lights moved, one of the blindingly bright beams finding David's exhausted, dripping face a short distance away. A man's voice, coming from the boat now moving slowly toward them. "This is Captain Blake of the Philadelphia S.T.A.R.S.! Identify yourself!" S.T.A.R.S.?
Blake went on, his shout louder as the boat came closer. "The water's not safe! We're coming to get you out!"
David called back, his voice clogged and crack-ing. "Trapp, David Trapp, Exeters, and Rebecca Chambers..." When Blake shouted again, he said the most won- derful, most beautiful words that Rebecca had ever heard.
"Burton sent us to find you! Hang on!" Barry. Oh, thank God, Barry!
As drained as she was, as spiritually wasted, torn by loss and fear from the long, terrible night, Rebecca had just enough strength to smile. That's when she heard the choking groan behind her.
There was darkness, tinged with red and an echo of pain. In that darkness, there was no self and no peace; he was alone and engaged in battle, a furious struggle to find the end to that absence of light. He knew that finding the end quickly was important, but a maze of strange and somehow frightening images blocked his way, insisting that he didn't need to hurry. A ghost, a soldier, a rage. The ringing laugh of a woman he had known who was no more and the terrible dead eyes that had taken away the light in an explosion of fire and sound. Eyes that he knew but was afraid to remember... The maze beckoned him, called to him to explore deeper and give up his search for the end of darkness - that the path would only lead to greater pain - and he'd almost decided to stop fighting, to let the shadows take over when the light found him in an explosive blast of deafening thunder. Then he was being shot through ice and liquid black, pounded to consciousness by pain - and it was the pain that he focused on in that screaming, terrible ride, the pain that drove him to fight the darkness. His awareness spun away as the air curdled in his lungs and the raging cold numbed the pain, but then he could breathe, and the jagged piece of bobbing wood beneath his clawed fingers told him that there was, in fact, light. He wasn't dead, although he almost wished he were, he could still hardly breathe, and the pain in his back was exquisite and then he heard the sound of David's voice amidst the sloshing cold and felt that life might be worth living, after all. He tried to call out, but all that emerged was an exhausted moan. There was a stab of sharp and blinding light and then darkness again, but there was a flicker of awareness this time that allowed him to understand what was happening. Pain and move- ment, a feeling of weightless suspension and then hardness against his cheek. Chill and more move- ment, the sound of cloth ripping and paper tearing. Excited voices calling orders, and again, the shriek of torn flesh. When he came around again, he saw a shadow in a S.T.A.R.S. vest bending over him with an IV bag in one hand and a needle in the other.
Hope that's morphine, he tried to say, but again, he only groaned.
A split second later, he saw two pale blurs hovering over him as the S.T.A.R.S. shadow continued to work over him with warm and gentle hands. The blurs were David and Rebecca, eyes circled with dark, hair dripping, faces tired and lost. "You're going to be okay, John," David said softly. "Just rest now. It's all over."
A spreading warmth started to flush through his body, a delicious, sleepy warmth that banished the roar of pain to a distant and faraway land. Just as a friendly darkness came to claim him, he looked into David's eyes and managed to rasp out what he sud- denly wanted to say more than anything. It took great effort, but it had to be said.
"You two look like somethin' a coyote ate and shit off a cliff," he mumbled. "Seriously..." John was followed into the healing blackness by the sweet sound of laughter. The middle-aged S.T.A.R.S. medic had taken John inside the small cabin on the thirty-foot boat, coming out only once to tell them that everything looked all right. Two broken ribs, some deep tissue trauma and a punctured lung, but they'd managed to patch him up well enough to call