A Place Where There Is No Darkness

Nine

The water surface shattered like a mirror into a thousand glittering diamonds. Water came streaming into the car through various openings and we began sinking like a rock.

“How the hell do we get out of this?” I wheezed, pulling furiously at the door handle. My hand shook, and it wasn’t just from the freezing temperatures. The water was burning, searing cold against my skin. It accumulated at the bottom of the car and slowly started rising, climbing up my pantleg and under my skin, letting my bones quiver.

The door didn’t budge.

“It’s the pressure,” Mitchell muttered back, trying just as hard to get out, like me without any success. “It’s virtually impossible to open the door.” Which, of course, didn’t stop him from trying time and time again. He would have looked funny or at least idiotic if put into any other setting, but given our situation, he only seemed desperate.

“Wait, wait, I’ve seen this in a movie once.”

“In a movie? Oh, great, we’re saved.”

“Don’t start with that tone. At least I have a solution.”

“Which is?”

“I think we have to wait until the car fills up with water. The pressure levels out or something. Only then can you open the door.”

He let go of the handle, leaned back in his seat and sighed. He looked utterly defeated, his bruised face scrunched up into a scowl. But he didn’t seem scared. “Sounds about right. You know, with our luck and everything.”

I forced myself to abandon my futile task as well. The door had held strong through all of my attempts and would do so for a while to come. There was no reason to lose more energy than necessary.

The car slowly tipped forward, the water rose and we were going down.

Mitchell sat up quickly. He looked around and through the windows. No, not through them, at them. The windows.

How stupid could we be?

“I could–“ he was staring to say, but I was quick to interrupt him.

“Do it.”

He looked at me, let his eyes roam up and down over my figure, reassuring himself that I meant it.

“Water is going to come gushing in, so we’re going to have to be quick.”

I rolled my eyes. “Do it.”

He nodded jerkily, looked down at his hand that was resting on a button to his left, then at the water accumulating at his feet and back to his hand. “Fine. Here goes nothing.”

He pressed the button and our windows slid down. Water started rushing in immediately, first a little stream, then growing into a waterfall of epic proportions. I unfastened my seatbelt and waited for the opening to get big enough, then jumped off the seat and threw myself through the window.

The current was strong. But this time, I decided to be stronger.

I kicked and kicked and after a few moments, I could feel that I was free of the car. The current was still massive, but it wasn’t the same current anymore. It felt different – more natural, somehow, more ancient, as if it was meant to be there. I didn’t try to fight it as much. I only tried to find up – which was getting increasingly hard to do –, located a shimmer I thought could be the sun and started fighting my way towards it.

Three kicks, four, and I was up. My head broke the water surface and I inhaled a magnificent gulp of fresh air, which got stuck somewhere in my throat and made me cough, but it was followed by another and another and I was grateful. My eyes burnt, my neck ached, and all I could do was kick and splash and stay above water. But the current took me along.

Mitchell’s head appeared close to my own.

He gasped too, coughed, then looked around. His hair stuck to his head like the fur of a wet puppy, but otherwise he had never looked better. I berated myself for thinking such stupid thoughts in the middle of everything that was going on, but I found that I couldn’t bring myself to care.

“Oh, great, you’re alive,” I said coldly, waiting attentively on how he would respond.

Apparently, he wasn’t up for my games. He rolled his eyes. “Let’s just get out of here, okay?”

Looking around, I had to agree. The river had carried us farther than I’d thought. The bridge was almost out of sight. The car had, by now, disappeared completely under the shimmering surface of the water.

Wordlessly, I turned and started swimming towards the shore.

***

I pulled myself out of the river and onto solid ground. Unfortunately, it wasn’t quite as solid as I had hoped, given all the mud, but it was still enough for me. My hands were the first to sink in the mire, next came my knees, my feet. I had lost a shoe somewhere along the way and my sock felt cold and lifeless.

I was about done with water for my whole entire life. If I never had to see or feel anything wet again, that was just fine by me.

Mitchell pulled himself out beside me. We collapsed into the dirt, uncaring about the mess. It was all I could do to rest my chin on my filthy arms instead of letting it drop directly onto the ground.

