11. EXPERIENCE.

I really enjoyed swimming out from the beach. I felt free. Not having to take breaths just freed everything up. I could stay underwater as long as I liked, and the flippers powered me forward. I felt like I could do anything. This was the best. I had never felt like this before.

I came to a stop where I felt the edge of the essence sphere. I fiddled with my watch and had it record the location. Carla was making steady progress, and I waited for her. Her upper body was on the Bodyboard, and she was powering forward with her flippered feet. Carla could swim quite well, but it wasn’t her preferred sport. I had helped her train for a triathlon once, but the swim was the weakest part of her race.

She came to a halt near me. “This is it?”

We both knew that if she was going to back out, this was it. She set her eye on the rocks and powered forward. This time, I followed her, staying just off to one side.

Control, absorb. Stay focused. That is not your favourite butt, just there. Actually, it is. Long bronze legs…

Control, Absorb. I swim faster so I am not looking at her butt. Shit, she better live. I will make sure her Sugar Daddy gets her something nice.

Control, absorb.

Control, absorb.

It is time for me to slow down and wait. I am comfortable with the level of the Anomaly Essence here. I was too far from the rocks for my liking, but I guess I will always feel like that.

I watch as Carla moves steadily and with confidence toward the rocks. She reaches out, grabs the rock, and gets her feet under her. She is a bit unsteady in the flippers as she is not used to them.

She drags the bodyboard up enough so it won't float away. She untied the Kahawai and freed the net. She places the Kahawai above the tide on the rocks and moves across the rocks. I am guessing she wants to get a look at the anomaly.

The crazy bitch. She is not looking. She is casting her net as close to the anomaly as possible. I can't see what she has caught, but she is not happy. She is casting again.

I don’t know if the time she spends inside the sphere will affect the mutation. I basically saw the anomaly and got out as fast as I could. She has already been here longer than my total time. As she is casting again. Does she remember the anomaly affects every living thing in its sphere, including the microorganisms in the water, air and our bodies? I am sure this is where the randomness in mutations comes from, but I don’t fucking know anything. This is the most frustrating part. Nobody knows.

I am worried for her. I don’t want her to die. OK, I fucking admit it, she has become more than just another booty call. Fuck. She has joined Maple as someone I care about.

Yes, she has something she thinks will work. I see her draw the knife and stab something. The rocks are blocking my view, so I can’t see what it is. She grabbed the Kahawai and sliced the stomach open. I see the guts slide off the rocks into the water. She puts something into her mouth I can’t tell if it is Kahawai or whatever else she caught or both. Come on, let's get out of here. Nope, she is taking another mouthful. She is working on something with the knife. Come on, come on.

I start working my way toward her. I don’t want to call out and distract her. She knows, trust her. She knows the risks. Fuck, I know what she is doing. She is going for everything she can get for her 50/50 toss of the coin. She is a sportswoman. She has a competitive nature. She is going to get everything she can on the bet she lives. I got one ability the first time. She is going for as many different things as she can. No wonder she didn’t tell me.

I stop moving forward. She is casting again. I am scared she is changing her 50/50 chance of living doing this, but what the hell do I know? Nobody knows.

Shit, control, absorb. Shit, shit, shit.

She is squatted down again, working the knife. She is betting everything, but I guess if you are betting with your life, why not go for the jackpot? I calm down. There is nothing I can do. This is her life. Or death.

What the hell is she doing now? She is taking her time.

Control, absorb.

Control, absorb.

She is biffing rubbish into the sea. Fucking hell, she is casting again. She bloody has nerves of steel. I freaked out. I guess she has my account of what happened and is not taken by surprise like I was. I admit I pretty much freaked out the second time, too. I guess she is not planning for there to be a second time. Why risk your life more than the minimum? This is all logical. Is it right? There must be factors we are not accounting for.

Control, absorb. The time spent here is helping me grow as well, except for my nerves.

Shit, how long is she going to take?

Apart from cutting the Kahawai open, I don’t think she has touched it. I move a bit closer and try to get a better view, but the rocks are still blocking me. Once I move all the way in, I will only have a limited time to hold off the blue waves. Even at this distance, the essence is starting to pulse at me rather than a steady pressure.

I time my control and absorb for the pulses, and it helps.

How long has she been there? Shit, I have a watch, I should have timed her. I am not used to having a watch. I also thought she would be quick.

I move a bit closer. Yeah, this is definitely strengthening me. Now that I am not panicking, I can sense it. I still think she should leave now. I am not going to interrupt. I am going to trust her.

I take a breath. I don’t need to take a breath, but it is calming.

What the fuck? Did she just give the anomaly the finger? Crazy bitch. Does that mean she is feeling something from it and reacting to it?

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I move a bit closer, and the pulses are turning into small waves. It is a bit like swimming in strong surf. You have to watch the waves and time your moves. My years swimming at Piha are paying off.

Suddenly, Carla stood up and moved hurriedly back from the water. Her flippers and the uneven surface meant she tripped. She put her hands down to catch herself, and one slipped on some slime. She rolled near the water, and her leg splashed in.

I was frantically swimming toward her, so I couldn’t see well, but I heard her scream. I hauled myself up on the rock. I was on the opposite side of the rock than her. She was rolling away from the water. The rocks must be bruising the hell out of her. Then I saw the blood streaming down a leg. Then the water churned, and a shark rose out of the water and snapped at the leg. It missed, but it has had a taste of blood now.

