He winked at her. ‘Time to go, Gwen. Place is flooding.’
‘You warned me not to listen to you.’
‘That was then, and this is now.’ A note of studied exasperation in his voice. ‘You said it yourself, my plan’s gone so horribly wrong. Completely tits-up.’ He could evidently see from her reaction that what he’d said had surprised her.
‘How very interesting, Jack. Now, how would you know I’d said that?’ His eagerness was evolving into worry, and then anger, as she continued to speak. ‘Because you were unconscious when I called Tosh. So either you were faking it, which wouldn’t be good. Or you heard it when you were possessing Owen. Which would be even worse.’
‘Please, Gwen. This really isn’t what I planned.’ The level had reached his waist now. He wriggled impotently as the cold grey water lapped around him in the cage. ‘Please Gwen. I’m begging you.’
‘Pleading?’ she asked him. ‘That’s so not Jack.’
‘God dammit!’ he flared, shaking the cage as he struggled against his restraints. ‘That is me now! Up to my ass in seawater, you think I’m gonna reason with you, Police Constable Cooper? Think I’m gonna conduct a debate with you? Observe the niceties of reasoned argument? Get me the hell outta here!’
The water had reached her chest now. No more time to talk with Jack. Gwen inserted the mouthpiece. She ensured that there was a watertight seal between the breathing set and her lips.
Water slopped around her face and ears. She could hear her own breathing as she tried to inhale through her mouth regularly, calmly. Still she watched Jack in the cage as the churning seawater eddied around him, splashing in his face, making him splutter. He was shouting at her still, his bound hands thrashing and scratching at the bars in a futile effort to release them.
Jack wailed and pleaded and screamed at her. The last thing she could hear before the water rose over her ears were his threats.
‘If you don’t release these clasps for me, I will get outta here once the water has short-circuited the system. And then I am gonna bust your ass. You will regret this, lady. I will make you regret this…’
The water continued to rise over her face mask.
You’re unable to keep your temper. The anger and desolation and anguish consume you. It’s not like the hunger this time, not the exquisite agony of physical want. It’s the knowledge that you are no longer in control. Not of your body. Not of the elements. Not of the woman who has trapped you here to face this alone.
The sea has reached your chin now. It’s cold and dark and there is no comfort for you in its chill embrace. With your mouth clamped shut, you can just angle your head a little higher, keeping your nose and eyes above the water. Staring at the top of the cage. The last thing you expected to see, and the last thing you will see.
You consider what’s inside yourself now. What there will be next. And it is so dark and lonely and empty. You knew that Sandra Applegate believed in everlasting life and a better place to go. Guy Wildman’s unreasoned agnosticism allowed for something beyond death. But when you explore your heart now, there is nothing inside you. Nothing. Blankness, blackness.
Close your eyes now. How long can you hold your breath?
Your lungs burn. They ache for air. Every fibre of your being is telling you to open your mouth and your eyes.
You so want somewhere to go from here, but you don’t remotely believe there is anywhere left. You are not Bee or Wildman or Tegg. You are not like them. You know there is nothing more.
You are-
Jack’s face was underwater now, angled up to the last pocket of air in the cage. With her head underwater too, everything seemed closer to Gwen. Images were magnified, even in the greyish sea water. The sound of her own breathing, the noise of exhaled air, was loud and close.
She wasn’t sure she could bear to watch this, but knew somehow she wouldn’t look away. Think of how he had killed the Bruydac Warrior. He had told her that she should imagine him as that man, who showed no mercy to a defeated enemy. He was someone who should suffer the same fate, if it came down to it. He should be allowed to die, helpless and alone.
That wasn’t Jack in the cage any more, cajoling and begging and threatening. Thrashing at the restraints in fury and desperation. It was the Bruydac Warrior. So wasn’t she just doing the same thing that Jack did earlier?
Didn’t that make her the same? Or, knowing that about herself, didn’t it make her worse?
The bubbles from Jack’s upturned face slowed to a trickle and stopped. His eyelids opened. His mouth gaped abruptly as the breathing reflex overcame him. His chest convulsed as he sucked cold grey water into his lungs in a final, choking rush.
Cold, grey seawater surrounded Gwen, so she couldn’t feel the hot salt tears on her face. She forced herself to watch Jack until his seizures subsided.
Once he hadn’t moved for ten minutes, she knew for certain that Jack was dead.
THIRTY-TWO
The mesh grating tilted up and over and toppled with a clanging echo. Gwen emerged from beneath it, surging out of the water in the basin and sending waves slopping over the edges across the Hub floor. Through the mask, she could see that she had broken the surface. She tore it off and eagerly gasped down clean, fresh air. Or as fresh as it got in the Hub. Even the slightly damp atmosphere of the main level made her feel home and safe.
Behind her, Jack’s body floated face down in the water of the Hub basin. She had released it from the bonds of the cage in the ship and desperately dragged it behind her through flooded corridors, along an open stretch of the Bay, and finally through the interlocking junctions of the Hub’s underwater entrance.
She’d found Jack’s body a dead weight while it was in the water. Now she tried to drag it from the basin. It was more of a struggle than she had anticipated. Her body was telling her to stop, to rest. Gwen’s legs and arms throbbed with dull pain, and she had to fight for her breath.
Eventually, she got her hands under his armpits and half-dragged him, half-fell with him onto the Hub floor.
Jack’s body was supine on the chill metal of the walkway by the basin. His staring eyes were glassy, empty. His skin showed as a ghastly pale blue, his full lips were dark, and there were rings of black beneath his eyes.
She slumped down on the grating beside him, and removed her diving cylinder. Sat watching him. Urging him.
Why wasn’t he reviving? She’d seen him take a bullet in the forehead and return to life. But she didn’t know for certain if anything could kill him. An illness, a devastating injury… or maybe the inability to recover immediately? He’d been dead for at least half an hour this time.
She rolled him over so that he was prone on the floor, and began to push beneath his shoulder blades. Water spurted from his mouth and through the grating into the basin.
Gwen pulled him onto his back again. Her mind raced, and she couldn’t focus on what to do next. She’d so believed that Jack would spontaneously recover once he surfaced that she was now panicking about the right course of action. What had they taught her in that Basics of First Aid course? Was it safe to give him oxygen from her diving cylinder? Or was that too much pressure? Did she need to empty the lungs of water? Or was it CPR first? Oh God, she hadn’t even checked for a pulse! There was something about having to give CPR within a quarter of an hour of someone collapsing. And how fast did brain death occur after they’ve stopped breathing?
Jack eyes stared up at her, glazed, sightless. They were unfocused, peaceful, unaccusing.