Daniel opens his eyes.
The first thing he sees is a red phone receiver, floating in slow motion in front of his face, which seems like an odd thing for a phone to be doing.
It's another few seconds before he shakes off the haze settled behind his eyes, remembers where he is, and he comes back to himself with a start and starts to swim toward the sunlight above.
And then he breaks the surface, spluttering and gasping for breath and fighting to stay afloat amid the heavy waves crashing over his head. There's chaos, everywhere, debris still raining down in bits and pieces, and he whips his head around, struggling to re-orient himself.
He doesn't see the Zodiac raft, but it can't be too far; they couldn't have been more than fifty meters from the Kahana when it erupted into a ball of fire, and if there's a correct way to react to something like that, Daniel has no idea what it is. There had been no time to contemplate, though, before the shockwave from the blast reached them, tossing the raft violently in the surf and nearly capsizing it altogether.
The moments following that are a blur; he remembers hitting the water, and he thinks he remembers another impact, something hard and heavy hitting his head, a theory supported by the persistent ache spreading in waves from a spot on his temple.
A wave crashes over his head and he struggles to resurface, choking on saltwater, and that's when he finally spots the Zodiac a short distance away. As he makes his way over, he hears shouting from seemingly everywhere at once, and he can see a few of the Zodiac's other passengers nearby heading toward the same place.
It takes him three full tries to haul himself over the side of the raft; by the third, he's already exhausted, his ears ringing and his vision hazy and blurred from the blow to his head. Still, he moves automatically to help one of the others struggling to climb aboard.
"There's someone out there," she says breathlessly, and he quickly finds the man she's pointing to, a bit closer to the freighter's flaming wreckage, waving desperately with an arm that's tangled in rope. Dan hesitates for only a moment before jumping back into the water to help.
As he gets closer, he recognizes the man as one of the passengers from the first trip on the Zodiac; he must have been on the freighter, then, thrown into the water by the blast, and something about that realization makes Daniel nauseous.
He's almost there, nearly close enough to reach out and grab the man's hand, when suddenly his head slips underwater and doesn't come back up.
"No, no, no..." Dan's movements become more frantic; he takes a few quick breaths and dives beneath the surface, cursing himself for not thinking to leave his bulky backpack behind on the raft.
He can't seemuch of anything, really, despite how clear the water is, with the waves tossing around so many pieces of the wreckage. He keeps moving and reaches out blindly, until his fingers brush against cloth, and he finds the man's arm and holds on tight as he fights his way back to the surface.
And then he's struggling to keep them both afloat, searching for the Zodiac once more. He's momentarily distracted by a sound from above, rhythmic and steady and accompanied by a low hum, and he looks up just as the helicopter from the freighter soars overhead.
Daniel follows it with his eyes as it flies away, toward the island, and then his gaze drops down to the Zodiac bobbing in the waves far beneath it. It seems so much farther away, now that he's keeping someone else's head above water along with own, and it's just as he's working to untangle the man from the heavy cargo net he's caught in that he notices the hum from before getting louder.
The helicopter can't be coming closer, can it? He turns back toward the Zodiac, toward the helicopter that's still moving in the opposite direction, toward the island, and as the hum grows even louder, there's a faint light in the distance, steadily getting brighter, lighting up the sky over the island.
And spreading outward.
Dan's stomach drops. "Oh, no."
And then he's moving, as fast as he can, making a beeline for the Zodiac with the other man in tow, as the light gradually grows brighter and brighter. Two of the others are still in the water, one moving in his direction, and he waves them back frantically and shouts at them to "Get on the raft, now!"
The hum is deafening, now, a shrill buzzing sound over a low rumble that feels like it's shaking the entire ocean around them, and the Zodiac is barely visible as the light becomes blinding, turning the sky some unnatural shade of purple before it spreads to block out everything and Daniel has to shield his eyes.
Then, all at once, it stops.
Daniel jerks awake at the sound of a voice over the PA system. Daylight pours through the glass beside him, disorienting and bright despite the overcast sky, and he squints at the hazy sunrise reflecting off the plane's wing.
Sunrise. Morning. Right.
He stifles a yawn and sits up straight in his seat to cast a brief glance around the mostly empty cabin, quickly spotting at least three other people that look just as tired as him; unsurprising, since it's still the middle of the night on the other side of the Atlantic.
Not that the time change is necessarily to blame for his own fatigue. Caroline always used to say that he could fall asleep just about anywhere. He assumes it's a residual effect of his rigorous education; back when he was constantly studying, constantly working, constantly exhausted, he learned to grab sleep wherever and whenever he could, in bits and pieces.
Even now, he has trouble sleeping all the way through a night.
But there might be other reasons for that, now, more recent and more relevant things that keep him lying awake, staring at the ceiling for hours on end.
The seat belt sign illuminates with a ding. Dan combs a quick hand through his hair as he returns his attention to the world outside of the window, the cloud cover gradually dissipating as the plane descends. He watches the city below slowly move closer, and he has to take a few deep breaths, remind himself once again of the necessity of this journey; he's put it off long enough. He can't exactly rewrite history, leap into an alternate timeline where he didn't lose his damn journal and it didn't get left behind on that godforsaken island along with half of his team from the freighter.
He fidgets with a loose thread on the end of his sleeve. That was months ago, and he can't help feeling like he's abandoned them somehow, now that more than half a year's gone by with virtually no progress at all.
And of course, that's exactly why he's here.
