Now You See Me

Thirty-Five: The Victims' Requiem

I plunged into blackness.

I felt Chris burst through the tarpaulin beside me, his fin brushing my cheek as his momentum sent him rocketing downwards. On his way past he grabbed my hand, yanking me down and out of the narrow beam of light that filtered in from the cave room. Nell was still howling, and through the depth of the water it sounded all the more unnatural.

I looked around, but I might as well have been blindfolded. Velvet darkness pressed in on all sides, contrasting oddly with the feeling of utter freedom in the most open source of seawater I'd ever been in with my new body. I heard Chris sigh in relief, felt his hair brush my neck as he hung in the water just below me, his skin the only solid thing I could feel.

"We can't stay here," he whispered after a moment, after both of us had adjusted to the shock. "If we wait until Rella or Vashde respond I don't know what they'll do. There must be an opening somewhere."

He made a sudden movement as if to swim away, and then seemed to change his mind.

"Come on," he said, "If we separate we'll lose each other."

I let him tug me forwards. We both had our hands out ahead of us so we didn't plough headfirst into a rock wall. The pitch darkness was oppressive; it almost made me feel safer to close my eyes. It felt like the migraine Vashde had forced on me the day she took me prisoner, only in both eyes, and much more debilitating.

My fingers brushed rock, but Chris kept going, stopping as my halt pulled him back.

"Move this way," he said gently. His voice was the only sound, I realised. Nell had stopped howling. I looked back at the turquoise shaft of light, and my heart jumped as a shadow moved over it and blocked it for a few long seconds. My breath seemed to go solid in my throat, and it was with clockwork movements that I readjusted myself to slip through the opening, fingers always out ahead, making sure to touch Chris's arm each time I moved forward to make sure he was still with me. I wished he would hold my hand, but I didn't dare ask him. His reactions frightened me sometimes.

"I don't like this." Chris faltered, and drew us both to a stop after a few minutes of swimming that felt like hours. "They must be setting something up at the other end. We must be going straight into a trap. They should have come after us by now."

I let out a shuddering breath, and it was strange to feel the bubbles around my face but not see them. It was strange to fix my gaze on only a patch of blackness where I suspected Chris was.

"If you give up here, you know we don't have any chance at all."

"Maybe we didn't to start with." Chris was heading into the realms of a panic attack, and we both knew it. "How do you know they didn't set up your warning? Maybe you didn't really hear Leia at all, and in reality they're just driving us into something worse as a punishment for trying to disobey them."

The same thought had occurred to me, which he didn't seem to realise. Knowing what we were up against, this had seemed like an extraordinarily easy break-out.

"How could they make it worse?" Anger flashed through me. "I still don't actually know what they want from us!"

An image flashed into my mind, of a cold corpse on a steel drawer with the legs crudely sewn together. Vomit rose in my throat even though I had nothing to give; I hadn't eaten since I left London. I tried to push the thought away, but it persisted. I wouldn't have brought you here if I didn't think you needed to see this. Leia's words. The plastic box on the table with the...

"Heart," I whispered, a shock running through me as I said it. "They want our hearts."

Another obvious clue I'd missed; I was starting to feel like Marilyn's accusations were completely justified.