Micro-Management in urgent situations is not ideal. The Titanic fiasco made a lot of sense to me as the water was rising at the bottom of the elevator. Karen was still lying down at the bottom of the shaft with her jaw crooked and her eyes half opened. The “Take-Your-Shit-And-Leave” strategy came to my mind, but somehow I couldn’t stay insensitive to Karen’s vulnerability. She tried to break my neck a few minutes before, but a lot happened since then and I always was a sucker for girls.
“Godammit”, I said, hopping back into the elevator shaft. “Pat, help me to yank her out, she can be useful still.”
“ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND?” said Tony, who had just pulled Louise out of the cage, still unconscious.
Karen chose well her moment to get back to consciousness. She rolled over and made some sort of distorted moan. The type of moans you can only hear when someone is badly injured. I had no doubt that he jaw was broken then. She might have suffered a concussion from the epic slaps that Tony laid on her. Her cheeks were still red where he hit her. I pulled her up and she could stand on her legs despite being wobbly. Even if her jaw had a strange angle, I still found she was beautiful. I cursed at myself for being in love and for having a stupid superhero syndrome, but I hopped through the roof trap and pulled her up. I had a though for Ray Bushnell, this deprogrammer I knew that worked with sect survivors. Given we survived this; I’d have to drop Karen by his office. My pink romance feelings aside, she could most likely tell us a thing or two about the Society Of Jesus. Ray would get that out of her.
In order to survive, we’d have to exit the elevator room. There were two ways of doing that. We could climb up to the floor we were going and take the stairs from there, but with Louise and Karen, that would lead us to a certain doom. Instead, we chose to Tarzan-it-up from an elevator box to another, then to the lower floor. We’d figure a way to the stairs from there. Tony and Louise went first, then Pat.
“Hold on tight” I told Karen, before grabbing the thick elevator wire.
I rolled it around my ankle before going, as a security measure. Karen wrapped her arms around me and held on tight to my shirt. I couldn’t help but to feel a warm rush of endorphins. I kissed her forehead and swung to the next elevator box. I’m not sure what went wrong there, but the wire didn’t go the way I wanted and we ended up hanging in the middle of the elevator room with water rising faster and faster. I had to think fast. With an injured passenger, fighting the elements and taking such high risks wasn’t the smartest idea.
“I’ll meet you guys on the bridge” I yelled to Pat and Tony.
Pat gave me a thumb up, meaning he understood. I looked for Trevor, but he wasn’t there anymore. He must’ve escaped by himself while I was picking up Karen. A question of priorities I thought.
“Hold on baby, it’s going to hurt, but as soon as were down, hop on my back. You might have to hold your breath. I love you.”
Not sure why I said that. Not sure if it was exactly what I felt at the moment, but it made sense saying it.
“Mike, I’m scared” said Karen before falling.
My goal was to use the waters to get back up. Yes I would start back in the ballroom, at the bottom of the boat, but the place was certainly desert by now, so that would grant me a clear way to the bridge, given that we could beat the flow that filled the room faster and faster with the clear waters of the Pacific Ocean. We landed straight in the waters and Karen made the shift to my back like a champion. I had almost forgotten that she was quite the athlete back in the Academy.
The waters were in between two floors so I had to take the decision, wait to go up or going down underwater for a while. I chose to take immediate action and dive down. I was scared that the elevator boxes would fall on our skulls while waiting. This ship would sink at any moment, so the ongoing ruckus was damaging enough to make it look like the end of the world. I told Karen to hold her breath and we dived down for what might be the last moments of our lives. Fortunately the waters were clear and the first floor exit was still opened.
For a moment that was long enough for my lungs to burn and my vision to blurry, we stayed underwater. But we came out, we had done it. We would survive. I swam up to the staircase, against a current that pushed me back to the end of the ballroom. Once again, I could’ve waited there, but as I though this; candelabra fell from the ceiling and crashed into the water. Getting to these stairs was a necessity.
“I love you too Mike” said Karen. “I’m sorry for all this.”
She gave me the wings I needed in order to reach the first steps that weren’t completely drowned underwater. Karen stepped down to walk on her own, but she fell on the water soaked floor.
“Come on Karen, hop back on, you’re not that heavy”
At the top of the stairs, a Trevor Greenwell clone appeared, wearing a robe and wielding what seemed to be a crowbar. For a few seconds, I was scared we wouldn’t make it, but out of nowhere, the clone’s head got blown to pieces. He fell like a disarticulated mannequin on the floor. On my back I heard a weak: “Travis…”
I raced up to the next floor to realize it was Trevor that blew his brother’s head off with one of the assault rifles he had with him. There were nasty things about this family I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. If Trevor had blown his twin brother’s head off like this, I’d hate to see what he could do to his grandfather. Karen seemed way below his preoccupations now. Going through all this hassle to get her out of there alive made me feel stupid when I looked to what Trevor was going through, but I also felt like I was doing the right thing. Somehow, Trevor might have also felt that…or he wouldn’t have made brain stew out of his brother.
We came to the bridge without anymore scuffle, only to realize that the boat had a funny angle and was sailing away from the coast. On the Pier, police agents were preparing inflatable rafts but the Society Of Jesus people were all jumping in the water. That made it as good as a shark infested pool for me. In deep waters, the playground is leveled. A fifty years old woman could grab my leg and drown both of us. Fortunately, I heard a familiar whistle. I turned around and Pat was alone, at the back of the boat, which started to tangle dangerously forward. This bad boy would capsize anytime soon.
I held on to the rail and slowly made my way up to him. With ascending gravity, Karen’s weight on my shoulders didn’t speed up the process. She tried to help herself though by pushing on the railway with her feet. I recognized a glimpse of the old Karen I knew, the fighter, the girl that would keep giving her hundred percent efforts under fire. I made it up to Pat and took rest against the captain quarters as the boat was turning vertically. Trevor was still nowhere to be found.
“Where’s Tony?” I asked Pat.
He pointed down in the water. The boss thought it would be a good idea to leave with his wife and leave Pat on the boat to his destiny. That had for result to have him attacked by what seemed to be ten or twelve members of the Society Of Jesus that dragged them down to their doom at the bottom of the ocean. Winchester was dead, Tony was going to die, maybe the order of things would be reinstalled.
“What do we do now brother?”
“We’re going to Let that ship sink and hope these guys kill each other before we reach the water. I don’t think anyone of them saw us yet.”
I nodded. That made a lot of sense. The ship had maybe another minute or so before sinking and a lot of things could still happen. As the ship went down, we decided to hop in the waters facing the coast, most of the action being behind the boat. We jumped in there with maybe a few hundred meters to go. There was a glimmer of hope. For the first time since the whole thing started, I felt strong.
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