“Here we go!” I shouted.
The current hit like a freight train.
Water rushed downward and sideways simultaneously, dragging us toward the channel. Ethan’s eyes went wide—one sharp, gasping breath—and the surge swallowed him. Jeff reached for his son, but the current ripped them apart, pulling them in the same direction but separately, tumbling, helpless.
Above us, through the churning surface, I caught one last glimpse of the maintenance hatch.
Gray fingers pushed through the gap.
I filled my lungs and went under.
* * *
Nothing but water.
Cold. Violent. Absolute.
The current dragged us through the dark tunnels beneath the tank—concrete walls rushing past in the blackness. My shoulder clipped something hard, and pain exploded down my arm. I tumbled, spun, and lost all sense of direction. My lungs screamed for air. My ears roared with the force of thousands of gallons funneling through passages never designed for human bodies.
Something brushed my leg—large, smooth, moving with purpose.
Frank.
The old turtle swept past me in the dark, riding the current like he’d done this a thousand times, his massive shelldisplacing water in a way that actually pulled me forward, into his wake, through the worst of the turbulence.
Then—
Light.
We burst upward into the open air.
I broke the surface with a ragged, tearing gasp. Coughed saltwater. Blinked against the sudden brightness.
The quarantine holding tank.
We’d made it.
Jeff surfaced beside me, sputtering, blood running from a cut above his eye where he’d hit something in the tunnel. Ethan popped up a few feet away, already coughing, already turning toward the ladder bolted to the concrete wall.
Alive. All three of us. Alive.
“Swim!” I shouted, my voice destroyed. “We have to clear the channel so he can open the tank!”
We fought the remaining current and pushed toward the ladder. My arms had gone to dead weight, but adrenaline overrode everything—every ache, every torn muscle, every thought that wasn’tmove, move, move.
Behind us, back through the tunnel we’d just been dragged through, something echoed.
Splashing.
Not the current. Not Frank.
Something else had come through after us.
Jeff heard it too. His head snapped toward the tunnel opening.
“They’re in the water,” he said. Flat. Factual. Terrified.
“GO!” I screamed.