Depths of Courage: Corbin and Marella's Oceanic Battle Against Extraterrestrial Invaders

Chambers shivered. As Marella swam down toward the light, he noticed a slight tremor in her form. Chambers himself felt the same wave of coldness pass through him. He wondered if it was just the water temperature.

Or something else.

Marella had spoken of an energy signature; that she could sense a power somehow emanating from the light. She said that it called to her, and she did not know why.

She used to be scared of the ocean: of its expanse, of what might live in its depths. She had tried to push him away when they first met, thinking of him as an outsider at first, then an ally and finally as someone who understood her and accepted her for who she was. And now... Now she was like a moth drawn to a flame. A moth that would burn itself out in pursuit of a heat she did not understand and could not control.

Marella reached the source of light, and turned around slowly in place, taking it in with wide eyes and parted lips. "Corbin... It's beautiful..." She drifted closer to the source, but thankfully did not touch it. Her hand brushed against the surface of an invisible barrier, raising white bubbles from her fingers' tips where they contacted the surface. It was like some kind of force field or something, protecting whatever was inside from the outside world... Or maybe protecting the outside world from what was inside?

"Marella," Chambers said softly, approaching her slowly. "You need to stop this."

"Stop what?" Marella asked dreamily, almost plaintively, as if he'd said something that didn't make any sense at all. "I can't stop this," she added softly, moving closer still until she bumped up against the field again without penetrating it any further than before.

"You're my assistant," Chambers told her sternly, placing his hands on her shoulders and gently pushing her away from the barrier, "and you're also my friend. You need to go back now." He swam them both toward one side of the bubble surrounding whatever was inside, finding a seam somewhere between two walls that formed a narrow corridor leading away from where they were. He pushed them through into another chamber entirely -- this one larger than the first -- where he found the source of both light and energy: a sphere-shaped alien craft standing on three legs like some kind of tripodal insect towering over them menacingly at least six feet over their heads (he later measured it). There were no visible seams or joints in its hull; nothing that suggested it had been built by human hands or by any hands other than its own kind's either for all he knew or cared right then at any rate because his eyes were drawn inexorably upward toward its glowing heart instead of downward upon its hull as a whole. *A reactor?* he wondered idly as his mind raced ahead faster than his body ever could under these conditions... *Is it going to explode?* ... *Should I tell Marella about how one does not simply walk away unscathed from something like that?!* ... *What would happen if I told her anyway?!* ... *Does she really see me as just another employee or is there more to our relationship?!* ... *Can I afford to take any risks right now?!* ... *Will she follow my lead if I just start swimming away and hope I'm right?!* ... *How long do we have left?!* ... *What are we supposed to do here in this place with aliens and strange lights and this dangerous reactor all around us?!* ...