"Right!" Alton shouted, ignoring the tension below his shoulders as he pointed down and twirled his finger. "Set 'er down!"

From his position inside the forklift, Sern nodded, and with a hydraulic hiss the pallet loaded with rebar settled into the muddy sand below. Alton watched Sern's forks separate from the top of the pallet , directing him to back away from the load. With a steady beeping that seemed to reverberate in his skull, the forklift slid away from the pallet, and nodded to Elizabeth. His coworker nodded back and started hauling on a dangling chain, her black-gloved hands almost a blur as their pulley system's hook slowly rose above the pallet.

To nobody's surprise, Tirto hadn't come in today, so the three were working together. Normally he'd be fine with that, especially considering the circumstances of Tirto's absence, but it would make executing his plan a little more awkward.

Alton deftly scooped up two fabric straps, sliding the reinforced fabric through the holes in the pallet. The hook at the end of the chain, slowly rising thanks to The Abyssal's efforts, stopped for a moment, allowing Alton to slide the ends of both straps on.

Well, he still wasn't sure his coworker was an abyssal, but he was about as close to sure as he could be without solid evidence. Thankfully, he could feel the key to that could be found by the extra weight in a pocket, a promise- or perhaps a warning- that the moment of truth would come today.

Elizabeth started hauling on the pulley system's chain, her bottomless energy coming into play yet again. Slowly, but inexorably, the straps securing the loaded pallet to the chain went taut, until finally a corner separated from the muddy soil, followed by another. Soon enough, over a thousand pounds of rebar and plywood were suspended in the air, rising towards the second floor.

It arrived last night, insulated in plastic and styrofoam. As far as FLIR cameras went, it was among the worst, a relatively cheap phone attachment that still seriously cut into his savings, but it was worth it.

Alton was still anxious as hell, but he had the best kind of plan: simple, safe, and inconspicuous. It was incredibly easy to take a picture, after all. He'd use the regular camera to grab an image of Elizabeth and her face, then switch over to the FLIR camera and get the final proof he needed. The toughest part would be acting normal until work was over, where he could rush home, upload the photos, and email a full report to Everett. He'd send them a phone call as well, to ensure that the email didn't get lost in the flood of information they got all the time.

From there, it would be up to The Navy. Hopefully they'd track her down and pick her up in the evening, and Alton wouldn't know anything happened until she didn't show up for work one day. None of his coworkers would know how much danger they'd been in, Alton wouldn't have to confront the abyssal, and nobody got hurt.

Well, The Abyssal might. Alton wasn't sure how much of Elizabeth's personality was genuine, but a part of him felt like this was a betrayal, somehow. The thought was almost laughably dumb- she was an abyssal, for christ's sake, the same monsters who'd hunted him in Hawaii- so Alton was mostly able to ignore it, but it remained at the back of his mind, adding to the stress he'd been dealing with today.

Anyways, if she somehow was the only nice abyssal in existence, the Navy probably wouldn't have to kill her, meaning everybody won!

The pallet was past the ground floor, now, some workers he recognized but couldn't match a name to watching patiently from the top of Building two. Alton looked over to Sern, who was busy poking at his phone from the cockpit of the forklift. It was probably safe to take a picture now, but if Sern did look up, he'd notice the strange lack of a case on Alton's phone, not to mention the weird, dark device attached to its bottom. Probably not that suspicious, but Alton wanted to take as little risk as possible here.

He checked his watch. 11:52 was a little early to start packing things up, but considering how long it was going to take to get that pallet onto the second floor…

"Hey, Sern!" Alton shouted, and the young man looked up. "Why don't you go park that?" He asked, pointing towards his watch. Sern nodded, throwing the Forklift into reverse again and backing away.

Success! With his other coworker out of the picture and with Elizabeth focused on dragging the pallet up, he'd gained a solid time window.

He stiffened, pantomiming receiving a message on his phone, before fishing it out and staring at the screen. Without the case, the phone felt oddly fragile in his gloved hands, so despite trying to act nonchalant he found himself handling the phone- along with the dark camera attached to the bottom- more gently than normal. Hopefully nobody else would notice.

Even if she did look this way, the abyssal probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Alton had never seen Elizabeth with a phone of her own, so he doubted the lack of a case would come off as weird to the tech-illiterate monster.

Holding it with both hands as if typing a text response, Alton unlocked the phone and opened the camera. A view of the ground below him met him. Slowly, and as inconspicuously as possible, he slowly panned the camera up, the abyssal slowly falling into the shot. He'd wanted to keep her in a corner of the picture so he wouldn't be obviously pointing a lens at her, but the damned autofocus kept shifting until he was forced to put Elizabeth's face squarely in the top-third of the frame.

So much for being inconspicuous. He took the shot as quickly as he could, then brought the camera down as he checked the picture. Looking up as she was, Alton didn't have the best photo of the abyssal's face, but that should be enough for the government to work with.

Step one, finished.

It took him half a minute to track down the FLIR camera's app, but thankfully, while the pallet had completed its slow ascent, Elizabeth was focused on holding it until the folks at the top could wrestle it fully onto the top floor.

