"Reed? We have to go..." Laine's voice echoed through the silence encompassing the reef.
She didn't respond.
Her body remained frozen in place, kneeling while she watched the endless oblivion before her.
She couldn't see anything... Just a dark and empty abyss.
Her lungs stung, her chest heaving while she came down from the spiral of panic.
Everybody was dead...
Everybody was dead and it was her fault.
"Reed?"
"I... can't..." she whispered, eyes open wide.
"Rowan, you know-"
"Maybe she will catch up with us? Maybe she found the helmet and-"
"You know it's impossible..."
A shudder travelled down her body, electrifying whatever was left of her frazzled nerves.
"N-no... We... We have to wait for her..."
"Reed... If we don't start moving soon, Melanie will find us..."
His words send her heart spiking.
Melanie... The bane of Reed's existence... A burden Ryan dropped on their shoulders...
"I... I understand what you are going through..." Laine started, his voice uncharacteristically soft through the speaker.
"You don't-"
"I do... Trust me... I have had my moments when... Everything felt so hopeless... But in order to move forward-"
"What if I don't want to move forward?!" Reed suddenly exclaimed, feeling her grief burning through the walls she had built around her.
What If I don't want to go anymore?
I don't have the strength to get up...
I am exhausted...
There is nothing... There is nothing I can do...
"So you will just stay here?" The sudden calm in Laine's tone made her pause.
She knew that tactic... That cold attitude that would send her into a frenzy every time she did something wrong... Laine was doing it again...
Mimicking the people she knew.
"It's not going to work..." she muttered.
"What is not going to work-"
"You think you can just pretend to be my mother now?!"
Laine paused.
"I... I am sorry..."
"Just leave me the fuck alone... This is all your fault..." Reed muttered, looking down at her knees.
"I am done..." she exhaled.
"So what? That's it? All of this so you could just give up?"
"Don't give me that "heroic speech" crap..."
"There is no 'heroic speech'! Do you think you are the only one who lost something? I am cut off from the system! Melanie will erase me from existence if she finds me! I have no connection... No network to rely on... I am bound to you and you are telling me that all of this was for nothing?!"
"Should have picked your champion better..." she rasped out.
"Trust me... You weren't my first choice-"
YOU ARE READING
Deep Dark Blues
HorrorDefeated. Discredited. Forgotten. But whatever they say, Rowan Reed is not a quitter. Life hadn't treated Rowan kindly but with a sudden opportunity to research an oceanic anomaly, she takes a leap of faith into the cold depths of the Atlantic to re...
