Nameless:
The Liquid Triumph
Author: Keren Ziv
Disclaimer: I don't own DA
Rating: PG, because it's not G
Category: It isn't any shipper story
Author's Note: This is the second in a series
I used to love to swim. Effortlessly racing through the water, my body moving through it as if I weighed nothing at all; everything about it sent shivers of joy through my body. I lived for chances to train with my brothers and sisters in the pools. I used to dream about the water, feeling the cool wetness against my skin and the droplets that would stay on my eyelashes when came to the surface. To say that the water was my life would be an understatement.
We used to train a lot underwater. We would have to stay underneath for a certain amount of time. It was simple for me to do, really simple, and I always came up with a glint in my eye that I'm sure the others saw. It was fun, to sit down there and imagine that I could stay there forever.
We would be chained. I remember that the first time I was chained underwater I was angry. I was quite young and I didn't comprehend the reasons they had for not letting me swim around the pool and play. I remember that I looked at the fear in my siblings' eyes and knew it wasn't mirrored in my own. I thought perhaps that I should be fearful, not furious, but I couldn't get the anger out.
We stayed down for only forty-eight seconds. I remember, afterward, going up to Colonel Lydecker and asking him why he had taken my pool time away. It was very wrong of me to do so, but he didn't punish me. He merely said that I had gotten extra pool time. He explained that the longer I held my breath, the longer I would get to stay in the pool.
I didn't get angry again. He had given me what I most wanted: time in the water. I would sit there with my brothers and sisters, at first as calm as they were; soon I ignored the relaxation techniques that we were instructed to employ and I would move a bit; back and forth, as much as the chain and the small pool allowed. I always came up last when they released the locks. I knew that once I hit the surface I would have to climb out and go to the barracks. The barracks didn't have a pool.
I was eight when it happened. The director, Renfro, began watching our sessions in the pool. At first, it was only while we were swimming, practicing our underwater vision and above water movements. We were observed while we divided the water into two with the swiftness of our arms.
Then she started watching us when we were chained to the bottom of the small pool. She would gaze at the stopwatches that the men held with her keen eyes and then glance at us in the pool. Soon, we were doing two and a half minutes instead of one and a half. I knew that because she was watching us we would have to get better.
We got better. Each day, we went a little longer. My brothers and sisters began to get frightened, often clawing upwards for released five or six seconds before they opened the locks that held the chains. I would watch them with impassionate eyes. Didn't they know how to take relax and slow down if you're running out of air?
We were down there for three minutes and twenty-six seconds before we were released. I remember counting the seconds out of boredom. We had already been down to the small pool, with its chains, and so a second trip to it in one day or even one week was something unusual and rather boring.
They released the chains and I waited a bit while the others raced towards the surface. I watched as they broke into the air and began my upward passage, only two or three seconds after them. However, I came to the end of my chain.
I looked up, startled. I was still chained, even though the others had been released. Was there some sort of problem with it? I swam down a bit and inspected the secure on my foot and noticed a manual lock. I looked to the surface and tried to convey the thought that I needed a key.
I saw her, the director, with her eyes fastened on a stopwatch. She took her eyes from it and I saw her gave me a cold glance. What about the girl? I saw her say. I could see the smile in her lips and I knew that I wouldn't be getting the key. We have to get her out. She's valuable weaponry.
I swam to the bottom and tried to remain composed. I knew that the calmer I was, the less oxygen that I needed. It was the common sense it was necessary for me to retain a hold of. I had to keep my priorities in sight. Get out of the water, take a deep breath, and keep silent. I tried the secure on my ankle.
At four minutes under water, I saw the Colonel walk into the room. It wasn't common for him to supervise training in the small pool, so I knew that he was here because I me. I felt powerful because he was, for the first time in my life, in my control.
He said something to her. His back was toward the surface of the water so that I couldn't see what he had spoken, but I saw the directors calm reply. Problem with the release mechanism, Colonel. We're working on it, loking for the key. Lydecker, look at these numbers. She's been under water for over four minutes now and she . . . the director turned.
I wondered if Renfro had fixed the 'release mechanism' herself or if she had one of her henchmen fix it. I doubted whether she had taken time out of her life to edit a slight code, or maybe hide a key, for one small child. Then again, she probably enjoyed being in control and liked the feeling of knowing she, personally, had done this.
It had to have been five minutes. My lungs were beginning to burn but I wouldn't give her the victory of seeing me snatch at the water in a desperate attempt for air. Let her see it in my eyes, I thought, let her see that I wont give up. I tugged at the chain again. Still fastened.
I wonder if she has a button to release me, something that she's rigged into the wiring of the computer so that she'll be able to make a slight movement with her hands and then watch with her melodramatic voice exclaiming that I've come free.
I see her murmur something to an aid. Six minutes. This is the longest that I've ever been down underwater and I can feel it start to get to me. I want to go up and take a large breath and water and maybe the Colonel wont mind if I glare daggers into the back of Madame Renfro as she saunters out of the room while I towel off. I closed my eyes, unwilling to let the want show through.
I felt it before I saw it. It was a slight disturbance in the water, a ripple, but I felt it all the same. I opened my eyes and watched as a small key came down. Inadvertently, I smiled, and eagerly palmed the key as it came close enough to reach me where I was sitting. I fitted it into the lock and released myself. I was in power.
I swam a bit towards the surface, glad to be released. I saw it in her eyes, though, saw her victory, and it hurt me. I didn't want it to be her victory. I didn't beg to be released. She shouldn't have won. It was my victory and she had taken it and made it pale. I looked at the key in my hand and dropped it, watching as it lazily made its way to the bottom.
Staring up into the eyes of my brothers and sisters, all huddled around the pool, I swam the path that the key took, never letter my gaze break. Settling myself comfortably on the bottom, I smiled up at Renfro before taking a deep breath.
Water was my life, but it was also my death.
