Long time no see from whistlebird! I must apologize once more for the cliff hangers and ridiculously long pauses in between chapters… procrastination is a dreadful habit, really. =_=

We're back to a chapter's written in Caitlin's point of view, and I sure hope it's worth the wait. Thanks for the reviews! Please enjoy.

"Jackson?! How—what are you doing here?"

Laura sounded half strangled; whether it was with disbelief, relief, or joy I wasn't sure. Maybe all three emotions plus a few? Both Rich and Laura were leaning over the edge now, ridiculous smiles on their faces, which immediately put away any suspicions that this Jackson guy was any kind of threat. And apparently this was someone they knew. Were we saved? Did this mean we could get off this building? I tried to feel happy, but I think the emotion got stuck somewhere en route. It all seemed too easy, somehow. Too fast. Could we really be saved—just like that, when the chances that anyone would find us out here were so minute, I hadn't even allowed myself to hope?

And in the back of my mind, I felt I couldn't just leave. This city-ocean rooted me in place. Miles… How could I just escape, leave all that behind? My muscles went rigid, but I forced those thoughts again from my mind so I could fake a smile.

"Who's Jackson?" I asked.

Between exclamations they didn't hear me. "Buddy, aren't you supposed to be dead or captured?" Rich yelled downwards. "What happened?? And where'd you get the sub? You didn't give up and go and join them, did you?"

Them?

"What am I doing here? What do you mean, what am I doing here? What are a pair of crazies like you two doing getting yourselves stuck up there? You and trouble are like a fish and bait. How many times do I have to risk my butt for you guys? You owe me big time, by the way. Your life several times over should just about even the score with what I've gone through because of you."

I moved toward the edge again, drawn, despite myself, by curiosity to the man Jackson's voice. I peeked again over the side and locked eyes with the far away stranger. Bushy brown hair and a slightly boyish face, though he looked around the age of twenty or maybe older. The corners of his mouth twisted into a grin. "And it looks like you two aren't the only crazies. Where'd you pick her up? How many you got up there anyway? Ten? Twenty? Come on down! There's room for all, monsters not included."

"There's just the three of us, Jackson," Rich said without hesitation. "How'd you get the sub again?"

Laura, almost bobbing with impatience, shouted, "Never mind that. How do we get down?"

She was right. The distance between us and the water below, still filthy and now shattering vivid orange sunset colors into the air, seemed like miles. Miles and Miles… Miles. I looked away, forcing down fresh tears. Stop thinking about that now. Stop acting like a weepy little girl. You're about to be saved. That's all that matters. I set my jaw and blinked fiercely. Saved. We were escaping. Maybe I would get to see my family again after all. Be happy about it!

"Down… huh… well, how did you get up there in the first place? Just come down through the building or something and I'll pick you up down here."

Down through that trap door again? "Hey, isn't that dangerous?" I shouted. "The debris and the glass. It could all collapse in on us…"

"Would you rather jump?" I winced at the suggestion. "Come on, we haven't got all day, unless you want to be breakfast for the monsters. Well, dinner, anyway." He paused and crouched into the sub for a second, cocking his ear to hear a voice from somewhere inside that I caught only faintly. Suddenly he straitened and peered out over the water, shielding his eyes. I looked too, but all I could see were the same choppy ocean planes of the surface. When he spoke again, his voice shook a little nervously, though he tried to hide it. "Aaah… we got a bit of a monster problem, you mind picking up the pace a bit? Like a lot?"

Laura went pale, and Rich immediately strode to the trapdoor and ripped it open. He stepped back to take our arms and we stumblingly followed him. Fear clogged my mind, but it kept me from thinking too much about moving. Them again. Were they the big ones? Where was Nim? The ladder on the trap door was broken off halfway from the floor but the dropping distance wasn't too bad. Rich went first, cursing softly when he stumbled in the rubble on the floor. Then he assisted Laura and me by steadying us when we landed.

The place really was wrecked. I would have looked around a bit, out of a morbid sort of curiosity, but there wasn't time for that. We picked our way through the debris. Crumbled doors, tables crushed against punctured walls, shattered stained glass—it was all a ruined, soggy mess. Was it really only water that did this? A wave? I suddenly had a newfound respect for Mother Nature's Kung Foo. She could really kick butt. And so could the ginormous Nims that would be after us soon. I hurried along after Rich and Laura.

Finally, after much stumbling and some swearing—mostly Rich's—we made it to what was left of the largest room of the church. The place was almost entirely filled with dirty ocean water. We would have to swim a bit to get to the windows.

For a moment we eyed the murky surface nervously. What if they were beneath the chapel water? Like that one before that had ignored us for some reason? Were they just waiting for us to get our toes wet and then chomp chomp and they swallow us like caviar? I didn't like that thought, so I shut it out too. No, I will not share a grave with Miles. I will live, and I will see my family again. There were people out there who loved me, and I just had to cross a little water to get to them. Easy as pie. Piece of cake. I really was hungry, even at a time like this.

Rich was first. He took a deep breath and jumped in. He came up shivering slightly and motioned for us to hurry. "Let's go. Easy does it," he muttered, and set out. Laura made a face and followed, and then me.

I meant to slip into the water quietly—just in case anything was listening—but at the last moment my foot slipped on something and I fell ungracefully and loudly with a splash. Water closed over my head and the discomfiting sounds of underwater filled my ears. Motion, things rubbing against each other, floating—monsters!

