He woke suddenly, bed sheets clinging to his body as darkness filled his vision. For a moment, his eyes darted around the room, before movement to his left reminded him where he was and he finally relaxed.

Alton Owen's gaze drifted to his side, resting on the silhouette of his partner. Sometimes, Mabel's situation had him burning with envy. Her dreams weren't plagued with dense jungles, sporadic gunfire, and glowing eyes, but in the end, Alton couldn't blame her for anything. He'd been the one urging her to evacuate early, while he'd stuck with his steady job until it had been far too late.

Even in the darkness and covered by thick sheets, Alton found his eyes drawn to his wife's figure. A set of familiar urges rose, but he quickly suppressed them. With her holding her own job, Mabel needed sleep as much as he did. Alton sighed, sitting up and reaching for his phone. Just how much sleep was he missing out on? The screen's glow filled the room as it woke, forcing Alton to blink before he could read the time.

5:27

Well, he guessed he wasn't missing out on that much. While three more minutes of sleep probably wouldn't have made a difference in how well rested, the bitter feeling of being cheated took hold in his gut.

Speaking of which, it would probably be best to disable his alarm before it disturbed his wife's slumber. Mable would hate it if he snuck out, but a few extra minutes of sleep as he showered would be welcome, he was sure.

A groan emerged from the covers behind him, and Alton let his shoulders slump. Not the best start to the day.

"You awake?" He whispered, turning his phone screen off.

"Yeah." She grunted. "What time is it?"

"Five-twenty eight." He replied, standing. "Sorry."

"Mmmh." Mable replied, grabbing the bed's comforter and rolling. As his wife turned, Alton allowed the bedsheets to be pulled away from him, exposing himself to the frigid morning air. That woke him up. How did people live this far north?

With a sigh, Alton stood, leaving Mable to work on salvaging a few more minutes of sleep. He knew she didn't really blame her for waking her up early, but a feeling of guilt followed him into the bathroom. He'd have to prepare more than eggs and rice for their breakfast.

Come to think of it, there was plenty of frozen fruit in the freezer. It was especially pricey these days, but if they never used it, it was money wasted. Without giving much thought, he started the shower, waiting for the water to warm while he took mental inventory of their freezer.

He wasn't much of a cook, but he certainly could ensure his wife woke to something special.

The car in front of him halted, forcing Alton to tap his breaks again, his sedan sliding to yet another stop. Knowing he was going to be here for a while, Alton shifted his vehicle back into neutral, allowing himself to release the clutch and rest for a moment. He sighed, taking a moment to study the house to his left.

Another morning, another hour of stop-and-go traffic.

"Ever since man has known the sea, it's immense power has inspired fear and wonder. Rumors of dark gods, lost cities, and horrifying monsters abound, from hushed whispers to grand tales of adventure and horror."

He missed his old Explorer.

It hadn't been much, all things considered, but at least it had intact upholstery. The old sedan he'd managed to find barely had seats at all, something he wouldn't normally complain about, if he wasn't stuck in it for two hours each every day.

For six days a week.

For the last four months.

"Even now, things lurk under the surface of the water. The events of the past two years probably spring to your mind, of course, and they are indeed why we're revisiting this topic. Long-term listeners might recognize some of the mysteries we'll be investigating, but with everything that's happened in the last two years, I think they can pardon us for revisiting some topics."

At least he had something to do, beyond staring at the stationary bumper of the car in front of him. His 'new' car burned oil almost as quickly as gas, had a clutch which must have suffered serious abuse from its previous owner, and judging by the heat gage, had just started leaking coolant, but at least it had a working radio. Add a bluetooth FM transmitter, and Alton could relax on a podcast when he wasn't focused on surviving the horde of motor vehicles which choked Washington's roads.

"The majority of this episode will be investigating some of our previous conclusions, including legends of sunken cities, suspicious disappearances, and prewar reports of ghost ships."

He'd listened to several different podcasts to help make these commutes more bearable, ranging in topics from history, science, politics, and sports. This one, however, was certainly the oddest. A few years back, he probably wouldn't have considered it, but with everything that had happened in the world he couldn't dismiss the stories the two hosts would investigate. Most of it was bunk, of course, but the wild stories and intriguing mysteries they covered provided a good distraction from the soul-grinding traffic that had become a major feature of his life.

"We actually had to re-record this episode the day before release. You might notice this episode is a little longer than normal, and that's because of a strange video that someone sent us. We'll be diving into that, and if we don't find it interesting, then we'll go with the last take, so if you're hearing this make sure to stick around."

