A warning: this story will contain rather dark material. If you are offended by the display of mass casualties, or the usage of real natural disasters in fiction, I advise you to leave the thread.
Currently rated PG for mild language. This is subject to change, though.
Prologue
The streamlined mass of floating steel creaked eerily as it swayed back and forth in the dark undulating waters of the Pacific Ocean. It certainly wasn't a large boat, but James Hopkins had originally found himself wondering just how something as big as it was could float at all. It certainly wasn't very stable, either. All night, every night, it rocked back and forth, back and forth, incessantly and as constantly as the ticking of a clock.
That was why he currently found himself hunched over the toilet, breathing deeply and watching his exhausted reflection stare back up at him from the surface of the small pool of water, shifting along with the rocking of the boat. He grimaced, feeling his stomach lurch again, and ducked his head closer to the bowl, until the feeling passed again. A small pocket of gas escaped his throat, and he was sure he tasted bile. The fact that the entire ship reeked of fish wasn't helping, either.
“Oh, sure,” he muttered irritably to himself. “Come all the way out here to investigate growing concerns about the geology of the area? Shifting plates and all that? No problem.” He belched again, and soon after thrust his head into the bowl and retched.
A few moments later, he shakily clambered to his feet, flushed the toilet, and turned to the sink. He turned the faucet marked with the letter “H”. The water came out cold. He washed his hands, his face, dried them. He grabbed a tissue and blew his nose. Then he grabbed his toothbrush, toothpaste, and a small cup he'd stored in the medicine cabinet, rinsed his mouth, brushed his teeth thoroughly, and rinsed his mouth again.
He glanced down at his watch. It was almost nine o'clock, according to it. So that must mean it was just before five here. He really didn't know why he wore the watch, or why he wouldn't set it to the local time. All he knew was that he felt more comfortable with it on and displaying the time back in Massachusetts. Back home.
He was a geologist, just out of college, and had been hired by the UN to join a team investigating the recent seismological activity around the so-called “Ring of Fire”. The thing is, it was all a natural phenomenon. The pacific plate was known for being particularly active, and the recent earthquake near Japan wasn't a big surprise to him. Of course, he felt sympathetic toward all those affected by the quake and the resulting catastrophes, but he couldn't understand why this investigation was necessary. But money was money, and money was tight in the economic situation.
It had been just over a month since the investigation had been commissioned, and headed out to sea. James had been flown from Cambridge to San Diego on the twenty-second of March, and it was now the twenty-sixth of April. They'd started fairly close to home: from San Diego, north, toward Alaska, then east, toward Russia and the Kuril Islands, then south, along the coast of Japan. Ever few hundred miles, they'd stop and measure the oxygen content and acidity of the water, scrape up and analyze a few samples of the sea floor, and check for radiation for some reason. He understood that the area around the northern side of the main Japanese island would be contaminated, due to the reactor leak and everything, but they'd stayed clear away from the isolated zone. So why would there be any abnormal levels of radiation so far away?
They were somewhere in the Marshall Islands now, although James wasn't sure where. All he knew was he couldn't wait for the end of May, when he'd be back in Cambridge, reading the newest geological studies in his comfortable apartment.
He staggered to the door, flicked the light switch off, and walked, step by step, back to his quarters. Forgoing his pajamas, he whipped the covers off his bed and immediately collapsed into them. He yawned deeply, pulled the covers up over his shoulders, and closed his eyes. The creaking of the ship was almost a comfort to him by this point. He felt himself drifting further and further away with each sound.
Then there was a new sound. Something barely audible, but clearly distinct from the creaking. It was a low, almost silent, rumble. The ship swayed a little more, and James's eyes snapped open. He leapt from his bed, darted through the door, up the corridor, and into the bridge.
He waited a moment. He was sure everybody else in the ship was still asleep. He turned to the seismological instrument panels that the ship had been outfitted with. A seismograph, currently synchronized to one in Majuro, was hastily scribbling wild lines on a sheet of paper, just as James had suspected. There had been another earthquake.
He reached for the black telephone receiver, which reflected the light of the full moon, and dialed the number for the US Geological Survey. He put the receiver to his ear, and heard only static.
“Odd,” he said aloud to himself, hanging up and deciding to try the radio, but it, too, only gave static.
“What the hell is going on?”
He reached in his pocket, his breathing becoming ragged as the situation began to sink in, and produced his cell phone, which yielded the same result.
Then the sound of more static began to issue from somewhere nearby. He turned toward the sound of the noise, finding a Geiger counter. Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Neutron radiation were all off the charts. James's breathing grew more ragged as the static from the counter grew more frequent.
“What?” he whispered, his brow furrowed. A chill ran down his spine.
He stood, deciding to wake the other members of the team, and started back down the corridor, hearing his own breath as if he were standing inside his own lungs. He rubbed his eyes, yawned, and then froze. The breathing continued.
A deep breath, inhaled, like a strong wind. Then a slower, just-lighter sighing exhalation. He glanced around; none of the doors were open that he could tell in the pale moonlight. It definitely didn't sound like snoring.
Then he was thrust into complete darkness. The ship lurched, creaked, and shifted slightly away from whatever force had pushed it.
“What the hell?” he muttered, feeling another chill go down his spine.
“Just clouds,” he told himself. He groped into the darkness, finding the wall, and guided himself blindly back to his quarters, where the gloomy green glow of his alarm clock provided just enough light to see. He spotted the glint from his black metal flashlight, grabbed it, clicked it on, and hurried back to the bridge.
He almost immediately turned it back off. There was something that sounded a lot like a growl on the same side the ship had been pushed from. Something scraped against the hull, and the ship jolted another few feet away.
Back in the corridor, he could hear the other members of the team stirring from their slumber.
He felt his pulse throbbing in his neck, his chest, and his arms. He could hear the beating of his own heart in his ears.
There was another growl, and then he realized he really was hearing a heartbeat- but not his own. He could hear it pulsing against the hull of the ship, like a horrific drum beat underlining the bass rhythm of the breathing. He felt his heart rising into his throat, and clutched the flashlight in his hand so hard his palm had already begun to sweat.
He clicked it on. Something screeched against the glass overlooking the ocean to port, as what was apparently a massive eyelid slid open against it. James went mute as a massive, yellow eye gazed in at him, the pupil contracting in the light.
There was a deafening roar that extended over the space of about thirty seconds, during which time all the other members of the survey team scrambled into the bridge, and glass everywhere shattered as if smashed with a baseball bat.
The eye pulled away from the ship, and James's body began to relax as the horrible breathing and heartbeat drifted away into silence. And then there was a series of blinding flashes of pale blue light.
