Charlie wakes with a start. Heart pounding, adrenaline courses through her body. She gropes around the darkness, finding her watch laying next to her pillow. It lights up in her hand, reading 3:48 AM in a dull green light. Everyone else in the room is still sleeping. She sighs, trying to calm the pounding in her chest. Though she remembers nothing, the nightmare lingers about her mind like a putrid miasma.

She sticks her face into her pillow, trying to fall back asleep, but the remnants of the dream nag her and keep her focused and awake. She becomes uncomfortable in the bed, turning her pillow over, switching from her side, to her back, to her stomach. Still her mind races, fear of something in a forgotten nightmare keeping her exhausted body awake. She stills for a moment, grumbling to herself fretfully and something catches her ear.

Charlie stills, curious. She sits back up. There is no need for her to close her eyes to concentrate; the room is as dark as closed eyelids anyway. The Narwhal groans, metal warping under the weight of the sea, but that’s just background noise, something she doesn’t even notice when she isn’t trying to listen so hard. No, it was something different that had grabbed her attention. Straining her ears, Charlie finds something else, something she had never heard before, another sound, quieter than the Narwhal’s groaning, but distinct, and very near. It sounds, to her, like something soft sliding against metal. The noise is coming from above her, as something large enough to cover a significant portion of the hull slides by. It’s like the sound of a finger being run across an iron pan, and it travels throughout the Narwhal. Nobody else in the bunks is awake to hear it, and it’s nowhere near noisy enough to rouse them, but it’s different, different enough that Charlie sits in the dark, listening, and wondering what to do next.

It doesn’t take a great leap of imagination for her to conclude that the noise is Julia. She’s here, right on top of them. Charlie’s breathing becomes ragged; short, uneven, and quickening in pace. Charlie is petrified. She’s not even sure why, even when the whale attacked, she could still think clearly, she could still move and take action. This was totally different, and what was happening outside would seem to her logical brain to be harmless, at least for the moment. And as soon as that thought comes to her, her fear dissipates, just a little. She finds a part in the clouds of terror that grip her and uses the opportunity to grab her flashlight and descend from her bunk.

Charlie, slipping on her shoes, bends over and shakes a still sleeping Bill awake.

“Bill,” she whispers.

Bill turns over, squinting as Charlie’s quivering flashlight beam hits his eyes. Though still sleepy in appearance, his eyes are now wide awake. Looking left and right, he searches the room and finds nothing but Charlie, but it seems as if that’s not satisfactory, like there’s something more he needs to find.

“Bill,” Charlie whispers his name again to grab his attention.

Bill looks back at Charlie, confused. “What? What is it?”

“Listen,” she says, before staring up at the ceiling.

Bill sits up, trying to push aside the intense feeling of paranoia he’s awoken with. He closes his eyes and trains his ears on his surroundings. When he opens his eyes again, they’re wide, and he swallows hard.

“Let’s go,” he says, standing up and rushing out of the bunks.

They both head for the control room and inside, Lewis too, is awake and waiting for them.

“Heard it too, huh?” Lewis asks, shaking his head. “Woke from a dream and it caught my ear right a fuckin’ way. We had the damn hydrophones all pointed away from us, that’s why we didn’t hear jack.”

“She was above us the whole time,” Bill whispers.

“You think?” Charlie says. “Maybe she only just found us. I imagine we would have heard her earlier if not.”

“Well, whether or not she’s been sitting pretty up there for a day or a minute, I ain’t got no clue what she’s doing,” Lewis says. “She’s been going on like this for damn near half an hour now.”

“She, uh, must be curious,” Charlie says, but she sounds far from confident.

“New object in the environment,” Bill adds, “perfectly natural response.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t like it,” Lewis says. “We’re damaged enough as-is. Don’t need no sea monster poking and prodding at us.”

Silence falls over the room.

“What’re you thinking about, Bill?” Lewis asks.

Bill shakes his head. “I don’t know, having a hard time thinking straight. But if this is just curiosity, we still need to be concerned. A large animal’s curiosity can be just as deadly as aggression. At her size, she could crush the Narwhal like a tin can completely unintentionally.”

“But if we try to get it to leave,” Charlie says, “if we do something, that might just make things worse. It might actually get aggressive.”

“Well, as much as I enjoy the thought of getting comfortable and weighing our options, I don’t know if we got that kinda time,” Lewis says. “And I ain’t given to taking that kinda risk.”

“So, what do you think we should do?” Bill asks.

Lewis paces the room, his brow furrowed. He appears as frustrated and tense as a cornered animal. For the first time in his life, he feels trapped in his submarine. “Way I’m hearing it, either this thing pokes around and slowly figures out it wants to kill us, or it figures that out right quick. I think we oughta take action now. Maybe we can scare it off before it makes up its mind.”

Lewis speaks with initiative, but Charlie and Bill can tell he has no clue if it’s a good idea or not. He too, seems out of it, clouded, and it seems to bother him. Here is a man who’s lived his life sailing a submarine, trained to fight in one. Submarine battles are all about fighting with just a thread of information, and only those who can cut through the uncertainty, find their footing, and take decisive action are equipped for that type of combat. Lewis knows how to fight the unknown, yet still, he feels hesitant, and he hates that feeling.

