Swim for it

Jade pokes her head up as much as she dares, trying to get a good look around without revealing herself. I can't do that again, she thinks. I'll tear a muscle, or worse. So running up the beach is out. And it's still a bad idea to go back into the trees, especially since now I know the men are hiding in there, waiting for me. So that leaves...

Jade looks out into the pounding surf. It's a mile-long swim, through rough waves and unpredictable undertows, but there's absolutely no chance that anyone will be lying in wait. It may be her best shot!

But, I can't just swim that distance, she thinks. I'll drown, it's as simple as that. I'm not Wonder Woman, and there's a limit to how far I can push myself. I've got to have something I can float on... it'll still be dangerous, but given the choice between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, I'll take the latter.

Jade looks at the stick in her hand; it'll be hard to swim with it, but she doesn't want to give up her last line of self defense. The pack doesn't have much in it; the electronic device dropped out back in the swamp, and of course the pager was left with its former owner. The water bottle is still there, with some water in it, and the remains of the first-aid kit. There is also a pair of handcuffs, which Jade glares at, even as she feels the unnatural thrill as she imagines what it might have been like if someone like LaShonda had found them and used them on her...

Wait, these might actually be useful!

Jade looks over her stick, and in the middle she can see a narrow spot between a knot and the stub of a branch. She clamps one of the cuffs onto that spot, tightening it until it won't slip off, and then snaps the other one tightly over a strap of the pack.

There, she thinks. I can poke the stick through the straps while I've got the pack on, and it won't slide back out. I won't be able to use it in a hurry, but I won't need it out in the water. Once I'm back on land, I can pull the strap out of the buckle and get the cuff back off. Now, insofar as keeping afloat out there...

Lying in the sand next to the two palms giving her cover is a third one, knocked over at some point by a rough wave which was too much for its rotting trunk. Jade tentatively pushes on it... it's heavy, but not so much that she couldn't possibly get it into the water. Getting a good grip on its rough outer bark, Jade braces her feet against one of the standing trees and pulls, hard.

The tree slides about a foot and a half, and then the base separates from the top, crumbling into pieces. Jade falls back into the shallow surf and comes up sputtering. At first, she glares at the chunks of hopelessly rotted wood, cursing her luck - but then she sees that the top part of the tree remains intact, and looks to be a good deal less decayed.

There's **** but to expose herself. Jade climbs up out of her cover and grabs the trunk by its top, swinging it around toward the water. It's about eight feet long and tapers from ten inches thick at the base to only three near the top, and it's heavy but she can move it! Soon she has it rolled off the bank into the water - but when she looks up, there are more men running her way from the trees!

Gotta go now! Jade drops back down and waits a few precious seconds for the next wave, then pushes the log out into the surf, plunging in after it. It floats about half out of the water, enough to keep her buoyant, and as the wave recedes she's able to push off against the bottom with her feet and follow the current out, forcing the point of the tree through the next incoming wave. Then, as she suspected it would, the sandy bottom drops out from under her feet; such large waves so close in to shore need deep water to support them, Jade knows.

"You're gonna die out there!" one of the men shouts from the shore. "Seriously, there's sharks in that water!"

Jade turns her head around sees him standing there along with three others. "If my other choice is any of you guys, I'll take the sharks!" she calls back. Then, she throws a leg up over the tree trunk, lays down low over the top of it to keep her balance, and starts paddling out to sea.

"Maybe this was a bad idea," Jade says out loud.

It's hard to say how long she's been paddling out in the ocean, but it feels like it's been over an hour, and the piece of land where the final safe house stands doesn't seem to be a lot closer. The shore, on the other hand, seems a good deal further away - she's no longer sure she can make it back, and even if she could, there's at least seven men waiting there for her now. The Sun on her back feels uncomfortably warm, and Jade knows for a fact that she must already be turning red from it.

"Okay, options," she says. "Shortest way back to land is straight that way, and I could probably make it, but I'll get caught as soon as I reach the beach; and I won't have enough energy left to fight them off or run. That's just not an option. I can't forget why I'm doing this... I can't give up.

"I can keep going toward the end. Maybe I'll get lucky, and run into some kind of current that brings me in. I could just as easily end up getting swept out to sea, though."

Jade looks out in that direction. The waves are rolling up onto the shore, so it's clear that if she could just make it there, she would be pushed in the right direction - but she won't be alone when she gets there. Ideally, she needs to emerge from the water on the small stretch of sand which is separated from the men by a jumble of rocks... but they'll see her coming, of course.

She looks down into the water, and sees a small school of fish wriggle past her legs. "Do you guys have any ideas?" she asks, but her only answer is more fish.

More fish... all swimming the same way, toward those rocks.

"There's a current down there," Jade says softly. "Below the surface. I'll have to leave this log, though... am I really that crazy?"

Jade looks back up at the final house, then to the shore, then out to sea in the direction of home... so far away. "I'm sorry, Dad," she whispers. "I know you would never have wanted me to do this, even to save your life. I still want to save you, more than anything. But if I can't... if I've really come all this way just to fail, then I don't think I want to come home anyway."

Jade takes a deep breath, and lets herself fall off the log into the sea.

She can feel the current the moment her body slips into it, some three feet below the surface. The small fish scatter before her, and she swims underwater as far as she's able before she has to rise for air. Jade breaches the surface, looks back for the log... it takes her a moment to see it, because it's suddenly over forty feet away!

