Ultimum Carceron

Ultimum Carceron 7

It took all but half a second for the situation to impel Rebecca to leap from the base shore into the bloodied water. While most of her body was underwater, she slung her right arm around Theo's body, and used her legs to propel herself backwards, the way she came, until her shoulder bumped the hard metal. Dragging him was not easy; he must have been a minimum of one-hundred and eighty pounds. Gasping, she put her left hand on the shore and hauled herself on top. She used both hands to drag Theo until he was lying beside her. His feet were a couple feet from the water, from there, she could see red, watery blood drip from his heels to the surface.

She didn't think. Once ripping open his shirt and opening his mouth, she placed herself on top of him, legs on either side, and cupped her hands together over his chest. Furiously, she smacked both of her palms down on his skin, pushing harder and harder each time. Every time that she did, she looked up and expected air to expel from his mouth, and his eyes to fly right open. Given what happened in the past, if he did come back, he'd be scared to see her there, but right now, Rebecca was willing to take any response over this. As if she was dying too, her breathing increased rapidly, her brows furrowed, and frustration, angst and fear escalated, for every second he wasn't breathing was a moment farther from reviving him. Looking at his face again, she was disappointed to see that neither color nor expression occupied his face. She pushed and pushed rhythmically, expecting even the meanest sign of life, and despite her fears, she believed he was going to come back.

She removed her hands. Quickly, she put her right ear to his chest, all her hope mounting for—

His heart wasn't beating.

His eyes had not opened, and his mouth had not exhaled.

Rebecca fell on her back, side-by-side with Theo's corpse. His body beside her oozed water with diluted, powdery dirt and blood, seeping into the lake of waste. She felt too frozen to move, but she must have breathed, because much time passed and she was still stuck there, staring at the ceiling, the horrible feeling of failure like a nasty stomachache.

No thoughts or observations presented themselves to her, none that could explain how she missed seeing him die. It was inexplicable, and more terrifying the more unexplained it was. The last of him that she remembered was him going down another staircase...and then never coming back. In her head, it played like a movie with the last scene missing. How could she have missed this? Who could have killed him while he was climbing the stairs down?

Her hands raised in a vain attempt to stand. Both were soaking in watery red. Disgusted, she wiped it on her pants until they felt relatively dry, albeit sticky.

But, using her feet and her palms, she stood up, feeling out of it. Like someone who just woke up, she sloppily progressed away from the homicide, her heels grazing the hard metal. When her feet did lift, they came back hard onto the slope below, not caring to restrain herself at a steady pace. In seconds, she was ankle deep in the lake. Rubbing her hands and noticing the friction, she bent over to wash her hands. Of course, without soap, the best she could hope for were smoother palms, not necessarily cleaner ones.

After a minute of scrubbing, her hands resurfaced and now were peachy. They were, however, smelly with a couple of small, black specks on her knuckles. With one finger, she brushed them off both hands.

Suddenly, a low noise, like a helicopter in the distance, was audible, and she turned her head to see an aircraft exit out of the tunnel she came out of and begin patrolling the sewage chamber. It was followed by six soundless drones, each with a spotlight. As none of them had been seen since she descended below the Z39 floor, this was not standard procedure. It seemed the manhunt had finally begun.

Though fifty feet away from it and currently out of its sight, she quickly dived into the hazy cold lake, in no destined direction as of yet. She swiped away the thicker liquids and solids, bravely but barely opening her eyes in polluted water. Looking down, it seemed bottomless, but the more she looked, the deeper and wider the lake became. Most dead drones, identifiable not by features but by near black blurry shapes, were above, though she did see two of them stuck to the walls, maybe forty feet below her. She guessed it was around two hundred feet down before nothing could be seen anymore. But with most drones above her, she swam without the risk of bumping into rough or even sharp metal. When swimming, the wall underwater, now wide and cylindrical rather than a cone like the surface above, seemed farther away than it truly was, so when her fingers touched it at last, she was surprised.