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THE WATER FELT LIKE A BRICK AGAINST HIS SKIN.
Everything had happen so quickly in those last few seconds, the world around him moving in a blur. He could barely recollect the sequence of events, of how he'd gone from standing with his younger sister, grounding himself to jump of the bridge with her, to being pushed into the water, something tugging against his legs.
Mouth gaped open in surprise and fear, he failed to spit out the murky, rotten river water. His mouth tasted like dirt and too many salty and unknown substances.
Viktor's eyes were widen open in fear, but they could barely pick up anything in the dark waters. They moved up to the surface of the water, barely picking up on the faint silhouettes high above on the bridge; the gang that had sent him to his death.
Then fear and instinct kicked in.
He started thrashing against the waters, desperately unbuttoning his black waistcoat, stripping it off in an attempt to make it easier to reach the surface.
His arms flailed above in him a failed matter, not pulling him up to the surface like he wanted. Viktor looked down at his right and left leg, cursing what was dragging him down to the bottom of the river Amstel. The moment he saw those leg irons, he just knew that that's what Clara had been warning him about moments before peril.
And they became the deciding factor of his fate.
As the water grew darker, and deeper, the silhouettes faded away from his view. All sounds of the bustling night time city of Amsterdam; the carts, the people, the stray dogs and cats, Viktor and Clara's shared partridge dog Nora, the frustrated groans and yells of failing gamblers.
The oxygen in his lungs had almost all left at this point, and Viktor's eyes grew heavy.
You cannot let yourself die here. You cannot leave your sister. You can't. Move.
The last thing Viktor felt before he passed out was the cold that shivered up his legs and spine.