It's working! she thinks. I can do this, if I can just keep going! And if I can stay low in the water, they might not even see me back on the beach; I sure as hell can't see them. They'll think I drowned or something, maybe even on purpose. Jade deliberately avoids thinking about how close she might have been to doing exactly that.

The current is erratic, and seems to vanish or even reverse as she swims, but for the most part it pushes her in the right direction and every time she surfaces the rocks are noticeably closer. She begins to feel almost optimistic... and then she sees something that makes her blood run backward in her veins.

Cresting the water just ahead of her, for only a moment, is the unmistakeable dark-gray fin of a shark.

Oh shit, oh shit. Jade fights down panic, forces herself to remain still in the water. Is it true they don't attack you if you don't thrash around? she thinks. Fuck if I know! Wait... what was that I read about in biology class last year? Sharks don't attack people because they want to eat them, they do it because people in wet suits look like seals. And I'm not wearing a wet suit! Hell, I probably don't look like anything it's ever seen before!

Jade remains as still as she can while staying afloat, waits for the shark to pass. It seems to take much longer than the few seconds she watches it.

Sharks would follow currents too, because that's where the fish are, she thinks, her heart pounding in her throat. That's not the only one out here, I might be surrounded by the damn things. Well, I can't just stay here, of course; **** but to keep going, and hope they don't think a skinny little ginger girl looks appetizing!

Then, as she dives down to catch the current again, a sudden and ridiculous thought almost makes her laugh. I sure hope they haven't dosed the sharks with the sex **** too!

Waves crash against the great brown rocks which jut outward from the bottom of the cliff, worn irregular and misshapen from the battering of the sea. Parts are polished smooth, other surfaces are broken and jagged where the rock finally failed to keep itself up. At the very least, they seem largely free of seaweed or algae. Jade stays a few yards out, treading water against the eddies which alternately threaten to pull her in or push her back out again.

I get one shot at this, she thinks. If I screw it up, I'll end up a bloody pulp or drowned. I have to ride the right wave in there and get a grip on the rock, then climb up high enough and fast enough so the next wave doesn't knock me off. And I have to do it soon, because this is really exhausting!

Jade watches the next four waves come in, and sees the same patter which she thought she saw before; there's a wave which creates a peculiar vertical splash right between a pair of boulders, and then the next one is comparatively gentle and should take her right in to where it looks like she can get a good hand-hold on the cliff face. But that one is followed by another, much stronger wave which would sweep her off into the jumble of rocks below, and the likelihood of getting back out of that alive would be slim at best!

All right... should be about three more waves, and then I'll need to go in fast, and it feels like the current will be going against me at first but it's still the best shot I have! I wish I could drop this stick, it's making this harder, but there are sharks on the land here too... Wait - "NOW!"

Jade takes in a deep breath, as much air as her lungs can hold, and plunges in. The current drives against her, then jerks her off to the side, and then she's caught in the approaching wave. It seemed slow and gentle when she watched it from a distance, but now it seems like a torrent!

She breaks the surface, shakes the stinging salt water from her eyes, sees a blurry form of the rocks rushing up to meet her.

The swell of water lifts her deceptively gently up and to the top of the rocks, where Jade flails at the side of the cliff, going for the cracks which she can no longer see. Her left hand strikes the rock hard, pain shooting up her arm, but she finds a hold and grabs on. The swirling current around her legs threatens to pull her off, but then she finds a grip with her right hand, and a foot. When the water recedes, she's left dangling there, like a bit of torn seaweed stuck on the rock.

Gotta climb!

Jade strains for another crack, grabs it, pulls herself up higher. Her foot slips on a smooth bit of rock which has managed to gather some slick algae, but she keeps her hold, and as she strains to lift herself almost entirely with her left arm, she screams out loud with equal parts panic and heroic effort.

The next incoming wave slaps at her calves, but she's high enough that it fails to take her back down. A scraggly, wind-twisted branch sticks out from a tree that seems to be clingning to the cliff as desperately as Jade herself, and she grabs it, knowing that if it breaks then she's done for. But the branch holds, and then both her feet find solid purchase above the highest reach of the waves, and at last she can breathe.

"Holy. Living. Fuck," Jade gasps.

A moment later, she has reached a ledge wide enough to stand on normally, a growth of tough grass holding together a clump of sandy earth, and she's able to sit down and gather her wits. After a few good, deep breaths, she looks up and around to take stock of her situation.

I can't see it from this angle, but the final Safe House is up there, she thinks, looking up the cliff. But there's no way I can climb straight up that. I only made it this far on pure adrenaline, I've just about had it and there's no point in pretending I can keep going no matter what. One wrong move on a climb like that and I'll die, it's that simple.

So, I'll have to go a different way. Jade looks to either side. This ledge is almost like a path, going that way. I can't see what happens around that bend, but it's still my best shot. There's nowhere to run, but no one would expect me to come from that way; why would they think anyone would be crazy enough?

With a grim smile, Jade stands up again, slides the backpack off, and unthreads the strap from the buckle, and slides the handcuff off, letting it dangle from the stick. She checks to ensure that the rock is still tied securely to the top of it, then tosses the backpack out into the sea.

All right, Fox, she thinks. This is it. This is the final move of the game. Win... or die.