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The water tastes like copper and old coins. Jrlb doesn’t have time to spit. He lunges, a frantic, desperate dive that slams his body into the silt-thick slurry of the marsh. Above him, the surface is a chaotic blur of violent magenta and gold—the xanthoria are shrieking, their carnivorous cilia whipping the water into a frenzy, searching for the soft, permeable heat of his skin. He holds his breath until his lungs burn, the pressure of the depths squeezing his ribs, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm against his sternum. He is a ghost in the muck, suspended in a suffocating, sulfurous silence while the predators snap and hiss just inches above his crown.
A sudden, violent grip seizes his wrist.
Jrlb nearly bolts, a primal reflex sparking in his nerves, but the hold is absolute—a crushing, possessive clamp that anchors him. He looks up through the murky veil to see Barney. Barney isn't swimming so much as he is carving through the sludge, his expression a mask of jagged intensity. There is a raw, predatory edge to the way Barney looks at him, a territorial heat that rivals the danger above. Barney’s chest is heaving, the muscles of his shoulders bunched and tight, still vibrating from the adrenaline of his own flight.
He had been hunted, too. The memory of that thing—the Piggy—flashes through their shared panic. That pink, orbiting void of a creature, a singular, unblinking eye and a smirk so vapid it feels like a physical insult. It had chased Barney through the reeds with a mindless, circling persistence, driving him deeper into the rot of the marsh until he found Jrlb sinking into the dark.
Barney doesn't speak; he doesn't have to. He yanks Jrlb forward, the force of the movement dragging Jrlb’s body flush against his own. The friction is electric, a collision of wet skin and desperate heat. Barney guides him with a dominant, steering pressure, pushing him through the underwater labyrinth of mangroves and decaying peat.
They break the surface in a gasp of shared oxygen, stumbling blindly into the hidden sanctuary of the encampment. Barney doesn't let go. He shoves Jrlb back against the rough bark of a sentinel tree, his hand still locked around Jrlb’s wrist, pinning him there. They are both shaking, drenched in the filth of the swamp, their breaths mingling in a hot, jagged cloud. The terror of the hunt transforms instantly into something sharper, something visceral—a raw, pulsing tension that vibrates between them, heavier and more dangerous than the monsters in the marsh.