text: I plunged deep into the river, the force of the water carrying me sideways. My body tumbled in the rapids, water pushing and punching me in every direction; buoyancy smothered out by the weight. I found the bottom of the river. Rotating my feet, I pushed hard against the bed, and shot up, breaking the surface. I gulped down air as I saw the giant mouth of the man-made cave hovering above me. The water swept me into the darkness. However, ahead, I could see a thin halo of blue, a small patch of shade brighter than the total blackness around me. The spot grew bigger, until I could make out the cloud-covered night sky and the grassy banks on either side. As I emerged from the tunnel, the grass banks looked climbable, but the pace of the river was too much to make clinging on to damp grass an option. I looked around for something to grab onto when I heard a voice. “Ferdinand!” I turned to see Alessia standing on the river bank, pointing to a branch that overhung the rapids.I swam over to the bank and reached up, grabbing onto the tree. The force of the water was such that the branch bent slight, but it held. Alessia walked over and held out a hand, and with one fierce grunt she pulled me out of the water. My back hit the ground, as I lay there, panting. The cold night air latched onto my wet clothes, as my chest tingled with the dissipating heat. Alessia sat down beside me. Her hair was soaking, falling like a long black sheet from the sides of her face, stray hairs clinging to damp skin. She pinched at her water-logged clothes, trying to stop them clinging to her. “We need to get moving. We’ll freeze if we stay put too long.” I forced myself to sit up. “Now what?” “Find out where we are, and hopefully get off this godforsaken island.” We climbed up the slope. On top, the land was flat. The thick forest had disappeared, replaced by low lying shrubs that broke through compacted brown dirt. And everywhere, there were buildings. We were in the middle of a large settlement, encompassed by scattered one storey buildings with wood-panelled walls. All of them were derelict. Rot and erosion had done their work over a couple of hundred years. Trees grew through the broken floors inside, bursting out of holes in the roof. The worst of the homes were little more than piles of splinters, plants munching on the island’s history until there was nothing left of civilization to consume. What were once homes, businesses, offices, were now little more than shells reclaimed by nature Looking between the buildings though, in the distance, I could see a small glow of light, a gentle orange tone projecting against the greys and blacks above. It was the unmistakable glow of streetlights. “That’s... not nature,” I said, looking towards it. “None of this is,” Alessia replied, looking around in a full circle. “Any ideas of where we should head?” I tilted my head towards the light in the distance. “Whoever’s causing that probably ain’t friendly.” Alessia pulled back one corner of her mouth as she spoke. “Probably. But, at least for the first time we’ll *know* what we’re walking towards.” Alessia took a deep breath, the damp clothes heaving with her body. “I guess.” We started walking through the forgotten settlement, passing by the shadows of a former time. I eyed up the buildings as we passed, looking for clues as to what had happened. All I could tell was that while the town had been forsaken a long time ago, the buildings left standing were too rudimentary to be of the old world. These were homes built with available, local materials in the aftermath of the Archipelago’s birth. This town had been abandoned, but in the new times, not the old. We came to what was once a crossroads. Four clear paths stretched out at right angles between the buildings. In the middle, there was a small set of stones arranged in a circle, a raised bed of soil behind it. In the middle there was a metal pole that had listed over the years of neglect, the soil rising slightly at the base. Affixed to its top were of series of signs with crudely drawn paint. *CIVILISATION IS OUR SIN. RETURN TO NATURE.* *NATURE IS BEAUTY. TECHNOLOGY IS CORRUPTION.* Past a few more homes we came across an old fence. Where it met the road, there was a large gateway some three metres high, an arch across the top. From what I could tell, once upon a time, the arch likely displayed a town name or some other marker. But the details had rusted away so that only jagged edges could be seen. The gate’s hinges had long since rust away, and the gate collapsed. However, the two halves didn’t lie on the road where they fell. Instead they had been dragged off into the shrubs at either side. This path was cleared after the city had fallen. We passed a few more buildings, and yet more signs: stakes stuck into the ground; paint on the sides of homes; scrawlings drawn over metal and wood that once indicated something else - a storefront, a direction. *WE NEED ONLY WHAT NATURE CAN PROVIDE. ALL ELSE IS MALICE.* *We were not made to control our environment but to live in harmony with it.* *NATURE IS PEACE.* *Humanity must be one with nature. Only there can heaven be found.