That would explain the extra thirty minutes. Normally, the hour-long show was just about the right size for his Saturday commute, but unless the state was widening Highway 203 a month early, he'd be parking just as they got around to investigating something new. A bit of a disappointment, but he'd have time to listen on the way back.

However, that would mean missing out on his sports podcast. After missing the game yesterday, he was kind of hoping for a good summary on the Seahawks' performance. He wasn't all that interested in the local team, but if they were failing he needed to know, else he'd miss out on an opportunity to rag on the locals.

Well, he'd find time.

Thankfully, the traffic started to clear once he got closer to his jobsite. It only took a few moments of stop-and-go to cover the ground between intersections, and he even found himself shifting into third occasionally. Not an enjoyable commute, but it was the kind of traffic he was familiar with.

"Right, this is where we'd planned on ending this, but one of our viewers sent Aaron this video and it's so weird we had to talk about it."

Thankfully, the lane across from him was empty, meaning he could make his last turn without slowing the traffic behind him. If they didn't add this extra section, the podcast would have been the perfect length. The familiar vehicles of his co-workers swung into view as he pulled into the site's parking lot, little more than a patch of particularly sandy mud.

"It's quite the video, too. On September 13th, the youtube channel KalalochWitness was created, and uploaded one video: ' 4.'"

The Sedan's tires crackled against the lot's sandy mud, Alton's gaze flitting over his co-workers vehicles. There was the Foreman's chrome titan, a few mid-range vehicles belonging to natives, and several of the clunkers owned by other refugees with families, but compared to prewar sites the lot was exceptionally bare. Most refugees were single, or practically so, and lived in the portable barracks set up across the office.

"In the description, the uploader described themselves as an employee of Olympic National Park, and that this was filmed off the coast of Washington."

What?

There was a battle offshore? That or a rumor of one, but that was how things started at home, too. Back then he'd asked his wife to leave just to be safe, but otherwise ignored things until it was far too late. This time?

He was about to collide with the fence in front of him. Alton tensed, slamming on the breaks as the car jolted to a stop.

"This video is… strange. We don't look much at combat footage, but we had to do some research to check if it was legitimate, and from what we can tell it seems legitimate."

He needed to calm down. He wasn't on a small island anymore, but a vast, heavily-defended continent. The Abyssals had much shorter supply lines in the east coast, and even then they needed to engineer a tsunami to make any headway in an attack. Beyond that, if the news hadn't lied about it, La Palma had been as much of a disaster for them as it was for the US. He'd have to move further inland to be truly safe, but for now?

"There's this large fog bank, maybe a smoke screen, that hides one side of combat, but there's a lot of different weapons fire. Only one ship is visible, and it flickers like we've seen with shipgirls."

"But what is she? It's hard to imagine an abyssal ship that large getting this close to shore, but assuming this is real, there are plenty of different-"

The radio died with the car's engine, Alton reaching for his phone to pause the podcast. He knew he'd spend another fifteen minutes listening if he allowed himself to, and if he wasn't parked outside his work he certainly would.

He had a job to do, though, and a distraction like that wasn't necessary. He'd get caught up during the less congested drive home, and ponder the rumor later.

It was probably nothing, anyways.

On the other side of the fence, the noise of passing vehicles sounding twice as distant as she guessed they were. The ground was shielded by the ever-present ceiling of clouds, the sun's harsh rays diffused into a diffuse glow that cast everything in an even light. Several humans paced the site, observing various pieces of equipment or half-built structures with a practiced eye.

The rest of the humans quietly chatted among each other, grouped up in formations of two to five people. Occasionally, they stole a glance at the pair walking through the site, although Trinitite wasn't sure if the stares were because of her novelty or the identity of her guide.

"Here's building three."

Forman Pratt explained, waving his hand over a large pit several yards away from them.

"We've started digging the foundation here, and once we've got the retainer wall in we'll get this crew working on building four over… there."

Trinitite hadn't fully comprehended the scale of the project until his supervisor took her inside site perimeter. The pair were standing over a pit, twice as wide as her hull and about a fourth as long. At the far end of the depression, some kind of engineering vehicle sat, facing an uneven wall of dirt and mud. The rough wall contrasted sharply with the three others, the pit's even sides maintained by reinforcing struts.

"In a few months, there's gonna be four buildings on this lot."

Dan turned, waving towards the larger of the two structures. The squat building was about twice as wide as her hull, while falling short of her length. Even unfinished, Trinitite could make out the stout skeleton of a structure she was familiar with. She'd only seen them from a distance, but they'd decorated every abandoned city she'd seen across the pacific.

"Fifteen stories each, twenty apartments a floor. That means once this is done, 1200 families from out there…" Dan pointed over his shoulder, directing his thumb towards somewhere beyond the site's perimeter. "...Get a new home."

