"This is not going to work," she hissed a little while later. We were crouched on opposite walkways, Incaendium in my hand and a sharpened rod of steel in Sheira's.

I glared at her, "just trust me on this."

"This isn't trust anymore, I'm following a madman into the unknown."

"Just..." I tried to think up some valid points as to why this wasn't the most stupid thing I'd ever done, but nothing came up. "Just stick to the plan."

"We're going to be eaten."

I didn't answer that, mainly because the broken bot had just come limping around the corner and also due to the fact that yes, there was a very high chance that this could go to being mopped off the floor levels of bad. But there was no time to reconsider as the automaton had just caught sight of our lure and had frozen in place. It inched forwards, examining the human sized fireball I had positioned in mid-air that Sheira had told me would release the right amount of carbon dioxide to make this madness work.

I crouched there as still as I could, but I was trembling with excitement. Would it fall for it? It had to, right? Lets just hope its as stupid as I think it is. The automaton kept staring at the fireball and for the briefest second my heart dropped as it took a few steps back from the bait, but then I felt a massive grin spread over my lips as the robot lunged forwards, clamped its jaws over the fireball and the chains we had hidden just behind it and allowed its forward momentum to rip the tops of the vats clear away.

Setting it up had been a nightmare, what with securing all the chains to the vent systems of the containers and then somehow creating a blob of fire that resembled a human being, but it was completely worth it. As soon as the containers had been breached they had started spewing gas like there was no tomorrow and as predicted it was a complete sensory overload for the automaton. It roared and screeched as it was effectively blinded and as it thrashed around we made our way to step two.

"You ready?" I yelled over the noise.

Sheira paused and then looked me dead in the eye, "as I'll ever be."

"Alright then, NOW!"

We jumped. The automatons surface didn't have many places to grip but I managed to gain a foothold on the side of it head while I saw that Sheira had landed deftly on its shoulder. It realised we were there a lot quicker than it would have liked as it went completely mental. It wasn't meant to have people on it so naturally it thought it was under attack and was now swiping wildly and shaking its whole body like a wet dog. We hung on desperately as we were thrown about like rag dolls.

Somehow I managed to crawl up to the glowing orb in its skull, keeping my own head down to avoid losing it, and repositioned myself so I could get a better angle. The orb was flaring a dangerous scarlet compared to the amber I had seen earlier which further reflected the beasts aggression. Incaendium sat comfortably in my hand, waiting for the right moment where I wasn't going to get decapitated, and raised my arm and plunged the flaming piece of iron into the orb.

The reaction was to be expected of someone that had just had a meter-long piece of metal into their head that was also on fire. It freaked out. It started thrashing and attacking more violently now, slamming its head against any surface it could find in order to try and shake us off. It didn't succeed as I pulled my sword out and once again plunged into the robots skull, but this time I was followed by Sheira's own piece of rebar. That was the final straw for the automaton as I suddenly noticed the flat side of its paw heading straight towards us.

I braced for impact and then promptly realised that we were shooting through the air like a couple of darts, and the ground was getting closer at an alarming rate. I closed my eyes, waited for the impact and then felt something loop around my ankle. What the hell? No time to think any further than that as I was suddenly yanked backwards out of the air, so we went crashing to the cold hard ground. I blinked away the stars whizzing round me and turned, dizzily to what had just grabbed us.

"You two sure like to make a dramatic entrance don't you?"

"Shadow!" I exclaimed, sitting upright and promptly regretted the speed of that action as the taste of nausea filled my throat. "You're alive!"

"Course I am," he snapped, "how are you still alive?! I heard screaming, that wasn't you two?"

"Nah, it was the guy you brought in with us." I shuddered at the memory of the curtain of red blood dripping from the sky, "he may as well have been thrown through a wood chipper."

He ran a hand through his hair and swore quietly under his breath. He sighed exhaustively, "now, why the hell were you two flying through the air like that?"

"Why the hell is your leg so messed up?" I gasped. Shadow's left leg looked distinctly shredded. The fabric of his jeans were stained a dark red, crusted blood no doubt, well whatever was left. The material up to his mid calve was either ripped to pieces or torn away completely.

He looked down like he'd only just noticed, or he was trying to start a new fashion trend. "It got hold of me after Crash banged it up, nothing my healing couldn't handle." Something about that didn't sit right, it couldn't have just got his clothes, not with those teeth, and there was too much blood. I decided to store that away for later.

