I drove down as fast as I could, hoping a breakneck speed could help me forget about the numbing unease of the entire situation, but it didn’t work. Especially because I noticed the blue orb was gone when I got down to the beach and stopped the four wheeler right at the edge of the rising water line.

“What the fuck?” I whispered out loud into the dark waves.

Maybe I felt the wind from its motion, or my body just sensed a presence from behind me, but I knew something was about to hit me before I even felt it knock me off of the four wheeler and into the shallow waves.

On my back in the wet sand, I looked up and saw that blue orb I had seen from the vista race over my head and go back out into the deeper water. A freezing wave of ocean water roared over my face as soon as it was gone.

Soaked from head-to-toe, I jumped up onto my feet, stood up in the knee-deep water, and looked out to the deeper water where the blue orb, looking much bigger than it had from up on the course, rested on top of the waves about 10 yards away from me.

What the fuck?