“We should probably move away from the river,” Mitchell said quietly.

“Yeah. Probably.”

But we stayed put.

I don’t know how long it took for the shaking to kick in. It was partly the cold – the water had found its way deep under my skin all the way through to my bones – and partly something else entirely. A dread I couldn’t shake. Something deep and awful.

I pushed myself up and away from Mitchell, stood up, started walking.

“Hey, where are you going?” Mitchell was right behind me in a second, following my every step.

I looked back at him, feeling a rage rising from all the icky stuff inside me. “Away,” I told him icily and turned my back to him.

He ran a few steps, coming up next to me.

“Are you mad at me?”

His tone did it. The words were unconvinced, his voice wondering, innocent. But yes, I was mad at him, as a matter of fact, and I didn’t see how that could be at all surprising. He was anything but innocent in this scenario and it was high time someone told him that.

I stopped, turned to him very deliberately. Slowly. So he could see my rage unfolding little by little, giving him an idea of what was to come. But he didn’t budge. He stood tall, head held high, shoulders straight. He didn’t believe he was in the wrong here.

But I wasn’t either.

“What the hell was that?!” I yelled, getting up in his face. He didn’t flinch. He didn’t move at all, a stony statue save for his eyes, which followed my every shift. I looked right back, stared into his left eye, then into his right, and back. It was a furious dance – left, right, left. Faster, then slower, then I stilled.

“Well?”

“What was what?” he said back. His voice was calm like that of an innocent. Calmer. Like that of someone not even involved – someone who hadn’t just been inside a sinking car. I continued staring down his eyes, both of them, as if I was going to find a clue somewhere in their depths.

No, no, no, I knew what was going on here. I realised it just a second later. He was speaking from a place where he knew that he had done everything right. He hadn’t made a single mistake. And he wanted me to know.

“You drove us straight into a river!” I screamed. “You could have got us both killed! You do know that, right?”

He shrugged. “You told me to go faster.”

“I told you to ditch the cops. I never said anything of getting us killed.”

“I told you it could get dangerous. Remember what you said?”

I deflated a little. Stayed silent. I didn’t stop looking into his eyes. They were a dark, chocolate brown.

“You said that the Elite is more dangerous.”

“They are,” I countered, still heated, but lacking some of my usual determination. “They are more dangerous than anything.”

“See?”

“Well, I’m still not ready to die.”

He sighed and finally looked away. The curse was broken and I could turn away as well. He shook his head. “At least the police aren’t following us anymore.”

“And how in the world do you know that? For all we know, they could be back at the bridge, piecing the story together as we speak. They could even be already moving in our direction. They could be anywhere or nowhere.”

“Calm your horses. I think you have them confused for the Elite.”

I whipped around to him, realising that I felt something burning in my eyes. He stood in the middle of the mud, tall and proud and dirty and beaten. His face was bruised. It was clear that he was tired and about ready to go home and sleep and wake up in a hundred years, but he was still so grand. I realised for the first time why the FBI had recruited him and more, why he had been chosen for this particular mission. I saw why the Elite would want to have him as one of their own. Not immediately, not at first, but these were the situations he found himself at home in. This was where he flourished. It was annoying and irritating, but I saw it, the same it someone had seen in me all those years ago. He was so cold, so collected, so uncaring in the face of doom.

I had been cold, too. Five years ago, I had been an arrow, sleek and deadly and covered with frost. But prison had mellowed me out. Funny how I had needed an FBI agent to make me see that. Even funnier that it was an agent who made me burn in anger.

“Never,” I said slowly and clearly, lifting a finger to point at his chest, “ever, ever, joke about the Elite again. They’re not a game and I’ve had it with your attitude.”

He stepped closer, his hands lifted in a placating manner. “Okay, okay. I’ll stop.”

I frowned. He rolled his eyes.

“Why are you never–“ but he sopped in the middle of the sentence, took in my appearance, pursed his lips. “You’re shivering,” he said. He stretched his arm in my direction – I saw him coming closer and I was almost too late. I jerked back in the last second and looked up at him, horrified.

