Despite your joint efforts, your supply pile continues to lack one vital component.
"I can't believe we're short on titanium," Skye frets. "I was sure we'd find more in the mushroom forest."
"Do we have space for more materials?"
"A lot of it will be refined into ingots," she explains.
"What about around the crash site?" you ask, trying to be helpful.
"I've already been there," she says, waving off your suggestion, "numerous times before you showed up, and for that very purpose. The debris field is picked clean, not to mention hazardous. Any salvage that may be left in there isn't worth the trip."
"You could deconstruct the base."
Skye coughs and rubs her eyes. "I'm already planning on stripping out a few of the mechanical components to take with us. We'd have to dismantle half the base to get that much titanium, and I'd rather keep it intact in case we need a fallback location."
"So what's left? Besides splitting up and pinging random pieces of salvage with the scanner room, I'm out of ideas. Is there anywhere you haven't gone?"
"I haven't explored the dunes extensively. Not hard to guess why, but if that's the only option we're left with, it may be about time."
The scanner room confirms there's a good density of titanium salvage inside the neighboring biome. All you have to do is go get it.
After a short diversion to let a solar eclipse pass, you cross over into hostile territory.
"You still got the salvage locations on your HUD?" she asks.
"Yeah."
"Good. I'm going to turn mine off. That way, I can keep watch while you gather."
"How about I keep watch, and you gather?"
"What's the matter, Stalker Bait? You don't have to be scared – we won't run into any Stalkers here. Just Reaper Leviathans. And Sharks. Lots of Sharks."
You sigh. "I hate the ocean."
"You know your comms channel is still open," she says. "How's your practice with that stasis rifle going by the way?"
"I caught a Bladderfish the other day."
"Cool. How do you feel about catching a Reaper?"
"Alright, point taken. I'll get the salvage."
"I knew you'd see things my way eventually."
"Whatever. Just be sure to watch my back when I'm out there."
The dunes are an expansive landscape of rolling sand hills interspersed by the occasional rocky outcrop, patch of brown sea grass, or spaceship wreckage. Warmed by the sun above and a few thermal vents below, the water is a pleasant temperature – downright enjoyable. The sun is bright, you haven't come across any Sand Sharks as of yet, and you've only heard one roar from a distant Reaper.
It is a great comfort to know Skye has your back. She spends most of the time standing atop her Seamoth like a lone sentry. Head on a swivel, nonlethal rifle in her hands, and potentially lethal knife on her belt, she watches with a singular attention you did not know she possessed. She hasn't looked at her PDA in the last five whole minutes.
You guide your tiny posse to salvage deposits according to the HUD's icons. When your inventory is full, you transfer its contents to Skye and then continue to the next unplundered section.
"This isn't so terrible," you say to lighten the mood. "We're still alive, so that's gotta count for something."
"Don't jinx us just yet." She exits her Seamoth to keep a lookout. "Frankly, I would have expected to see more Sand Sharks. This is prime sandy territory after all."
"'More?' You saw some?" you ask.
"A couple. A while ago."
You reposition your Seamoth for easier access to another cluster. Skye stays where she is.
"Oh, this could be bad," she says slowly.
"What? What could be bad?"
"Finish gathering that scrap metal," she says, attention fixed on some point in the distance.
She doesn't sound panicked, so you collect the rest of the nearby salvage and return to your Seamoth. Skye remains outside.
"All systems online."
"Let's start heading the other way," she suggests, climbing into her Seamoth.
The roar of a Reaper Leviathan echoes in the distance.
"It's still a long ways away," she says, anticipating your thoughts. "Let's just keep a leisurely pace and not draw attention to ourselves."
You putter along the bottom, hyperalert despite Skye's assurances. She falls back every few seconds to check behind you.
"Okay," she says after another check, "there's one behind us. Get to the rock formations, I'll be right beside you."
You push on the accelerator, heading for the rocky structures the two of you passed nearly an hour ago. The Reaper releases a deafening roar. Small outcroppings poke out of the sand, and you white knuckle the controls as the Seamoth reaches its top speed.
You spot a small cluster of thermal vents.
"There," Skye declares. "We can lose it in the vents."
You duck in between the steaming spires, seeing the Reaper Leviathan for the first time when you turn around. The gigantic serpent veers off, circling the vents while eyeing its prey within.
"I think we're safe for now," Skye says.
With another roar, the Reaper charges. It demolishes the thermal vents with its bulk, raining down rocky debris on your Seamoths.
