Coalescence by Mathew F. Riley

Kealan watched the two businessmen die slowly and, well, fairly silently.

When they were still, he made himself a drink, this time without his special added ingredient. He downed it in one. It was time to talk with the pilot. He opened the cockpit door and stepped in, crouching. The Cessna was a small plane.

“Nobody’s allowed in here,” the pilot instructed, turning to look up at the intruder.

“I’ve got special dispensation mate.”

Kealan pushed his Glock-36 against the pilot’s temple.

“Okay, here are the options. One: take me where I want. Two: I’ll shoot you and fly there myself. Three: you jump.”

The pilot’s eyes bulged.

“Who are you? You’re not supposed to be in here!”

“So you say mate. What’s it gonna be then?”

The pilot stood. In a single fluid motion he knocked Kealan’s gun arm away and drew his own, seemingly from out of nowhere.

Without thinking Kealan dropped to his knees, out of the direct line of fire. He shot the pilot in his left leg.

Poor shot!

The pilot screamed. His gun went off. Kealan felt a hot itchy sensation as the bullet zipped past his forehead. Then he was engulfed in stunning heat.

***

In retrospect, Kealan considered, he should have shot the pilot straight away.

I could have been more focused.

His training had prepared him well, or so he’d thought, but he’d leave that for someone else to decide. The Agency had got him on board as the flight attendant, although in reality the role was that of a glorified barman. Things had gone as planned. Until the pilot’s bullet had punched through the fuselage, entering the fuel tank. And now, his pilot’s license would go unused, so too his newly acquired ability to mix exotic cocktails.

Maybe I was too confident?

***

Kealan shouted at the silhouette of a bird far overhead. It ignored him.

Bastard.

He was freezing. He hugged himself. The singed remnants of his shirt and trousers provided no protection against the elements. His shoes and socks must have been sucked off in the blast.

He supposed he was lucky though. He’d survived the explosion and the fall to earth, to water. He didn’t even remember hitting the water, or swimming here so it was some sort of miracle he hadn’t drowned. He’d simply woken up, draped over the rock. Since then, however long it’d been, he’d not even considered swimming away from here. There was simply nowhere to swim to. He looked around: nothing but simmering grey sky and a darker sea. He wasn’t sure how far away the plane had gone down; its wreckage was lost in the roiling spume.

Gone to the bottom.

He felt sick as he considered how deep the water might be that surrounded him. He imagined the tiny bits of plane and people tumbling over and around, over and down through gradually dimming fathoms of water, away from the radiance of the sun.

Seeing something, anything from the plane, a seat, a bag perhaps, would have made him feel better somehow. Not alone. He wished for a detail he could concentrate on within this monotonous landscape.

Black, he squinted into the distance, big, black, and empty.

Soon there would be even less to look at.

Not much daylight left.

***

The wind was invisible movement until it came into contact with his body, then it whistled and cracked around him.

The rock’s circumference was not much bigger than the width of his shoulders, so he simply stood here watching and waiting. Kealan wasn’t sure what he was looking out for, but it certainly wasn’t rescue.

Nobody would miss him.

The Agency, which had been his family for years it seemed, wouldn’t send anyone to come looking for him. Nobody used real names in that organization. There wasn’t even an office, just direct debits and telephone calls. He knew his place: an anonymous assassin. Assassins were killed too. It was part of the job. A bad day at work, they’d joked with him.

He hadn’t laughed.

Kealan realized he couldn’t feel the leaden sleet that relentlessly pounded his head and shoulders. He squeezed his hands together. Nothing, no feeling at all. He no longer hopped from bare foot to foot. At first it had been to keep warm, then just for something to do. He had no circulation in his legs, nothing happened when he tried to move them.

So he stopped trying.

Does a rock, a stone, feel cold? The rain?

The wind became silent once more as it moved on, forgetting him.

***

All next day something swam in circles around him.

He couldn’t see what it was because it remained underneath the surface.

Bastard.

He attempted to follow its path but his neck was stiff and turning his head was an effort.

The thing was too quick for him anyway, and after several hours he forget about it.

***

Unseen formations whirled above Kealan’s head; clashing clouds lifted him out his trance. Black waves broke against each other, across his thighs and chest, but he found he had no difficulty keeping his feet. His movements from the waist up became one with the swell. Was the water rising, or were the waves just bigger now? How could this sea possibly get any deeper?

Exhalations of thunder flattened the water; lightning pierced its surface once, causing it to bubble. Sizzling water splashed into his eyes and mouth. He wasn’t surprised when he found he couldn’t raise his hands. They were frozen to his sides. He blinked, the salt no longer stung. It had no flavour. His vision was clear, although he could see nothing. Such was the depth of the night in the middle of wherever he was.

All feeling had gone below his neck; he may as well not be here anymore. What night was this? His first? Third? He thought his heartbeat must have slowed to an hourly echo. He wondered if he’d be found one day, withered and watered down to a translucent shade of himself, adhered to this rock.

***

A field of seaweed had come close during the night; mist blew patterns across its oily green leaves. Kealan imagined the storm’s strength wrenching the weed up from the seabed.

In the thin morning light he stared at his feet through the now shallow water lapping at his ankles. The water rippled across the rock he was standing on, across his feet. His toes appeared to have dug into the solid surface beneath them, fused to the rock as if it were as soft as sand. He could see his veins trailing into the rock at these points, perhaps they’d decided his body was too restrictive and they needed other areas to traverse.

Or had the rock sent its fault lines up into him? He saw that his feet and legs were taking on that same mottled complexion a corpse assumes, as its blood thins and it fades into darker shades of dead.

His skin and thoughts were grey.

I’ve seen too many dead bodies. Killed too many people. Easily. Without thinking, without feeling.

He was as hard and insensitive as the featureless rock he was standing on.

Perhaps, it had been put here just for him.

He watched the undulating seaweed as it drifted slowly towards him.

***

Kealan saw movement out there.

Small things, grey and red, splashed towards him through the seaweed.

Crabs…?

Scrabbling shapes came into focus out of the mist.

Can a rock be scared?

He thought it could.

Kealan had his detail to concentrate upon.

He tried to open his mouth to scream.

It was the Pilot.

Or what was left of him.