Hand over hand.
Mokoto looked up, then back down. The waves crashed against the vessel, and her speedboat rose and fell in the choppy water. She gritted her teeth as she looked up. The sun was directly overhead, and the light caught her silver grappling hook and reflected near blinding streaks of light as she continued.
Hand over hand.
She pulled herself onto the deck. There were two men with AK-47s with their back turned. Mokoto saw three scientists lying dead on the deck before her. She reached into her hip holster and drew her Glock.
*BLAM* *BLAM*
The two men crumpled to the deck. She had to move fast now, as the pirates would soon overwhelm her if she didn’t hurry. She heard boots impacting the stairway from the lower deck. She ran towards the doorway and leaped parallel to the opening, her pistol cracking off several shots towards the pirates on their way to the commotion, who were instead sent to their deaths. She tucked and rolled back up. She crouched as she reloaded her pistol. She ran towards the first two men she killed, and grabbed a rifle. She spun to look down the stairs, but only two corpses greeted her. She slowly crept down the stairs. She knew there were three more. One came around a corner and he was dead before he could even call out for the others. She then ducked around the same corner after she heard a door open. Gunfire rang out across the deck as one of the pirates emptied their rifle towards the corner she was hiding around. She made sure the AK she had appropriated was set for full auto, and she timed her spin. The rifle roared in her arms, peppering the corner with bullets. She gritted her teeth as she ran forward. She slid on the wet deck on her side as if it was a slip and slide, and the startled pirate saw her slide by, then he saw nothing as his life drained away from five direct hits.
Mokoto pressed herself up and ditched the rifle. She was about to kick down a door when another set of arms grabbed her from behind. One arm went around her neck, and another slipped away for just a moment. She felt a knife in her back as she struggled to breathe. The wound was in a bad place, but she would live. She kicked, clawed and bit like a ravenous wolverine until the man let go. She had dropped her pistol, but she had a knife tucked away in her boot. She pulled the knife as the pirate slashed at her arm. She didn’t even feel the blade pierce her skin, and she didn’t notice the blood dripping down her wet-suit. She screamed a primal growl of rage as she hacked her knife in wild, uncontrolled slashes. Before the pirate could counter, Mokoto’s blade found its mark. The pirate dropped over backwards as blood poured from the knife jammed through his neck.
She stumbled forward into the room the pirate was in, and there were two more scientists lying dead on the floor. Mokoto dropped to her knees, as the pain in her wounds melted away to another kind of pain. She began crying, screaming “NOT AGAIN! OH GOD, NOT AGAIN!!!” as she sobbed. She curled into a fetal position, crying in an expanding pool of blood as the boat rose and fell.
“It wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t have saved them.”
Mokoto opened her eyes. A young girl looked at her from inside a closet door that was now open. The sun shot through a window as the girl walked towards her. The sunbeams danced around. Mokoto closed her eyes tightly. She could almost feel the girl comforting her…
Mokoto’s eyes opened, and she saw two flashlight beams hitting her now destroyed jacket that was still in a tree, now blowing in the South Dakota breeze.
