A moment later, the fear returned — she’d lost sight of the blue spectral.
Zara panicked. There was nothing else for it. She’d reached the limits of her ability to hold her breath. She squirmed to make sense of anything, but now the one thing she could remember — the fact that she needed to follow the blue light — had been taken from her.
She continued heading in a clockwise direction. Constantly ascending in an identical curve, but soon she no longer had the ability to move her arms or legs. She no longer worried about whether or not she could hold her breath. None of those problems mattered anymore.
Zara felt herself sink onto the edge of the stone stairs. The last thing she remembered was the warmth. Everything felt so warm, and good, and safe. Dying wasn’t so bad. The darkness had been pulled up around her like the safety of a warm blanket. It consumed all her senses and left her feeling nothing.
Chapter Seventy-Two
Sam looked at Tom as he squeezed by inside the narrow stairway, where the water met the dry section. He looked at Tom’s hardened expression as he breathed deeply. “You okay, Tom?”
Tom nodded but said nothing.
Sam waded into the submerged steps of the stairs. “Where’s Zara?”
“She was behind me a moment ago.”
Sam swore and then dipped his head beneath the water, diving head-first downward. He followed the descending stairs in their counter-clockwise direction. He could hear the sudden throb of his own panicked heart sending blood pounding in the back of his ears. He descended for approximately twenty seconds before he saw her.
Christ! She’s dead!
He didn’t wait to check her vital signs. He grabbed Zara by her shoulders and pulled her backwards, and clockwise up the stairway. Sam moved with the speed afforded by his adrenaline, but it was much slower than when he swam down on his own. It felt like it had taken forever by the time his foot stepped on the dry stone and he pulled her out of the water.
Her body appeared lifeless. She wasn’t breathing. Her normally dark skin appeared pale and waxy. Sam placed her on her side and with her head downwards inside the narrow stairway so her head was draining.
Her mouth was open and the water gushed out.
Sam watched as it continued to drain. One of the hardest things to do in an emergency is nothing. Sometimes you have to wait. No reason to try and help her breathe if her lungs are still full of water. It might have only taken seconds. Then again, it might have been minutes. Sam had no way to tell. All he knew was the water must have filled her lungs completely.
She must have taken a deep breath in while she was still under? Sam thought, morbidly. It would have been a conscious decision. An acceptance of her death.
Tom took one glance at her. His mouth set hard. “Does she have a pulse?”
Sam placed two fingers on Zara’s neck, next to her windpipe. He waited for a moment. “She’s got a pulse. It’s bounding, but it’s there!”
A moment later, the water stopped draining.
Zara coughed multiple times and stopped. And then started breathing on her own. Her eyes were still shut and she looked like she was sleeping. There was no way to immediately know how much damage had been done to her brain.
Tom asked, “Now what do we do?”
Sam breathed in and then sighed. “Nothing. Now we wait.”
Chapter Seventy-Three
The warmth and euphoric dreams were over. In their place, nightmares filled her mind. There was a burning sensation in her chest. It felt like she’d swallowed fire and no matter how much she exhaled, the flame remained. She coughed a few more times and felt her lungs struggle to expand. It felt like they were being held by a big piece of elastic, which prevented them from fully opening. She felt something change. The gooey and fiery liquid drained from her mouth. When there was no more to exhale, she tried to inhale.
Nothing happened. The muscles of her diaphragm had lost interest. She tried again. Nothing.
Am I already dead?
The elastic over her chest snapped and now she was finally allowed to inhale. The air felt icy cold, and sweet on her burnt lungs. She coughed twice more. It seemed to take longer than she thought was normal to take a second breath. It was like her diaphragm was still debating what it wanted to do. She breathed again. And again. By the fifth time, the process seemed more natural. Definitely far from normal. Her muscles of respiration were no longer working on autonomic reflexes. Instead, she was having to consciously coerce them into keeping her alive. But at least now, she seemed to have some control over the process.
No. Not dead.
Zara tried to move her arms. Nothing happened. She tried to speak. She wanted to speak. And wanted to say that everything was all right. Whatever happened. Whatever went wrong. It was okay now. She was okay.
She couldn’t remember what she’d been trying to do, or what went wrong. But somehow, it all felt okay. There was a picture of an island. The surrounding shallow waters were turquoise. The island was shaped like a perfect figure eight, lying on its side. One side of the island was completely flat, while at the center of the other side, a small mountain of sand rose a hundred or more feet into the air.
That’s right! She thought. I was on my way to an island.
It seemed incredibly important to her all of a sudden that she reach the island. That it held the answers to every question that was so important to her. Although, at the present, she had no idea what she wanted to ask. Heck, if she was honest, she didn’t even know the name of the island, or how it was going to answer her questions.
Two voices were arguing.
One said, “We should have planned the ascent better.” It was terse. Like a reprimand.
“What could we have done?” the second one asked.
“I don’t know, prepared her better? She’d have had a different outcome. Now we don’t know what’s going to happen. You were in such a rush. You just told me to bring her up. And said she’d be all right.”
“And she will be all right,” the second voice replied. It was abrupt and full of authority.
“How can you be so certain?”
The voice paused. Like its owner was struggling to even consider answering in such a way. It sighed. The voice, succumbing to reveal the truth, even though it didn’t want to. “Because Nostradamus didn’t mention anything about her drowning!”
Nostradamus. She repeated the name, silently in her mind. What does he have to do with her future?
She opened her eyes. They weren’t quite in focus. Everything around her appeared blue. She was lying on a series of stone steps. They were hurting her back. The steps were narrow and on each side was a masonry wall.
Two men started asking her questions. She didn’t hear any of them. They both glowed with a blue haze, like a spectral or ghostly apparition. She would have been frightened if it wasn’t for the fact that both men appeared excited, like her arrival was the best news they’d received all day. They looked kind. Concerned. And supportive.
She opened her mouth to speak. Her voice was soft, not yet capable of producing any great resonance. Her eyes, deep-set and intense, stared wide.
“What is it?” the first voice asked.
“Go on. We couldn’t hear you,” the second said.
Zara grinned. “I know exactly where we have to go!”
Chapter Seventy-Four
Zara felt a man lean in and help her to sit. There was barely any room and no way that either of the men could have sat next to her. Both of her shoulders rested on opposite sides of the masonry walls, which formed the vault of her captivity. She felt one of the men rest his hands on her back to stop her from falling over.