One thousand, two hundred? Trinitite wasn't sure how many humans made up a family, but judging by her mother's reminiscing of her last daughters, those who'd been doomed by The Fire… Fifteen, Thirty people?

Hold on, that meant they were planning on moving about Thirty six thousand Thousand humans into this place! By the deep, with about nine-thousand humans per building, the population of just one of these buildings far outnumbered the combined strength of every fleet in the pacific. Trinitite couldn't hope to make an estimate of how much the abyssal fleets had in crew, but while the number was much higher, she kept remembering the astounding size of cities like Singapore, Port Moresby and Seattle, and how many blocky structures, abandoned or otherwise, had been scattered everywhere.

Her boilers tightened, and she gripped her new helmet as her boots temporarily slipped in the mud. Trinitite could calculate the trajectory of a shell in a storm, perform precise estimates of an aircraft's range based on their payload, fuel, and local weather, and could precisely arrange the aircraft, fuel, and cargo to ensure she was as balanced and seaworthy as possible, even with her pumps fighting flooding in several compartments, but she couldn't begin to wrap her head around how many humans there must be. Even if every ship in the abyss had a crew larger than her own, they were outnumbered, massively.

No wonder humans hadn't resorted to The Fire yet.

"You coming?"

Dan had started moving again, pausing a few feet away to ensure his Abyssal subordinate was following.

"Oh." Trinitite shook her head, jogging to catch up with the Foreman. "Sorry."

"Don't space out like that." The human chided. He kept his voice low and even, but Trinitite still got the feeling he was dead serious. "There's a hundred ways to die in here."

"Aye Aye." She replied, nodding. Even when chastising her, the big human's voice didn't have the edge she was used to from Abyssal princesses. It reminded her more of the way other abyssals would lecture their fleet-mates, rather than the tone she'd expected from Princesses. Odly, the rebuke seemed to hit harder that way. Hopefully he didn't notice Trinitite's cheeks darken through her makeup.

"I've got a man who needs another guy on his team, so you'll be filling their place for the first two hours." Dan spoke up, breaking into an even stroll after Trinitite had caught up. "They'll be bending rebar in building two for the majority of the day, getting the skeleton for the second floor's pillars today. It doesn't start as hard work, but I guarantee an arm workout."

"I can do that." Trinitite nodded. Rebar… the term was a little familiar, but she couldn't exactly recall what that stuff was. Had she heard it from an installation?

"We'll see. Three hours later, I'll turn you over to the electricians. It's more complex work, but I assume you'll be better built for it. Not as dangerous as it sounds, but a lot more technical. Just do everything Lee asks you to and you'll do fine. Those two supervisors will let me know how you did, and I'll find you after lunch. Either you stay on, or I give you sixty-five and wish you luck elsewhere. Sounds good?"

Trintite couldn't give him a salute while they were both walking, but she could nod.

"Aye-"

"Hey, boss!"

Dan abruptly stopped, his attention turning to another human. The dark-skinned human was jogging towards the pair, coming to a stop and pointing over his shoulder.

"Someone's been cutting corners at building three." He stated in a thick accent Trinitite couldn't hope to place. "Some of the shoring installed yesterday wasn't secured properly."

With a dramatic sigh, Dan looked down, tracing the edge of his helmet with his fingers.

"Okay, Elizabeth, I need you to go to building two, floor two. Ask for Austin Gomez, he'll be your immediate supervisor, got it?"

Trinitite nodded, repeating her commander's words. "Second floor, building two. Work for Austin Gomez."

"Good." Dan nodded. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to tear someone a new asshole."

The Foreman and the other human turned, walking back towards the reinforced pit. For a moment, Trinitite watched the backs of the two, pondering the human's last words. She wasn't entirely sure what he'd meant, but certainly didn't sound pleasant.

She banked to starboard, healing around to face the shorter of the two incomplete buildings. The promise of violence was unexpected, but to Trinitite the familiarity was oddly comforting. Some things never changed, did they?

Now she just had to figure out who this Gomez person was.

First, an apology. I'm still getting used to , so I'll admit I'm not very good at replying to reviews. I'd like to thank you very much for the ones I've gotten so far, and I'll try my best to reply more to you guy's feedback.

This chapter fought me a bit, but I think it turned out better than I expected. I got to introduce the arc's antagonist, and get started actually writing work stuff. After doing so much research and still not knowing much about how work on a construction site is done, I think I've managed a pretty authentic feel so far. If anything's blatantly wrong, current or former construction workers who're reading this, please let me know. I'm more than willing to retcon mistakes if it means I have a stronger story once I'm done.