Vanguard is under attack.

Vanguard. Is. Under. Attack.

Even as the governor steps away to bark orders at someone else, the words scroll through my brain like an annoying chorus of doom. But what kind of attack are we talking about here, anyway?

Maybe it's another confused whale like the one that did a bit of damage not long ago. Or it could just be a new jellyfish bloom descending on the base, which can screw with the water filtration system and the movement of Skippers, but is more annoying than anything else.

Both could also be considered somewhat of a threat, or technically even an attack, but only if you were going to be extra dramatic. Perhaps there's no attack at all and it's all a big misunderstanding. Or, if I'm being realistic, Bradford could just by lying. It wouldn't be the first time.

"Right!" I exclaim to no one in particular as my training as a soldier kicks in and I turn to face the girls. "You two help Dr. Scott up and take him inside. I'm going to—"

"You'll go with them and get that shoulder looked at," Dad interrupts, extending his hand down to me.

I take it with my good one and use the leverage to help myself up beside him. A sharp pain radiates from the wound on my opposite side, but I suck in a breath and ignore it.

"That's a negative, Dad. I need to find out everything I can about what's going on with the base. Even if Bradford thinks fleeing is the only option, there might be a way I can help her," I say as my sister and Nelly pull her dad to his feet.

"You're not stopping us from taking the ferry," one of the governor's men says, putting his hand on the holster at his hip.

I look at the weapon and then up at the guy with a 'what are you gonna do, shoot me?' expression.

"I got that," I say before pushing past the men still standing in my way. "Go do your thing and let me do mine."

I don't look back as I head toward the terminal building, but I expect resistance even as I pull the door open. It doesn't come.

Inside, there's chaos. It's like someone pulled a fire alarm and everyone had different instructions on what to do. I guess this is what it's like to be given a small amount of time to grab everything you need to start a new life thousands of miles away in an unknown land while trying not to worry about the people you know who will be left behind.

Or the ones you've never even met, but who will die a tragic death underneath the water, giving a convenient diversion while you sneak away in the only submersible that could have helped them.

Bile rises to my throat as images of Dunstan, Ann-Marie and even Roger appear before me. They—and thousands of others I've known all of my life and have grown up with—are trapped in our underwater home with no way to escape. If there is anything I can do to save them, I have to try. But first I have to know what we're even dealing with.

Looking for a familiar face that I can both trust and who might have the necessary intel, I hit the jackpot.

"Ray!" I yell across the room to my buddy who's tinkering with the wireless radio.

He turns around and drops his shoulders in relief. "Oh, thank goodness, man. We thought you weren't going to make it back. You could have radioed in code or some—"

"Forget all of that," I mumble while hurriedly giving him a bro-hug. Explaining what we've seen and done over the last few days would take too much time and the only thing that matters now is the present. "Listen. Bradford told us about Vanguard."

Ray pulls away and throws up his hands. "I'm sorry, Will. I know it's the wrong decision, but I don't see any way I can get out of piloting the ferry away from here. You better believe I've tried to come up with—"

I shake my head as I cut him off. "No. Wait. This time I actually agree with the governor. If there's danger coming, the smartest thing right now is to get as many people away from here as possible."

"You do?" he asks with a shocked expression. "But what about all of that 'every single life matters' stuff earlier?"

"There's not much good in trying to save everyone if you end up saving no one," I say, thinking back to my previous conversations with Nelly and later with my dad. "Unless of course we're all overreacting since no one has actually mentioned what exactly is going on down there."

Ray rubs the stubble on his chin as he pauses. "I wish we were overreacting, but it's bad. It's really bad," he finally says.

I've just about had it with everyone being so cryptic, so I step to the wireless and turn the knobs to look for a signal. "How do you know? Do we still have contact with them? What's going—"

He gently pushes me aside as the device emits a quiet static.

"Will, stop. You're not going to reach them on this," Ray says. "Only the transmitter back in O-town can get through since Vanguard's communication towers were taken out."

My eyes widen at this choice of words. "Taken out? By what?"

"I thought Bradford told you."

"He said there was an attack and that this place was next. That's all I know."

