The Thorne islands were a blast, but they were also a total blur. He vacillated from a state of being wrecked on booze, to hopped up on some party drug to crashed the next day and taking hair of the dog. The place was a kaleidoscope of neon shades and a cacophony of electronica.
A weeklong party, all the neon, techno, drugs, alcohol and beautiful people that could be scoured out of the party capitals of the world, Ibiza, London, Los Angeles, Miami, Milan, Hong Kong, Rio, and so forth, all the amenities and then some. Awesome hotels at a rate that made the long flights out totally worth it, in a place where the jetlag didn't matter a damn bit because the party was 24/7. Step out of the neon towers of the hotels and the club life and the casinos and onto the beach or into the wild. Do whatever you want, no police, no worries about offending the locals. Whatever you want, if you could pay, taken care of. It was all very modern, at least in Nagara Town, the primary settlement, which was a small, but glittering city with an international grade airport that could handle connection flights from airports in the various nations that Hobbes-Horizons, the owners, did business with. If there was a local government, it was kept out of the way.
And that, of course, is what brought everyone running. That and Hobbes-Horizon was selling the packages cheap -- they wanted the Thorne Islands to be established as the party central of Asia, an island situated near Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Burma, and a variety of other places, but also near enough to Saudi Arabia and India/Pakistan and Central Asian and Africa.
Brian Price was halfway through his vacation and on one of the many junket trips out into the Thorne Islands, which seemed to be pristine, unsurpassed tropical paradise, if one cared to look out the window of the bus, which had appointments like a large limousine -- couches and a fully stocked bar and food amenities for the travellers, as well as wi-fi for the inevitable selfies and 'lol hungover!' tweets. Everyone was young, enjoying their vacations of hedonistic excess, and soldiering through the aftereffects of late nights with relatively good grace. They didn't have time to look over the green-grass hills and the trees and natural undergrowth, or to appreciate the local wildlife as it flew from tree to tree in a riotously multi-hued burst of feathers.
This particular junket was on its way to some of the best surfing and diving on the island, and had the equipment for it ready to go; the bus was piled high on top with surfboards and scuba gear and beach stuff, as well as the necessary drugs, alcohol and food to keep a debauched bunch of thrill seekers going much of the day, until it was time to return to Nagara and dance away the night in the neon-and-ecstasy haze of the clubs, grinding away to the thrumming bass of the dubstep, the reggaeton or whatever other 'shake yo' booty' stuff they were playing.
On other parts of the islands, others were on similarly luxurious excursions to hang glide or sky dive or even go on extreme safari hunts of the local wildlife, anything from Sumatran tigers to leopards to boar and all the other things in between. But except for these limited interactions with the islands and locals working for the entertainment companies, they didn't venture out or look over the Thornes; they were a place to the tourists.
Once at a pristine white sand beach with turquoise tropical waters, the vacationers laid out in the sun on the warm sand to sweat out the liquor, or to smoke up something, and others got their scuba and snorkeling gear together. The surfers grabbed their boards. Brian, one of the scuba goers, didn't bother with the wetsuit, but instead wore his shorts into the water. He got a few appreciative looks, for the hardened lacrosse-player fitness as much for the black-ink tattoo on his left shoulder, from the trap, over the shoulder and down to the bicep that was a bit of a departure from the usual array of stuff, not to mention the one along his abdomen. When stripping down, a girl asked him, in a husky voice, if that was 'tribal' and he seemed to crinkle his eyes in amusement when he said, "Yeah, something like that." Otherwise, except for a mop of dark hair atop the head and slightly olive skin, he seemed normal, though his nose had taken a beating in some sort of athletic pursuit.
He was a strong swimmer, though it wasn't the sport he competed in, and he'd done scuba before -- the others were in a group with the dive instructor, but he'd simply told the dude that he'd done it before and the dude shrugged -- there was no liability for injury on the island -- and Brian was able to go and do his thing. It was about fifteen minutes after he dove and explored the waters, the schools of bright tropical fish and the other life down there -- the kelp and the coral, not to mention the crabs and, though he avoided them, the large jellyfish that floated about here and there.
He came up for air and the scene was different from the one that he'd left behind when he dove. The bus was burning, and there was gunfire and shouting. Suddenly, he realized that the gunfire and the shouting was aimed at him, which is when he dove, deep, kicking his fins hard, and began to swim for all he was worth, the leisurely vacation forgotten as the bullets ripped into the water silently all around him -- all he could hear was the thundering of his heartbeat and his breathing as he swam blindly for safety beyond where the gunmen were.
It seemed like hours when he finally popped up his head above water and saw unfamiliar shoreline, and he swam ever so slowly and cautiously onto the shore. The rebreather had plenty of gas left in it -- that was the advantage of one, but he didn't have anything else on him but that, his shorts and his fins.
"Great, what the fuck do I do now?" he asked himself aloud, in a very American accent.