"We were trying to kill the automaton by stabbing it through the head after Nick dropped a vat load of acid on it," Sheira explained calmly, like that madness was as normal as popping down to the shops for a bottle of milk.

Shadow took a few moments to blink at us, a puzzled/surprised/amazed look on his face. It was a very strange look. "Okay..."

"Then we got slapped off it and now it's gone," I said, maybe adding a little bit of dramatics to my simple explanation. "Any chance we killed it?"

Shadow promptly shook his head, "nope, not a chance in hell its dead. More than likely you've just taken out a few of its systems and its limped away for a full reboot."

"Meaning?"

"You've pissed it off."

"Wonderful, now it really wants to eat us."

"Better question is how long before it resets itself?" Ah Sheira, without you we would have died a long time ago.

Shadow shrugged, "ten minutes max, we need to get out of here before then."

"Any ideas?" I asked.

"I'm working on it."

I glanced down and saw the little balls of darkness that had previously been used to guide us through the main facility sitting in the palm of Shadow's hand. As we crept along, rightfully not wanting to stay in the same space for too long, he would throw out those little orbs only for them to zip back, feeding his frustration. For some reason it wasn't working like it was in the corridors as the balls would sometimes fizzle out at his fingertips like he was running out of energy, but he couldn't, could he? I'd never even seen Shadow look drained or exhausted like me or Sheira whenever we exerted ourselves...maybe he just had more experience? Well whatever it was he was getting very annoyed, with...something.

"Come on, don't do this to me now!" he hissed under his breath. "Work goddammit, I need this, we need this. Give me something...Don't be an asshole because you're not getting me now, not here, so give up...It's my power and you're not taking it away!"

The darkness at his fingertips suddenly flared with strength and without hesitation he hurled the orbs clean away, so they zipped out of sight. A moment passed before they hurtled back to their owner and one of them flashed urgently. With a satisfied smile Shadow threw the ball at the ground where it produced a dusty black line that stretched off past a corner.

"Come on, follow the line to the nearest possible exit."

That exit however was not what any of us had in mind. A maintenance door or something with lights flashing in green was what I had in mind instead what we got was a bizarre looking machine. It looked like a bike chain with massive mine cart sized buckets attached to it that fed some sort of suspended tank above us. The whole thing was frozen in place from the alarms but a large hole in the floor did seem to lead somewhere.

"Do you think it'll just lead to another part of the facility?" Sheira asked.

Shadow didn't respond, he just leaned forward over the gap, one ear facing downwards like a cat. Then he smirked, so obviously we weren't completely dead. Yet.

"Listen to that," he said, beckoning us forward.

Aware of not trying to fall into the bottomless pit, I leaned forward and listened. The sirens, wailing alarms and hissing steam made it just a little bit more difficult to hear anything but somehow I could hear something distinctly...odd. Something was whispering down there but it wasn't a voice, it was like –

"Water!" Sheira exclaimed, taking the words out of my head and also scaring the life out of me. "That's running water down there."

"Which means we're either above a river or a lake, and because this place needs so much of the blue stuff its got to be natural with a constant flow which in turn means that we have just found our way out."

I don't like water at the best of times but if I'm having to chose between death by puddle or giant man-eating death machine, I'm taking my chances with the former. Anyway, the latter now seemed to be back on its feet and was a little bit mad at us. The roar echoed round the room, freezing us all in place where we exchanged a glance and promptly scattered round the mechanism to try and figure out how in the name of bloody hell this thing worked.

Well the other two were, because something else was currently preoccupying my attention. Cecily and the other slaves, would this warrant an evacuation for the entire building? Probably not if I was being realistic, it was too contained to this one room, but I couldn't just leave them here either. But what could I do? I gazed around the area where my eye fell upon a massive pipe, bigger and more reinforced than all the others combined with real heavy-duty valves and wheels sticking out from it. A giant yellow warning label was written on it : Warning Gas Easily Flammable. Now you're speaking my language.

The machine whirred to life behind me and in the distance the automaton must have heard from whatever pit it was crawling out of, so I lunged for the valves and started turning them all to open. The smell of gas overpowered my nose pretty damn quickly, but I had to open as many as I could for this to work, this room had to be filled.

"What are you doing?" Shadow asked. He was looking utterly baffled and Sheira, who was already halfway in the bucket, looked genuinely concerned.

