For some time, it was all primordial.

Emma struggled to rise above the crashing water. Whenever she swam straight up — or what she thought of as ‘up’ — something pulled her back down with capricious desire. She kicked, punched, did whatever she could to free herself, but it was no good.

What had happened? Why had it happened, whatever it was? And where was she?

She was running out of air. She could not field these questions, so why her mind drifted to such prosaic musings was beyond her at the moment. Desperation, perhaps?

With a violent shove, Emma kicked away whatever debris had latched onto her leg. Free — at last!

Drifting to the surface, Emma took in a jealous amount of fresh air. It was invigorating to be to free!

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But looking around, the same could not be said for the many corpses which now floated lifelessly in the still waters.

One of the dead bumped into Emma and she was terrified. Yet, she could not scream. She just hovered in her little oceanic safe place and tried to control the incoming panic attack.

But it was a losing battle.

Her mind brought her back to the beginning of the disaster. Or what she could remember of it.

She had been in the buffet hall. Having dinner? No, drinking? She could not recall. Political discussion, perhaps. But then an alarm sounded. People began to panic. And although she did not know why, Emma herself began to panic and then run; not just a fast walk, either, she now recalled, but a full on gallop. But what happened after? Just darkness. Water. And then, now.

Emma pushed the dead woman — an aristocrat by the looks of her once beautiful fur coat — and swam ahead. Where was she going? No idea. But Emma knew one thing — she had family in America and she wasn’t about to let some prissy Olympian, some ‘god’, stop her from traversing the ocean.

Come hell or high water, she would get to Boston.