The infrared camera didn't have the same field of view the regular camera had, so Alton needed to hold it almost directly at her to get an image. He found his breath caught in his throat as he slowly pivoted it towards Elizabeth…

...Until the barest outline of a face could be seen, The Abyssal's clothing and skin the exact same color as the concrete behind her.

There wasn't any real surprise that his worst fears had been confirmed. The fear of being this close to an abyssal had never truly gone, but it hadn't gotten any worse now that he had proof. Alton didn't feel vindicated that his suspicions were correct, or relieved that the worst was over. There was just cold, grim, certainty.

Step two, done.

Alton sighed, saving the image, before making a show of lowering his phone and looking back up-

The calm abruptly shattered as Alton looked up. Terror coursed through his veins and his spine suddenly turned to lead as he stared into a pair of cold, grey eyes.

She knew that Alton knew!

Trinitite had desperately wanted a normal day, but so far things had failed to meet her expectations. She'd hoped that doing something new like hauling supplies to the top of building two would distract her from this morning's disaster, but pulling on a chain was far too monotonous a task to be distracting.

Even listening to the calm, expressive music on the radio wasn't enough to keep her mind off her failure. Trinitite was tempted to switch to one of the… louder frequencies to drown out her thoughts, but she still wanted to be able to hear her fleetmates, so she wasn't able to evade her worries.

Had that human contacted the Navy? When had he done so? How much distance had she managed to put between the site and herself before The Navy had started their search? Did they have some way to track her over land? If they did find her here, and were more than willing to sink the Pacific Lilly, what did that mean for everybody here?

"Hey, Sern! Why don't you go park that?"

Alton's shouted order pulled Trinitite's thoughts away from those questions, but only for a while. As the Wo-class continued to haul on the pulley system's chain, she focused on the sound of the forklift behind her, visualizing it pulling away as its tires crackled against the damp ground and it continued to report its position via strong, steady beeping.

However, as the sound of Sern's forklift faded into the general noise of the construction site, the Wo-Class's thoughts inevitably drifted to the same set of questions, creeping into her thoughts like an unwanted submarine despite the fact she knew she couldn't answer any of them.

Why hadn't she chased down the human and taken care of him? Why had she had her island's lights on in the first place? Why couldn't she be doing something a little more interesting, so she wouldn't be wasting energy thinking about all this?

The pallet had reached the top of the little pulley system they'd made, and Trinitite stopped pulling once the worker above her started to wave. Instead, she held the chain steady, watching some coworkers she didn't know try to wrestle it onto the top floor. Here, at least, she could focus on watching their work, but they'd been repeating the process for a few hours now, so the vision above her was nothing… new…

Did she just hear a gasp?

The abyssal's attention drifted downwards, her curious rangefinders setting on Alton. His attention was focused on one of those devices she'd seen on the Pacific Lilly and in the hands of many of her workers, but while the screen was hidden, her attention was drawn to the set of clearly visible lenses visible on the back of the device.

Were those devices cameras as well as communication systems? Had he… taken a photograph of her? Pressure started to build in her active boilers as she noticed the grim expression on his face. Maybe she was a little too paranoid from her experience this morning, but she hadn't seen such a serious demeanor outside of truely dire situations. She could only think of one reason he'd be that disturbed.

Alton abruptly pocketed the device, looking up and meeting Trinitite's gaze. Her worst fears were confirmed as his eyes widened in terror, his mouth falling open as he instinctually leaned away from the abyssal.

No…

How had everything gone so wrong, so quickly? What did she do now? Trinitite held the human's gaze, hiding her own terror the best she could. Should she say something? Should she run?

Suddenly, the rain-coated chain in her hands slipped free of her gloves, tearing through her grip at an alarming speed.

The pallet!

Suddenly remembering her current duties, Trinitite's hands clamped back down on the rushing chain with supernatural strength. Then, out from instinct born of stress and panic, the abyssal did perhaps the worst thing she could have done in that situation:

She yanked on the chain.

Of the materials Austin had procured to build the pulley system, the chain was perhaps the most reliable. Most of the potential accidents that had Dan worried had to do with where the pullies were mounted, a haphazard collection of steel and hardwood secured to the concrete floor with little more than several fabric straps and its own weight.

He hadn't counted on the chain being squeezed with the force of three warship-grade boilers, then abruptly jerked downward. The majority of that force went into lifting Trinitite off the ground, but the squished links were already doomed.

With a harsh snap, one of the links the Wo-class was holding onto disintegrated, and the chain above her whipped upwards. The abyssal almost hit herself as her end of the chain flew downwards, and she spent a precious moment in dazed confusion as her sleep-addled mind caught up with what just happened.

A distressed shout from above focused her attention, and Trinitite looked up to see the pallet, almost balanced at the edge of the floor.

The pallet started to tip.

Then, it started to slide.

Panicking, the Wo-class traced the imminent trajectory of the rebar-laden pallet , her eyes finally resting… on Alton.