Ray scoffs, probably because it's not often that he finds out something before me. "You're not going to believe this, but—"

"It was a submarine," Nelly says as she walks towards us. "Probably the same one that you saw, Will. I knew you weren't imagining it."

Ray looks at her and then me in confusion, but not because she blew his big reveal. "You saw it? When? How?"

I wave him off. Why does that matter when it's here now?

"Probably five or six hours ago," I say as my mind creates scenes with the now known enemy. My god, what type of damage could a submarine be doing to my home right now? The only way to know is to find out from those in the thick of it so I pull up a chair and fiddle with the wireless again. "I need to talk to Commander Kiefer."

"I told you that Vanguard can't receive your signal," Ray says with the annoyance of talking to a petulant child. "Plus we've been getting increasingly less frequent updates through even the more powerful equipment. It's possible that by the time you got to it, their comms would be completely down."

I barely comprehend that he's basically admitting that they've given up hope as I focus on finding the right frequency, but I do catch the last few words.

"That's why every second counts," I say as the static suddenly stops in favor of silence. "Bingo."

"What channel is this?" Ray asks, his tone unsure of what my find means.

I try not to get too excited just yet, but I can't hold back a smile. "Fleet reconnaissance."

Ray puts his hand on my shoulder. Luckily, he picks the one without the bullet hole. "The Skippers?" he whispers in awe. "But how? Those have even less range than the base on a good day."

I chuckle and point at Dunstan who's playing chess at a table in the corner. "I had that genius of a man right there add a little extra juice to my marine transmitter a while back."

"So that's your submersible on the other end?" Nelly asks from behind, reminding me that she's still here, too. When I nod, she continues. "And you think someone is there to answer?"

I take another deep breath. "Only one way to find out," I say, before leaning into the microphone and pressing the 'transmit' button. "This is Wilhelm at surface base calling Skipper nine-nine-three. Anyone there, over?"

We wait silently, watching the wireless as if the answer will be seen, not heard. Meanwhile, few of the others wander over to us. Not getting a reply from my craft would have been bad enough without an audience, but I can't fault them for being curious.

"Don't get your hopes up," Ray says. He could be addressing just me or the entire crowd now behind us, but I can't help giving him the stink eye.

It makes him smile.

"Look, I know you're always the optimist, sometimes to a fault," he says in return. "But we both know that the best-case scenario for a non-answer is that your Skipper is sitting empty in its hangar bay."

"What's the worst case?" asks someone from the back.

"That they're all dead, dumbass," comes the almost reply similarly from our audience to a chorus of mostly groans and a few weak chuckles.

But that's not true. Everyone being dead down there might be a blessing if there's no way to bring them to the surface again. Especially if the base is irreparably damaged, slowly suffocating or dying of thirst would be a much worse fate.

Which is why I have to continue to try to make contact, so once again I press the 'transmit' button. "This is Wilhelm at surface base calling Skipper nine-nine-three. Anyone there, over?" I ask and sit back, mentally counting the seconds.

One, two, three . . . twenty-two . . . thirty . . ..

The continued silence is deafening so I'm grateful when Nelly fills it with a question.

"What's the probability of it even being out there? I mean, don't the pilots fish in shifts and even if your craft was needed, how—"

"It's S.O.P.," Ray answers before I have a chance. "Standard operating procedure."

"When there's any type of threat to the base, the first course of action is to get all of the operable Skippers out and away from potential danger," I add, knowing that Ray's answer is way too vague for anyone but me to understand. "So there's a very good probability, actually."

If only someone would answer my call, I think, trying to keep my increasing frustrations at bay. But as if they'd read my mind, the silence of the wireless suddenly turns to a brief crackle.

A collective gasp surrounds me and I reach for the microphone again.

"This is Wilhelm at surface base calling Skipper nine-nine-three. Anyone there, over?"

The crackle sounds again before there's a high-pitched noise, followed by a click.

"Yes! Hello! This is An—," says a girl before becoming garbled, but we've spent enough time together for me to immediately recognize Anne Marie. Luckily, we only miss a few syllables before the signal returns, but then my heart sinks at the desperation in the rest of her words.

"Nine-three. Thank goodness it's you, Will. Please tell me you have a way to help us. Over."