f she hadn’t already been reaching for F-1’s door, Elisa doesn’t know how long it would’ve taken her to find it in the deluge of darkness. She muscles her cart across the still, shushed lab, the bad wheel screaming in the quiet, her constant dreams of the room her only map until her eyes begin to adjust to the low level of light—the first rays of dawn, she has to assume, eking in from first-floor windows and curling like smoke through ventilation passages heretofore invisible.

The cart strikes nothing until the ledge of the pool. Gray flashes of rocking water wheel through the darkness like thrown knives. Can he see her? Into blackness, she signs with the fever of prayer, words she can only hope that he’s learned. “Come.” “Swim.” “Move.” She’s sprawled across the ledge, leaning over the pool, signing. Water laps against her. She’s still signing, signing. There’s no knowing why the lights went out, but it will foster a panic, and panic will drive people to protect their most significant asset. There’s no hope for the creature, or Elisa, if he doesn’t come, swim, move, and now.

Two golden eyes crest like dual suns. Elisa goes wordless. Next thing, her shoes are off, her legs are in the water, her uniform is wrapping around her thighs like cold tentacles. She shivers and slogs toward him, arms outstretched. The golden eyes are wary, of course they are—he’s been pursued before. Elisa takes another step and the pool bottom slopes dramatically; suddenly the water is at her chin and she’s gasping, and the weight of her clothes drags her farther down the slope, and farther, and now she’s sputtering, and the only signs her hands are making now are the desperate, empty grasps of a drowning woman.