It had all started as a friendly vacation to Europe.

A simple need to get away from everyone and everything, if only for a little while.

No cameras.

No presentations.

No rampant teenage mobs or meddlesome press.

No shuttling from place to place with scarcely time to catch a breath.

No sticking out.

Just the five of them, on a date with two glorious months.

No one had any way of knowing or harbored the least expectation for what would come about that night.

Whether it had been a temporary blackout or genuine death would forever remain a futile mystery.

How anyone else made it through alive was surely nothing short of a miracle.

All they could recall afterward was the falling.

The screaming.

The dark.

The bone-penetrating cold.

The voracious sea that swarmed from every direction.

The swim that cost virtually every iota of strength.

The endless struggle between the desire to die and the will to live.