Zodiac War

Talise in Trouble

I looked over at Hestia and couldn't help but wonder what rules our new world had. I had been living a perfectly normal college life, but that Talise Smith seemed like a different person from who I was now. It all started when I accepted a job on that cruise ship. I desperately needed money to pay for college and helping out on that cruise ship all summer wasn't a problem at all for me since I loved being in, around, or on water. I had always had an affinity for water, but seemed to be allergic to anything that grew on earth. That ranged from pollen to dust to animals. So obviously I preferred to spend as much of my time on the water as possible.

That day our cruise ship had just been returning to the harbor after having been all over the pacific for that summer. We were finally returning home at the beginning of September. We got close to the harbor and we were getting ready to dock when a bunch of alarms began sounding. I was just told to get all of the customers in life vests and get a life vest on myself. We were only about 200 yards away from the dock and I knew that I'd just be able to swim to the dock without a problem, so I didn't bother with a life vest. I had just barely started getting the life vests out when the cruise ship seemed to just disappear out from under us. One moment I was standing on a deck and the next I was treading water. I started to head to the dock when I noticed that quite a few of our customers couldn't swim and would certainly drown without a life vest or my help.

I couldn't just leave them there, so I swam towards the nearest customer and tried calming her down, so I could drag her to the dock. I got to her and she started trying to push me under to keep herself afloat. I eventually got her to calm down and grab onto my vest, so I could swim freely. After getting her to the dock, I contacted the emergency services, but knew that it would be a while before they got there. They seemed to be getting worse and worse. It always seemed like nowadays they only came to clean up and save people who had already saved themselves. And then the miracle survivors always just disappeared and no one heard from them again. But I couldn't just let all the people die, so I started the long swim back to the cruise ship. Most people had already managed to swim back by themselves or had sunk below the waves.

I got to where the cruise ship had been and dived under to see if I could see people who had sunk. I saw two little kids and immediately headed their way. I was relieved to see that they were still alive, but just unconscious. I now just had to figure out how to drag both of them back with me to the dock that seemed even farther away than it had just been. I tore the sleeves off of my shirt and used that to tie one of their arms to me. This way I would just be able to just swim freely without having to worry about losing them. I got to the dock and it seemed like everyone who had made it out already had just left on the way to the hospital by themselves. The only person left on the dock was a girl who looked to be about my age. She just looked on though and hadn't made any move to get into the water to help me save people.

I couldn't believe it. Why would she even stay if she wasn't going to help anyway? I hadn't the little girls up to her and said, "Are you just going to keep standing there and watching me? There's still a lot of people that need saving and that would go a lot faster if you got in here with me and helped." She shook her head and her strawberry blonde locks obscured her face while she whispered, "I'm sorry. I can't." I couldn't believe what I was hearing. She was just going to watch people drown instead. Well, not on my watch. I looked at her disapprovingly and said, "Fine. Keep admiring me while I save them then." After about half a billion laps to and from the dock I had finally saved all the people that had been easily spotted, but I still wanted to go back to check that there weren't more people left in the wreckage of the cruise ship. And that's where I went wrong.

I swam out all the way to the cruise ship and dove down to where it's hulk was sitting on the seafloor. I swam onto the deck and started trying to find a way inside. It was mostly intact, so it didn't take me long to find a door that I could take down into the customers hallway. I quickly looked into a lot of the rooms I came across and didn't see people in any of them, but I was running out of air, so I had to turn back. I came up and looked down at the ship again. It was just too big to search. I'd have to keep coming up for air and there were still hundreds of rooms to search through. I had to think of a quicker way to search. I decided that swimming along the outside and peering in through the windows would be quicker and that way if there were still people in any of the rooms, I'd know exactly which ones to go to if I had to go back inside the ship.

I started out swimming, but little did I know that the mooring ropes were swaying in the current until I got tangled in one. My leg was caught and no matter how I tried to untie it or get my leg out, it was impossible. It seemed like this is how I'd die. Stuck in the mooring lines of a cruise ship. I couldn't let that happen. I hadn't even ever been in a relationship. But I knew that if I wanted to get out of this situation, I'd have to do it myself, since I doubted the tall, skinny, blond on the dock would get in the water to save me. She seemed terrified of the water and didn't seem to care about any of the other passengers, so I doubted that she'd put aside her fear for me. And that's when I realized that I typically carried a switchblade in my boot. I reached down to my boot and to my luck it was still there. I started sawing at the mooring lines, but knew that it would be a while and I was quickly running out of air. Right when my sight started fading the rope broke and I was able to get to the surface. I gulped in a refreshing breath of air, but had no more energy to swim back to shore again. I just floated there and felt my vision fading again. I used the last of my energy to tie my arm to a piece of wreckage before my vision faded completely and I drifted into sleep.