Elina rests on her hands and knees, face hanging over the rim of the toilet bowl. Her face is pale, sweat dripping from her brow as the meager breakfast from just an hour earlier leaves her stomach. Charlie squats beside her, holding her hair back with one hand and rubbing her back with the other.

After taking a moment to catch her breath, Elina summons the strength to stand again and Charlie guides her back to the bunks through slow and uneasy steps. She helps her climb into her bed and covers her with the blanket. Placing the back of her hand against Elina’s head, Charlie checks for a fever but feels nothing out of the ordinary.

“I’ll leave the flashlight right here in case you need to get up,” Charlie says, placing the room’s flashlight on the floor beside the bed.

“Thanks, Lee,” Elina murmurs.

Charlie gets back to her feet and carefully makes her way to the exit. With her hand on the wall, she guides herself through the darkness and returns to the mess hall.

At this point, the crew and research team alike have developed a pretty good understanding of the Narwhal’s layout and developed the ability to navigate in the dark without too much of a problem. Though the tiny, cramped halls can be uncomfortable, their size has made it easier to learn how to maneuver in the dark.

The mess hall, lit by the flame of the stove, is the best reprieve from the darkness, and Charlie steps inside to find most of the researchers gathered there. She makes her way back to the table where she had been sitting with Bill, Piper, and Elina before Elina got sick.

“How is she?” Piper asks.

“Seems okay,” Charlie says. “She walked back to bunks alright.”

“Food poisoning, maybe?” Bill suggests.

Charlie shrugs. “Maybe, but we’ve all been eating the same things, haven’t we?”

Piper nods. “Could just be stress.”

From a table on the opposite end of the room, the unmistakable hulking shape of the captain gets up from his seat and wanders over.

“Little lady feeling alright, Charlie?” Lewis asks.

“Bit of nausea,” she replies. “I put her to bed.”

“Good idea.” He rests a hand on Bill’s shoulder from behind. “Bill, a word if you may.”

Lewis turns around and exits the mess hall, he waits a few steps down the hall. Bill stands, cracking his back, and follows.

Everyone in the room watches them go. Max, indignance in his eyes, gets up to follow, but Charlie stands up and blocks his path.

“Let them have a minute alone,” she says.

Max licks his lips and swallows. “Not a fan of secrets.”

“I trust Bill, Lewis too. They’re in charge and if they think they need to speak privately, then they should.”

Max clicks his tongue, but he turns around and goes back to his seat.

“He’s…” Piper trails off.

“Seems a bit on edge,” Charlie says.

“Not the words I was going to use, but yes. I suppose we all are.”

Piper looks down at the table, her breakfast half-finished on her plate. She takes a deep, uneven breath.

“Are you okay?” Charlie asks.

Piper nods. “Fine.”

Just outside the mess hall, Bill and Lewis speak in whispers.

“Elina seem alright to you earlier this morning?” Lewis asks.

Bill tilts his head. “I--I don’t know. Didn’t notice anything odd.” He sighs. “I’m trying to be more observant, but it’s not easy, you know? Even if it wasn’t pitch black down here, I can’t--can’t fucking concentrate. Maybe you should ask Charlie, they’re close.”

“You were sitting next to her at breakfast,” Lewis says, ignoring Bill’s suggestion. “Didn’t notice anything off while you were eating?”

Bill chews the inside of his cheek and squeezes his eyes shut. “Um, I guess she was a bit quiet. I mean, makes sense if she got food poisoning.”

“Probably,” Lewis says. “Hopefully.”

Bill perks up. “What do you mean?”

“Took a mighty hard hit the other day when Max pulled his little knocking stunt. One of my crew’s feeling queasy too. But ain’t nobody else reported it yet, and we’ve all been eating the same meals. So if it ain’t food poisoning…”

“Radiation? Aren’t you monitoring that? When we crashed you said--you said we were good.”

Lewis nods. “Yup, and according to our readings, we still are. Doesn’t mean they’re right. I mean look at us, can’t even see each others’ faces out here. No lights, half the sub flooded. The crash coulda done some damage to the reactor that made it a tickin’ time bomb and all it took was a little shove from ol’ Julia to set it off. I don’t trust none of the sensors while we’re in such a crippled way.”