Shit!

The fact that her coworker knew something was forgotten as the aircraft carrier realized that her fleet-mate was in danger. For her, such a load was nothing, but for a human?

Without any more thought, The Abyssal leapt.

Alton wasn't sure if the chain breaking was an accident or a tactic to create a distraction, because as soon as he looked up to see the falling pallet, the abyss made her move. Before he could react, the warship was upon him. The monster slammed into him, her cold arms wrapping around him as he fell back.

Was she going to kill him, right here? If she just squeezed a little, he'd be just as broken as the chain was!

He was about to struggle, but as he hit the ground and the wind was knocked out of him, he noticed The Abyssal didn't seem to be doing anything else. Her body was ridgid, legs and arms now firmly braced against the ground instead of tearing him apart, like he'd seen before on Oahu. Beyond that, the monster didn't seem to be doing-

The pallet struck the ground corner first, narrowly missing the pair as it slammed against the mud. There was a crack as the wood gave way in the impact, and a rain of sand and splinters flew into the pair as the second corner followed a split second later.

The pallet had fallen edge first, slightly spinning from tipped off the roof. Thus, when it finally hit the ground next to the pair, the part of Alton's vision that wasn't consumed by Elizabeth's hair and helmet could see a rapidly-growing wall of rebar falling onto them. The strike with the ground had consumed a portion of its energy, but the weight of all that steel came bearing down on them as the pallet flopped down, load-first.

Elizabeth grunted as the mass fell on her, the abyssal's cold cheek rubbing against Alton's as the mass of metal and wood slammed against the pair. A calamitous rattle filled Alton's senses for a tense, terrible moment…

...but once the noise died down, Alton was still there, the only sound he heard being the pounding of his heart.

The Abyssal was still there as well, her elbows and knees forming small craters on either side of Alton, and the rows upon rows of rebar were still hovering just above her, but as far as he could tell, he was in one piece.

Elizabeth, who'd until that point been as rigid as steel herself, finally started to breathe, breath far too cold for any human washing over his face. Alton, his muscles still frozen together, didn't do anything but breathe back, failing even to notice her chest pressing against his.

With another sigh, the abyssal straightened, the remains of wood and steel above her creaking as she rose to her hands and knees. The makeup on her cheek had been scraped off by his own, revealing a smear of her true form on her visage.

The way she looked at Alton, her features slack and her steel-grey eyes betraying a certain tiredness… was that resignation?

"So…" she started, her face dour. "...you know, then."

There was no point in denying it. Some of Alton's muscles finally responded, and with his heart still pounding at the walls of his ribcage, he nodded.

The Abyssal's eyes suddenly focused on him, and his panic returned for a moment, until her gloved hand rose and rested on her undisguised cheek.

"Dios mio!" A voice Alton didn't recognize shouted, abruptly drawing 'Elizabeth's' attention away from Alton and herself. "Are you two alive?"

Without another word, she rested her hand on the rebar above her, shoving it aside like cardboard and standing. As it hit the mud away from Alton with a loud thud, the abyssal pivoted on a muddy boot, then broke into a run.

The sprint immediately drew the attention of those who were gathering around the accident, several people shouting after her, but as Alton sat up, he remained silent. Adrenaline was still coursing through his body, and soon one of his knees started to uncontrollably shake.

"Are you alright, man?"

"I don't know." Alton mumbled, but his focus was still on the running girl. Elizabeth was heading directly for a chain link fence, stopping for a moment as she seemed to bounce off, but she quickly snapped back into action and scaled it with inhuman speed. From there, she vaulted over, disappearing from Alton's life.

"Let's get you into the office, take a look at you." The bystander said, kneeling down and hauling Alton up by the armpits. As he stood, he couldn't help but notice the top of the damaged pallet, the bound rebar clearly bent in a shallow, human-shaped depression.

"Yeah." He agreed dumbly. He didn't feel injured, but of course that didn't guarantee anything. Still, as he stumbled back towards the office and some more serious medical supplies, he wasn't thinking about the present.

Later today, he'd be going home and seeing Mable… because an abyssal, the monsters who'd destroyed his home, killed many of his friends, and threatened humanity itself, had chosen to save his life.

He needed a little bit of time to think about that.

...and there you go! The effective end of the construction arc! I actually got this done sooner then I expected, so an interlude might drop before I ship out, but I won't make any promises.

On that note, once I'm able to write and post again (and while I probably won't be able to overstate how much Nuke School will cut into my writing time, I hope to get my signature one sentence a day done during that period of time), expect a fairly large string of interludes as Trinitite's whereabouts remain unknown. Should be good to sum the story up after a months-long hiatus, anyways.

On the topic of the chapter itself, I think a lot of you saw these events coming from about the time I first introduced Alton as a PoV character, but hopefully it was still a satisfying conclusion. Trinitite's relative inability to human at the start of this arc really hampered her relationships in this one, which is why I'm pretty glad to see her out of the construction site and on to new... career opportunities. Me being so exited to write these is why I'm so confident this hiatus won't be indefinite.