Snippet #1875783

Lt. Mackenzie "Blades" Hawkins

Eyelids slowly opened to a constantly shifting and flowing world of underwater waves. Darkness was broken intermittently by slicing beams of light cutting through the depths of the water. Lifting her head slowly, Mackenzie saw the surface of the water above her. Too far to reach with her arms, but enough that she could see the burning light of day above her. The suddent comfort of the light rays above her was suddenly stolen away by the realization that they weren't getting any closer. She reached, but foudn herself still no closer. It wasn't until she tried to kick her legs that she realized why.

Something was pulling her down.

The intial panic caused the young woman to flail some, the lack of fresh oxygen pouring into her lungs causing her chest to burn as she struggled to pull loose from whatever it was that secured her beneath the surface, away from the sweet breath she so desperately craved. The more she struggled, the tighter the grip pulling her down, down down. The darkness prevented her from seeing her captor or anything below her own waist.

A blinding burst of light from above drew her attention for a fleeting moment, just long enough to distract her from the internal panic of conserving what little breath she had. The light burned so brightly through the flowing waves that Mackenzie lifted a hand to shield her eyes. Still, she could see the beams. They were getting brighter. And closer. After a few more seconds, the pilot's eyes grew wide with horror as she suddenly saw the flames.

As the flaming mass slammed against the surface of the water with weight and force on the magnitude to displace lakes, Mackenzie didn't even have time to register that her imprisonment in the darkness was broken before the sheer force of the impact of the massive, flaming bulk into the water hurled her into a twisting and spinning fury. Up become down. Down became up. The disorientation became so great that the young woman forgot about the burning light, the need to breath, and the confusion how she'd gotten here in the first place.

As soon as the world stopped spinning, Mackenzie found herself finally gaining her bearings, the sick spinning cycle suddenly coming to just long enough for her to open her eyes to a whole new horror that made her wish for the darkness.

Before her, the length of the Earth Defense Force Titan-class carrier Atlas plunged into the darkness. The twisted, scarred frame of the ship had been through hell and back again. Long, jagged tears ripped through the hull of the ship as she sank, the product of her own momentum and the sea's hungry pull down into the depths. The carnage wreaked upon the carrier was so severe that even the main launching flight pod was almost completely detached from the ship like a broken, twisted and mangled limb dragged down with the rest of the body.

Then Blades saw the bodies. They drifted out from the ship, burned and mangled themselves. The fires that consumed the ship had started from the inside, at least enough of them to char the remains.

Everyone was dead.

As the ship sank deeper and deeper, the great weight it displaced in the water beneath the suspended frame of the young pilot suddenly began to affect its own pull in the world, the vortex effect that began to suck everything down along with it.

The Atlas was well on her way to a watery grave and she was taking Mackenzie Hawkins with her.

When the girl opened her mouth to scream, no icy water penetrated her throat like daggers. No cold, deep darkness embraced her in silence. Instead, she screamed in the bustling corridor of the Atlas, home again. As much as any of them were home, anyway.

Every inch of her body hurt like hell.