"What have you gotten us into?" Angel asks through clenched teeth as she takes a seat in the cockpit. Her eyes scan a sea of buttons and switches. A panel before them reveals they are facing north. U-shaped steering wheels jut out between their legs and another between Elias's. She glances over at him, noticing his repeated glances in the rearview mirror. He's sweating and appears nervous.

Angel turns her attention back to the dock. The military police are ushering the last of the unwilling crew on board into the back cabin of the catamaran. She searches their faces. Is he worried about the officer?

A box behind her seat, resembling a deep briefcase, catches her eye. She flips a switch under her seat and spins around to face it. She considers using her lock-picking tools to jimmy open the lock out of curiosity when she spots a fingerprint scanner. She places her thumb on the scanner and a red light blinks.

Elias swiftly jams his thumb onto a similar print scanner beside his steering wheel, and the catamaran roars to life. The engines produce a deep thrum beneath the boat. "They spared no expense," she muses. "What do you think is in this box?"

Elias looks over his shoulder again toward the rear window, where the last of the passengers are boarding. At the sound of the engines starting, their gazes shift toward him.

"Welcome to the orientation of the catamaran," an officer appears on a screen above the windshield, but Elias presses a button to mute the screen and starts pressing buttons urgently. Angel snorts a half-laugh, "Wanna wait until everyone is seated?" Elias ignores her, glancing back at the docks again and shoving the handle forward between their seats. The engines below deck let out a loud, angry growl.

Angel spins her seat around and clicks it into place. "Elias, what's going on?" She looks back and initially sees an empty dock, but something catches her eye. Something is crawling upside down under the dock, a lanky man with loose-fitting robes and a bald head. He is somehow hanging upside down under the dock, crawling on all fours. "Elias, what is that?"

"We have to go now, Angel. How do you get this thing to move?" Elias's voice is almost shrill with panic, and Angel can't take her eyes off the creature under the dock. The pale man slithers toward the boat and reaches out a hand to grab hold, but he draws it back sharply as it catches the sun's light. She swears she can see smoke rising from his hand. "Angel?" Elias's voice trembles.

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She hears a click, and the boat launches from the docks like a missile. The front of the catamaran stands up high above the water, and they're about to flip over onto their top when Angel instinctively yanks the throttle back. "What are you doing?" Elias demands.

"Are you trying to get us killed? You nearly broke my neck taking off like that." Angel eases the throttle forward. "You probably threw everyone to the floor back there."

Elias turns and stares out the back window for a long moment. "Did anything else get on?"

"You mean that creepy man? No. Was he after you? What does he want? How did he do that?" Angel continues creeping the throttle forward at a careful rate. The catamaran bounces off the surface of the water, but she continues to accelerate. Something is off with Elias and the man under the dock. "You need to tell me what's going on."

Elias leans his head back against his seat and lets out a long breath. "Are you sure it didn't get on?"

"I'm sure. Now what's going on?"

Elias lifts a small vial from the neck of his shirt. "I think it wants this. Or rather, it wants it from me." He shakes his head. "It wants to catch me filled with it and kill me; I think. That was the feeling I got."

"You're not making any sense." She eases her hand off the throttle and pulls back a little to keep the boat from lurching too hard off the water.

"An Uptown man gave it to me. He might have been one of the elves. He was dressed fancy and deliriously happy. A strange man, but friendly. He told me to pray and drink from it. When I did, strange things started happening. Something flows into me, and I become... I don't know, superhuman?" Elias pauses, trying to collect his thoughts.

Angel reaches out to grab an ornament, and she lets out a scream as lightning runs up her arm. She jerks her hand back to her chest. "Never's abyss, that thing shocked me."

Elias puzzles at the vial for a moment, then mutters something as he looks up at the sky. Angel sucks on her finger to cool the burnt fingertip. Elias slips the chain over his head and holds the vial over for her to look inside. A cool white liquid swirls in the vial. "Drink it."

"And get the living piss shocked out of me? No way." Angel cringes back from it.

"Just hold out your tongue. Trust me."

Angel looks at him, wary for a few breaths, then opens her mouth slowly. Elias turns over the bottle, and the fluid drops onto her tongue. Then the world changes colors. Everything slows, and Angel becomes aware of a light deep inside her, swirling and dancing around. She lets out a long, deep sigh as a foreign power floods every cell of her body.