"I'm fulfilling a promise," I muttered as I struggled with what I could best describe as the master valve. It was very firmly stuck, and I certainly couldn't shift it on my own but even so, I was very surprised to see two extra pairs of hands pulling with me. With all three of us putting our weights against it the valve moaned and slid open, the sound of escaping gas filling the air.

Over the sound of us choking Shadow somehow managed to yell "Come on!" before dragging us into one of the stationary buckets and practically shoving Sheira and I inside.

And then of course it came back. It lumbered out from behind the pipes, spasming as sparks flew from its joints and the metal frame protested against its own weight. Its eyes kept flickering off and on, so whatever Sheira and I had done earlier had worked, it was broken but it looked positively deranged as it stared us down, twitching like bloody Springtrap. Shadow was half in half out and froze up completely when the automaton showed up, hoping it wouldn't see him as he slowly pulled his other leg into the bucket.

The eyes suddenly blazed to life and it screeched in fury and then started barrelling towards us with the full intention of having a three-course meal. Shadow moved faster than I thought was humanly possible and with a whip of blackness we were descending, but clearly not fast enough. We all noticed, we weren't surprised when the automatons long arm and six-foot-long claws hooked under our little lift, but that certainly didn't stop us from screaming in pure terror as the robot began to pull us towards its open mouth.

I looked around in a panic, desperate for anything we could use to get away. Shadow could probably cut the massive chain holding us up, but the automaton would just have us fully in its grip. We needed to drop down and find a way of getting the automaton to release us in the exact same moment... but how? We had nothing, even our powers were useless on it, after all Shadow had gone toe to toe with it and the thing only got scratched. I don't want to die like this, I would rather get gassed than this.

Gas. I'm so stupid, that whole room is filled to the brim and I'm a walking match. I started forming a fireball. The other two glanced over at me and with a few unsaid words they both got what my plan was, Sheira grabbed onto something and Shadow placed a hand by the chain and the whole thing turned black, ready to snap at my word. The fireball raged in my hands as I waited and waited as the automaton drew us closer and closer until we were just a few feet away and then, with my best bowling arm I threw it.

Several things happened in quick succession. 1. I threw the fireball past the automatons head and into the room behind it 2. Shadow cut the chain yelling a loud warning of "Hold onto something, we're going down." 3. The room proceeded to explode, knocking the automaton away with the sheer force of ignition which resulted in 4. The automaton let go of our bucket which meant that 5. We dropped like a stone into the abyss.

It was like the elevator from hell from the bank only a million times worse as we were in freefall with no way of stopping. All three of us clung to each other as the thing fell downwards, the surrounding air screeching, the wind whipping at our faces like knives and the temperature dropped to the freezing levels. I was on the verge of vomiting (And I usually love rollercoasters), but then I saw something that instantly put that silly action away. It was the ground and it was rushing up towards us for a hug.

I screamed in fear, I was pretty sure someone starting praying and Shadow lunged for the chain, stabbing a block of darkness right into the mechanism. The whole thing only slowed down at his efforts but by now it was too late to do anything else. Our reduced speed meant that we were very unlikely to die when we slammed into the cold hard earth but all three of us were still thrown outwards, landing in immense pain. I think I was knocked out for a few seconds if I was honest because I didn't remember landing, only lying face down in the dirt with blood dripping slightly from my forehead.

I turned over and wheezed, trying to get all the air back into my lungs that had been so unkindly knocked out. I didn't dare try sitting up, I think I'd pass out again if I tried that, but from my back I could see the rather unusual and beautiful image of a single square in the blacked-out ceiling burning a golden orange. Well if that didn't blow up the building then nothing would.

I heard a moan from behind me, signifying that the other two were still alive. "Is anybody dead?" Shadow's voice seemed as woozy as mine was.

Lying flat on my back, my head swimming, and not even attempting to move I called back, "Yes!"

"Good to know. You okay Sheira?"

She didn't respond for a few worrying moments. "I...I think I've broken something."

Despite the fact that my body was telling me very firmly to lie still and wallow, I was up on my feet and by Sheira's side faster than you could say A&E. Even Shadow was crouched beside as he examine her wrist with care. Well there was no denying that that bone shouldn't be at that angle, or pressing up against the skin for that matter, but it was, and it was very obvious and not for the squeamish.

"That's nasty, how did you do it?"

"I must have put my hand out to stop my fall when we were thrown out. It was a stupid thing to do, I know how to land as well."

