Endworlds - Nicholas Read [20]
Twisting his body he kicked toward the door, hoping that in the darkness he didn’t shred himself against the shards of window billowing around him. With his fingers he felt for the opening, attained it, and pulled himself forward.
Though the Jaguar did not have large side windows he was able to pull his head and torso through. The air in his lungs would send him upward. Once that direction had been established he would start kicking.
It would be all right, he told himself. The Thames wasn’t that deep and he had not hit bottom. He would make it. Meanwhile the chained amulet in his pocket unaccountably burned against his leg as the current swirled wood and glass around him.
Kicking upward, weak but still aware, he thought he could see a light overhead and off to one side. From a bridge, maybe, or a boat, or even a streetlamp on the river-walk. It didn’t matter.
The light gave him a direction, and a direction was a destination. Using his arms as well as his legs he swam frantically for the surface.
Focused on the light, already exhausted, he didn’t see the looming underside of the boat overhead. He hit it hard, headfirst.
Blinking from the concussion, his mind shutting down from lack of oxygen, he drifted in the water. The current swept a plate-sized piece of shattered glass across his failing line of sight.
Though it was most surely a figment caused by stuttering neurons, he thought he saw a face mouthing silent words in the passing glass. An outline, an image. A comfort.
“Paige?”
The night and the river erupted. From being confronted by nothing more than cold wet darkness his eyes were abruptly filled with a thousand pinpricks of brilliant white light. They overwhelmed his senses completely, rushing in and along his optic nerves to expand explosively in his benumbed brain.
Balanced on the knife-edge of unconsciousness, for a period of time measured in nanoseconds he perceived a million scenes and feelings from a thousand lifetimes crashing down on him.
Then the light went out, and so did he.
COLD. Cold and wet. Cold and wet and hungry. the first two he understood instinctively. The third did not sink in right away. He inhaled sharply, and choked. Half air and half water entered his lungs: a bad combination.
Hacking up river, he turned slowly in the dark. Reflexively treading water, he turned slowly to survey his surroundings. Through the rain he could make out lights on opposing shores. Striking for the nearest he swam clumsily, weighed down by clothes that ballooned around him. At least the shoes fit. He considered kicking them off, then decided he might need them to climb out of the water. Since he had no idea where he was or how he had come to find himself in the middle of a slow-moving river, he had no way of knowing what the shoreline might be like.
As he neared the dimly lit bank it struck him with sudden horror that he had no idea who he was, either.
Name? He could not remember it, nor could he recall the names of anyone else. Or any places, or any times. A black fog of terror descended around him, threatening to smother all thinking, to drown him as completely as the river promised to do. Searching his mind he encountered nothing. Where memory ought to lie was only vacuum, nothingness, a sensation of thoughts paralyzed and standing still. He struggled, fought to remember. Something, anything. Where was he, other than floating in a river? At least he knew what a river was, he told himself as he fought back tears that would have been lost in the rain anyway. The realization gave him motivation. He did not know where he was going except that it had to be out of the water and rain. After that . . .
Reaching the shore, he was confronted by a wall of brick and concrete that served as a bulwark on the river-bank. It proved too high to get a handhold. He let himself drift along the brine and mollusk encrusted barrier until he came to some stone steps that marched down into