July 1st, 2021

2100 hours

Robyn listened to the drone of the outboard motor and willed herself to stay alert. The soothing hum of the boat as it jetted over the waves synchronously was unexpectedly relaxing, and she found it hard not to simply drift off to sleep in time with the tide.

She shivered, despite the thick, heavy blanket covering her. Upon realizing that the doctor was boating back to the rig, she'd swiftly scrambled onto the deck and found the closest, most inconspicuous hiding place: the puffy quilt hid her slim form almost perfectly, the downside being that she had to tuck her legs up to her chest tightly. The position itself didn't bother her, for short periods of time. Robyn was a very avid yoga student, and in her spare time spent most of her days at the gym.

Regardless, the length of time she spent with her kneecaps nearly jammed up her nose, with the cold, damp night air chilling the sea-spray soaked blanket was unbearable.

Come on, she thought, goose bumps rising on her frigid skin. She could no longer feel her extremities and cursed aloud, directing her frustration at a particularly irritating agent.

Quinn had no right to expect this of her. She was an ordinary citizen, content to spend her days protecting one of God's last true creations. The most exciting thing she ever did was watch in awe as the baby turtles hatched, cheering words of encouragement at them as they struggled helplessly toward water while scavenging sea birds flocked around them. Every now and then, if one got too close to a hapless turtle, a hungry gull would get sideswiped harshly by her beach umbrella. It wasn't ethical: she figured that for all the good natural selection did, sometimes nature needed a bit of a push in the right direction. That was her attempt at undoing the wrong already unleashed upon the world by man.

Though at the moment she felt like one of those soft, struggling creatures. She was completely out of her element, without direction and hanging on to a thin semblance of purpose. The soft, pliable shell of protection she had placed around her was abruptly removed the moment that dark haired, sex magnet had entered her life. She had been completely content in her self-made reclusion: she poked lightly at the biosphere of solace surrounding her, the thrill of dangerous possibilities barely kept at bay. Robyn sometimes challenged her aura, teasing the thought of doing something rash and out of character. But always, at the last second, she pulled back.

Quinn ruptured that swaddling layer and exposed her like a raw nerve. Robyn supposed that Quinn didn't really know how to interact with others, neither did he seem considerate of her limitations, nor the fact that his expectations should reflect her capabilities instead of his. Metaphorically, Quinn seemed to be one who would pour gasoline on a burning building; Robyn wouldn't have been in the vicinity of the doomed structure in the first place.

She was angry at him for disrupting her charmed life. Of course, it was an illusion created to mask her deeply disturbed psyche. Her therapist was blatantly shocked that Robyn hadn't gone postal after her ordeal. Denial, he'd written on her chart, and scheduled her for weekly visits that lasted months after that initial meeting. She didn't attend. Robyn attributed her lack of attendance to the size of her wallet in comparison to the shrink's fees, but she knew the truth: she didn't want to face it. That admission would force her to live her life rather than paint a picture of sanity for those around her.

Now, she truly believed Quinn to be the insane one as she huddled her freezing extremities to her core, attempting to warm them in the salty, wet blanket. Her nose clogged with the moisture in the air, but she could still smell the moldy fabric, noting that it smelled slightly of fornication as well.

"God..." She groaned, voice inaudible over the roar of the sea.

She let out a sigh of relief as she felt the boat shudder and slow: she sensed, rather than heard, Dr. Urskin stopping the boat.

She waited several minutes after the boat came to a stop, his frantic footsteps scrambling over the damp deck. The solid thud of shoes on metal indicated to her that he was making his way up the ladder and onto the rig.

Robyn cursed her stiff, rigid limbs. She wasn't in a hurry: after all, she knew where he would be going on the rig. She remembered from the footage she'd watched in Quinn's office. Second floor, hallway to the right, past the fork behind the mess hall, located in the rear of the structure, facing south. She wasn't sure just what she would find there.

That trepid thought crept through her subconscious and she struggled to shake it off, willing her dead legs to move.

She disentangled her sore body from her cramped hiding place and stood abruptly, nearly collapsing with fatigue as she took her first step. Robyn cursed at her cold-weakened ankles. She screwed up her face in determination and made her way shakily to the edge of the boat. The ladder was two feet away, and as she took a firm step onto the lower rung her heel caught in the hem of her dress. She slipped, legs flailing wildly with nothing under them, body weight supported by her trembling arms.

She felt decrepit, hanging there vulnerably over the deep water with her body refusing to move.

You can do this, Robyn. Her wrists trembled with the effort of supporting her frame and she decided it was time to move, before her tired body failed and she plummeted into the sea.

This morbid thought shocked her into action and she tentatively eased her hand up, grasping frantically for a hold. Her fingers met something she assumed was covered in moss: Robyn couldn't feel the object, she had long lost the sensitivity in her fingers. As she grasped it, the structure didn't move, and she almost cried with relief. Her body burned with new found drive and she began to ascend the ladder. Her other hand reached out and tried to meet the other, fingers fluttering over the open air. Where was it?

She was badly disoriented. The lack of warmth and the conditions she'd been subjected to the last few hours had weakened her body and mind considerably. Her fingertips briefly brushed against a slippery rung; her relief was short lived as her stiff digits failed miserably to latch on and slipped. At the same time, her left foot slid off of her foothold. The impractical heels she'd been forced to wear, against her protests, were hindering her.

In a split second of time her body hung precariously over the open sea, held onto the rig by one hand. She stopped breathing as she watched the swirling black water beneath her, terror clouding her already hysterical brain. A single arm rested between safety and a plunge to certain death: if not by drowning, by hypothermia. She watched in horror as her other three limbs hung limply over the vast nothingness, the coal black water churning around the rigging, teasing her resolve. How easy it would have been to just let go. All her worries would be forgotten, replaced by a simple nothingness.

That's not what Barry would have wanted, though, and Robyn struggled to grasp at the far reaches of her cognizance for a profoundly needed reassurance. To her surprise she found it, in the image of a haughty Quinn berating her as she utterly failed him. That was unthinkable: the very idea she would fail to prove vital to his investigation created a burning determination within her. She gulped resolutely, body sagging weakly against the rail as she finally swung back. Robyn was panicking now, hot fear flowing though her veins as she recalled what it felt like to be suspended, in those depths, with something monstrous yanking her farther from the surface. Absolute terror began to overtake her and she struggled to pull in harsh, compressed breaths.

Where was the goddamn rung? She felt tears of relief run down her face as her useless fingers groped wildly for a hold and finally met something solid. She grasped whatever it was tightly, body shaking wildly for several minutes, afraid if she moved too quickly she would slip into the churning depths below her. With both hands up a few levels, she struggled to pull herself up and managed to find a rung with her foot. Slowly, one hand over the other, one foot after another, she crawled up and over the rail and fell onto the chilled deck, her body utterly used up.

She struggled to take a deep breath as she propped herself on her elbows, sick with the near terror of impending death. The nervous churning of her stomach reached her throat and she wretched, vomiting onto the wet deck.

"Damn these shoes." She cursed, wiping her mouth and kicking off the strappy sandals. Her arches nearly cried with relief as she stretched her cramped toes. She let the cool breeze calm her shaking nerves for a moment until the chill reminded her that she was soaking wet. Tentatively, Robyn placed her naked feet under her and stood.

She began to hobble resolutely across the platform, barely keeping her knees from buckling. Everything below her belly button was completely numb, and her arms were quickly following suit. She needed somewhere warm to rest, someplace to recuperate. More importantly, she was in desperate want of dry clothes.

She smiled as an idea formed in her mind, and she made her way toward the utility room, ignoring her aching, spent limbs.