Chapter 35-It’s here (2)

Chapter 35: 35-It’s here (2)

"The worst is yet to come."

At that thought, as though aligned with her, endless storms began forming across the ocean.

Black clouds spiraled across the horizon, swallowing the remaining daylight. Hurricanes erupted one after another, their winds tearing through the atmosphere with unnatural speed.

The storms collided, merged, and expanded into enormous rotating systems. Lightning flashed continuously inside the clouds, while winds screamed across the water and whipped the waves into towering walls.

The ocean no longer moved in a single direction. It churned beneath the hurricanes, rising and collapsing in every direction at once.

The system’s warning messages filled the screens.

[Multiple extreme storms detected.]

[Hurricane activity increasing worldwide.]

[Wind speeds exceeding historical limits.]

Aymara stared at the darkening horizon. The tsunamis had drowned the coastlines. The storms would tear apart everything that remained.

She didn’t have any major feelings towards the doom that was upon them. The second time around, it didn’t seem as scary.

---

Inside his room, Nathaniel woke to the shaking. His eyes opened immediately, and for several seconds he lay still. Then another tremor passed through the ship, making his brows furrow.

"This isn’t normal."

Even by his calculations, the apocalypse shouldn’t have been this bad from the start.

He pushed himself upright, though his breathing had become slightly uneven. He reached for the water beside his bed, but before he could drink, the ship tilted again. Nathaniel’s eyes widened.

"What is happening?"

He grabbed the edge of the bed and then heard something that sounded like a distant siren, not from the city, but from the ship. It was coming from the emergency system.

Nathaniel’s scientific instincts immediately took over. He looked toward the window. The ocean outside was enormous and wrong. The water level seemed impossibly high, and waves moved across the horizon like mountains.

His expression changed as his mind began calculating. The seismic activity, the waves, the pressure changes, the strange weather, the temperature anomalies, and the ocean’s behavior all came together.

His calculations had been correct and the apocalypse had arrived but he had been a little off when it came to how bad it would be right from the start.

He slowly whispered, "She’s right."

The words left him with a bitterness he couldn’t hide. For days, he had treated his own certainty as another mystery to solve. He had questioned the numbers, challenged every assumptions, and searched for the missing explanation behind every impossible warning and Aymara’s strange behavior. Now, he had one.

Now the evidence was outside his window and she had known before he did.

The realization made his stomach tighten. He had been right about the science, but she had been right about the future. That distinction frightened him more than the waves.

The door suddenly opened, and Aymara rushed inside. "Nate!"

Nathaniel looked at her. There was no anger in his eyes, only shock and the uncomfortable awareness that he owed her an apology for playing dumb earlier but he wasn’t ready to give it so he didn’t.

Aymara hurried to his side. "Are you hurt?"

"No, I am not," he answered honestly. Seeing the worry in her eyes, he felt a little moved.

"Are you having trouble breathing? Are you dizzy?"

"No."

She immediately checked his oxygen level anyway. Nathaniel watched her move and said nothing. Her hands were steady, but he noticed the faint tremor in her fingers as she adjusted the monitor. She was afraid. She had simply learned how to hide it better than anyone he knew.

Then he looked toward the window. "The tsunamis are here and they are far bigger than I anticipated," he changed the topic.

Aymara nodded. "It’s started. I told you that the world as we know it was going to be destroyed."

His face became solemn. "How far are we from land?"

"Far enough to be safe," she said, finishing up with the check up.

It felt nice to be able to sit with him and talk and it was easier now that they had cleared the air a little bit and had managed to get passed one of the barriers standing between them.

"Your ship... Can it withstand the force of the tsunamis and the storms?"

"I’d like to think it’s a fortress."

He looked at her. "What?"

Aymara smiled faintly. "I don’t call it a ship anymore," she replied.

Another enormous wave struck, and the room trembled. Nathaniel instinctively reached for the bed, but Aymara grabbed his shoulder.

"It’s okay," she assured him. "You don’t have to worry."

Nathaniel stared at her. She looked completely calm and it was not because she didn’t understand what was happening, but because she had prepared for it.

He looked around his room at the medical equipment, emergency supplies, reinforced walls, and sophisticated systems. It all suggested immense prior preparations.

Everything, she had done was proof that she had truly known in advance and had secured her survival.

"Aymara."

"Yes?"

"Even for a dream, don’t you think your preparations is a little bit too advance. How did you know to be so detailed?"

She looked at him, and a long silence followed. For one moment, her expression softened with something almost like guilt.

Nathaniel noticed it and felt a sharp, irrational frustration. If she was guilty, then she knew exactly how impossible this looked. She knew what she was withholding.

"I’ll tell you everything," she said and Nathaniel waited. "But not right now," she added.

"Why not?" He was curious and as a scientist, it was hard for him to not feed his curiousity.

"Because you’re safe."

He gave a humorless laugh. "Safe because you knew this was coming and made plans and "I had a dream" doesn’t quite cover it."

Aymara’s eyes flickered. "Yes and I need you to focus on the moment and enjoy it the best way you can," she offered him a bright smile. "There’s no need for you to have all the answers right now."

The simple answer unsettled him more than a denial would have.

She gently pulled the blanket higher around his shoulders. "Right now, I need to make sure you’re comfortable."

"Don’t change the subject. Aymara, I am truly interested in what the truth is so don’t hide it from me by changing the topic."

"I’m not."

"You are. You keep doing that." His voice sharpened despite his weakness. "You tell me enough to make me trust you, then stop before I understand anything and that isn’t fair. I need to know what it is that you won’t bring yourself to tell me."

Aymara’s hand paused against the blanket. For the first time, her composure cracked. "I know that you have a curious mind and it is one of the things I love about you but..."

"Do you?"

Her gaze dropped. "I know what it feels like to be told the truth too late, Nate. Trust me, I do."

Nathaniel studied her face. There was pain beneath the words, old and deeply buried. He wanted to press harder. He wanted to demand every answer.

But outside, the ocean rose like a wall, and inside, she was still checking his pulse as though keeping him alive mattered more than defending herself.

His anger faltered. "Well, your dream was right," he said quietly. "About all of it."