"Keep going," she shouts, speeding away from the thrashing leviathan.
You free yourself from the remainders of the vents and take off. A giant stone archway crests over a dune.
"We need to put something solid between ourselves and that Reaper."
"I hate the ocean, I hate the ocean," you chant.
Followed by the distant roars of the Reaper, you make it to the base of the arch and huddle together by one of its massive feet. You're both breathing heavily, and Skye tentatively hovers out of the shaded hiding spot to glance back the way you came.
"You alright?" she asks.
"I hate the ocean."
"How's your Seamoth?"
You check its condition. "Seventy-one percent," you relay. "And sixty percent battery."
"Alright, I'll get out and fix it when we know it's safe."
A great crash, then you are being battered against the Seamoth's interior. A second Reaper Leviathan, appearing out of nowhere, bats your Seamoth around. A cloud of dust billows where it struck the base of the arch.
"Shit, hold on Mark!"
The Reaper doesn't have a good grasp on your Seamoth, but that doesn't help the panic flooding your system. Down is up and back and forth. You catch glimpses of its rows of teeth as your tiny submersible spins.
Suddenly, the tossing and tumbling stops. The giant predator veers off from where Skye bashed it with her Seamoth, but it is far from finished. Nauseous and bleeding from your temple, you grab your control sticks and dive back to the bottom. Fine cracks spread across the glass in front of you, and your perimeter defense indicator flashes from recent use.
"Emergency: hull breach detected!"
"Fuuuuuuuck."
Skye's Seamoth is in the Reaper Leviathan's mouth. The moment it lets go, Skye is outside, in the water with the beast. A blast from the repulsion cannon is like a punch in the face to the roaring monster. As it circles, the original Reaper Leviathan appears over the hill, drawn by the commotion.
"There's two?" you wail.
"Mark, get out of here," she shouts over the PDA.
"Where?"
"Watch out!"
The Reaper Leviathan darts down towards your hiding space. You frantically slam on the controls, but everything goes black.
Water rushes around you, and you open your eyes a short ways from the arch. One Reaper chews on the fragmented remains of your Seamoth while the second gives chase to steal a bite.
"Mark! Mark, swim to the surface!"
You paddle up, but the squabbling leviathans intercept your course. They miss and you are left spinning in the open water. You still have a good amount of oxygen left, according to your HUD, but that won't be much use to you if you're dead.
"Mark, swim to my Seamoth, you're not that far!"
The world is still spinning, and when you can finally see straight, you see the growing mouth of a Reaper Leviathan. Suddenly the creature stalls, pulled to a stop by the stasis cavitation ensnaring its middle. It angrily shrieks and twists around to try to attack Skye, but she stays out of its reach.
"Go, now!"
You locate her Seamoth and make a mad dash. The second Reaper closes in, but it is similarly entrapped by the stasis rifle. However, halting the second one releases the first, and Skye backpedals while trying to keep both monstrosities at bay.
"All systems online."
Tendrils of smoke rise from the control console, and the interior light shoots off flickers of sparking electricity.
"Get to the base," she shouts, both Reapers temporarily trapped in the same stasis bubble – one by the middle, one by the tail. Their furious attention is on her.
"What about you?" you ask, engaging her stabilization controls and feeling for damage in the thrusters.
"I'll hold them off. Get out of here."
"I'm not leaving you," you argue.
"What if a third one shows up?" she says, reinitiating the stasis chamber. "I have to go up to the surface to get air in a few seconds. If you're still here, they'll go for you. Head for the base. If you can't make it there safely, go to the island. You remember the way."
"Skye-" you attempt.
One of the leviathans breaks free, roaring as it charges.
"Go!"
And for a moment, you see under her reinforced dive suit. You see the swaths of jagged scars covering her skin, the very scars that came from the mouth of a Reaper Leviathan. And you see the young woman, once again standing before the very creatures that caused her pain, willingly putting herself there, for you.
She's afraid. When she turns to raise her stasis rifle, you know she's afraid. Her hands are steady and her tone of voice is sure. But she told you. You know she's afraid because she told you so. In front of two alien sea monsters, each the size of a train, Skye is in control of her fear.
You turn and flee, listening to the angry sounds of the Reaper Leviathans as Skye continues to engage the threat.
It isn't far to the edge of the Sea Treader's path, but you don't consider yourself safe yet. Not even the sight of the base is enough to encourage you to turn around and check. Controls flickering, you race for the moonpool.