“Shit,” Bill replies, “so we have to tell everyone then, right? They should know.”

“They most definitely should not. First off, we ain’t got no way to know for sure, and I ain’t keen on jumping to conclusions so soon. Gettin’ everyone in a tizzy over nothing is not what we need right now. Hell, gettin’ everyone in a tizzy over something ain’t gonna help us neither. Even if we did tell ‘em, it wouldn’t matter, cause we ain’t got no way to protect everyone.”

“I just don’t like secrets, Lewis.”

“Listen, Bill, you and me are in charge here. Leaders keep secrets, it’s how it goes. Sometimes you gotta shoulder the truth alone to keep its burden off the people you’re tryin’ to protect.”

Bill sighs, trying to come to grips with Lewis’s style of leadership. “We won’t survive long if there is a radiation leak,” he says.

“Depends on how bad it is, we just gotta hope rescue comes sooner rather than later.”

“God, I hate all this waiting around.”

Lewis snorts. “Never been more frustrated in my life. I ain’t used to feeling helpless, so I’ll give kudos to your girl out there, she’s made me feel more helpless than any Russian sub I ever went up against.”

***

“Listen, it’s connected, I’m telling you, it’s connected.” Jessica leans across the table. On the other side, her brother Ernie shakes his head, but beside him, James nods.

Elina getting sick has been the talk of the town all day. The closed environment and heightened tension makes even the mundane something to be latched onto and dissected. Speculation runs wild, most innocuous, but some lean toward something more sinister.

“Jess, I know things are crazy right now, but I’m really not following,” Ernie says.

“I understand,” James replies, “completely.”

“Do you though?” Jessica asks.

James nods again. “All I know is that the nightmares are significant. They aren’t just some random bullshit cooked up by our brains because of the stress. I’ve been in stressful places before, fuck I practically made it part of my job to visit the world’s most dangerous places. I love pushing myself to those kinds of extremes. This isn’t that. And if you say whatever Elina’s got is related, I believe you.”

“Thank you.” Jessica throws her arms up. “Finally someone gets it.”

Ernie looks at James, then his sister. “Okay, but see, that’s where you lose me. The two being connected? Yeah, sure, makes sense. But then you say it’s not the stress? The nightmares we’re all having, Elina getting sick, I mean, it’s logical to assume they’re both from stress. I mean, come on James, you have to admit that none of the places you’ve visited were ever this extreme. You can’t pretend your previous adventures prepared you for this type of thing.”

“Maybe not fully, but believe me when I saw that there is nothing normal about these dreams, Ernie. I have spent days now, trying to wrap my head around them, trying to pull out some memory of them, or even just control my fear of them. I got nothing. And nothing has ever made me feel the way they do. And if you think about it, you’ll know you feel the same. It’s...fear and terror, but there’s so much more to it. And it’s hard to describe. It’s a thick, knotty rope around your windpipe, a sheet of cold metal on your back, a viscous inky fluid that you can’t quite swim through, insects in your hair, lead in your stomach, a spreading black rot in your mind. And it doesn’t go away, you can shake off a nightmare, but this...whatever it is, it stays with you. You push it down, bury it under your normal self, but it's still there, and every time you sleep it grows and every time you wake your normal self feels more and more hollow, more and more like a fake skin.”

Jessica says nothing, she nods a single time, slowly, knowingly.

Ernie pauses for a just moment, taking in what James says. His eyes search the table below him for just a moment, then focus again. He sighs. “I think we’re all very tired, and very scared. And I think you’re making that out to be more significant than it is.” He stands up and leaves the table.

James shakes his head.

“He knows,” Jessica says. “I know him, and I saw it in his eyes. He’ll see soon enough, everyone will.”

“God, I hope not. We need to get out of here, and soon.”

“I don’t know if we can. I don’t know if she’ll--” She stops, staring blankly. “Unless…”

Jessica stands and starts out of the room.

“Where are you going?” James calls after her.

Jessica turns. “To bed.”