Page 60 of The Outcast
“Please, Keith, pleeease.” Staring at my pants leg on fire, I pleaded for my life. Everything hurt from the heat all around us. Keith was no longer talking about our eternal loyalty, he was screaming and hammering on his jacket, which was on fire. With my hands and feet tied, and him on top of me, I couldn’t get away or protect my body.
We were both howling with pain when Keith grabbed onto me and yanked me along with him when he jumped into the lake.
The freezing cold water instantly soothed my burn wounds, but unable to move my hands and feet I was sinking fast and my lungs were screaming for air.
Disoriented, I couldn’t tell what was up, down, left or right in the water and my brain was too shocked to think straight. If Keith was close, I didn’t see him.
Air… air…I wriggled my body and fought to the last second until my lungs were cramping and I couldn’t hold my breath any longer. The moment I opened my mouth, I swallowed water. It made my lungs hurt even more. Slowly I lost control of my body, making my wriggling weaker, and then I stopped moving all together. My eyes were still open but all I saw were memories: my mother teaching me to count, my father swinging me through the air, and my brothers crawling into my bed when they were little, asking me to tell them a story. I saw Aubri and me as teenagers; cliff diving with the boys; and then a memory of Banni turned up. His beautiful dark eyes were looking deep into mine while we were in a sea of flowers. The moment he leaned in and kissed me my body tingled with delight and I flung my arms around him.
My arms…
Realizing that my arms were no longer tied, I looked at my hands, but in that moment Banni, who had felt so real a second ago, now faded and disappeared like a drop of color dissolving in an ocean. And there in front of me lay my body: burned, bound, and lifeless on the bottom of the cold lake. Sinking to my knees, I tried moving my arm, but nothing I did made a difference.
So, this is how it ends.The unfairness of it all weighed heavy on my soul. A broken, crazy man had taken everything from me. I wouldn’t get to make a difference in the world, marry the love of my life, have children, or grow old. There would be no more celebrations with my family and no more hugs and kisses.
A sensation of warmth from above made me look up to see the most amazing sight of an underwater rainbow. I extended my hand to investigate the strange phenomenon and watched the water separate into a tunnel with walls of fluorescent light. Feeling both awestruck and fascinated, I moved into the tunnel, which kept opening as far as my eye could see. And then, there, at the end, I glimpsed shapes of humans coming toward me. I couldn’t tell who they were, but they radiated such wonderful bliss that I was already smiling.
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CHAPTER 22
Execution
Banni
With my enhanced vision I saw everything from the moment Sparrow’s hair lit up in flames to Keith’s body bursting into fire.
The powerlessness of not being close enough to help her brought me right back to the time my friend Benjamin was dragged off by wolves and killed ten years ago.
“What was that?” Aubri exclaimed. “Something fell into the water. Was that Sparrow?”
“Yes, Keith jumped off the raft and brought her with him,” I said without telling Aubri and Indiana that from what I could see, Sparrow hadn’t moved her arms, which meant they might be tied or broken.
“I’ll land the drone,” Indiana informed us and pointed with one hand to the door. “Get ready and don’t jump until you’re right above her. You won’t have time to swim to get to her.”
Aubri and I worked together to open the door and climbed out to sit with our feet dangling from the drone while holding on to handles on the side.
“We’re going for Sparrow. I don’t care if Keith drowns,” I shouted over the wind.
Aubri leaned back and called out to Indiana, “You need to go lower. If the lake is shallow, we’ll break our legs jumping in from too high up.”
Keith was flapping around on the surface, but I couldn’t see Sparrow’s body. Switching to a different filter of my vision I searched for contrast in the water and saw a shape that could be her. “She’s a little to the left of the raft.”
“Where? I don’t see her,” Aubri shouted.
“Under the water.” My instinct told me that Sparrow had already been under water too long. I couldn’t wait another second. Counting down from ten, I held myself back while Indiana lowered the drone to hover as close to the surface as possible.
We were still at least ten meters above the surface when I pushed out from the opening and aimed for the exact spot where I saw the shape. High on adrenaline, I fell through the air and penetrated the surface of the lake like a cannonball locked on its target. My muscles contracted from the shock of the ice-cold water and my ears hurt from the fast dive. Turning my head in all directions, I searched as my eyes adjusted to the darkness. There, not far from me, I saw Sparrow. Her eyes were closed and some of her hair was gone while the rest of it moved with the water as if she was a sleeping mermaid. Using every bit of muscle power in my arms, I swam to her and once I had a tight grip on her, I set off from the bottom steering us both toward the surface of the water. When Aubri found us, I was on my back, holding Sparrow’s head on my chest while using both my feet and one arm to move us to land.
“Sparrow!” Aubri shouted at her friend with panic in her eyes.
“We’ll need to bring her back,” I shouted. When Aubri didn’t set into motion fast enough, I screamed at her again, “Get everything ready for CPR, now!”
Finally understanding my order, Aubri swam ahead.
Once I got close to land, Indiana stood with his knees in the water ready to help me. He pulled Sparrow’s soaked body into his arms and ran with her, bringing her into the drone. I had used up a vast amount of energy and crawled onto land trying to catch my breath while at the same time coughing up the water I’d swallowed. Full of concern for Sparrow, I got up and jogged to the drone, looking in at Aubri and Indiana working together. Aubri knelt bent over Sparrow, dripping from her drenched hair and clothes while blowing into Sparrow’s mouth.
“Come on, cat-face, you’re not going to leave us like this. Come back. Do you hear me?”