I was reaching for her to drag her away from the edge, not that anywhere was far from an edge. The shark slammed down on the rock, and instead of slipping back into the water, it came for another bite. That was highly unusual. Then I saw the unusual stubs on the side of the shark.

Fucking bloody hell. A mutating shark growing legs.

Carla was quick, and that was the only thing that saved her leg. Even then, I saw the gouges the teeth made in her flesh. I reached over her to shove the shark back into the water and put poison into it as fast and potent as I could. My hand ripped along the shark’s skin in the wrong way, and my skin ripped off. Shark's skin is streamlined for speed, but rubbing the wrong way feels rough, like many tiny teeth. Actually, I think that is precisely what it is.

My hands were bleeding now as well, but the shark didn’t like it and went back into the water. I scrambled back to Carla and ripped off my shirt to make a bandage for her leg. I just put pressure on it for now to try to stop the bleeding.

“Is it dead?” she asked.

“No, it is circling and in a frenzy.”

“Can we kill it?”

“I doubt we can get to shore without it attacking.” I was tying my shirt as tightly as I could around her leg. The blood on my hand was mixing with hers. We have swapped enough bodily fluids in the past. Some more won’t hurt. “Where is the knife?”

“There,” she said, pointing.

I grabbed it and gave it to her.

“My poison is probably the only thing that might hurt it, but I will need to get my hands on it for as long as possible.”

Then I realised I was not control, and absorb, and everything was awash in blue. Fuck. I decide to take a page from Carla’s book and go big or die.

“Can you bait it up on the rocks with the kahawai, and I will jump it and try to kill it with poison?”

“Shit, you can’t do that.”

“This will be my third mutation. At this stage, your chances of surviving are better than mine.”

“Fuck!”

“Fuck!” I agreed.

“Give me the fish. Let's kill the fucker.”

She limped to her feet, and I could see blood still running down her leg. She grabbed the Kahawai by the tail and held the knife in the other hand.

I moved to the side. She splashed the kahawai on the water and took a step back.

“It will be coming fast,” I warned.

“And I am going to go for the eye,” she said, tightening her grip on the knife.

Everything happened in a rush. The shark burst from the water at speed. Carla dropped the Kahawai, dove left and stabbed with the knife. I dived to grab the back of the shark.

The shark missed the Kahawai and Carla. Carla missed the eye but did get the knife past the skin, cutting a gouge. I landed on it, slamming my face into the dorsal fin. I grabbed it with one arm, and the other was trying to find a hold. I tried to get my legs hooked around it, but it was bucking too much. I was pumping poison, trusting the nys…whatever could get it past the shark scales. We crashed back into the water. The shark took off. I had one hand desperately trying to hold onto the dorsal fin. My other found the side fin, whatever that was called. My brain randomly thought this was a copper shark, one of the most common here.

I was dragged through the water, my legs trailing behind. I was trying to get poison in through any contact point I could. I was flooded with anomaly essence. If I passed out now like last time, the shark would eat me. I was trying to funnel the anomaly essence through my poison and into the shark.

Fuuuuuuuuuuck!

At least I didn’t need to breathe.

I had no idea where I was, but suddenly, something crashed against me, and I lost my grip. I caught a glimpse of Carla stabbing wildly before the shark left her behind as well. We must be close to the rock. I swam to her rather than the surface as the shark would be back. I grabbed her waist and swam for the surface. I seemed only to have one flipper again.

I could also see her blood colouring the water. Maybe it was my blood. Our blood. There was also definitely shark blood.

I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye and shoved Carls toward the rock, which sent me in the other direction. The shark chose me.

I had been thinking I was fast in the water and free, and I was fucking deceiving myself. The shark was fast, but it couldn’t manoeuvre a damn. I got out of the way of the teeth but got swiped by a fin. It would have knocked my breath out, and I think it cracked something. The only positive was that I didn't have any air in me. Fucking weird.

Carla was quick. She was shoved to the rock but immediately pushed off back to me and stabbed the shark as it swam past, knifing it right along the side. She lost the grip on the knife, and it spun off somewhere in the blood-stained water. This is going to draw in more sharks. Shit, shit, shit.

Carla was dragging me back toward the rocks, but she was struggling. I kicked my legs to help her, grabbed the rock with one hand, and tried to help her get out of the water. The shark was much less dangerous out of the water.

She was half out when I felt the shark coming. I shoved her up, and I dove down. The shark was in a blood frenzy and, I hope, affected by my Hypnotoxin. It slammed into the rock and seemed stunned. I wrapped my legs around it and my arms near the head end and poisoned for all I was worth.

I felt a tugging at my arms, and I was pulled up. I ran out of strength, and my arm let go of the shark, which just floated there, dead.

Carla was tugging me, and I helped to get out of the water and onto the rocks. I just sat for a bit.

“Fuck.”

“Fuck,” she agreed.

“We need to go.”

Carla nodded. “If this is the end, then thank you.”

“Fuck,” I said.

“Fuck,” she agreed.

I discovered I didn’t have any flippers when I grabbed the bodyboard. I had a lot of cuts. My chest hurt with every breath I took. I stopped breathing because I could.

I insisted Carla use the board, and I would hang off the side. She needed to breathe. She also had one flipper. Both our masks were long gone. Before we left, I ripped her t-shirt off and used it to bind the worst bleeding on her legs. I don’t know where my shirt went.

We paddled our way to shore. It seemed to take forever. I felt the effect of the anomaly fading. I could also see sweat beads appearing on Carla’s forehead. Shit.

My vision faded as I crawled up onto the beach, and that was the last thing I felt.