Free Point and Shoot by Duane Swierczynski

Hardie knew they were in serious trouble. Within a minute he was up to his waist in seawater, and that seemed to happen in the space of a blink. Was this supposed to happen? Or had he screwed something up when he blasted the hatch?
    Whatever. Hardie needed to get out of here.
    As he crawled along the side of the vessel, salt water lapped at his hands and burned like crazy. Which was going to make swimming fun. And that’s what he was facing—a long swim. Without a life preserver. Somewhat stupidly he wondered if there were flotation devices hidden somewhere in this craft, as if he were aboard a commercial airline. There were no life preservers. Hardie had been over every piece of this damned thing for nine months; he would have noticed if there had been big inflatable orange vests. There were no seat cushions that could be used as a flotation device, unless by some miracle the toilet could float.
    Worry about that later, Hardie thought. Get out now.
    Then he remembered his buddy, the clone.
    The cruel part of him wanted to shout,
Every man for himself!
And just split. But the human being inside him couldn’t. The father and husband inside of him couldn’t, either. He needed this guy if his family had any shot at survival. Even if his story about the NSA and Eve Bell and rescuing him was complete and utter bullshit,
somebody
had to be backing him. Sure as shit wasn’t the Cabal, breaking into its own satellite. And any enemy of the Cabal’s was a friend of Hardie’s.
    “Come on, pal, let’s get you unhooked. No, really, it’s no trouble at all. You just rest and relax and I’ll take care of the whole thing.”
    You can’t respond.
    You’re out. O-U-T.
Out
.
    You don’t sense Charlie Hardie unbuckle you from your harness, nor do you see the water rising at an alarming rate. You’re not awake to see the panic in Hardie’s face as he realizes the water is rising much, much quicker than he thought possible. You certainly don’t feel it when Hardie accidentally bangs your skull on the side of the hatchway. Which is probably fortunate, because had you been awake it would have really,
really
hurt.
    All you can do is be carried along.
    Sometimes a much younger and more carefree Charlie Hardie would go swimming in someone else’s pool (never his pool; his family couldn’t afford a luxury like a pool, even those cheaper metal-and-vinyl above-ground pools). He’d play a game with himself:
How long can I stay afloat
? The rules were simple. He would pump his arms and legs to keep himself up in the middle of the pool without touching the bottom or sides. If he did, he’d lose. He’d imagine that he’d been abandoned in the middle of a vast ocean, and his life would be over the minute his arms and legs failed to move. The young Hardie never won the game, of course. Winning was impossible. Sooner or later his burning, tired limbs would give out, and he’d gently float down those few inches until his feet touched the vinyl pool bottom. Or someone would jump in next to him or throw a pool toy at his head.
    Hardie never thought he’d actually be stuck in the middle of a vast ocean, with no land in sight, body aching and limbs already dangerously weak—and with his arm wrapped around a goddamned clone of himself.
    Knowing that the moment his free arm and two legs ran out of steam, he’d be a dead man.
    He’d give anything to reach down with his toes and somehow feel a vinyl bottom.
    Charlie Hardie had no idea how much time had passed. It could have been anywhere from just a few minutes to a couple of hours. There were no landmarks, and there was no way to mark his progress. Or lack thereof. There was just water, water everyfuckingwhere, as a poet once said. The vastness of it was beginning to creep Hardie out. He tried not to think about it. But how could he not? He was a bug—not even a bug, a fleck of a bug part, struggling in this immense and ancient primordial force. Long before there was a Charlie Hardie, there