"Does it hurt?" he was rummaging through his bag for something.

She thought for a few moments. "No actually I don't think I can – Oh wait, never mind, adrenaline's wearing off. Ahhh...god that hurts." Her teeth were now gritted in agony and puffs of breath were leaving her lips like a train. I looped my fingers round her other hand and let her grip as tight as she liked.

Shadow pulled out a small green box from his bag and began unloading the supplies, picking through them until he found a silver coloured glove looking thing and after a painful moment of removing Sheira's existing glove, he put the silvery thing on instead. It was obviously some sort of bandage but that led to the question of why a guy who could probably heal every wound on his body in a heartbeat (Because I was also ninety nine percent sure that his run in with the automaton had torn away a good portion of his leg), why did he have a medical kit in his bag? Okay, he might have picked it up in Greencoast, but this box was old, really old, with chips and scuffs covering the wooden surface and faded lettering obscuring the date but the number nineteen was just about visible. Hmmm...

"They're called healers gauntlets," she explained to me, but I knew that she just needed a distraction from the fact that her bone was being slotted back into its rightful place, and to be honest I really didn't want to look. "It'll do the majority of the work, but I'll still need a doctor."

"And to do that we'll need to get out of here. Give us a little light, would ya?"

The fireball lit up the surrounding cavern instantly, casting a golden, flickering glow along the smooth rock walls, the lines of machinery, some still pulling the water from the massive river in front of us high into the ceiling for use elsewhere. Until they all stopped with a skin crawling crunch! It seemed that my evacuate-everyone-by-blowing-the-building-up plan had worked. But other than that, what was this place?

"Where are we?" I asked, my voice echoing around the room.

Shadow examined the space carefully before answering. "It looks like some sort of underground reservoir, but its not like a storage tank. The water's running, there's a way out."

"And I can smell fresh air," Sheira was still sat on the floor taking a well-deserved breather.

It was about now I was regretting not being a scout. Seriously though, I needed to do some serious studying when we got back because so help me god if I got stranded in the middle of freaking nowhere on my own, I'd be reduced to caveman status within the hour.

"We need to get a move on," Shadow said firmly. He was glancing nervously up at the flaming square in the ceiling like the automaton was going to come flying through it like a bat out of hell. "Hey kid, you still got that stone? Cause I sure as hell am not going back for it."

I did have a moment of panic because the box had somehow managed to bury itself beneath a sheet of plastic, but I found it quickly and pulled it out to show everyone. The box was emitting a warmth from within and a quick peak inside confirmed that the Vulcan Star was still sitting pride of place. "All present and correct, sir!" I saluted and clicked my heels together with a big stupid grin on my face.

Shadow simply rolled his eyes and shook his head in annoyance.

"Can you guys give me a hand here?" Shadow and I both gently pulled Sheira to her feet, being careful to mind her hurt wrist.

Then she glanced upwards, just for a moment, and then I heard her scream in pure, abject fear. For a moment I thought one of us had hurt her, but I quite quickly realised by following her gaze, we had bigger things to worry about than a broken bone. Somehow the tangle of parts that was the automaton was dislocating every joint its body, each one with an audible crack, so it resembled a nightmarish serpent and it was squeezing its way through the tiny space we had come through. I caught a glimpse of its eyes, they were blazing with the unmistakable glimmer of murder.

We were off running again before the murder bot had time to roar at us. Once again we were running from the automaton but this time we had a chance of escape, a cool breeze drifting in across the water confirmed that. But we also had nowhere to hide, so the only option we had was to run until our legs gave way and pray that the automaton couldn't keep up, pray it was too damaged, pray that by some miracle we could escape and make it back to the "safety" of Scarlett and her cronies.

There was a loud thump behind us, it was in. Our run turned into a sprint as the first glimmers of real sunlight shone like an oasis in the darkness. My heartbeat was pounding in my ears, but I could still hear the sounds of the automaton's footsteps getting closer and closer over the flat surface where its horrifically long strides gave it the advantage. This game of cat and mouse was slipping out of our favour...but maybe it didn't have to.

While my attention was definitely focused on getting to freedom and not being eaten in the process, I noticed something about our environment. The cave we were in was not natural, it had been hollowed out for the factory and so the roof had to be held up by beams, wooden beams, very easily broken and damageable wooden beams that just happened to be very easy to set fire too. If that trick worked once it would probably work again, with a little bit of luck. So that's exactly what I did. The other two jumped as my fireball sailed across the room, the flames engulfing the wood in a matter of seconds, but they were used to my madness now and they got it and decided to lend a hand.

