The pain from the slashes across my back and at my mangled right shoulder climbed with each step I took along the edge of the underground town.

My body was filled with adrenaline, and a cocktail of acidic dread-causing chemicals, all brought about from the threat of losing too much blood, passing out from the pain, being hunted down by the Amalgamation, and not finding a way out of the underground complex before the flooding water completely consumed it.

The agony which gripped my back made the rest of my body feel weak.

Parts of my body were unresponsive, the nerves refusing to work the way they were supposed to. My legs limped along, moving at a staggered shuffle at best.

Somewhere along the way through the town, down a different narrow alley, towards the middle of town, I must have decided to remove my enlarged state, returning to my normal size. I was also no longer in a coiled state either.

Did I choose to undo it or had it undone on its own somehow? It was becoming increasingly difficult to concentrate and time seemed to lapse after the fact, as if I were struggling to remember what happened in intervals of several seconds.

The wailing siren and the flashing lights and the ever present water flooding the complex only added to the surreal nightmare of it all.

The icy cold water had reached my ankles. Each footstep landed with an additional suck and splash, slowing me down even further.

A memory of being seven years old and running around an outdoor swimming pool came to mind as I hurried on. With my thoughts racing a hundred miles a minute I couldn't remember if the memory was real or something I had imagined or dreamed; the image of a little seven year old me slipping and falling onto hard wet concrete played in a single flash.

One memory I did recall was nearly drowning around the age of ten. I had let go of the edge of the pool and drifted further into the deep end. I kicked, and splashed about, at first playfully thinking I could get back to the edge without issue; but there had been adults there who had passed by, preventing me from getting to the edge of the pool. By the time I started to lose the strength to keep myself above water the adults had gotten out of the pool and were distracted doing other things. I tried calling out for my mother, but the words came no louder than a whisper garbled by the water getting into my mouth.

And then I went down, submerging into the water like an anchor. For several seconds the surface of the water ascended, and down I went into the depths of the pool.

I felt very calm as my body gave up trying to reach for the surface. All I could see was the hazy light breaking through the surface of the water above; like stars in the daytime.

Mum, who had been swimming in the deep end, swam over and pulled me up. She helped me out of the pool, and I was thankful not to have drowned.

I thought you were pretending, Mum had said. Other adults that had been sunbathing around the pool had noticed I was drowning too, and likely would have done something had I stayed down any longer. Maybe. They probably thought I was playing too.

It was that calmness as I had held onto my last lungful of air which I remembered most about nearly drowning to death.

If I drowned somewhere under the facility would it hurt? Or would I feel that calmness again before the end?

It was hard to tell if the Amalgamation was chasing after me. If it was, with all the chaos I doubted it would have a hard time hunting me down.

I wasn't sure at first that I had really reached the middle of town because the flooding water, and the flashing lights, had changed the landscape enough to make it all slightly unfamiliar. The base of the guillotine was submerged more by the water, which had reached up to my knees.

A way off I saw much of the water sinking into the hole Sophie and Walter had taken to get out.

There's no way I'm going down there, I thought, I'll drown in seconds.

I stopped and looked about the middle of town, left, right, ahead, behind, dizzyingly unsure what to do and helpless.

The hulking mass of the Amalgamation had started to emerge from the alleyway. From a distance it looked almost like some kind of mutated bear, more shadow than fleshless skin; its left yellow eye shining even from a distance.

Its large head searched with sickening intelligence and fluidity until its gaze settled on me. It let out a roar that was tinged with a scream that sounded vaguely like both Adam and George.

Like many hard choices in life, my next decision really was no choice at all. I turned and ran desperately for the sewer hole in the ground.

There wasn't any time to look for another way out.

The vortex of the water flooding into the hole promised both death and escape.

I stood before the hole hearing the rushing of the water as if I were about to jump into the belly of some great beast.

My breathing was fast and sucking. This was it. I was very likely going to die. If not by drowning, then by the Amalgamation which had already begun its charge towards me.

I didn't think of anything in particular with these precious few fragments of life left to me. My mind was too caught up with stealing up the courage to jump into the hole to think of any higher cause. The whirl of the circling water before me, pulling at my legs, threatening to trip me up, matched the hysteria which gripped my every desperate thought, as if every possible good thought I might have were being sucked down into the void ahead of me too.

I wasn't sure if I had felt the breath of the Amalgamation on the nape of my neck, or if I had imagined it; either way it was enough to prompt me to risk it all for the slim chance of living another day.

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I jumped into the hole. Gravity gripped me, yanking me down into the darkness.

An immediate do-or-die fight to breathe took hold of me. There was nothing left to see because the depths of the sewer I found myself in was nearly filled with water already. There seemed little hope of me simply searching my way through the sewer tunnels, because my feet weren't even able to touch the floor. The throng of the water was too great.

All sense of up and down and the size of the sewer pipe I was in had become one unending, ice-cold, chaotic rush.

I held my breath, having just enough sense not to waste what precious time doing so would bring me.

I tried moving my arms and legs but it had become hopeless attempting to move or navigate my surroundings.

Was I even moving anymore?