It’s Charlie who seems the most clear-headed at this moment, and it’s Charlie who pauses to suggest a better plan.

“I have another idea,” she says.

“All ears,” Lewis replies.

“We need a distraction, or a, uh, diversion. We need to drop our tail.”

“Hm?”

“Like a lizard leaves its tail behind to escape a predator.” Charlie pauses, stumbling in her thought process for a moment. “Though, I, uh, I guess in this case we’re stuck in one place, so we’re more like the tail and we’d have to hope Julia follows the rest of the lizard. If we send out a probe, she might take the bait and leave us alone. We lead her away from us, and let the drone take any of her curiosity or aggression.”

“You’re damned clever, ya know that?” Lewis says.

“That means sacrificing a probe,” Bill says, “doubt we’ll be getting it back from this.”

At that moment, James enters the room and nods. “We can use the camera drone. Morning everyone, early start today, huh?”

“Got woken up,” Charlie says.

“I noticed.” He looks up toward the source of the dragging sound above them.

Bill shakes his head. “You don’t have to sacrifice the camera, James. We can use something else.”

“But we shouldn’t. Really, the camera is secondary. Visual data is nice, but all the other equipment we have is so much more. Science is more than seeing. Besides, I want to do this. It might be the best chance we’ve got to get a clear picture of the girl. I mean, she’s right there. I’d wanna send that drone out whether or not you had a plan.”

Bill walks over to James and pats him on the back. “Thanks. Alright.” He looks at Lewis. “Let’s give this a shot.”

James takes his seat at the camera drone controls as Lewis pulls up the intercom receiver.

“Torpedo room, you awake down there?” Lewis asks.

A voice comes back right away. “We’re here, captain.”

“Good, get the camera drone loaded. We’ve got a fish to catch.”

“Aye, sir.”

James settles into his seat, booting the system and getting himself mentally prepared. He takes a deep breath, trying to rid himself of the tension he feels in his shoulders. The lingering nightmares have left him with a slight shiver but his trembling hands grip the controls tight. He’s got one shot, one shot to speed the drone away as fast as it can go, and one shot to get a picture of the creature. He can almost feel the pressure of the millions of gallons of water around him, threatening to crush him, but his will to get the image he wants pushes back just as hard, and in that will he finds the ability to concentrate.

“Tube one loaded.” The voice from the torpedo room below returns.

Lewis looks at James, he sees anxiety in his eyes, but he also sees his strength. They exchange a silent nod, and with one final look to Bill and Charlie, and all of his men, Lewis gives the order.

“Fire.”

The Narwhal gasps as the tube floods with water and the drone is shoved out into the sea.

At the same moment, downstairs, in the bunks, Jessica awakens with a piercing scream. Those around wake immediately, and are greeted with another sound, still louder than her’s.

Julia cries out as soon as the torpedo tube is empty. James revs up the drone’s engine as a bellow loud enough to shake the submarine blasts through it. The cry of the beast is so loud it vibrates the fluid in his eyes, and James can no longer see his screen or controls with any clarity. The drone’s light flick on, and for a single instant, he can see the blurred seabed in front of him. Then the water shifts, becoming agitated and choppy, the drone is caught in rough water, and the screen goes dark. The words, “NO SIGNAL” flash in the corner.

The drone is gone in an instant, Julia quiets down, but she hasn’t moved. A softer tone still rings in the water, more subdued, but lingering none-the-less. Once again, a soft, fleshy sound strokes the Narwhal’s hull, but for just a moment before the water churns and the sounds of the enormous creature fade into the distance.

There’s a dejected lull in the control room. Julia has left, but not by the means they had wanted.

“What did you do?” Jessica enters the room, tears in her eyes.

Ernie runs up behind her a moment later and puts a hand on her shoulder, but she brushes it away. “Jess, what’s wrong?”

“I...don’t know. I wanted to hide, we needed to stay quiet...”

Jessica’s voice trails off and she furrows her brow like she’s trying to get back onto her train of thought. But it’s gone, and she can’t even remember where the thoughts were headed in the first place.

“It was just a dream, Jess,” Ernie says. “Just a dream, relax.”

Ernie tries to calm his sister as Charlie walks up beside him and walks the two of them back to the bunks. She can see in his eyes that even he’s not entirely convinced by what he’s saying.

Back in the control room, Bill, Lewis, and James stand in a circle.

“Well,” Bill says, “she’s gone.”

“Don’t like it,” Lewis says, “doesn’t feel right.”

“She got the drone as soon as it came out,” James says, “like she knew it was coming.”

“Must’ve heard the tube opening, lashed out as soon as something moved,” Bill says.

“Yeah, maybe. Whatever the reason, nothing about that went right, and something tells me that ain’t gonna be the last we see of ol’ Julia,” Lewis says.

“Maybe we should just stay quiet for now,” Bill says. “Lay low until help gets here. We’re really in no shape to be trying to do research right now anyway, it was probably a bad idea to try.”