“Don’t touch me.”

“I’m sorry.” He came a step closer and I took a step back. He frowned and stepped closer. I wanted to step back, but I decided to let it play out, see where he was going.

“What exactly are you doing?”

He didn’t answer. Now he was the one to stare me down. His eyes found mine and didn’t let them go. He was looking for something, searching, searching. I didn’t last long. I broke the contact, burst our little bubble and looked down.

“What happened to you?” His voice was small and quiet now, so different from his former dominant appearance. Still solid, but slightly less imposing.

No idea why I didn’t yell at him or at least start swearing up and down. I would have in any other situation, with anyone else. But I could only seek out his eyes again. Feel his closeness. He was so near, I could feel his hot, hot breath in the cold, cold air. He was still staring at me, as if I were the only thing in the world. As if I was something to figure out – but in good way, somehow. A prize to win. I moved my shoulders up and down in the imitation of a lazy shrug, then looked away again.

“I don’t know. Many things.”

“Bad things?”

His voice guided my face back up just as effectively as his hand would have. He could have placed his finger under my chin and lifted my head, but something had held him back. Something in my eyes, maybe?

“I, uh …” I had never before cried in front of anyone. At least not since I could remember, not even when I had still lived with my parents. I knew how to hold back tears. But now it just didn’t work. The pressure behind my eyes became too much and it suddenly didn’t matter anymore what I wished for, that the last thing I wanted to do was make a fool out of myself on the first day of the mission. I had lost control of my body, just as Mitchell had lost control of the car. I had let it go wild, and it did, and now I had to live with the consequences.

He didn’t look away. So I had to. I turned my face, wiping at the tears frantically.

“I’m sorry, I just, I, uh–“

“Don’t be.”

I really had no idea what made me look up again. Towards the danger, towards the one who would see the coward underneath. But I did anyway. Maybe it wasn’t even me anymore.

His eyes were still dark and burning. And I knew so many things right then. I knew that in a more ideal world he would have grabbed my arm and pulled me closer and I would have let him, melted into his wet grip. And I knew that he would have pressed his lips against mine and I knew they would have been soft but demanding and as burning as the rest of him. I knew the cold would have melted away, into nothingness, and I knew it would have been the greatest moment of my life.

I knew it.

What I also knew was that my world was anything but ideal. And that I couldn’t have any of it. Mitchell seemed to know that, too, because he didn’t pull me close – even though I knew he wanted to. I wouldn’t have let him if he had tried.

I felt it all pass by in another existence, under other circumstances; I felt the familiarity of an unfamiliar life, of an unfamiliar touch and a kiss and a whole universe I would never experience. I let it pass. And then I rose to my toes, got as high up as I could and pressed a fleeting kiss onto his cheek.

I sniffed, ran a hand under my nose, and turned away. For good. He cleared his throat and we both came back to reality. I brushed the tears off my cheeks and closed myself off.

Wow, almost dying had made me go weak. If this was what death felt like, I never wanted to do it again.

(Kind of.)

He cleared his throat again and brushed away the last remnants of our little fantasy. I turned back to him and smiled my cold, unforgiving smile.

“But you do have to admit that you did screw up the plan.”

I waited for him patiently. I had pushed the pieces in the right direction, now he had to let them slide back into place. It took a bit longer than necessary, but he finally rolled his eyes, letting reality close over them.

“Fine. Have it your way.”

“Thank you.”

He sighed again, collecting his thoughts, and looked around. “Well, let’s find a hotel or something. Stay somewhere overnight. We’ll hit the road first thing tomorrow.”

I didn’t want to lose that kind of time, but the whole drowning fiasco had left me bone tired and I knew Mitchell was exhausted, too. We needed someplace to lay low for a while, get a few hours of sleep. We needed to get death out of our systems and get back on our game.

I knew just the place.

“Fine. But we start really early tomorrow. We can’t be late for this, Mitchell.”

“I know.”

I nodded, believing him fully. “Okay. Follow me.”