Sheira leapt towards the river and for a brief moment I thought she was going to jump in, but instead she did something considerably cooler. Pun not intended. The blades of her skates dropped out from the soles of her shoes and the moment they touched the water it froze into solid ice, creating a perfect runway for a little bit of target practise as each support was taken out with ice blast after ice blast.

The curling darkness in Shadow's hands proved to be very helpful as he could create waves, taking out five or six supports at a time, with each flick of his wrist. My fireballs helped to take out the stragglers and surely enough the top of the cavern began to sag under its own weight, but it wasn't falling yet, and the automaton was sounding a hell of a lot closer than it was before. But the original pinprick of daylight had now swelled into a doorway of light, we didn't have far to go and let's be honest we were two or three supports away from doing the exact opposite of raising the roof.

At last that final support went out, courtesy of Sheira, and the result was as breath-taking as it was terrifying. I turned around, scaring myself in the process because the automaton was literally right there, and witnessed the sheer carnage that was the cavern roof collapsing. With a deep rumble that probably would have been heard down the valley, it fell like a wave, rolling towards us and the automaton that had stupidly turned towards the sound.

Sheira grabbed hold of us from her position on the water and hauled us the last few meters into the blazing sunlight while we turned and watched the scene unfold. The automaton realised a fraction too late what was going on and sprinted towards the exit as the dirt fell around its shoulders. A large boulder collapsed from the ceiling and fell onto the robots hind legs, trapping it in place to be buried alive. Its cries of anger were smothered as hundreds of thousands of tonnes of rock and soil dropped all their weight onto the monster, covering it until it resembled nothing more than a hill with a fossil buried beneath it.

During this execution by mountain the three of us had been stood primed and waiting, our power curling from our fingers, readying ourselves just in case we needed to push the creature back a few steps or suddenly have to fight for our lives, but luckily we didn't need to fight that man on...uh, monster? Whatever, that doesn't matter, it's probably not going to be coming up for air any time soon.

"Is it–"

The it in question decided to answer that itself as it seemed to be trying to punch its way out by making the dirt bubble and strain out of the landslide. How? HOW!? There was hundreds of tonnes on top of it, it was buried alive!

"WHY WON'T THIS STUPID THING JUST DIE!" I yelled in frustration.

"Because you can't just kill an automaton," Shadow said grimly, "trust me, last one I ran into it took ten of us, and they were some of the best elementals I've ever known, and a week to kill it off."

"How did you do that?" I could almost see the gears in Sheira's head whizzing away urgently trying to figure out how to get out of here alive. I caught a glimpse of the hour glass around her neck, we didn't have long left.

Shadow mumbled something under his breath that even the most talented lipreaders would be unable to decipher.

"I'm sorry I can't speak Gaelic, any chance you could you speak up?"

Shadow whipped round so fast it made me take a few instinctive steps backwards. "I said," he growled, a hint of something else lingering behind his words, "we dropped it into an active volcano."

I felt the colour drain from my face and Sheira seemed to turn the colour of old paper but that could have been my imagination. "Well then...I can think of a problem with that, England's not exactly famous for being volcanic."

He rolled his eyes, "there's only two sure fire ways to kill an automaton. One, you destroy the thing all at once and even the combined ten of us couldn't accomplish that, or two, you take it apart piece by piece until it can't function anymore, but here's the thing, automatons become more dangerous and a hell of a lot more aggressive the more damaged they are. It's a survival instinct that isn't exactly helpful on our end."

"So, what are we waiting for, let's get the hell out of here!"

"Umm...I think that might be a bit more difficult than you're imagining."

While Shadow and I were discussing extermination techniques, Sheira had decided to scout up ahead but hadn't got very far, in fact she seemed to be unable to move forwards. Shadow and I joined her and let's just say I was very glad I didn't have vertigo. It kind of went without saying that a giant reservoir in the hills would probably be held up by some kind of dam but being stood on the edge, twenty metres up was still a bit surprising. The structure was short and flat, tiny compared to the massive super dams of America or China, made out of concrete and probably reinforced with steel if my knowledge of GCSE geography held up and was still a lot taller than I was comfortable with.

"Well dam."

I could feel the disapproving looks from the other two boring into my head like a red-hot poker. "Not the time," Shadow warned dangerously, even though he wasn't looking so good himself.

