Chapter 7 - THE DEPTHS

Suddenly, there were other screams.

Dozens, hundreds of people crying out in pain, barking out orders, calling out for her.

There were things whistling through the air with sharp bangs, ripping through the smoke filled air. And there were even heavier ones crashing down on the sand and rumbling and making the whole world go silent for a split second, before exploding and erupting into even more painful noise.

Ada doubled over with a choked out gasp and pressed her hands over her ears. But that didn't stop the sounds from sinking into her skull, splitting it in half.

Forcing her eyes open, she frantically searched the blurry shallows and the sand dunes behind her, but Kassia and Gabriel were nowhere to be found. There was no one there, and the beach... the beach was the same, but... different, somehow.

Darker. Reder.

The sounds faded, but one stood out, growing louder and louder until it was the only thing she could hear.

The voice. The person, that pilot, whoever they were, was still in danger. They needed help. She had to help them.

Ada started pushing through the waves, deeper and deeper into the sea, towards the burning, floating wreckage of the plane. The water was now washing over her shoulders, slapping against her neck and chin.

She took another step and felt ... nothing. There was nothing beneath her, just void, a sudden drop where there should've been more sand.

Ada sunk. In that split second where her head went under, submerged in the bitting cold of the depths, she heard another, much more familiar voice.

'It's too deep and you can't swim, Ada. You'll sink to the bottom and drown.'

Split-second flashes of images went off in her head, one after the other, too fast to register.

With a jolt, Ada tried to pull herself back to higher ground, flailing her arms. But she couldn't see or feel anything expect for the water pressing in on her from all sides, and she was already sinking too deep to reach back.

It was right at the moment, when panic kicked in and bubbles of air escaped past her parted lips, that Ada felt something grip the back of her shirt and yank her back.

Her calves hit the hard edge of something. A second later there was sand and rocks beneath her feet once more. With one strong kick, her head broke through the surface.

For a while, all she could do was gasp for air, nose burning as she spit out mouthfuls of water.

There was a muffled voice close to her ear. Someone was calling her name.

"Ada? Ada! Are you okay?"

There was a strong grip under her arms, keeping her head above the water and dragging her back, fighting against the waves' strong pull. The voice grunted and panted, puffs of breath blown into her ear.

"You're way too fucking heavy, Ada. You gotta help me out here! Come on!"

The last words snapped Ada out of her stupor. Planting her feet on the seabed beneath her, she took in a deep breath, straightened up and began pushing herself through the water, dunking her head beneath each wave. It didn't take long to reach safer ground, the water well below her chest, but the person beside her kept going, arms pulling her along until they reached the shallows.

Coughing and whipping the water and sand from her eyes, Ada blinked up at the person panting next to her, not surprised when she found Kassia.

Kassia. Kassia, her friend. Not... whoever's voice still lingered in her head, so similar yet different.

A hand, warm and damp, gripped her shoulder.

"Are you..." Kassia paused to bend over and take in a couple more breaths. Ada could feel and see the twitching muscles in her arms and the tremble in her fingers. "Are you okay?"

Ada swallowed. There was so much salt in her mouth, but her nose and throat were no longer burning, and her breathing had evened out. Her hands were still trembling, adrenaline buzzing hot underneath her skin, but other than a dull throbbing in her head, she felt ... fine.

"Ada?"

"Yes, I'm ... I'm okay."

"Good," Kassia sighed in relief, only to lash out the very next second, raising her voice, "What the hell were you doing, Ada! I told to stay in the shallows, didn't I?" She wavered for a second, voice breaking and mouth twisting under the weight of what looked like a horrifying realisation, "You... you could've drowned."

"Hey!"

They both whipped their heads towards the voice. It was Gabriel, standing right at the edge of the water, looking worried and hesitant.

"You two okay?" he questioned, eyes flickering back and forth between them before settling on the older girl.

Kassia took in a deep breath before nodding, giving Gabriel a shaky thumbs up. Her lips twitched, trying to mould themselves into a confident smile to assure the boy, but it didn't hold up, trembling and crumbling down like a sand castle.

It hurt. Seeing the older try and fail to smile hurt more than Ada had expected. It was like a knife had sunk itself deep into her chest.

"I'm..." she started with a stutter.

Kassia turned to face her, but Ada, unable to hold her gaze, caved and dropped her head.

Bitting her lip, she tried again. "I'm sorry. I... it's just ... I heard someone..."

"...What?"

Clutching her arm, Ada swallowed again, digging her nails into her skin to stop the weird numbness that was spreading across her whole body, creeping up her neck and latching onto her head.

"I heard someone ... in the waves. Calling out for help. There was a..."

Like a switch, something flicked Ada's brain. Eyes widening, she whipped her head up and started a frantic search across the horizon, between the tall waves.

"There was a plane!"

"What?" Kassia raised an eyebrow, but turned to look as well. She frowned, clearly unable to find anything. "What plane?"

Ada squinted, but no matter how hard she looked, she couldn't find anything either.

There was nothing there.

"There was a wreckage right there... I..." she sputtered, frowning when she tried to recall what she had seen and a sharp pain shot through her skull instead.

