No one on the rafts noticed me at first. I think they assumed I’d gone down with the rig. However, once they did notice they began firing at me with everything they had. Bullets, bursts of fire, even a few grenades were thrown but none of it could hurt me. My only real concern was for my makeshift flippers but they were under the water and not being targeted. As I drew closer I could make out that there were only three rafts, all tied together to keep them from drifting too far apart from one another. At the top of each one was a flashing light that also served as the beacon, sending out a repeating distress signal. Each raft looked like it could hold a dozen or so people, though I couldn’t tell how full they were from where I was in the water.

“HEY!” I shouted at them when they paused to reload. “If you keep this up I will kill you. If you want to live, stop it.”

It wasn’t my most intimidating speech ever, but all I wanted was for them to calm down and leave me alone. I kept swimming and about half of the people in the rafts resumed their attacks. Unfortunately for everyone, the raft nearest me caught fire when a super with particularly bad aim struck the raft with a handful of fire. Panic set in almost immediately on the raft as the people on board screamed out insults while they tried to put out the flames.

The fire wasn’t ordinary fire, though, and no matter how much water they splashed on it it just kept burning. The people in the other two rafts struggled to untie their rafts from one another so the fire wouldn’t spread. It was a lost cause and people began jumping out of the rafts and into the water. I reached the group just as the first raft sank and the second and third rafts turned into brief infernos. With everyone else panicking, I had a moment with no one attacking me and I used that time to locate and retrieve the beacon from the first raft before it was completely lost beneath the waves.

The fire only went out if whatever it was burning was completely submerged in water and there was no way to save the rafts. In the end, everyone went quiet as the rafts burned, deflated, and ultimately sank out of view, leaving around two dozen people in the water. They had life vests, at least, but whatever other supplies they’d gathered had gone down with the rafts.

I wanted to point out to them all that this was their own doing but didn’t want to draw attention to myself. I found an extra life vest floating in the water and put it on, hoping I could just blend in with everyone else for a while. The vest helped keep me buoyant and I didn’t need to tread water so furiously to stay afloat.

“How long before they get here to pick us up?” someone in the group asked.

“A day, maybe two,” a familiar voice replied and I realized it was the captain I’d met earlier. “Did anyone grab one of the ration bags before everything sank?”

No one spoke up.

“Just stay together,” the captain went on. “We’ll get hungry and thirsty but other than that we should be fine. Keep all your complaints to yourself because there’s nothing any of us can do for you.”

It seemed they’d forgotten about me for the time being and I kept my head down, staying towards the outside of the group.

“Wait, who gets the bonus for taking out Nayak?” someone piped up.

The captain visibly rolled her eyes as half a dozen hands shot up into the air.

“None of you idiots get the bonus,” she replied. “Nayak’s right there.”

She pointed right at me and I felt me stomach clench. I’d hoped to go unnoticed but apparently the captain, at least, had kept her eye on me throughout the commotion. Everyone in my immediate vicinity reacted at once, swimming away, splashing me, throwing whatever attacks they could at me.

“Stop it!” I shouted.

No one listened and the attacks continued. My patience ran out and I swam over to the nearest super. With my flippers I was actually pretty fast and the super couldn’t get away. I ripped their life vest off of them, hefted them bodily over my head, and then threw them towards the horizon. Their scream faded off into the distance. I repeated the process three more times until everyone got the hint and the attacks stopped.

“Alright,” I said, wiping water out of my face. “Now listen. Either you get rescued along side me, or you get to take a little trip.”

No one responded and I took their silence for acceptance. In the mean time, I took the three additional life vests and strapped them together as a makeshift raft that would help keep me afloat since the one life vest wasn’t quite enough, especially with the added weight of my metal flippers.

“They won’t take us if you’re here,” the captain said after a few moments of awkward silence.

“They will if you don’t tell them who I am,” I replied.

“You’re dressed as a prisoner,” she pointed out. “It won’t take a genius to figure out who you are.”

“Sounds like you just volunteered one of your soldiers to give me their uniform,” I said.

“No,” the captain stated flatly. “If you want to take a uniform, we can’t stop you, but none of us is going to help you willingly.”

I didn’t like the idea of forcibly stripping someone, not to mention the likelihood of seriously damaging the uniform in the process. At the very least I pulled off my jumpsuit, leaving me in just an undershirt and shorts but that was less obviously prisoner garb. I could claim to have been asleep and undressed when everything happened and I didn’t have time to get dressed. Not that my story would hold up if anyone else here spoke up and said who I really was. I’d have to deal with that later though.

Even though it was midday, I was getting tired. I’d gotten so used to sleeping so much of the time that my body was trained to sleep at this time of day. I knew sleeping right now was a bad idea but try as I might, I was getting groggier and groggier. My head lolled and then jerked back up as I tried to stay awake. Very few of the others were looking at me but a few of them were bound to notice if I fell asleep and then what would they do?

I swam around the group a few times to get my blood pumping. Someone took a pot shot at me from within the group. I didn’t see who it was so I glared at them all.

“I think you’re making them uncomfortable,” the captain said.

“Oh, well, I wouldn’t want that,” I said with heavy sarcasm.

“If you want our cooperation, I’d suggest not antagonizing us,” the captain said.

“Look, the rules are simple,” I stated. “Don’t attack me, don’t tell anyone who I am, and we all get to go home. Otherwise we drown out here and everyone dies.”

Silence returned to the group and I stopped swimming circles around them. In hind sight I could see how it would be intimidating, like a shark circling prey or something. As soon as I settled back into my place on the outside of the group, the tiredness returned. It was like a physical weight dragging my eyelids down.

It was only then that I began to suspect this wasn’t an ordinary tiredness. I’d been tired before, but this was something else. I shouldn’t be this tired, this fast even though I was used to napping. Was this a mental power I wasn’t as resistant towards? If it was, I couldn’t keep resisting forever, and besides, I would eventually have to sleep. I started pinching myself below the surface of the water so no one could see. The pain kept me awake but I pretended to finally succumb and let my head loll backwards. I had enough flotation from the vests that I didn’t need to tread water all the time either so I let my whole body relax except for the pinching.

I waited, letting my breathing slow but making sure I didn’t actually fall asleep. Even with the pinching that was a difficult thing to do. I was desperately tired and so much of me wanted to just drift off to sleep but I kept myself from slipping away.

A minute passed.

Two minutes.

Finally a voice spoke.

“I think she’s really out,” they said.

“Get the vests,” the captain said. “Do it slowly so you don’t wake her.”

Hands began to tug at the vests that were keeping me afloat. That was all I needed to know. They weren’t going to leave me be so I did what I needed to to survive.