* Eventually the signs ended, and the lights that had drawn us were now distinct bulbs. Iridescent light breaking through the darkness of the night, casting across the street. We began walking more cautiously, our stance crouched slightly into the ground. I walked up to a building and leaned against it, feeling the firm wood push back against me. It wasn’t rotten. It was maintained, varnished, inhabited. The settlement was at the base of a steep valley with large hills on either side. There were perhaps only twenty buildings here, but they were also much larger than the derelict husks we had passed. Yet one structure still dwarfed the others. It was perhaps only a couple of storeys tall, though the lack of windows made it hard to judge. However, it was at least sixty metres in length, stretching out across the open dirt till its back met against the start of a steep incline at the edge of the forest. My eyes glanced across the construction till my vision caught something at the front. Peering between the buildings, tracing the dirt path at the edge of the lights, there was a point where the ground changed. It wasn’t stationary. Instead, it swayed, and glimmered, with soft tones in waves. “Water,” I whispered to Alessia. “It has to be the sea.” “Not much good if we can’t sail it,” Alessia said. “Still, you’re right. Head to the coast, see what we find.” We set off once more, skulking between the buildings, pausing every few metres to check for any other signs of life. However, we seemed to be alone. Whoever lived here was likely asleep, and we had to hope it would stay that way. Soon we came across an open courtyard covered in electric lights that lit up the square like a stage. Ahead of us was a fifty metre sprint through bright beams across the centre of the settlement. “We can’t walk through there,” I whispered. “We’ll go round the back of that one.” Alessia pointed to the giant building off to the right of the courtyard. “Okay.” I pushed off from our spot, but Alessia grabbed my hand, and pulled me back. “Wait.” “What?” I replied, my eyes darting around me as my back lay flush against the wooden wall. Alessia pointed out across the courtyard once more, down to where the water was. “There, look closely, there’s something in the water.” I followed her finger towards the rippling light, till I could see the black void where something sat on top of the sea. “A rock?” I shrugged. “No,” Alessia smiled. “Just above it, you can see something rocking back and forth. A mast. It’s a boat Ferdinand. A small one, but a boat.” “You sure?” “I’ve seen a thousand boats in night seas, I’d recognize that rocking anywhere.” She turned to me and punched my arm with a grin across her face. “Ow.” I rubbed the impact piint. “Okay. We’ve got to get there first.” “Sure. Round the back of the building, sneak across the far end of the courtyard, then finally, we can leave.” Alessia grabbed my shoulders as she said the last bit, her grin briefly morphing into laughter. “Let’s go.” We darted back across the dirt, trying to keep to the shadows, avoiding anywhere the streetlights touched. I glanced across the courtyard as I scampered, but still we remained in luck. We remained alone. I slid up against the large building. I stuck so hard to the wall I could feel the splinters scrape against my back and the vertical slats pressing against my spine. We continued round. At the back, none of the streetlights’ energy reached, and we were once more returned to the natural gloom. Black shadows crept across an indistinguishable ground. The forested hill encroached towards us, no longer held back by the power of human technology, confining us to the few metres’ sanctuary between the trees and the wooden wall to our left. As we walked along the narrow corridor I noticed a patch of ground that was lighter than the earth surrounding it. A momentary break, perhaps half a metre wide, where I could make out the brown earth from the black of the night. It was a ditch scraped out from the dirt. The bottom of the wooden panelling was snapped off as well, creating a hole through to the inside of the building. The electric lights inside leaked out of the space, filling the whole with its yellow hum. I stopped by the small channel, leaning in closer. I could see scratch marks. “You don’t think... the varg?” I said, my voice uncertain. “Nah,” Alessia whispered back, scrunching her nose. “Marks are too small. Fox, dog. But nothing like those things.” I stood back up and continued, turning the corner to the far side of the building. I walked maybe three or four paces when I heard the crunch of a foot against the grainy dirt up ahead. “Someone’s coming,” I whispered. I listened for half a second, trying to tell which direction the shoes were heading. A few more paces confirmed the fear - towards us. We turned and retreated to the back of the building, once more huddled in the darkness by the woods, the steep bank of trees leering over us. “Hello,” came a voice from the otherside of the building. The footsteps continued. The slow crunching of boot on dirt creeping closer. “What are you doing?” A second voice called out. “I thought I saw someone. Go let the others know. Someone may have come down the river.” The footsteps began again. This time walking down the side of the building. Then they went silent; shoes transitioning from hard ground to soft grass. They were heading our way. I knew it. Even if I couldn’t hear them. “Now what?” I whispered, trying to remain near silent while hiding the panic in my lungs. “Inside,” Alessia nodded to the small ditch. “Will we even fit?” “It’s that or run to the forest.” I looked at the trees. I looked