"Oh, come on, when else am I going to be able to use that joke again?"

"Time and a place Nick, and now is not it," she was scanning the surrounding environment and muttering quickly to herself. "Hills are too high to climb, there's no way down, there was probably a service tunnel back in the cavern but that's unreachable..."

"Maybe we can climb over the landslide," I suggested, "but we'd have to be willing to risk running the automaton, so to speak."

"That's a possibility."

Shadow was peering over the edge intently and even though he spoke quietly, I heard every terrifying syllable. "Yeah, we can make that."

"I'm sorry, what did you just say?"

"You heard me, we can make that jump. Easily in fact."

"Are you mad?" I gasped, utterly flabbergasted

"I'm with him on this one," Sheira said, jabbing a finger in my direction.

Shadow rolled his eyes, "its only twenty metres, cliff jumpers do that all the time."

"I've never even been off a diving board!" I yelled.

"Well there's a first time for everything!"

I looked around frantically. There had to be another way out of here, there had to be. I was not going to take a leap of faith by throwing myself off a twenty-metre-high platform without knowing what was at the bottom, there could be rocks, the floor, crocodiles! (Okay maybe not that last one) I darted along the length of the wall, the automaton still trying to dig itself clear in the background, looking for a ladder, a pipe, a slide, something! But there was nothing, oh god...

"It's the only way out that we can see," Shadow was trying to rationalise his madness, "the hills are too steep to climb, and the way back into the building is buried and I don't think we'll be able to climb that dirt pile without being attacked or falling all the way down."

"Sheira, please back me up on this," I begged.

She looked between the two of us like she was watching the tennis. "I..." she stuttered, "I agree with both of you. This is complete madness but it's the only option we've got before that thing breaks free." The automatons claws punched through the dirt right on cue. Our whole party jumped, exchanged a look and then the other two started dragging my protesting ass towards the edge. "I'm sorry about this but we don't have a choice on the matter."

Sheira may have been apologising but I was not happy about this at all. "No. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no! I am not throwing myself off that, I DO NOT WANT TO DIE!"

"Nick come on!"

"You know why I don't want to Sheira, I've told you before!" She looked like she actually didn't have a scooby doo what I was talking about and then I remembered, "I didn't tell you. I told Sophie...you came in afterwards." That little detail could prove to be a bit of an issue, especially considering we were all about to take a crash course in cliff jumping.

"What are you talking about?" Sheira asked.

"Erm, there's something quite important that I need to say that could hinder our current activity."

"What?"

"This is a really bad time to bring this up."

"SPIT IT OUT!" Shadow roared. The automaton did the same, one of its forearms was now free and it was trying to pull the rest of its gnarled form out of the dirt. It looked very zombie like in its broken and malfunctioning state.

"Okay, you need to listen to all of this. All my life I've had this big problem with this thing, and looking back now it could be elemental based or linked or whatever, but its quite dangerous for me and it also happens to mean that I can't–"

What I couldn't do in that moment was finish my sentence because at that exact moment the monster finally hauled itself clear of the dirt, its broken claws scrabbling for traction. Rocks, dirt and worms dropped from its beaten frame, which jerked and glitched as it raised its head in our direction. Its eyes flickered on and off the grey and orange popping in the light as it blinked, and those eyes remained the deepest amber where rage and murder danced like a flame in their centre. All of us had frozen completely, but my instinct was screaming that it wouldn't help us now.

The other two grabbed my arms in unison and started hauling me towards the edge, the drop that could easily break us apart on impact. The automaton saw the struggle and was now advancing, screaming and bellowing thinking its job was about to be completed. I on the other hand was having a complete panic attack combined with a breakdown, screaming at the other two to let me go and don't you dare push me. But they weren't going to listen because as my own voice was drowned out by the robot and its demonically whirring teeth I felt nothing but empty space below me. Once again we were falling.

Twenty metres is not that far but its just enough to send your body into pure, complete fear and terror and that's all I could feel in that moment. I was numb to anything else. The only things that I was aware of was the automatons cries of anguish, the wind screaming in my ears, the rushing water getting closer and closer, and my own voice. My own voice somehow finishing my sentence for me in that moment of freefall.

"I can't swim."

And that echo was the only thing left in my ears as I hit the surface, punching through like an arrow and my world was swallowed by the inky blackness of water and everything went cold.