A Daughter's Duty

Chapter 7

I had had many nightmares about dying in an accident – a plane crash, a car crash, a subway crash, and even a spacecraft crash.

But never before had I experienced this.

Gravity pulled the ferry downwards, as if it were a monster of the deep, fishing, slowly reeling us in, while the panic of getting killed ate up our insides. George Knossos's poem rang in my ears –

'...The old boat is going down as it has had its day
and all that we know and love is passing away.
It seems strange and sad how this has come about
but the evidence is clear without a shadow of doubt...'

The couple's screaming jolted me back into the present.

"Mr. and Mrs. DeVere?" I asked.

They hesitatingly nodded. I took of the sacks on their heads. Mrs. DeVere was, like her daughter, an auburn haired woman, and Mr. DeVere had long black hair that ended in a ponytail. Both their eyes were full of fear that they would drown, but relief that it wasn't some goon who was trying to kill them.

I looked around everywhere in the tiny toilet, but there was nothing sharp enough to cut through the cords, and there wasn't enough time to go back to the storage room and look for a knife.

Mr. DeVere yelled through the gag in his mouth. He jerked his head downwards, and shook himself, his jacket opening.

"In the jacket?" I asked. He nodded, and shook his head vigorously to the left. The left pocket.

I searched through his jacket, finding his wallet, his breath mints, his reading glasses and –

"A Swiss knife." I said. The man nodded energetically.

The knife was barely bigger than my thumb, but at that moment I had nothing else to work with. I started on the man's mouth gag. The ferry was sinking fast. I really hoped Michael had been able to catch the three unreliable crew members and gotten the onboard passengers to safety.

As soon as I got the gag off, Mr. DeVere exclaimed, "Is Sofia alright? Is she safe?" The woman nodded to show that her concern was the same.

"I – I don't know," I said, feeling very stupid. "The last I saw of her was yesterday. I haven't kept in touch with her since."

His face fell. But I couldn't focus too much on that, because the water had started accumulating around my feet. I had to hurry.

In the next five minutes, I cut through Mr. and Mrs. DeVere's hands and leg cords. They stood up with difficulty, since the water was now to our stomachs.

"Get out of here!" I screamed at them. They didn't hesitate. They waded through the water, pushed the door open and left. I stopped to put my gun safely in its case under my clothes, hoping it wouldn't get too wet. I went to the door and pulled.

It didn't open.

I pulled harder. It still didn't.

It had been locked from the outside.

In a rush, I was reminded of my worst nightmares, all of them coming – my family standing far away, watching me being tortured to death, my mouth and nose being clamped down by someone, not allowing me to breathe, me being put into a small wooden box, which gets smaller and smaller by the moment, nobody nearby to hear me scream on top of my lungs...

That's how I felt when the water reached up to my chin. The door wasn't opening. Maybe the man outside had slid a long bar through the handle, so I couldn't open it.

Water went up my nose to my eyes.

So this was it then, I thought. This was how I was going to die. I would never see my Gran, or my college, or my best friend...