at the black spaces between. And I imagined the snarling jaws that may be in them. “You go first.” Alessia bent down to the crack in the wall, lifting the wooden slats to create a few extra inches of room. I crouched down, prone on the floor, and began slithering through, trying not to audibly grunt as my body writhed along the dirt surface. My shirt snagged against the broken wood. I tried to pull hard against the friction with my arms, but it wouldn’t budge. One more pull, and I heard a tear. The smallest rip that sounded like a gun going off. However, now free, I wriggled through. As soon as I made it, I turned and lifted up the panel for Alessia to squeeze through. She bent down and began wrestling through the hole, her smaller frame making the squeeze that bit easier. As soon as I saw a hand make it through, I bent down and dragged her to the inside, her body scraping across the dirt. “You okay?” I asked. Alessia got to her feet and brushed herself off. “Yeah. What is this place, you think?” We were in a small room surrounded by crates. I walked over to the nearest one and stared inside. Empty bottles neatly laid out in a grid pattern. The next one had various glass jars placed as uniformly as they could be. “Looks like some kind of warehouse,” I said. To our left, I could see an archway at the corner of the room leading through to the next part of the building. I walked over and peered around the corner, the room was empty. This room was bigger. While crates lined the sides of the room, they were also dotted around the middle, placed in random positions. Along the walls there were doorways to other parts of the warehouse, the labyrinth slowly widening around us. Alessia walked off to one side, inspecting a few of the crates. She looked over the edge of one, and pursed her lips, letting out a long, silent whistle. “What?” I asked. “They're not short on weaponry.” I walked over and looked inside. It was filled with guns. Some simple pistols, others much larger than anything I’d ever seen, needing at least two hands to merely lift up. There was no sorting, no organization, just a large pile of ready-to-go death. A place to grab whatever took your fancy and head on out. Looking over I could see the next few crates were filled with ammo. Alessia bent down and picked up a pistol. “You ever fired a gun before?” “No.” I said, recoiling slightly. “I used one on Kadear, to threaten. But... never fired it.” “Then let’s hope to keep that record. But just in case.” She walked over to the ammo and picked out a box, loading the bullets into the gun. “You ever fired one?” I asked. “Never in anger. Nothing good can come from making killing easier. But right now...” She handed me the loaded gun and reached in and grabbed another similar looking pistol. “I’m not sure I even know how to use one,” I muttered, looking at the weapon in my hand. It felt heavy, and my sweaty palms were slick against the handle. “Point it at the thing you want to go away, and pull the trigger,” Alessia replied, loading ammo into her own gun. “It’s not that simple.” “I know. But right now, it might need to be.” I kept the gun in my right hand, holding it by the butt, keeping my finger as far away from the trigger as I could. We approached another archway. I peered round the entrance, checked the room, and snuck into another empty space. One step closer to the front of the building. My eyes were immediately drawn to a mess of cables on the left-hand wall. “You know what that is?” Alessia said. “We had one on Kadear at the Citadel. Distributes electricity.” I pointed to a thick cable that ran out of the ground up to the clutter of metal boxes and exposed wires. “Wherever they get their electricity from, comes in from there, then gets sent to everywhere else.” “Interesting, but...” “We need to make a break for it across the courtyard right? If we find the right line we could turn off all the lights outside. They’ll just think it’s a broken wire and we can use the darkness to escape.” “That will alert them to something being wrong,” Alessia said, rolling her head from side-to-side. “By the time they fix the lights we’ll be three hundred metres out to sea.” “You think you can figure out which wire is those lights?” “Maybe,” I said. I looked once more at the chaotic circuitry, a complex web I had no true hope of understanding. But I was determined that I could reason my way to a solution. The system was the same principle as the one I had seen on Kadear, though this one looked a lot more delicate. I remembered how that circuit had killed Mary. And the exposed wires, the frayed, burnt ends of metal, all made certain I kept my distance from the board here. From the top corner of the board, I saw a long snaking cable, stretch off across the wall. “Maybe that one...?” I said, trying to seem knowledgeable, but truthfully acting mostly off instinct. “See where it goes.” I traced the line until it buried through the wall. I followed it into the next room. I stopped and looked up. Ahead of me were five people. Their faces and skin were pale. They wore long white cassocks that flowed freely down from their shoulders, brushing against the ground, hiding their form, as though they floated. The woman at the head of the group, stared into my eyes, and raised her hand. She pointed towards me, a gun clasped in the ends of her fingers. The Leviathans. \ Next chapter released 11th November.