"How many eggs?"
"Typically between one hundred and two hundred. Not all will survive—predators, temperature fluctuations, developmental issues. But the ones that make it..." He paused, watching her face. "They'll dig their way to the surface, usually at night when it's cooler. Then they make a run for the water. It's one of the most incredible things I've ever seen."
"And you think it might happen while I'm still here?"
The question hung between them, heavy with everything it implied.
"I don't know," Alex admitted. "I wish I could?—"
He stopped himself.Wish I could what? Control nature? Stop time? Change the perimeters of our ‘live in the present’ agreement?
"The reef," he said abruptly, standing and brushing sand from his knees. "There's a section nearby I've been wanting to check. We should look while we're out here."
Lily studied him for a moment, something unreadable in her green eyes. Then she nodded, letting him off the hook.
"Lead the way,Dr. Carmichael."
The water was perfect—crystal clear, warm enough to be comfortable, cool enough to be refreshing. Alex adjusted his mask and fins while Lily did the same beside him, her underwater camera housing secured.
He shouldn't have been nervous. He'd swum this reef dozens of times. But something about sharing it with her—about showing her these hidden corners of his world—made his pulse quicken in ways that had nothing to do with physical exertion.
It's just a reef check, he told himself.Stop making it into something.
But it wasn't just a reef check. Nothing with Lily was ever "just" anything.
They submerged together, and the familiar underwater world embraced him. The reef here was older than the western sites they'd filmed—more complex formations, more diversity of species. Fish darted through elaborate structures that had taken centuries to build, following patterns that hadn't changed since before humans existed.
Alex glanced at Lily, watching her film with the confidence of a woman comfortable in her skillset. Even underwater, her movements were graceful, purposeful. She'd gotten good at this—anticipating his directions,finding angles he wouldn't have thought of. A real partner in the documentation process.
Partner.
The word settled in his chest with uncomfortable weight.
He led her toward a section of branching coral he'd been wanting to assess, noting the healthy coloration, the active fish populations. Good signs. Maybe Site 7 wasn't as stressed as he'd feared?—
Something caught his attention.
A shadow. A wrong shape amid the organic curves of the reef.
Alex changed direction, finning toward it with a sick feeling in his gut. Lily followed, her camera tracking whatever had drawn his focus.
As they got closer, the shadow resolved into something that made his blood run cold.
Fishing net.
A ghost net, tangled through a section of branching coral like a malevolent spiderweb. The synthetic mesh wrapped around delicate formations, breaking and crushing everything in its path. Some of the damagewas old—coral already dead, covered in algae. Some was newer, raw edges exposed like open wounds.
And caught in the center, its shell wedged at an unnatural angle, was a sea turtle.
It wasn't moving.
Alex's stomach dropped. He surfaced first, ripping off his mask, and heard Lily break the water beside him a moment later.
"Ghost net," he said, the words coming out clipped and hard. "Abandoned fishing gear. Drifts until it snags on something and just keeps killing."
"Is it—" Lily's voice was small in a way he'd never heard from her.
"Yes." He didn't elaborate. He didn't need to.
