Water began flowing into the control room and I spotted another submarine. I thought I was going to freeze, but the Holy Spirit kept the fire within me. And with those temperatures, I certainly needed it. I thought about firing a torpedo at them, I even stepped to the control panel, but God wanted me to survive and bring justice to those whom Freedom’s Voice had slaughtered, not to perish in a false display of valor.

Girgor and I rummaged around but no diving gear lay nearby, and the few suits and gear I found seemed made for Goliath. And I could spot the other submarines circling us, ready to fire, but I was going to remain calm. There had to be a diving suit somewhere, and I was going to find it.

I spotted the torpedo heading right at us as if it were in slow motion. I wanted to hold on to something, but I felt as if they had injected me with a paralyzer. And the second the torpedo hit, the tremor knocked me down and I crashed into a table. But just then I heard something fall and roll over. And then a translucent ochre liquid began to fall right at me. I could picture it in my mind—the Eugenex entering my body.

So I just rolled over fast. And the Eugenex landed on the floor, making contact with my skin, with my hand, with my fingers. Was the first time I had ever felt Eugenex, that venom, that bane that felt like gunge, like filth. But I would have none of that. I stood up and cleansed the Eugenex off my fingers with water, hoping that whatever must have seeped through my skin was negligible, and then stepped into a hallway.

Smart devices and offices supplies crashed into the floor as I scavenged the rooms and tossed them around. The arctic waters of the North Atlantic had swallowed my knees at that point, but I felt no pain. And then I glanced at the submarines again, ready to fire, but I wasn’t going to die there.

Furniture began to capsize. The submarine had begun to capsize. Gunshots and torpedoes echoed nearby, all of them piercing the submarine’s hull. I could even see it in faces of the incoming soldiers, diving towards us. They wanted to kill me, even if they had to die because of it, even if the submarine had to plummet to the bottom of the ocean to do so. I wanted to fight them, but my life was more important than the fight, so I just dashed through the remaining rooms but found nothing.

Water already spiked my waist, as bursts of ice blasting through my nerves. Only one room remained. The diving suits had to be there, something had to be there. I swam there, where a wardrobe awaited me. I would not drown. I would not perish. I was going to survive. If I could open the wardrobe, that was. I hauled its handle, rammed its doors, knocked it down even, but it was as locked as any biometric door would have been.

I was doing everything within me not to panic. Liquid ice blades already frosted my chest, but I wasn’t even thinking on the spikes of the freezing water, I just wanted to survive. I took a deep breath and dove into the currents that threatened to drown me, fingering every inch of the floor.

And then I felt something, a switchblade, but just when I seized it, the submarine crashed into a cliff and the switchblade slid from my grasp. And I heard soldiers and things falling and footsteps practically right next to me. I just swam upwards but banged my head with the ceiling. Water already filled the submarine. I didn’t want to open my eyes, I knew what that meant, but I’d have to.

I did. And it was like having millions of needles lacerate your eyes, but there were no soldiers, and no switchblade. But I wasn’t going to surrender. Water swelled my lungs, but I wasn’t going to breathe. My heart beat so loudly that I thought it was going to rip my chest, but I wasn’t going to breathe. I patted the floor, the walls, the windows, everything, but the vortexes around me had snatched the switchblade, as if the Enhanceds could even control nature. And perhaps they could, but I didn’t think the soldiers chasing me capable of that. They were not specialized Fenglas or Achroites.

And then I heard some soldiers yelling, and guns firing, and bullets thudding all over. I just swam up, down, left, right, in every possible direction, but my lungs wouldn’t resist for long. I wanted to breathe. I had never wanted to breathe more than I did at the time, not even with the paralyzer at Zee Gevangenis. With the paralyzer, you were still, physically unable to breathe. So even if I wanted to breathe, which I definitely did, I couldn’t. In the submarine, I had to dodge bullets and force myself not to breathe, even though every second the fact that I could breathe irrupted in my mind, even though every second the picture of me breathing burst into my mind. But breathing meant certain death. Water would fill up my lungs and I’d have died by drowning. But now because of my weakness.

And the worst part was that sooner or later my body was going to make me breathe. And when that happened, it was goodbye. But then it clouted me. I dove around, and tapped everything I could until I tapped the wardrobe. The plan had to work. I only had ten seconds before I breathed. Nine. Eight. Seven. And then the bullets slowed down until falling to the floor because of the water’s resistive force.

