Sinking

Realizing he'd been had, Yomiel hurried back to his shell, already knowing what he was likely to find. Sure enough, the room his body had been in was gone.

It had all been a set-up. He was being set-up up all along, and he fell for it hook, line and sinker. They got what they wanted, then abandoned him to a fate spent at the bottom of the sea.

… slowly sinking away from any hope he'd had at salvation…

Aimlessly, he wandered downwards (much as he'd been doing these past ten years), encountering no one. Well, it was a fine coffin they'd built for him. Not everyone rated a submarine burial.

Truly alone now, he reflected how fittingly ironic it all was. His efforts to escape his fate had only served to drive him deeper into it.

… it was, he supposed, exactly what he deserved. He had nothing left to lose by admitting that now.

The worst part was he knew he had only himself to blame. He was the one who abandoned his bargaining chip, he was the one who underestimated them, he was the one who lost sight of anything other than his goals…

… and lost the last thing he'd held dear to him in the process…

Sissel…

He'd thought he knew what it was to lose everything. Only now, trapped on a doomed sub, did he realize how wrong he'd been.

… funny. Even without ears, he could still hear the sounds of gears working beneath him, the grinding caused by movement of machinery…

…and the rising and falling pitches of a voice speaking...

People! his mind screamed in relief. He wasn't the only one on board, there were other people! And judging by the screams, they were soon-to-be-drowned-people.

Fashioning a retrieval claw out of objects, he threw open the door and whipped down to grab them.

He didn't care that it was the detective he'd sworn revenge against and the girl he'd tried to use as a pawn. At least it meant he wasn't alone.