There's no reason for him to be this anxious – not yet, anyway – and he repeats that thought on a loop in his head as the plane makes its final approach. Nothing to worry about. Nothing to worry about.
He still can't help flinching, just a bit, as the wheels touch down, like the whole damn island is going to sense his presence, like every person he passes on the street will take one look at his face and know exactly who he is and what he's done.
"But that's not gonna happen," he mumbles to himself, closing his eyes. "Nothing to worry about." He can almost make himself believe it, too, considering that the statistical likelihood of running into someone who recognizes him would have to be damn near impossible.
After all, London's a big place.
The island is gone.
The entire island and everything around it, vanished in the blink of an eye, moved to some other place and some other time and the two of them must have been just outside the radius, because they're still here.
But the Zodiac isn't.
The Zodiac, and the other passengers, and all of the debris floating on the water's surface up to a point maybe ten meters away, all gone along with the island.
That sound is still echoing painfully in Daniel's ears, so loud that he almost doesn't even notice the rhythmic noise of the helicopter still hovering in the distance.
Then his gaze falls to the open water beneath it, and his blood turns to ice.
Daniel launches himself in the opposite direction, one hand still looped through the net to clutch the other man's arm. He's still turned the other way, gaping at the place where the island used to be; he stammers out something about the water, barely audible over the crash of the waves behind them, catching up way too fast as the surrounding water rushes in to fill the space formerly occupied by the island. Dan is tempted to look back and see how much time is left before they're swept away, but it doesn't matter; it's not going to be enough.
Sure enough, it's only a few more seconds before the water takes them, pulls them down into a crater along with some of the wreckage. For a brief moment, it's like everything is frozen; the wall of water surrounding them is beautiful, almost, nearly motionless from so far below, until inevitably, slowly at first and then faster and faster, the crest comes crashing down.
Daniel sucks in a deep breath at the last moment, and then he's pulled under, tossed relentlessly into the current, and he doesn't fight it; he just holds on tight and shields his head with his other arm from the debris hurtling past from all directions.
Something crashes into his wrist, and he loses his grip on the man's arm, but he can't even begin to try finding him again in this chaos. He can only squeeze his eyes shut against the heavy pressure and wait, desperately, for the water to calm down.
Finally, the wild spinning slows, and he looks up, dizzy and disoriented, to see sunlight streaming down from high over his head. He's just started to make his way toward the surface when he feels something pull at his leg, and he doesn't know whether to be relieved or horrified when he looks down. He hasn't lost track of his companion after all; he's here, drifting a few feet beneath Daniel, one arm still twisted in that same damn net.
The same net that's now wrapped around Dan's leg, as well.
He dives down, red blotches clouding his vision. Untangling himself takes time, precious seconds that he can't afford to lose, especially since the other man doesn't seem to be moving anymore; pulling him free of the heavy rope is easy enough, at least, and Daniel loops an arm around him to drag him up and away from it.
For a single, terrifying moment, the end of the net catches on Dan's shoe; a few frantic kicks are enough to dislodge it, though, and he finally begins the impossible climb back to the surface. His lungs are already on fire, his heart hammering desperately against his ribcage like it's trying to break out, his pulse pounding in his throat and in his ears and all the way down into his toes and his fingertips as he kicks and claws his way toward the sunlight above with only one free hand.
He should have gone back up for air again first, made a second trip for these 200 or so pounds of dead weight slowing him down; the voice of the flight attendant from the plane to Fiji echoes crystal-clear in his head, like she's floating beside him with a megaphone, "In the event of an emergency, secure your own oxygen mask before assisting others."
Now they're both going to die, because he was too stupid to think ahead.
The thought leaves him along with the last remnants of the breath he's been holding in, bursting from his mouth in a string of shimmering bubbles, barely visible through the static bleeding in from the edges of his vision to blot out the light refracting from above.
And then he breaks the surface, gasping and choking and struggling to keep his head above water as exhaustion threatens to drag him back under. The other man's head flops limply against his shoulder, and Daniel maneuvers himself to tilt his pale face toward the sky.
A wave crashes over the both of them, and Daniel has to fight to resurface. He spits out water, shakes his hair out of his eyes, and tries to regain his bearings, a difficult task when there's nothing but ocean in every direction. On the edge of his vision, a flash of orange appears between the waves, and he swims toward it, fighting to keep them both afloat and praying it's a life raft.
It isn't, of course; it's a single survival float, no more than a buoyant block of plastic barely four feet long, but it's something. With no small amount of effort, Daniel climbs onto it and uses his last ounce of strength to drag the unconscious man aboard before collapsing in a heap on top of him.
"Made it," he mumbles into the man's shoulder, panting heavily, and that's when he realizes that the body beneath him isn't moving at all.
He's not breathing.
"Oh, no..." Dan sits up and nearly falls back in the water before maneuvering himself into a more stable position, a knee on either side of the man as he checks for a pulse. "No, no, no, come on..." He grabs the man's shoulders and shakes, hard. "Hey, come on, wake up, please..."
No response.
Daniel exhales and lifts his head. "Help!" he calls out, desperately, searching for a sign of life, for something, anything else that might have survived the explosion. "Someone!"
There's nothing but ocean in every direction; the smoke from the Kahanais visible, still, but distant.
"Anyone!"
And it's as he looks up, to see that the helicopter is nowhere to be found, that it all begins to sink in, the realization of how completely and utterly screwed he is.
"Help!"