5. Rhaek #3
The cold grip in my chest came back with a vengeance. Different this time. Bigger. It moved up into my throat and I pressed it down by force of habit because feeling it would not help her. Right now helping her was the only thing that mattered.
I stood completely still on the ridge.
I watched her.
And made myself breathe.
Now came the hard part.
She hadn't heard me yet.
I stood at the ridge crest and watched her. Thirty yards below, alone in the basin, facing east. The water behind her had already crossed the low ground. It was moving up the basin's southern edge. She didn't know it was there.
I started down .
I kept my feet wide. My weight low. I angled left, coming around the side of the basin. I wanted to be in her line of sight before she noticed me. Not behind her. Never behind her.
Fifteen yards out I stopped.
I scraped my boot on the rock. Deliberate but not too loud.
She turned.
She saw me and her whole body went rigid.
Then she ran.
Not fast — the ground was uneven and her first step caught a raised edge. She stumbled, caught herself, kept moving. North. Away from me. Away from the ridge.
I walked. Long strides, not running. I kept the distance between us exactly where it was.
She looked back. Saw me still coming. Made a sharp sound and moved faster.
"Stop," I said.
She didn't.
"The ground ahead of you is wet."
That stopped her.
She looked down. The dark wet line in the pale rock was six yards ahead of her. She stared at it. Then she turned and looked at me, and her face was doing several things at once, none of them calm.
I stopped too and held up my empty palms. I didn't move closer.
"Stay away from me." Her voice was high and tight. She had her hands out. "Stay — just stay there. Don't come any closer."
"All right. I won’t."
She stared at me. Breathing hard. "W-What are y-you."
"I'll explain everything. I promise. But not here. "
"What do you mean, not here?" Her voice cracked. "Where is here? What is this place? What is—" She stopped and pressed both hands to her face for a moment. Then she dropped them. "You were in the warehouse. Back on… on…"
“Earth.” I nodded.
"You were in the warehouse. I saw your eyes." Her own eyes were wide and fixed on me. "What are you? What is happening? Where is—" She looked around the basin wildly. "Where is Greta? Is Greta here? Is she okay? I, I?—"
"I don't know who Greta is."
"She was with me." Her voice broke. "She was taken first. Before me. She has to be here somewhere, she—" She stopped again. She looked at the water to the east. Then back at me. "Why are you here? What do you want?"
"To get you to the ridge."
She stared. "What?"
I pointed. The ridge ran south-east, a clean line of elevated rock above the basin floor. "There. We need to get there."
"I'm not going anywhere with you." She took a step back. The thin sheet of water at the basin's southern edge reached her heels. She didn't seem to feel it yet, her fear of water momentarily forgotten. "I don't know what you are. I don't know where I am. I am not going anywhere with?—"
"Listen to me. The water is rising. And it’s going to keep rising."
She stopped talking.
"Behind you," I said. "Look behind you."
She turned and saw the water was at her heels. She hopped back and hadn't felt it yet through her boots, but she could see it now — a thin moving sheet spreading across the pale rock, catching the light, reaching steadily toward where she was standing .
She made a sound. Short. Involuntary. A broken weep. She stepped forward, away from it, toward me. Then she realized she had stepped toward me and stopped.
"What is that?" she said. Her voice was quieter now.
"The tide. It comes in fast here because there are three moons. It will cover this basin."
She looked at the water, at the ridge. Then at me. "And you want me to walk over there with you."
"Yes."
She looked at the basin floor. The thin sheet had spread.
It reached her ankles now. She felt it and took another step forward.
Then another. She was moving away from the water without meaning to.
"Okay. The water is rising. What does that have to do with you?
Why are you—" She stopped. She was eight yards from me.
She held her ground. "Stay there. Just — stay where you are. Tell me what you want."
She was in shock, I realized. "I need to get you to the ridge. Now. Because when this basin floods, things come in with the water." I said it quietly. "Things that live in the channels."
She stared at me. "What kind of things?"
"Fast things." I paused. "Bigger than me. And if they reach us…"
We’re doomed.