Gritting her teeth, she tried to grasp at the images lingering in the back of her head, but they were fading, fluttering away to somewhere dark and beyond her reach.

"They were ... calling for help."

"Ada, I don't see anything... and I didn't hear anything either."

"But I..."

"Maybe it was a boat or something?" Kassia offered with shrug, scrunching up her nose, though there was still a hint of worry hidden underneath her tone. "Sometimes you can see oil tankers and stuff like that passing by..."

The older girl paused, locking eyes with the younger girl. A smile tugged at the corner of her lips, one that slowly grew into a tentative grin as she stepped closer to rub her hands all over Ada's bare scalp.

"Or maybe all that heat and sunlight on your bald head is finally getting to you," Kassia joked.

Ada tensed up at the touch, but then slowly relaxed into it. Letting go of all those blurry images in her mind, she let out a deep sigh, shoulders sagging with the motion. The pain in her head began to fade and the world seemed to settle into place.

"Yeah... Maybe you're right. I'm sorry."

"It's fine. What matters is that you're alright. Come on." Kassia tugged at their clasped hands, pulling her all the way up to the drier patches of sand.

Bending over, she picked up something roundish and hard that had been laying alone on the ground.

"Look what I found just for you," the older girl said in a lighter tone, smiling as she showed it off.

It was a shell, but nothing like the ones Ada had seen so far. This one was big, with a cone-like shape and a high spire. It wasn't all white either, but bursting with color, painted in soft shades of orange, pink and gold. It was beautiful.

"It's a conch," Kassia explained in an increasingly excited tone, letting Ada trace a finger over it. "They're pretty rare, haven't seen one like this since I was a kid. Here listen to it, like this."

She brought the open part of the conch up to Ada's ear. The younger girl flinched back at first at the cold, foreign touch, but seeing Kassia's encouraging smile, she forced herself to relax and lean into the shell.

The sounds around Ada grew muffled, most of them fading so far into the background that she stopped noticing them altogether. There was only this soft whistling and rumbling that sounded a lot like the waves crashing down on the beach, but quieter. There was something else underneath it though... a soft, almost metallic sort of whirring, like a fan, or maybe a buzzing... something familiar but kind of cold and ... unsettling.

Was it really coming from the conch? Or somewhere else?

"Do you hear it?" Kassia whispered, as if not wanting to ruin the experience by being too loud. But the giddiness still seeped through, raising the pitch of her voice.

Ada did her best to shake off the uneasy feeling and threw the other a gentle smile, lowering the shell from her ear to nod. "Yeah, I think I hear it."

"Pretty cool, huh?" Kassia grinned, fingers running through the ridges and slopes of the colourful conch in an almost reverent way. "They say it's the sound of the ocean, which is kind of bullshit, actually. It's probably just the wind and, like, our heartbeat and stuff."

She snorted, brushing her braids aside, though the smile never faded from her lips. "But it's nice to just pretend sometimes," she paused, words petering out as her eyes glazed over in this far-off look, like she was recalling something.

Whatever it was the older girl was remembering, it seemed like a nice memory. So, Ada stood still and quiet, more than glad to just let her own eyes roam across the girl's face, free to take notice of all the soft curves and tiny blemishes that she could commit to her own memory without being caught. The moment was short-lived though, Kassia finally snapping out of her reverie, to blink up at Ada with a wide-eyed, almost lost look.

"Sorry, hum..." The older girl coughed into her hand before pushing the conch into Ada's chest. "You should have it. It's your souvenir. My gift to you." She looked away then, rubbing the side of her neck and cheeks.

Ada carefully accepted the conch and smiled softly at the girl. "Thank you, Kassia."

Scratching her nose, Kassia shrugged in a dismissive way, though a shy smile still tugged at the corner of her lips. "Don't mention it."

"Hey!" Gabriel's rough voice broke through the nice silence that had settled between them. He leaned back against the front of the SUV with an annoyed look, tapping a finger on his wrist watch. "Your time is up."

Kassia huffed, but didn't reply straight away. Instead, she glanced at the younger girl to make sure she was watching before showing her the most dramatic eye-rolling possible.

"We know, party pooper," she said in a mocking tone, low enough so Gabriel wouldn't hear it.

The childish response had Ada stifling a snort, which only made Kassia's cheeky smile grown even wider. They did eventually make their way up to the car, though, Ada following behind the older girl, but at a much slower pace, careful not to drop or break the seashell in her hands.

"Come on, hurry up, girls." Gabriel grumbled, snapping his fingers at the two as they took their time towelling off and brushing off the sand from their feet. "I want to get to the market before it rains."

"What?" Kassia scoffed, raising an eyebrow at the taller boy. "It's not going to rain. The weather station said it was going to be sunny all day."

Gabriel clicked his tongue and gave her a pointed look, pressing his thumb on the fingerprint screen of his car key to open the doors.

"Yeah, well, I trust my eyes," he said, voice dropping to an oddly somber tone as he stepped up to the driver's side, an arm slung over the door as he stared off into the horizon. "And it's not looking pretty out there."

Noticing the boy's worried tone, Ada looked up as well. She squinted against the strong rush of wind, eyes zeroing in on the towering waves and the menacing grey clouds far off in the distance.

"There's a storm coming."