Born Predators - Chapter 1

Chapter 1

𝕁amie gasped for air as he surfaced, flailing and kicking after his plunge into the dark water of Hampton Bay. He slapped at the water, shaking his head wildly to get a breath, blinking his eyes to clear them. The midnight wind off Long Island threw choppy waves at him, hitting his face and choking him as turned in circles and sputtered for air. There was so little light that he couldn’t see the waves before they hit, so he scissored his legs and pushed with his arms to keep his head up. The summer night was warm: still, these waves felt cold on his face, and on his whole body. But he wasn’t shivering…his heart was racing, his pulse was high, and his wild kicking made him gasp for breath. His ears were plugged with sea water so that all he could hear were the waves hitting him. All he could smell was iron tang of the Bay with a hint of sulfur from the nearby marshes. He felt… What was that?

Jamie spun around in the water and saw lights close behind him – the glare of the party boat with people he knew. He thought he’d escaped cleanly, slipping away outside their view. But on deck everyone was now yelling at him, calling to him. His ears slowly began to clear and he could start to hear them fuzzily yelling his name. Gesturing at him to do something. Come back. And he could feel the deep base thrum of over-amplified music coming at him from the boat like a hammer on his head and a pounding on his heart. No. He wouldn’t come back. Not to them. He was leaving.

***

Jamie had stood shivering on the railing of the yacht, hand tightly clenching a sturdy part of the bulkhead. This was it. Here at last, atop the polished teak banister. And suddenly… Afraid? An overwhelming fear welled up inside him, a fear different than inside the party. That fear was his typical panic about how to interact, how to answer, how to react to the social tumult around him. This fear struck his chest like a massive emotional wave. A fear of being overwhelmed, of having no choices, of being in the wrong place with no escape. And Jamie needed desperately to escape. He felt stalked somehow, pursued. But there was only one route away, wasn’t there? One route where he could just slip quietly away and fade from view. The route in front of him.

The people on the boat weren’t helping. They taunted, laughed, teased, and hurt him all night. He was the idiot genius of the company, that’s what their attitudes told him. Capable of taking computer code and giving it life, but incapable of a rapid conversation. He found himself instinctively pulling away, running away from them – and found himself here, out over the rail.

His strong arms and tight grip suspended him above the ocean water. He instantly felt the isolation of the ocean as his eyes drank in the blue-black surface stretching far away. It was getting rougher, blowing and slapping waves against the boat moored far from shore. But Jamie swam well. Really well. Swimming was a solo sport. So all he really had to do was let go. Push himself away. Kick with his legs to get distance from the yelling mob, repelled by the bright lights, the pounding sounds and the frantic demanding people. He’d be free of them. Free of Laszlo.

Before Jamie climbed onto the rail, Laszlo had followed him from deck to deck on the yacht, giving him drinks but baiting him unmercifully, praising him then goading him in that superior privileged way he had, throwing him complements that also subtly insulted him. Practically sneering at him. Jaime had started out the night so well, imbedded for once in the wild and young party of their recent business successes. And he’d worked so well with this group all year, discovering advances that they took and turned into a global technology marvel. He came to the party thinking he could rely on them.

But Laszlo could always breach the carefully crafted mental space that Jaime used to manage himself in a crowd. Laszlo could always destroy his equilibrium. And when his mental control was gone, Jaime found himself buffeted by other people’s moods and actions, drowning in their words and eyes. He couldn’t sort out what was important and what was not, what shouts above the music were congratulatory joy and which were snide attacks, which glances were smiles, or what pushes, pulls, and bumps were full of cruel meaning. Bouncing from deck to deck, blundering into tight groups of co-workers who always seemed to interact so easily, Jaime had grown increasingly uncomfortable, increasingly harried, increasingly desperate for any kind of escape. The intense music and surging crowd and shouted conversations of 50 people had overwhelmed any ability Jaime possessed to deal with the party.

So he didn’t deal with it. He found a way out.

He left the crowd and found a small, isolated balcony off a stateroom. He climbed onto the rail. He leaned out above the dark water. It scared him to be there. But it scared him more to be anywhere else.

And now Jaime thought about his little sailboat, floating nearby. The craft meant quiet and peace. In his mind’s eye it was solitude and protection. Its small cabin of wood and brass was an embrace of familiarity. Each coil of line on the deck, each smooth pillow on the bunk, each nautical map lovingly framed and displayed, spoke to him of comfort. And it was so close, it was so familiar, it was so quiet. He could swim there. He could get himself there with no help from anyone. It was a way out.

So he jumped.

Unthinking, in a panic, he had jumped into the midnight Bay, a snap decision to get away from the aggressive taunts of his sneering tormentors. Anything to get to the safety of his boat. But when the salty water crashed over his face, he woke up to the very different reality of a wild bay, in the wind at night, far from shore. And he became merely a tiny set of kicking legs and slapping arms.

***

As Jamie began to swim away, his escape was spotted. “Hey! Jaime’s in the water!” And the crowd on the party boat got more and more frantic. All except Laszlo. Through blurry sea water eyes when he looked back, Jaime could sometimes still see him on the boat, standing still on the rear deck where they’d last argued. His anxious presence remained even as the Bay’s currents pushed Jaime further away. Laszlo just fixed him with a calculating gaze.

Jaime’s legs kicked in a frantic spiral, spinning him away from the party boat. He could just barely see speckled lights far away. They appeared in groups of two or three, all forming a thin line in front of him that marked the local boats. They seemed so much further – so much fainter than he’d guessed. Still, one of those lights was his small boat. One of those lights was his target.

The Bay stretched dark and uncaring all around Jaimie, with only those tiny lights blinking far ahead. Finally now behind him the sounds of the party boat were dropping away, relieving Jamie’s panic, allowing him to focus on his swim. His breathing calmed as he realized he was finally alone.

Then one final word penetrated the distance, shouted from the boat.

“Shark!”