The color left her face. She was beginning to wake up.
"The ridge is twelve yards up," I said. "Dry. Above the waterline. We have time to reach it if we go now."
"And if I don't go with you?"
"Then you stay here, the water rises, and you drown."
She froze at that. Then she looked at the water. It was over her boots once more. Just. She could feel it. I could see the moment she felt it in the way her weight shifted.
"You don't have to trust me," I said. "Not yet. You don't know me. You have no reason." I kept my voice level. "But I need you to come with me to the ridge. That's all. Just the ridge. When we're there you can ask me anything you want. Every question you have. I will answer all of them."
The water moved. We both heard it. A low rushing sound, somewhere to the south. She turned and looked and the sheet across the basin floor was no longer thin. It was a centimetre deep, two, moving with direction and purpose now. The far edge of the basin was already a mirror of standing water.
We’d run out of time. If we didn’t move now, we would drown — or worse.
I extended my hand toward her. She just looked at it.
"I know this seems impossible," I said. "I know you don't know where you are.
I know you're frightened and you have no reason to do anything I say.
" I let that sit for a moment. "But there are things in this water.
And the water is coming in. The ridge is right there.
" I looked toward it. Then back at her. "I am asking you to trust me for four minutes.
Just four minutes. To get to the ridge. After that you can do whatever you want. "
The water moved. A small surge. Nothing dramatic. But it pushed, and the level rose another inch.
The air was electric. The sea was holding its breath. The Fast Moon was approaching its zenith, and soon, it would draw the tide up and over us in a surge, like a veil.
Her face changed.
Not much. Barely visible. But her arms uncrossed. Her hands dropped to her sides. She looked at the ridge. She looked at me.
"Four minutes," she said.
"Four minutes. "
She looked at my hand. She didn’t take it but she turned to walk.
The Fast Moon crossed its zenith and the water rushed forward.
"We need to run," I said. “Run!”
She gripped my hand tighter as we raced the tide.
The water was at our ankles as we ran.
The basin floor had disappeared. What was under our feet now was moving. A cold sheet, shin-deep, pushing south to north. I could feel the direction of it through my boots. The surge always had a direction. It didn't slosh. It flowed. And when a surge flowed, it accelerated.
"Don't stop," I said.
The water hit my calves. Both of us felt it at the same moment — the resistance, the drag, the way each stride now had to push through something instead of nothing. Running in water was a different equation. Every second the water rose, the equation got worse.
I looked at the ridge. Forty meters.
I looked at the water. Rising.
I looked at the fins.
There were four of them. Moving fast through the deeper water to our east, cutting wide arcs, following the surge line in. They hadn't turned toward us yet. But they would. Once the water was deep enough.
"Keep moving," I said. "Don't look at the water."
And, of course, she did.
"Don't—"
"What are those?" Her voice came out wrong. Too high. Too thin. She’d spotted the fins .
"Don't look at them. Focus on the ridge."
"What are?—"
"Look at the ridge!"
She kept running.
Thirty meters.
The water hit our knees.
She squeaked and stumbled. Her knee went into the water and she went down to both hands. I had her back up in one pull before she registered she had fallen.
"I can't—" she gasped.
"You can."
"The water is?—"
"Don't think about the water. One step. One step and then the next."
Twenty meters.
The surge was stronger now. I could feel it pushing against the outside of my left leg, trying to angle me off course.
I corrected. She was flagging beside me — I could feel it in her arm, in the way her stride had shortened, choppy and desperate, her body spending energy on fear that she needed for running.
The fins turned.
I saw it in my peripheral vision. The long dark shapes changed angle. Not toward us yet. But they had felt something — the vibration of our feet on the basin floor, the displacement of the water around us. They were orienting.
Ten meters.
The water was at mid-thigh on her. She was shorter than me and the water found her faster. Each stride she took forward the surge pushed back. Her face was white. Her mouth was open. She was still moving but the movement was becoming something else. Becoming a stop.
"I can't," she said again. "I can't, I can't?— "
"Five more steps."
"I can't?—"
"Five steps. Count them."
