“I’m Mattie,” she announces almost too bright, her tone unnervingly calm for the nightmare we’re now facing. “I was there… in that room. You know? When they hosed us down.”
I sniffle, dragging my wrist across my snotty nose, the movement small and unsteady. My mind flickers back to the blonde girl who knelt beside me before, and suddenly everything slots into place.
Pushing myself upright, I use the wall for balance, and move through the dark, the quiet whimpers of the other women trailing behind me.
“Where are you going? We’re trapped,” Mattie calls out, her voice stifled, but I don’t stop.
I edge toward the doors, my legs quivering under the strain of exhaustion.
When I reach them, my hands slick with blood and seawater, grope along the surface until my fingers brush against a bolt.
Before attempting to pull it open, a small cry reaches my ears, and my head whips around.
Pushing myself away from the door, I blindly search for the red haired woman who was beside me in that evil doctors room, the one I promised.
Breathing heavily, I carefully step over the other bodies still wrapped tightly in plastic, and when I find her small form, I fall to my knees.
I’m here. It’s okay.
But, without warning, the container suddenly and forcefully slopes, and my body is hauled off the ground.
When I crash into the wall, a burst of agony shoots through me and I crumple.
High-pitched shrieks erupt around me, the sound of terror swallowed by the roar of wind and rain.
I struggle to stand, my bare feet slipping over the soaked floor, and just as I find my balance, a deafening screech of metal grinding against metal fills the air.
The floor lurches beneath us, and reality hits me like a punch—we’re sliding off this ship. The container isn’t anchored, and it’s being thrown around like a goddamn fish in the storm.
The screams grow louder around me—a single, overlapping shrill note of fear that vibrates through the iron walls.
The container tilts again, harder this time, and I lose my footing entirely, smashing into my side as we slide faster.
Someone grabs my arm tightly, Mattie maybe, but the momentum pulls us apart, her hand slipping away in the dark.
I can’t see anything, and I can’t tell which way is up or down anymore. All I feel now is the gut-wrenching sensation that we’re falling.
There’s a violent jolt, then a bang so hard it tears through me. The container explodes into chaos as it slams againstsomething—an edge or a railing, maybe both, causing the doors to shudder under the collision.
For a split second, it feels like we’re airborne, suspending in awful silence between shock and the fall before gravity takes hold and everything comes slamming down.
The impact hits like a cannon blast and I’m plunged into countless bodies at the other end of the container, colliding with the water in a monstrous, devastating bang.
Freezing seawater starts to flood in almost instantly, seeping through every crack and gap in the steel. The walls groan and buckle under the pressure, trembling like they’re alive and screaming.
Within seconds, the water is everywhere, biting at my skin, dragging at my legs and engulfing every tiny bit of oxygen I had left.
Then, near the front, the doors suddenly give way with a deafening crack.
The ocean floods in, roaring like a living thing, hurling wrapped bodies and debris into a fierce, spiraling mess.
The container tips again, half-submerged, and I reach for something solid, my hands sliding over slick metal, searching for something, anything, to grip onto.
But the black sea doesn’t care.
It takes us anyway.
The water fills my throat with salt and horror, my heart pounding hard, dying for air that isn’t there. The oceanwraps around me like a fist, dragging me out of the container and into its cold, endless dark.