Jules exhales hard, running both hands over his drenched face. “Fuck me sideways.”
“Right?”
I try to laugh, but it comes out like a cough and a whimper. I lean against the cold wall and slide down until I’m sitting in the water again. It laps against my ribs, trying to remind me this isn’t the time for existential breakdowns.
“Don’t sit in the fucking whale water,” Julian snaps, grabbing my arm again.
“Too late. I’m bonded for life now. Maybe it’ll bring me a fish for lunch.”
“Reid.”
“Jules.”
He stares at me, his eyes softening just a little. “You’re not losing it. If you are, then so am I.”
That helps more than it should. I nod and climb back to my feet, dripping and heavy and weirdly aware of everything. The scrape of my soaked jeans. The flit of a bird outside the broken windows. The soft buzz of something I can't name inside my head. This isn’t over. Whatever it was that just happened - it opened something up in me and I don't know how to shut it.
Julian and I climb the cement stairs up to the next level. My soaked clothes cling to me like a second skin, and I’m starting to shake, both from cold and what-the-fuck-is-my-life exhaustion. We reach the next level and for the first time in what feels like hours, my feet squelch on dry tile. We walk deeper into the floor of cubicles, closer to the windows where the lighting is better.
“Okay, start talking,” Julian says, panting. “What the hell was that down there?”
I drop down onto an office chair and grimace at the feel of my wet jeans, dripping everywhere. He kneels in front of me and pulls apart the rip in my jeans to get a look at the wound and I realize it doesn’t even hurt. I look down and frown at what I see. My leg was bleeding before, I know it was. Now? All I see is a thin pink line on my skin. Jules falls back on his ass with a grunt and drags up the cuff of one of his pant legs.
“What…how?” He rubs at the skin that had a deep red welt from the wire that wrapped around it. All that’s there now is smooth, tanned skin. His icy blue eyes lift to look at me in confusion. “What is this? What’s happening?”
All I can do is shrug. “You mean the killer whale? That talked to me telepathically? Or that we apparently can heal like superheroes now? No clue, Jules. Just my brain cracking under the pressure, maybe.”
He pushes back to his feet and gives me a look. “That’s not funny.”
“Wasn’t trying to be. I thought I was hallucinating, except it didn’t feel like that. It felt real.”
He opens his mouth to respond but something outside the cracked window catches his attention. We both edge closer and peek out. Below, a tiny boat bobs in the flooded street, flanked by five massive black shapes. Killer whales. They’re nudging it forward, guiding it through the water like they’re on a fucking mission.
Julian mutters, “No way.”
The air feels charged as I watch the pod work together, moving with eerie purpose. One of them lets out a high whistle that vibrates in my chest.
“Magic,” I whisper. The word just slips out, and for the first time today, it doesn’t feel crazy.
I whip toward Julian. “Jules. When you got pulled under... when the wires wrapped around you. What were you thinking about? Right before the water pulled back?”
He looks thrown. “What? I... I was thinking about not dying, obviously.”
“No. Be specific.”
He hesitates, then runs a hand through his wet hair. “I was thinking about you. About not dying that way. I didn’t want to leave you alone. I felt... angry. Desperate.”
“And then the water just moved?”
He nods slowly. I let out a breath and laugh, sharp and disbelieving. “Come on.” I grab his arm and drag him toward the stairwell again. “We’re doing a test.”
“What kind of test?”
“A biblical one.”
Back at the flooded lower floor, I stop just above where the water creeps up the stairs. Julian stands beside me, arms crossed.
“This is stupid,” he says.
