Emma had no clue if she was going insane or not.

For all she knew, she was dead, and this was the Underworld. Certainly enough water about and then the dead…

But then again, when she glanced toward the sky, she saw now darkness, but a light shade of blue. The storm had passed. If this was the underworld, Hades, then it was much more pleasant then she imagined.

Minus the bloated, fetid, watery corpses, of course.

The sudden drop back into the water took Emma for surprise, but she quickly swam her way back up.

Returning to her all-consuming task, Emma focused once more on finding a place to hunker down as she waited for rescue. Or died.

Whichever came first.

Emma swam for a long while in pursuit of this goal, but it was as fruitless as the goals of organized religion. After what seemed hours, Emma was sure she would die in this accursed place.

But luckily, her swimming was not in vain.

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Ahead, Emma sensed something.

What it was and what she was sensing, and how he was sensing it, was unknown to her. But she could tell that something was ahead. Some sense in her, always there, but long buried, had activated. She renewed her swimming at full-speed…

Speed. The word brough back another memory fragment: Emma had been running down the hall — yes, that was what happened! — and then water crashed upward from somewhere from the decks below. It thundered through the reinforced steel of the ship, splitting it open like wet paper, and consumed everything in its path.

Emma’s heart beat so fast, if she had been able to give her organ any attention, she thought it might burst. But as the memory replayed in her head, Emma only thought of the terror as the water stripped flesh from bone in seconds and gushed down and through hallways and into rooms, where the screaming only amplified. Emma remembered herself running against fate as she fled down corridors and hallways and anything that would get her away from the monstrous, murderous water imbued with the laughing face of the god Poseidon.

But just as the final seconds of the memory finished replaying in her head — darkness.

It was over.

Although Emma still paddled herself to the unseen force up ahead, inside, she was still. Her soul quivered with rage. Her heart hurt. Her mind tired.

Numb. Her body was becoming numb.

It is the cold water, a part of Emma told herself. Get out!

Suddenly, Emma bumped into something. She looked. Land!

Although she climbed up, what she saw was not land, as in ‘ground,’ per se. Rather, it was solid water.