I floated to the surface and blinked. That simple movement took about an hour, my eyelids weighted with iron bricks. Something gripped my left hand and held my fingers straight, though I couldn't see exactly what. There wasn't any pain, just an un-naturalness to it that I didn't really care for.

The taste of metal danced over my tongue, zipping every cell awake with an iron-fueled high. Except for those cells in my eyelids, which had fallen shut again. The parasites inside me ...