Dark Waters (Warriors S1B5)

Chapter 7

Earth date: 01/04/2012, 18:37

Reason ceded my mind once my head was underwater.

I'd gotten swimming lessons when I was younger. Mother had washed them all away. I flagellated, distending my limbs like a crazed animal in a climacteric attempt to get oxygen. Water was all around me--not the reposing, wavy water of the swimming poolat the YMCA, but aphotic, unforgiving water that spun me in every which direction so I wasn't even sure if I was swimming up. 

Something touched me. I managed to spin around and came face to face with the Hautik. With what oxygen I had left, I descried its beady black eyes, the catfish-like whiskers, the mouth full of needle teeth and the fin-like protuberance on its head. It snapped a claw at my feet, missed, snapped again, and prehended one of my legs. From the amount of pressure on my leg, I was pretty sure it would have snipped it clean off were it not for my armor. It pulled my leg into its mouth and masticated like a dog worrying a bone. Again, my armor saved my leg, but it didn't matter. My lungs burned like I'd swallowed gasoline, black dots danced at my eyes, and my vision wavered so there were two, then three, then one, then four Hautiks trying to eat its way through my armor.

I thought the argentate thing jetting its way through the water towards me was a hallucination from my dying mind. But then it got bigger and bigger.

And then it punched the Hautik right in its crustacean maw.

In the same sweeping motion of its arm, the whatever-it-was glommed me around the waist and swam. I saw a black blob in its other arm. It was Jay. He wasn't moving.

Whatever had a hold of us swam fast. In seconds, our heads broke clear of the water. The thing that had saved us put a hand over Jay's and my helmet. It had hands big enough to swaddle fully around my head. There was a sucking noise, and I jerked in the thing's grip as the water in my lungs was forcefully pulled out. I insufflated cold, wet but fresh air.

Me breathing again, the thing took its hand off my head so I could get a good look at it. It was a silvery gray, and commodious. I could only see it from the shoulders up, the rest of its body obscured by the water, but I assayed it to be about five meters tall. The hand it pulled away from my head was as big as a car window, and each digit was tipped with a claw. It had a head like a giant metal reptile with rectangular slits for eyes. If I squinted, I could see a tail swishing underwater. 

"You can breathe?" the robot queried curiously. The voice was male, deep, with a resonant quality, as if a gong was speaking. "Both of you can breathe?"

Jay coughed hard, but managed to put up a thumbs-up. 

"Good."

The Hautik surged from the water, gunning straight for the robot. Without looking at it, the robot slapped the Hautik back down into the water. "I can distract it. Can you get these people back to safety?"

"Way ahead of ya!" Frazz yelled loudly. He came flying out of the water, circumscribed in green energy. He came to a stop in the middle of the whirlpool and summoned a green disc of energy. He decreased the power of the green energy shooting from his feet so he dropped until he hovered only a few feet above the lowest point of the vortex. "Drop them here!"

"Can you do that?" the robot asked. It took me a moment to realize he was speaking to me.

"Y-yes," I finally managed to stutter. "Yes, I think I can."