She counted. I heard her. Under her breath, barely audible over the water. One. Two.
The ridge base was in front of us. Pale rock rising out of the water, rough-edged, solid. Real.
Three.
I put my hands on the ridge face and found the first holds — a horizontal crack at chest height, a jutting edge below it. Good. Dry. Above the waterline.
Four.
"Up," I said. "Hands on the rock. Go."
She put her hands on the ridge face. Her fingers found the crack. She pulled. She got her right foot onto a low ledge and pushed upward and she was climbing.
Five.
She climbed.
I stayed in the water below her, watching the fins. They were still orienting. Still circling. The surge was pushing debris past us now — small dark shapes of organic matter, carried in with the flood. The fins moved through it like they owned it.
She was three meters up. Four. Pained.
She was breathing in sharp pulls, each one audible. Her hands moved too fast. Urgency making her sloppy. She grabbed at a handhold she hadn't checked and her palm came down wrong on a broken edge of rock.
The sound she made was small. Surprised.
I looked up.
Her left hand was bleeding. A clean cut across the palm, welling dark and fast. She pressed it into the rock face without thinking, leaving a wet print. She kept climbing. One more handhold, two.
The blood dripped.
It hit the water below me and spread in a thin dark thread and the fins turned like someone had pulled a wire attached to each of them simultaneously. All four at once. All pointing directly at us.
No circling now.
I grabbed the ridge.
"Hold on," I said.
I don't think she heard me. I put my foot on the lowest ledge and reached up. I grabbed her around the waist with one arm and I pulled her off the rock face. I got her over my shoulder in one movement. She made a sound that was mostly air.
Then I climbed.
My right hand found the horizontal crack. I locked my fingers into it and pulled. My left hand found a knob of rock above and I pulled again. Her weight shifted across my shoulder. She grabbed at my back, at my clothing, finding something to hold. Good. Grip was good.
I climbed.
The rock was dry above the waterline and the holds were solid. My arms burned. Not from the climbing alone — from the run, the water resistance, the weight of her added to mine. I felt the burn in my forearms first, then my shoulders, then across my back in a long slow wave of heat.
I climbed anyway.
I looked down once.
The fins were directly below us. The largest one — the one that had turned first — was moving in tight circles at the ridge base where the water was deepest. Its dorsal fin was as tall as my forearm. It moved through the water without urgency. It was waiting.
I looked up.
Three meters. Two.
My right boot slipped. I caught it. Reset. Pushed upward. She made no sound on my shoulder. I didn't know if that was control or shock and I couldn't ask yet.
One meter.
I got my right hand over the top edge of the ridge. Flat rock. Solid. I got my left hand up beside it and I pushed. I got my chest over the edge and I dragged myself forward. She came with me and then we were over.
I rolled and she came off my shoulder. I put her down on the flat rock of the ridge top.
I stayed on my hands and knees for three seconds.
My arms were shaking. Not visibly. But I could feel it from the inside — a deep tremor in the muscle, the thing that came after maximum effort when the body finally had permission to register what it had just done. I breathed. I got it under control.
I sat back on my heels and looked at her.
She was on her back on the flat rock. Her chest was heaving. Her left hand was pressed against her sternum, still bleeding. Her eyes were open and aimed at the sky, but they were not seeing it.
Below us, the water continued to rise.
The surge had found the ridge base and was pushing against it in long slow rolls. Not waves exactly. More like pressure. The rock absorbed it. The ridge held. But the sound of it was there — a deep rhythmic push and release, water against stone, again and again.
I looked over the edge. The fins were still there. Moving slowly now. Patient .
I looked back at her.
She was crying.
Not loudly. Just tears running sideways across her face from the corners of her eyes into her hair.
Her mouth was pressed shut. Her jaw was tight.
She was trying not to make noise and losing.
A sound came through anyway. Small, compressed.
Something that had been held too long under too much pressure and had finally found a crack to squeeze through.
Unable to just watch, I inched closer. I wanted to take her in my arms but I sensed she wasn’t ready for that. So I let her feel my presence as she wept.