He awoke to aching cold, a mix of numbness and pain in his legs. Dizzy, he couldn’t really orient his direction, but when he moved, the feeling of water sloshing around him brought some coherency to his thoughts. A fine spray was showering over him, as he struggled to get somewhat upright. He moved his legs, ignoring the shrieking agony in his back, nerves always taking longer to rewrite themselves than just flesh and blood. He couldn’t really get upright, but the fucking safe had to already be half full of the salty ocean’s water.

For maybe the first time ever, true despair filled his soul. There had been dark times, many. Dark thoughts, often. Suicidal thoughts, regrets, pain, survivor’s guilt. He’d failed. He’d become over reliant on all the things those fucking bastards had given him with their experimentation. He’d lost his edge. He hadn’t been able to protect her, hadn’t been able to protect Olivia. Ever, apparently if fucking Dryce had been their all along.

The water continued to rise, the temperature incredibly cold. Most of humanity didn’t know what that meant, but, he did. He was deep, well below the warming rays of the sun on the surface.

He struggled to stay over it, but well, even enhancement only allows you to tread icy water for so long, and the water continued to rise, somehow reaching some sort of equilibrium with a pocket of a couple inches left. Who knows why.

Exhuation would overcome him, he’d sink, struggling, the water would begin to enter his lungs, and then at some point, his strength and stamina would expel and instinct would send him back to that little pocked for a quick gasp of every increasingly poisoned air and the process would repeat itself, over and over, each time underwater lasting longer and longer, each captured breath more poisonous to the body, until finally the lungs were burning, and the regenerating cells struggling to process air unfit for any normal person.

He hadn’t been normal in a long time.

Is that drowning? Did it really matter? If he’d been able to tell time or have any rational thought left, sometime during the seventh hour his mind truly broke, and he escaped into memories.

Him and Shawna on the beach at Eighty Mile Beach. On Miami Beach, the beaches of Cancun. Somewhere irony raised its head that their vacations were almost always at a beach. Because he liked it, and she knew it reminded him of home.

His body continued to react as animalistic instinct took over.

Bryce, the first time he raced, his first championship. Indonesia, Korea, Mexico. San Diego. Always impatient to help people.

Bryan, the joy when he’d found him again. Thankfulness when the darkness began to leave his eyes. Watching him play rugby as a teenager.

His body thrashed every more violently, and the safe rocked.

Henri – cooking. Shoveling more food his way. Her excitement when he built the new library at the base.

Whitley – Dancing. Fierce Anger. Intensity at the operating table.  Lilacs.

Titan – Finding his humanity with the commissioner.

Shawna. Olivia. Bridgette.  Mum. He’d failed them all, once, twice, a hundred times.

Darkness.