“How?” Katie cried. She had tears filling her eyes. She knew she could survive this, but the others would surely die within minutes.
Katie closed her eyes, her tears still spilling down, though indiscernible from the rest of the water that was now above her head. Cyrus and Tyson took one last quick breath before the hull was completely filled with water.
Katie opened her eyes to a devastating scene. She saw Tyson and Cyrus staring at her, waiting, expecting. Katie moved her arms around but nothing happened. She saw the desperation and sadness filling Tyson’s eyes.
Almost as if time were frozen, Katie and Tyson stared at each other for what seemed to be forever, both suspended in the water.
Tyson opened his mouth. Katie screamed but only bubbles came out. There was another hit to the ship that ripped apart the hull. Katie raised her arms to shield herself. The force of the blast sent her flying through the water, almost as if in a riptide. Sand rose from the ocean floor, obscuring her vision.
When the sand cleared, she was opened to an entirely new world under the sea. A few lonely seaweeds were hanging about, and a small school of fish. It took her a few seconds before she realized that Tyson and Cyrus were not in sight.
11
A Memory Unforgotten
Katie swam around frantically, hoping to see Tyson or Cyrus. She wasn’t sure what to do if she did see them, other than try to save them, of course. The main thing Katie wanted to know was what had happened. Were they even alive? Or did they drown?
The ship they were in had been blasted apart and now was only chunks of wood and metal sinking to the ocean floor.
Katie finally surfaced. There was just plain, blue sea ahead of her. She turned around and saw a beach a little way away. Katie swam towards it as fast as she could.
When she reached the shore, she found Tyson lying on the sand, his eyes closed.
“No,” she whispered to herself. Tears welled up in her eyes. “No, no.” She put her head to his chest to listen for a heartbeat. It was faint and growing slower with each one. He wasn’t breathing. Without thinking about what she was doing, Katie scooped the air over Tyson’s mouth; water rose out of it in large drops. Tyson coughed. He rolled over and spluttered water onto the sand.
“Tyson,” she cried in a whisper and hugged him. Katie held him for a few seconds before she felt herself being roughly pulled away from him.
“Stop! Get off!” she yelled as she attempted to fight, but her captor had her locked in his grip. Up ahead she saw two men holding Tyson up. He was putting up a good fight considering he had just about drowned.
“Leave him!” she shouted. She watched helplessly as a man drew a whip from his belt and hit Tyson in the back. He let out a cry of pain. “Stop!” she shouted again, but then felt something soft and lint-like stuffed into her mouth. All she could do was make muffled sounds of whimpering.
They hit Tyson again, but he still attempted to fight back, trying to break free. The other man let out his frustration with Tyson by screaming and hitting Tyson in the head with a stick. Tyson dropped to the floor, unconscious.
Katie then saw Cyrus. He was standing, being held by one guard. He wasn’t fighting back. He wasn’t even resisting. Before she could let out cries of frustration, she felt something smack against the back of her head hard and she fell face-first into the sand.
Katie woke up. Her face was pressed against something cold, hard and damp - wood. It was quite an unpleasant feeling. There was a ragged blanket tossed over her. She looked around slowly, spit her hair out of her mouth and stood up.
Her head hurt a lot. The pain that she had avoided up until this point by her unconsciousness hit with such force that she collapsed and hit her face on the ground, which didn’t hurt at all compared to the pain that had already exploded in her head. She rubbed her head. There was a large bump on it.
Before she choked on tears, she forced herself to stand. The room was humid and smelled of rotten wood. There were wooden bars in front of her, and across the narrow hallway, there were more cells. There wasn’t much light.
Katie tried to break the wood that looked so brittle, but only added another bruise to her hand. She was alone in her cell. Katie looked down the hall, as far as she could. All she saw were the many more cells, all complete with rotting wood. She couldn’t see if anyone occupied those cells.
Her mind raced as thousands of possibilities of what happened to Tyson and Cyrus charged through her mind, each one more depressing than the last.
She let out a yell of frustration and slammed her fists on the wall but immediately regretted it as it just made her hurt more.
“Katie?” she heard Tyson’s voice. “Katie!”
“Tyson!” she called back. “Where are you?” But she knew the answer to that. He was in the prison cell next to hers, the one that she couldn’t see. Judging by the cells that she could see, there was too much room between each cell for her to reach out her hand and touch his.
“I’m here,” he said, in a quieter voice. “I’m here. I’m with Cyrus.” He sounded sad, sad like a young child who didn’t know what was going on.
Katie calmed down slightly. At least they were safe. Relatively. “How is he?” she asked about Cyrus.
“I’m fine,” Cyrus replied himself. “The yelling has busted my eardrums, but I’m otherwise fine.”
Katie didn’t smile. The current situation vastly outweighed
