Chapter 5: Out of Nowhere
Chapter 5: Out of Nowhere
~~[576 Words]~~
Caroline was almost at the edge of the hull when she turned back. She froze.
Calvin wasn't there.
"Calvin!" Her voice cracked like a whip in the air.
Saedan's eyes went wide.
Another shark? Bigger this time? Circling?
But no. All the worst things they'd imagined, none of them happened.
Something heavy crashed onto the hull.
It was Calvin, completely soaked, clothes plastered to him. Someone had carried him and slipped off the hull again before anyone could react or say a word.
Saedan stared, breath caught. He whispered, "Redd".
"What just—" Saedan looked out of it, but not lost. He watched someone disappear beneath the swell. "How did he—" He choked on the words and stopped.
Everyone spun around. Calvin spoke behind them.
"Calvin!" They all shouted at once. Everyone except Saedan.
He was drenched and just as shocked as the rest of them.
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"How?" Lisa asked, stumbling on nothing, puzzled and shaken. She couldn't understand how Calvin ended up on the hull. "He was just… and now he's here—"
"Calvin, how did you get up there?" Caroline yelled, still bobbing in the water. Nothing else around her mattered except Calvin.
"We thought you got eaten," Lisa said, clambering up onto the barnacle-crusted hull, breathless.
"Get up here, Uncle. Now. Move," Saedan snapped, voice hot with urgency. He stepped into the water. That set his uncle and everyone else off—instant panic.
The old man scraped his way up onto the hull, clumsy and wild-eyed.
His back was turned. He didn't see it.
"Saedan!" The old man yelled, bracing himself on the hull, feet planted on the metal. That was when Saedan went under.
"What the hell is he doing?" Lisa whispered, stunned. "He knows it's insane down there."
Silence.
"Saedan!" Lisa's shout was half fear, half anger.
The sea just rolled, the kind of heavy, suffocating silence that eats up a minute and dares you to speak.
Then it broke wide open.
From the hull, the others caught sight of Saedan bursting up from the depths, gripping the nose of an enormous shark as it ripped through the water. You couldn't miss the size up close. None of them had ever seen a Megondagua this big.
Sixty feet at least.
Lisa lost all colour in her face.
"Saedan," she breathed, barely a sound. She watched what her mind refused to believe.
Two long minutes ticked by.
Saedan surfaced again, gasping, half-dragging himself up the hull before a coughing fit splintered him in two.
"Saedan! Are you alright?" Lisa was right there, worry written in every line of her face.
"I'm fine." He caught her hands, cold and anxious—in his. His eyes fixed somewhere on the metal below.
"Why would you do that?" Her voice broke, turning sharp. "Are you crazy?" She thumped him hard on the back of the head, a real, angry smack. She was furious. Underneath, her words brimmed with something raw. "Did you not think we'd lose our minds worrying?"
She bit her lip. Her eyes — she fought to keep them dry and failed.
"Wait. Are you… crying?"
"What? No," she mumbled, scrubbing at her cheeks, trying to hide it. She wasn't that fast.
And while they were still tangled up with each other—
A man emerged from the water and slipped onto the baked hull, silent and strange.
He stretched and took his time. Didn't tell them who he was. Didn't bother explaining anything.
He just asked a question.