"C'mon, c'mon," you chant, mashing the docking button as the arms slowly reach down.
"Mark has boarded the habitat."
You throw yourself out of the Seamoth, hyperventilating, and rip off your gear.
You left her there, you think to yourself as you pace. There were two Reaper Leviathans. No Seamoth. You left her there.
When pacing doesn't help, you take your repair tool to Skye's battered Seamoth. You could go back – switch out the power cells and go back to look for her. But if she managed to escape, you'd only be going back to where the Reapers are.
Vibrating with nervous energy, you walk the base. Once again, Subnautica threw a situation at you, and you were too useless to handle it. Skye was counting on you, and the only thing you could manage was to run away.
You pace and panic and throw curses. You left her there to die. She's dead because of you.
One minute turns into three. Then ten. Your PDA tells you to eat, but you ignore its warnings.
Fourteen minutes later, the robotic voice chimes, "Skye has boarded the habitat."
You run.
You find her in the empty moonpool, seated against the wall. A trail of red shows where she dragged herself up the side.
"Holy fuck you're alive."
"Sorry to disappoint you," she says weakly.
"Oh shit, this is bad," you say, coming to kneel beside her.
Her left thigh is covered in deep gashes.
"Need you to patch me up again," she says with a small smile.
"Skye I, I don't know if I can." You can see her bone.
"Sure you can," she says. "You just do your best. You think I knew what I was doing when I patched you up?"
You gather a bunch of medkits and start to cut away her shredded suit.
"Geez, now I gotta make another one," she complains.
"Don't talk," you say.
"Your forehead's bleeding."
"It's nothing."
She clamps down on your shoulder when you clean out the gashes. She must be in unbelievable pain. You pull a tooth out of her muscle and hand it to her.
"How did you escape?" you ask, winding another roll of bandages around her thigh.
"Escape? There's no escaping two enraged Reapers. I had to put 'em down."
She might be delirious.
"You killed both of them?" you ask.
"Yep," she replies. "Damn that hurts."
"Do you think you can walk?"
"Not a chance."
As you help her to her bed, she comments, "I'm sorry about your Seamoth. I'm not sure why they went for it first – mine was the one without the automated defense system. Shit, now we have to make you another one."
"You're not going anywhere for a while. You can barely walk."
"What, this little scratch? This won't keep me down for long."
You're not so sure.
"Hey, since you call me 'Stalker Bait,' does this mean you're now 'Reaper Bait?'" you ask.
Skye chuckles, but her laugh devolves into a coughing fit. After it passes, she eyes you wearily.
"Yeah."
Skye spends the next full day in bed. The pain is intense, and you use up a lot of antibiotics keeping her fever down. Despite this, she regularly requests that you help her limp around the base so she can organize your travel inventories and craft the remaining materials.
You wedge a chair under the bulkhead wheel outside her door whenever you're not in the room with her.
"You know my door swings open the other way, right?" she says over the PDA.
You swear under your breath, standing from your plate of laser-cooked Oculus to go see what trouble she managed to get into this time.
"Also, I fell and can't get up."
The following day, Skye is more tenacious about limping around the base. She bemoans the great loss of your Seamoth every twenty minutes and bleeds through her bandages.
"We're going to have to get more," she says, flipping through a line of storage lockers.
More, referring to more of everything – enough to construct a second Seamoth, hull reinforcement, storage, perimeter defense, and the full line of depth modules.
You can hardly believe she is still thinking about reaching the Sea Emperor with an injury like that.
"We're not getting more," you argue.
"We'll have to," she says. "There's no way around it. We can't both fit in one Seamoth."
"Can't we?"
As it turns out, you can. It's a tight fit, but at least Skye stops going on and on about building you a second Seamoth.
No, her new fixation is worse.
"Great, that means we can leave right away."
You set a plate of steaming Peepers in front of her and glare.
"Absolutely not, you . . . you Limpy. You can barely walk."
You couldn't protect her from the Reapers, but at least you can protect her from herself.
"I don't need to walk. I'll be piloting a Seamoth. And a Cyclops. And a Prawn Suit. Besides, I have three good limbs. I can still swim."
"I'm going to hide the Seamoth," you threaten.
"Don't do that, that's the only Seamoth we've got. It's our ticket to the Lost River."
"Eat your alien fish. We're not going until you can get around on your own."
"You can't keep me inside forever, Mom. I will escape."