It was so cold in the water at best I was aware of the sensation of bumping into things; hard metal, mostly with a slick texture. But there was something else too; a momentary hardness against the left-side of my face and exposed chest; it felt as if these parts of myself were being pressed over rubber ridges. Whatever it was that was pressing against me pushed me away from it.

In the madness of it all I even imagined George calling out my name.

And then I felt it.

The calmness and the euphoria brought about from every fiber of my body no longer having the strength to keep fighting the inevitable.

It was like I was seven years old again drowning in the rich family's swimming pool we had visited that day; only this time there was no Mum to save me. No adults at all. No teenagers either. One by one things had worked out so I was exactly as I had always feared I would be: on my own.

I had tried somewhere in that darkness to use my power to buy me more time. It was something like a wish, hold on just a bit longer. Hold. On. Just a little more.

Maybe my lungs did manage to hold on for a little longer than might be normal for a human being. Or maybe not.

My mouth opened and what little air I was holding in escaped. I couldn't help it, for some reason my mouth and lungs just refused to listen to me anymore.

There wasn't any calm euphoria anymore. Just agony. Everywhere all over my body all at once.

If there was any silver lining to the agony it was that a creeping tiredness followed by darkness quickly took hold of me.

A tiny piece of my me, maybe just the will to live, remained just above that darkness as if the very essence of my being were holding on for dear life.

*

I had no idea how much time had passed since the agony of drowning took hold of me. There was no thought I was able to hold save for the recognition that I was incredibly heavy. I was beyond tired.

There was something bright pressing against my closed eyes. The more I felt it the more it annoyed me. But this was a good thing, because if I was annoyed then maybe I was…something. Whatever that something was had to be better than being dead.

I knew for sure I wasn't dead when I began to cough and sputter, my throat was burning and raw.

My body more than my mind recalled the tiredness I had felt way back when on the treadmill in Lintern's Gym. Way back however many weeks ago when I had brought my body to the point that, under any normal circumstance, it should have died. Tiffany and I had come out sunburned from the treadmill torment.

As if I didn't want it to, my mind tried to refuse the onset of consciousness. The tiredness and lack of thought was a nice reprieve from the horrible nightmare I had just woken from.

In the nightmare I had been in someplace dark, with a monster chasing me, with water everywhere threatening to drown me in its depths.

Something clicked, and I realised that I must have washed up somewhere. I hadn't drowned.

There was still cold water washing over me, mostly from the chest down, with occasional bouts of water still entering my mouth. My world flipped when I realised I was laying down on my chest instead of my back.

Light continued to press against my eyes. There was no hope of opening them. They were shut tight as if glued in place. My eyeballs behind the eyelids searched about trying to perceive anything besides vague redness and the light peeking through it.

Become stronger, I thought, searching my mind for the unlocking sensation I knew well enough by now. Become stronger.

I had no idea how long it took, but bit by bit strength returned to my body. Along with the strength came the distant rush of water, the sound of leaves rustling in the wind, and my own hoarse breathing.

Should be dead, I thought, with breathing like that.

After the course of some unknown amount of time I found strength which would only be available to me through superhuman means.

I climbed to my feet, numb to the environment around me; too inside my own mind to know if my body even had the capability of shivering.

My eyes opened to see a world of gray. The sky was bright but overcast.

Focus, I thought, concentrating on making my eyes work. I stood in one spot like a drunk.

My eyes settled on the river bank around me.

The deepest greens and browns I had ever seen in my life were to my right. I was at the start of some kind of heavily wooded forest.

To my left was a river, and further along the river, not too far off, was a huge sheer rock wall. I wasn't sure if it was part of the dam Sophie had mentioned before, or some other off-section that led out of the underground complex. I saw the sewer hole I must have fallen out of and been washed along by the water's current.

My head ached fiercely, seeing how high up the tunnel was, with all the water pouring out of it.

The lone sewer opening didn't make sense to look at however. There was something off about it which didn't add up to scrutiny.

In my dumb state of mind I began to move towards the sewer opening, towards the torrent of rushing water shooting out of it. When I was about a stone's throw away I craned my head up, ignoring the miserable cramping in my neck, and saw what it was that puzzled me about the opening.

It looked as if it had been forced open from the inside. A large, heavy chunk of metal was peeled outward like a flower petal sculpture.

Had I done that? If I did I had no memory of doing so.

It doesn't matter, I thought.

I'm out, that's what counts.

I was finally out of the facility, the underground complex, and back to the real world.

Alone but alive.

Stiff and with pain newly returning to every inch of my body, I turned away from the tunnel opening and considered where I might go.

I needed to get away from the Pied Piper officers and, because they were one-in-the-same thing, Chellam too.

And where was the Amalgamation? Had Adam and George made it out?

I didn't know which outcome I preferred. Maybe dying would be a better fate for them than making it out to the real world as they were.

Somewhere in nature, I thought, remembering back to when I had wanted the evacuation to take me to someplace away from the grit and grime of the city with all its urban fumes.

Whether it was the best direction to go or not didn't matter to me at that moment. I staggered deeper into the forest, letting the deep greenery of it all surround me.

I kept moving and didn't stop for a very long time.