting. Apparently, Rick's group was on the other side. It meant that there, underwater, in the last seconds of his life, Rick was thinking not of me, but of his group, and so the faint shadow of the Transition that I had amplified was stretched right here, to his friends.

I jumped on my feet, hitting the toes of my bare feet against the stones, and started dismantling the top of the rubble on our side.

***

A scrawny man in camouflage, with a stubbled face and horribly chapped lips, dragged Rick into the dismantled hole. I crawled in after them. They were already sitting on the other side of the blockage, measuring each other with burning eyes.

"The rest?" Rick asked.

"Still alive, but we must get out as fast as we can. And what about Evelyn?"

"He's at home... probably. But his tracker is here. Wait a minute..."

Rick pulled the crumpled plastic water bottle from his pocket and handled it to his friend. The man took a sip and carefully screwed the lid back on.

"Are the others in the same condition?" Rick asked again.

"Worse. We must leave urgently. We've prepared the Transfer Frame, but we hadn't had enough trackers. Can you walk?"

"I have to," Rick muttered.

Together, we lifted Rick to his feet, I threw his arm over my shoulder from the healthy side, and we started walking slowly.

We walked through the large empty rooms of an industrial building where neither the furniture nor the equipment had been preserved. Perhaps there had been offices. In one room, an entire wall of panoramic windows had been blasted outward, and we froze, mesmerized by the view. Beneath the low gray clouds, a leaden expanse of water stretched to the very horizon, and the upper floors of buildings protruded out of it. Bright sunbeams broke through the clouds like searchlights, melting the gray waters and turning them into the dazzling living silver.

"The sun," Rick breathed out, "it exists... I almost forgot... Harvey, do you see that?"

"Yes," our guide said. "We think this is our world, only it's very far away, maybe in the other hemisphere, where our connection does not reach and the helicopters don't fly either. They didn't have our General here. And neither did they have our Professor. Let's go, Rick."