He would make it. The water was kinder than he'd imagined. It held him like an embrace, cradling him in the flow of its currents and rocking him in the roll of its waves. He pointed himself away from the prison's massive shadow and thrashed his arms and legs, imitating the swimmers that passed by. The water pressed up underneath him and bobbed him back up toward the surface. So long as he kept his head up, and his body spread, and his limbs moving, he would keep going forward, toward that invisible goal of escape. This was working. Maybe getting thrown from a platform was the way everyone learned to swim.
The man who knocked him over the edge was already gone, vanished somewhere amongst the other escaping prisoners. The water churned around him as men threw themselves free. They went past him, coming up from behind and pulling ahead faster than he could keep up. It didn't matter. Winning this game wasn't about how fast you went, there would be no shocks for the slowest player at the end. The splash of more bodies hitting the water was still loud in his ears, but he couldn't feel the spray. He was getting further.
The other men were distant now. All he could make out were white shapes appearing and disappearing with the rise and fall of the waves, like diving birds at play. It was hard to lift his arms out. His legs dragged, and his feet hung down. The troughs that eased him down between the waves grew more inviting than the peaks that pushed him up. It felt right to relax here, his body still, the water around him.
Cold water closed over his head. The light above him was no more than a dim patch, one that seemed to quiver in ecstasy. The water held him close, like the embrace of a lover, one that would never let him go. The water would never send him back to that prison, it would never turn him over to the empire. He would never walk those floors again. He was out.