A D R I A N

The radio dies mid-sentence.
Her voice, half a breath, half a challenge cuts off in static, and the silence that follows is worse than any sound the storm could make. The monitors on the command desk flash red, beacon flicker gone. Beyond the window, the sea turns black, the breakwater lights already dissolving into rain.

“Skiff Two just vanished,” Rocco says behind me, voice low.

I’m not listening. All I can see is her out there in that small boat, stubborn, soaked, alive until she’s not.

I grab the headset, slam the transmit key hard enough to crack plastic. “Elara, respond.”

Nothing.

The horizon flashes once, white fire through ink. Then nothing again.

I’m already moving before the thought fully forms. If she’s in that storm, I’m in it too.

The wind hits like a fist the second I clear the dock. Rain needles sideways, stinging my face, salt biting the corners of my mouth. Floodlights along the marina sway, flickering in the gale. Every radio in the command post is screaming, but the only word that matters has already been said.. her name, before the channel went dead.

“RIB’s primed!” Rocco shouts over the storm, voice shredded by wind. “Skiff Two’s off-grid, last ping at three miles!”

I’m already moving. The world shrinks to metal, noise, and need. My boots slam the deck, water sheeting over the boards as I vault into the rigid-hull inflatable. Twin engines rumble beneath me, impatient.

“Ethan’s still with her?”

“Affirmative.”

“Then we bring them both back.”

Rocco doesn’t argue. He tosses the gear pack into the well-thermal blankets, med kit, spare headset and jumps in after me. I slam the throttle forward. The RIB tears off the dock, bow knifing through waves that feel half alive.

Spray blinds me, but the muscle memory is older than fear. I steer into the swell, not against it, quartering each crest so we ride rather than fall. The storm howls around us, trying to pry us apart, and still I push harder.

Rocco grips the railing beside me, soaked and cursing. “You sure about this, boss?”

“Not remotely,” I say, tightening my hands on the wheel. “But we’re going anyway.”

Lightning flashes, burning the sea silver-white. For a heartbeat, I see the breakwater vanish behind us, the island reduced to shadow and foam. Ahead nothing. Just darkness, and the faint echo of her last breath in my ears.

The headset hisses, half-alive. I adjust the frequency, heart punching hard against my ribs. Static. Then, faint: a voice, buried in the noise.

“Adrian”

I freeze. “Elara?”

No answer. Just the wind, roaring like a thing that knows my name.

“Hold on,” I whisper, to her, to the storm, to myself. “I’m coming.”

The engines scream higher as I push into the open channel, chasing the dying signal into the dark.

The GPS flickers, then steadies. “Got her beacon again!” Rocco shouts. “Range two miles and closing.”

I can almost breathe again. “Patch me through.”

He twists the comms dial, and her voice hits me like a current thin, fractured, alive.

“Skiff Two to base, visibility near zero Ethan adjusting course ”

“Elara.”

A pause, just static and breath. Then: “Adrian?”

Relief slams through me so hard it hurts. “Copy. Hold your heading north-east; you’re inside the cell’s outer ring. I’m inbound.”

“Negative.” Her tone is clipped, calm, maddening. “You can’t enter this wall. We’ll ride it out.”

“Like hell.”

“Don’t make me waste battery arguing,” she says. Even through distortion, I can picture the look with jaw tight, eyes fierce, hair in her face. “Focus on extraction once it passes.”

“You’re giving orders now?”

“Someone has to.”

Rocco mouths, she’s got you there. I glare at him silently.

The wind spikes. Static howls across the headset, and then her breathing fills my ear, short, controlled.

“Your pulse is fast,” I say before I can stop myself.

“Yours too,” she fires back.

Rocco pretends not to hear. The storm groans like it’s grinding its teeth.

“Beacon reads one mile,” he calls. “Visual any second.”

Lightning flares, and I catch it, the faint glow of their running light through sheets of rain. For a split second, I see the skiff pitching high on a wave, Ethan braced at the stern, Elara crouched at the console, hair streaming. Then darkness swallows them again.

“They’re alive,” Rocco says.

“Not for long if they stay in that trough.” I crank the wheel, angle toward them. “Stay on their six. I’ll call it in.”

“Tower’s dead, boss.”

I check, he’s right. The comms link to base is nothing but hiss. We’re alone out here.

“Elara,” I say, forcing calm. “Do you read?”

Her breath crackles back, ragged but steady. “Reading you.”

“Stay with me. Count it out. In.. two. Out four.”

For the first time she obeys without argument. She inhaled ghosts across the mic, syncing with mine. The sound fills the RIB’s cockpit, a weirdly intimate heartbeat close, the storm fading to a dull echo.

Rocco murmurs, “That’s some connection you two have.”

“Focus on radar,” I bite out, but my own voice sounds strange hoarse, too human.

Her next breath hits my ear again. “Still with you.”

“Good,” I whisper. “Don’t stop.”

“Beacon thirty meters port!” Rocco shouts.

Through the deluge, the strobe winks, a weak pulse tumbling across black water. They’re closer than I thought, almost parallel.

I ease the throttle, trying to match their drift without overtaking. The wind shoves the RIB sideways; every correction costs muscle. “Ethan, this is Valcrosse, can you hear me?”

A burst of static. Then Ethan’s voice, shredded but there: “We’ve got one man over, beacon secured.. systems failing..”

“Elara?”

“She’s..” The rest dissolves in a pop of interference.

Lightning rips the horizon, and for one blinding instant I see them clearly: Skiff Two broadside to the waves, Elara kneeling beside a limp figure while Ethan fights the wheel.

“Jesus,” Rocco breathes. “They’re right in it.”

“Hold heading,” I ordered. “We can’t reach them until that crest breaks.”

The roar builds, low, endless, monstrous. The sea lifts both boats, carries us like toys. I grip the console, muscles screaming. The air changes, heavier, charged.

“Static spike,” Rocco says. “That’s not good.”

The headset whines. I open my mouth to shout a warning..

and the sky detonates.

Lightning hits the water a breath away, a vertical blast that turns the world white. The concussion punches through my chest, slams the air out of my lungs. Every instrument on the RIB dies in a single electric heartbeat.

For a moment I’m blind, deaf, unmade.

“Elara!” I shout into dead comms. Nothing.

The afterimage burns behind my eyes: the skiff, the flare of light, the shape of her reaching for someone and then nothing at all.

Rocco’s hand lands on my shoulder, grounding. “The signal’s gone!”

“Reacquire!”

“I can’t. She’s off the grid.”

Rain whips across my face, hot and cold at once. The compass light flickers, dies. The world is sound and movement and fury, no direction, no reply.

“Elara!” I try again, throat raw. “Answer me!”

Only static answers.

Rocco swears softly. “Boss, look!”

I follow his pointing hand. The place where their beacon was glowing is now pure darkness. The sea boils, empty.

My heart stumbles once, then slams back into rhythm. “Get us closer.”

“Without instruments?”

“By feel.”

The wind screams its laughter. I shove the throttle forward anyway.

Rocco braces. “You’re insane.”

“Occupational hazard,” I mutter.

The RIB leaps another wave, and the world explodes again, a second lightning strike so close it burns the edges of the sky white. The charge crawls over the metal railing, a hiss of blue fire.

We duck instinctively. Ozone fills my lungs. The next flash is farther off, but the damage is done, radar fried, comms dead, direction lost.

“Elara…” I whisper into the void. “Hold on.”

Above us, thunder rolls like a closing door. The RIB crests another swell, water hammering against the hull, and the storm answers with one more blinding pulse, closer, hungrier, final.