Rhea opened here eyes groggily as a throbbing feeling pulsed at the back of her skull. Rolling her head back she inhaled the dusty air. She had no clue where she was or why her body hurt so much, the only thing her mind could register was the large metal edge that was pointing itself at her face. Rhea became increasingly aware of the small space her body was crammed into. Unable to move herself out of her trap her breathing began to shorten and her pulse sped up. "Help! Somebody help me!" she yelled out, her voice was dry and raspy. The empty feeling in the girl's stomach told her that she had been trapped under the metal pieces for a while. "Help me, I'm stuck. Help!" no matter how much she screamed no one came. Unable to shout anymore Rhea tried to pry out the metal that was pressing her hands down. After what seemed to be hours she finally managed to shift the darkened piece and free her hands. Rhea rubbed the back of her head and felt a large bump that had formed itself - probably when she was unconscious.

What happened the she was trapped in a claustrophobically small space? The girl forced herself to remember to remember where she was but nothing came to her mind. "Okay, there must a reasonable explanation for all of this. Right now I'm in..." her tongue twisted itself. Confused she began testing her memory, "I am Rhea Nelson, twenty-one years old. I live in an apartment on Stelson St. on the fifth floor, in the eighth room. My parents are divorced and my grandmother is sick." The mention of her grandmother Rhea remembered that she was supposed to be on her way to meet her. Her grandmother lived in Holland and she recalled getting on her first flight to the country. She looked around herself and the realization that she was stuck under the remnants of a plane crash invaded her mind.

"HELP! HELP ME! HELP!" she banged at the large chunks of the plane that were imprisoning her. If she screamed loud enough someone was bound to hear her. 'But what if there are no survivors?' she thought to herself. Rhea recalled watching a documentary on the Discovery channel about a tragic plane crash. In that documentary, there were no survivors. Rhea wondered if there was a person on that plane who was stuck under a massive metal chunk. "What if the rescue crew never found that person?"

]The world faded in and out of view as the young count threatened to topple backward into the dark of unconsciousness. Several times now he had awakened to struggle against his metal prison only to be forced back into the blackness of oblivion as he failed to draw in enough air to keep the darkness at bay. Watching in helpless shock as it crept forward once again, teasing around the edges of his vision, he found that he had not yet, as he'd once believed, lost his capacity for prayer, though it seemed a moot point now.

No, it was not prayer that would save him, not heavenly intervention, not hurried words slipping out, colored with an unfamiliar and insincere reverence driven onward by fear. If salvation came, it would be in the form of a human hand tearing away at the wreckage, and a human body soaked in sweat from the heat of the dying flames and the pains of laboring against the stubborn remnants of the plane. And Santeri was still alive, wasn't he? Struggling against the encroaching blackness, Evander shift his head to the side a fraction, trying to catch sight of the man who had served as both his manservant and bodyguard for the duration of the trip.

A startled grunt forced it's way from him as a the piece of metal that had been pinning him to the dirt and attempting to rob him of breath and vision was shoved to the side just enough to allow for wiggle room. "Santeri," the young man croaked in surprise, clearly pleased to see the impassive Italian man, as much as he was loath to show it. Anything to be free of the sharp pain in his chest and sides.

With a grunt of effort, Santeri wedged himself under a teetering piece of metal as he tugged at Evander's arms, causing the younger man to wince as he was pulled from beneath the metal and it collapsed in the spot where he had been pinned just moment's before.

His lungs burned as he choked and spluttered while Santeri carried him to a safer location a few paces away and set him in the sand. Too focus on the mixture of relief and pain that accompanied being reintroduced to much needed air, he hardly paid any mind when his manservant headed back toward the wreckage to search for survivors. By his own reckoning there should be a number of them if he had survived and, if not it was a small matter. Tragic, to be sure, but misfortune was just another part of life and their families would deal with it as his own came to retrieve him, as they undoubtedly would when new of the downed flight reached home. Focused on his own concerns as he was, he failed to hear the cries that marked the existence of another survivor, cries that Santeri immediately followed toward their source. Thus far the only other source of life he'd found besides himself and, thankfully, his young master, Santeri was determined to find and rescue whoever was trapped within the wreckage. Company was, after all, a blessing where he came from and he had no doubt that it would be some time before news of their fate had reached the mainland and a search party was sent out to retrieve them.

"HELP! HELP ME! HELP!" The plea for aid was followed by frantic banging. Moving ever closer to the sound at a hurried pace, Santeri called back, looking to reassure the girl that someone was now actively looking to free her. "I hear you. Keep talking so I can find you." He briefly considered instructing her to stop banging on the metal, afraid that it would off-balance and collapse upon her, but decided against it. if hitting the twisted scraps of plane would aid in his finding which piece was hiding her away, then the banging constituted a necessary risk, he would simply have to act quickly.

Amidst her banging and screaming, Rhea heard someone yell in the distance, "I hear you. Keep talking so I can find you." Her heart began to thud with both relief and anxiety. The girl started thrashing her arms against the cold plane remnants and yelled more frantically, "I'm over here! Over here! Can you hear me? Help me! Please!"

The shrieking sound of two metal chunks scratching against each other pierced Rhea's ears but she didn't mind. Tears streamed through her eyes and light invaded her vision. She couldn't register the face of her savior as darkness invaded her mind once again and she slipped into unconsciousness.

[oops, I used the wrong plane]

This time, when the girl cried out, he didn't respond in words. Instead, he found where the sound appeared to be coming from and began shoving at the large hunks of metal over top the spot where he believed the girl to be pinned down.

A few minutes work left him nearly breathless but triumphant as the metal slid sideways and came to a screeching halt, uncovering a young woman covered in places in what was presumably her own blood. She lay unmoving, having slipped into unconsciousness, something that the manservant didn't seem to find surprising given the amount of pain that his efforts must have caused her in his attempts to free her from the wreckage.

Bracing himself against the metal to keep it from falling as he eased her from the metal and pulled her close to his chest. he didn't want to risk any additional damage to her person at this point in time, not knowing what injuries she'd already sustained nor if she'd be well enough to survive long enough for them to be rescued. He'd have examined her injuries after he'd brought her to lay beside his master in the sand, but he had other survivors to search for. Not knowing that they were the only ones who had managed to live through the terrible crash, Santeri made his way back the the twisted remains of flight 267, leaving the girl to slumber under the largely uninterested gaze of his young master.

The sun was rising against the horizon when Rhea woke up, 'Or setting,' she thought to herself. The bright celestial giant illuminated the endless sea before her, displaying a wide array of colors. Purple, orange, red and yellow hues reflected themselves against the body of water, shining brightly in every direction. Squinting her eyes, Rhea continued to look at the breathtaking scene before her, absorbing every shade of the color spectrum, every stray cloud that floated in the endless sky and every multiplying ripple that played in the sea. She tried to pick herself up and run into the shore and feel the wet sand between her tows but a forgotten ache began pulsing itself from the nape of her neck into her whole body. Restraining herself, she lay on the ground, motionless.

Rhea recalled her being trapped under the plane and the endless darkness that had abducted her. The girl remembered reading stories of how men such as Napoleon and Cesar each had willingly spent nights alone in the great pyramid of Giza, inside the burial alcoves. Her readings told her how the empty darkness began playing tricks on the men, making their stay filled with agony and distress. However, Rhea recalled the most important part of the book, when the men emerged from the depths of blackness, they claimed to be reborn. That was how the girl felt, reawakened. Her fear of death and had suddenly diminished and her hazy mind became clear. "So this is what it's like," she whispered to herself unaware of the man sitting behind her.