I placed myself in front of the wardrobe and waited for the soldiers to come at me. And just a fraction of a second before they clouted me, I swam away. One of them did punch my thorax with the strength of a high-speed truck, but I heard the wardrobe shattering, so I didn’t mind the punch. I only had four seconds remaining. My lungs wanted to burst at that point, but I wasn’t going to breathe, not until my reflexes made me.

I swam towards the wardrobe. Three seconds I had left. I fingered what was around it and found a couple of oxygen tanks and an armor suit, those with artificial gills, masks, able to withstand the pressure of the midnight and abyss zones, and temperature-resistant technology. Two seconds left. One second left. I just snatched the mask, put it on, and shut it. And I opened my eyes. And I breathed. I breathed, as I never had before, but not for long.

A soldier was about to rip the mask off me but I swam in the opposite direction and left the room, but not the submarine. I had to find Girgor, but he was nowhere to be found. I put on the rest of the armor suit and kept looking for him, but if I didn’t find him soon, I would have to leave without him, even if it made my stomach churn. And after three hundred seconds, I did. I had to. It would have been foolish for both of us to die. And perhaps he was alive, somewhere safe. That was it. He was alive. Somewhere. Or at least, that’s what I told myself to assuage my conscience. On my mind, Girgor was safe, somewhere. So I had to get to safety as well. He was the real deal. He would not betray me. Now I knew.

I swam above but someone hauled my neck down and I almost lost conscience. But for a second there, I couldn’t help but notice how peaceful the ocean looked, as if nothing was going on, nothing except me being choked to death. But I wasn’t going to die there, not like that, not death by drowning.

I elbowed the attacker and he let go. But then I saw him staring, glaring at my artificial gills, at my oxygen tanks. And immediately the gravels pummeled my brain. I pictured myself drowning, being eaten by fish, sharks, collapsing into the bottom of the ocean, but I hadn’t survived Zee Gevangenis just to let the mosquitoes of the mind kill me. They only brought despair and death, and sometimes not just the earthly one.

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So I swam further ahead, thinking about the surface, focusing on surviving, but my mind was so fixated on staying alive, that I forgot all about the attacker, who then snatched off one of my oxygen tanks. I thought my rage would explode at him, but I got frustrated with myself. If I hadn’t been so obsessed on heading to the surface, if I had just turned one moment, if I had just glanced back one second, then … but I just offered it to God. It was pointless to get mad at yourself. What I had to do was take action and deal with the consequences, even if it had been my fault.

And that first step was glancing back, and thank God I did, for the officer was about to bash my head with the oxygen tank he had snatched. I missed it by one second. I laughed, but that laugh vanished when he yanked off my artificial gills. I thought about fighting him for them, but I had to survive. And I was going to survive, with or without gills and oxygen. I kicked his thorax and swam away with the officer in pursuit.

But before I could even take a stroke, a nightmarish bioluminescent squid latched on to my torso and began to slice my suit and visor with its tentacles. Stronger and sharper than they seemed. I thought being a bridger would have readied me for everything, but antiviruses paled in comparison to that squid, and water’s density made me slower than the void space of the Bridge. Guessed that was because I was used to avoiding danger. That was the main rule of self-defense. Always avoid conflict. So apart from that firewall, antivirus had only caught me twice. But now I found out I was rusty in actual combat that wasn’t on land.

I was not used to fighting beasts.

The squid’s beaks, sharp enough to slice Kevlar, attempted to puncture my diving suit. I kicked and punched its head, and body, but it just tightened its grasp on my torso. And tried to pierce my remaining oxygen tank. Just the tiniest cut, just a minuscule tear on the tank, on my visor, on my diving suit, and the pressure would have crushed me. I panicked. First time. I rarely panicked in the Bridge. But I wasn’t in the Bridge. This felt more dangerous, even though I guessed the danger was greater in the Bridge. But it was the lack of control that lacerated me, though not as much as the squid’s beaks. In the Bridge, I knew what to do.

Underwater I didn’t.

I managed to socket the squid’s eye and it let go, but before I could even turn, it clutched my legs and began to haul me down, deep into the midnight zone. Perhaps even deeper than Zee Gevangenis. And when that happened, not even an intact diving suit would resist the pressure. But I couldn’t let panic get the best of me. I just elbowed the squid’s eyes and hammered its head as if I wanted to crush it with my own hands. Blood seeped. The squid’s, thank God. It retreated but then rammed into my visor, which cracked, but didn’t shatter. And at that moment, not thinking, not reasoning, I just grabbed my oxygen tank and clouted one of the squid’s eyes with it. It screamed a ghoulish shriek, but it didn’t let go. It wasn’t human. I could reason with a human. I could not reason with a hellish beast. So I just smashed its head again and again with my oxygen tank until it stopped trying to puncture my diving suit, now tainted by a trail of its blood.