False alarm. I came up again and decided not to go back down. I was jumpy and I knew my mind would play tricks on me. I would hear monsters underwater whether they were there or not. So I doggie paddled to the window, gasping with cold all the way. Carefully I avoided wreckage, and then when I got to the top half of one window, I was sure to steer clear of the shards still connected to the building. A few more strokes and I was free of the building's deepest shadows. Still sunset. Not all that much time had passed, and I was briefly surprised. It seemed like ages.

I spotted Rich and Laura a ways ahead, all limbs still attached. Somehow we had survived the swim. We were alive. For now at least.

"Get over here, over here!" shouted the voice of Jackson. "Hurry up if you don't feel like a night in the afterlife!" The sub was just a little ways away, shining silver and orange in the fiery light. It seemed so much bigger up close than it had from the building. "Now! Hurry, hurry!" We could see him standing, motioning to us frantically and peering around wide eyed at the water.

"Just a little farther," Laura gasped.

"Hey…" I started, my voice wavering, and rising at the end to a strange pitch. "The water…"

There was a greenish tint to the water that was not normal. Ocean water often greenish, I knew (algae and fish goo and all that, etcetera), but not like this. It was a light that emanated from beneath the water and some distance away… in all directions. I floundered in the direction of the sub, getting panicky. It seemed familiar, that light. And the static in the air that suddenly prickled across my wet scalp and down my spine.

I remembered something then. That night on the beach, before I knew that everything was happening. It was the night of the beach party, when the boy went missing in the water. "There's something in the water," Miles had said. My entire body tingled, and not just with fear. A sharp tang of electricity was in the air, and the water became…

"Hurry up!" I shouted almost without realizing. "Get out of the water! There's something in the water!"

I realized Rich and Laura were shouting too now, and probably Jackson, though I couldn't really hear anything above the fuzziness in my head, growing by the moment. Where was I? The static was doing something to my senses. I coughed and spluttered, forgot what I was doing and found the smooth metal of the submarine beneath my fingers.

A green colored spark from the silvery surface leapt at me and I squeaked, jerking away. Then I jumped back. Crazy radioactive looking sparks danced above the water's surface too now.

We were doomed.

A strong hand grabbed my arm and half dragged me out of the water. I was shivering, jerking away from each new spark that tried to leap at me. I knew I should be helping, moving my legs and kicking my way up the side of the sub, but I was immobile. Rich was having difficulty pulling me. We're going to die, I thought. We're all going to die right here and now.

"Everyone! Get inside the hatch! Now! Before they let loose on us!" Jackson was yelling and all I could do was let myself be dragged and stare at the choppy water, the sky's reflection, the sparks, and the fitfully moving shapes looming like whales beneath the surface of the water. It was strangely fascinating. I half wished the Nims would bring their heads above the waves so I could get a good look at them. How many were there?

Strange things to be wondering as I was about to be killed, I knew.

There, a head appeared above the water. A tiny face turned to look at me and stared with yellow eyes. Nim? Our Nim? Another head surfaced, and I blinked dizzily. Static was doing a jig before my eyes. No. Not possible. It was a face I never expected to see again.

…Miles?

"MILES!" I was on my feet, shouting, waving my arms. "Miles! Miles, your safe! You're—" I was cut short as I was hauled into the hatch and fell heavily and quite unexpectedly on top of the person who pulled me in. Vaguely I registered it was Jackson. Now I remembered him grabbing my arm, though at the time I had thought it was Rich.

The hatch was shut. I stumbled to my feet and grabbed hold of the ladder, excitement and electricity sending my adrenaline on a haywire rush. I started to climb but was pulled to the floor again.

"What the heck are you doing? Do you want to get yourself fried?"

"Miles!" I spluttered. "Miles is out there! We have to get him in, we have to help him! He's right there, with—"

There was a loud sizzling noise, a buzzing that surrounded us all suddenly and drowned out my voice. A dreadful crackling ensued and the sub shuddered beneath my feet. Then the noise died all at once and the lights and the sound of the engine went out, leaving us all in complete darkness.

And silence.

It was Jackson's turn to curse. But then there was a revving and the lights reawakened. Computer screens and equipment blinked to life all around me.

"Are we saved?" Laura murmured. She didn't sound as if she believed it were possible. I was having a hard time wrapping my head around it myself.

"That's it?" Rich asked. "We were about to be…"

"It is time we got going. Brace yourselves." A new voice. I looked in its direction and saw a man, his face somewhat Asiatic, sitting in a chair before a complex looking switch board covered in lights and buttons and screens. He appeared calm and collected in comparison with the rest of us, especially with our hair sticking up in odd places and our clothes sopping wet and dripping sullenly on the floor.

I wondered in passing who this was then headed again for the ladder. Again, I was pulled away, and this time Jackson kept his hands on my arms, holding me in place. He looked at me, clearly bewildered. "What are you doing?"

"Miles is still out there," I stated, and tried to tug away.

"Miles. Who is Miles?"

"Caitlin," Laura said to me in a voice meant to be soothing, though she was still quivering from fright, cold, and shock. "Miles is dead."

"You." The tone of Rich's voice was different all of a sudden. Hard and… accusatory? Like the voice you would use to greet your worst enemy. I thought it was directed at me and it distracted me for a second. I saw Rich's face then, and it was as different as his voice. It was a mixture of disbelief and anger. But his glare wasn't directed at me. He was focused on the strange man in the chair, whose face was a deadpan blank.

They faced each other in silence. I noticed Laura goggled as well, but not with anything like hate, just amazement. "Lee…" she said uncertainly.

Jackson cleared his throat. "Guess I don't really have to introduce you guys. You've already met."

The man gave a grim half smile that didn't quite make it to his eyes. "Nice to see you again," he said.