Below us, Frank continued his slow, endless circuit of the tank, completely unaware that the world outside the glass had collapsed, or perhaps creatures that old understood something the rest of us spent our whole lives trying to.
The water shifted around him, light rippling across the old scars on his shell as he turned again—patient, enduring, unbothered by the darkness.
Still swimming.
Still breathing.
After a century of storms, still here.
Twenty Seven
Callan
The morning had settled into something almost normal.
Almost.
Sloane and Ethan sat at the desk in the office, laughing about some stupid TV show they both apparently loved. I didn’t recognize half the references flying back and forth, but they were into it.
“…I’m telling you, the dragon episode is the best one,” Ethan insisted.
“That episode is ridiculous,” Sloane shot back. “The dragon makes no sense.”
“It’s a fantasy show! It’s not supposed to make sense.”
“That doesn’t mean it gets to ignore basic logic, Ethan.”
Jeff sat a few feet away at the coffee table, maps spread out in front of him, pencil tucked behind his ear, eyes tracing the coastline with the quiet focus of a man who’d spent hislife reading water and wind.
“Wind patterns along this stretch can get nasty this time of year,” he muttered, more to himself, “especially running north.”
I stood near the doorway, pulling my jacket on.
“I’m going up to the roof,” I told them. “See if the radio picks up anything today.”
“Copy that,” Jeff said without looking up.
Sloane waved a hand in my direction, already deep in another argument about fictional dragons and lands.
I stepped into the corridor and started down the walkway toward the spiral ramp.
The aquarium stretched quiet around me; halfway down the spiral ramp, something stopped me: a sound.
Faint.
Metal scraping against metal, the sound of a door.
My stomach clenched; that sound didn’t belong here.
I leaned over the railing, peering down toward the main floor below—at first, nothing, but then something moved.
A shape staggering out from the direction of the parking garage entrance, followed by another, and another.
My blood ran cold; five of them from what I could see, more behind, pushing through the open doorway in that slow, awkward way they moved, like bodies remembering how to walk.
“Fuck,” I breathed.
The chain, the goddamn chain on the garage door, hadn’t held.