I kicked its tentacles until I escaped, and the squid’s corpse plummeted deep into the abyss of the ocean, leaving Zee Gevangenis as nothing but a dot in its trail. I knew sadness was supposed to pulse through my veins, but it didn’t. That thing had tried to kill me. Sneaked upon me and treated me like prey. Thought it could kill me. Like the Harmonists. They had sneaked past me, past everyone that raw Eugenex blast decimated, but they would not win. I would bring those they had massacred to justice. Even if I had to slay each and every single one of the Limbs because they fought me.

Justice would prevail. The lives of the innocent clamored for it. And the unjust would fall, Enhanced or Natural; government or terrorist.

The midnight zone of the North Atlantic Ocean felt like another planet, even more so than the Bridge. An array of translucent jellyfish and slimy salamander-like fish swam in front of me. Their swimming, the only sound that helped me not surrender. Completely isolated, unaware of everything around them, like the trapped data packets of the Bridge. But what saddened me a tad was that no plants shrouded the slopes of the zone. I knew no plants could survive without sunlight, in total darkness, but it still felt like death, swimming for thirty minutes and not spotting a single plant. Just the occasional lantern fish. And yet, this sense of peace engulfed me, despite the ice lances that punctured every pore of my skin. I felt more comfortable than in the Bridge, even more so now that the tranquility had made my wrath at the squid attack subside.

I guessed I couldn’t stay mad at it. Was just an animal acting on instinct. Feeding itself. I thought if sometimes it was better if we humans didn’t have free will, and obeyed God like the angels did. Would make things so much more peaceful, better. Free from evil. But then again, if God in His infinite wisdom had granted us free will, it was for us to choose to love Him. But still, sometimes I thought I’d rather be like those anemones around me, unaware of everything, just minding myself. All of us, free from the consequences of our actions. But that was selfish. And weak. The tempter would not win.

I just kept swimming for an hour and twelve minutes until sunlight began to seep through my eyes. Must have arrived to the border between the twilight and sunlight zones of the ocean, but my legs swelled. My arms ached. And I had depleted my sole oxygen tank. Hypothermia had begun to affect me, but I would continue. Just one minute. That was all I needed.

All the words I could think about were don’t breathe, don’t breathe. Don’t think about your lungs. Don’t think about drowning. Don’t. Ironically, that made me think even more about drowning and the water in my lungs, but that was all I could think of, so I just powered ahead, with the images of me splattered on the ocean floor partying in my brain. Just ten seconds. Just a little bit more. And there it was—the surface. My head lay above water. I opened my eyes and took a deep breath, but someone or something hauled me down. But it could have been a triton or mermaid for all I cared at that moment. I just kicked it until it let go. I swam back above and took a deep breath. Thrice.

Land awaited me at least ten minutes away. I swam ahead, not thinking on the pain and hypothermia. I prayed no one hauled me back down again. And thankfully nothing did. I marshaled ahead and arrived at the shore. Dirt mantled by snow spiked my skull, though not as much as the arctic zephyrs that speared my soaked body. Rocks shrouded by sleet jagged my skin, though not as much as the gravels my mind hurled at me. Mountains veiled in iridescent ice and fjords drowned in pristine water welcomed me. So pristine that I even took a sip. But its salty taste jolted me back into the real world. I rested on a shore by the sea, not a lake.

It felt like sleeping on the Shannon Callows fields in the midst of a scorching winter. Which never scorched me, whatever the temperature was. I felt back at home. At last, I was able to just lie down and gaze at the sky in that deluged vale, even if only for one minute. A minute that a part of me wanted to last forever, but that I knew had to end. Wanted it to end. To bring justice for the innocent massacred. Find the cure. Save our country.

If I returned alive, I could inspire the Naturals, tell them the video was edited, that I had not betrayed them. I could help avert a civil war, where most Naturals would have ended up as willing fodder for the Harmonists, and victims for the government. And most important, I could rekindle the faith on those whose faith had wavered, and restore it on those whose faith had withered. With God’s light.

I had trekked through the depths. And survived.

I had trudged through water and fire. And survived.

I had returned. To save our country. To save our world.

Freedom’s Voice might have been the light that shouldered the dreams of our nation, the hope that would lead us to freedom, but now, he was the void that exposed the iniquity in our people, the calamity that extinguished the innocence in our lands, the ruin that annihilated everything, everyone I cared about. On his lust for power.

He would not rule. I would bring Freedom’s Voice to justice. Even if it meant becoming the nightmare that wrecked our dreams.

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