Her husband’s attempt to use streaming slang profanity elicits a smile. ‘Calm down, Erik. The girls wanted to take a cruise. It was either Bermuda or Cuba.’

‘Oh, geez. No, you made the right choice. Cuba, gee whiz. If you have so much as a traffic violation, island security demands an anal probe.’

‘I won’t ask you how you know about that. Miss me?’

‘Intensely.’

‘Know what I miss?’

‘Jennifer—’

‘I can’t help it. Being back in Florida … the warm weather … the palm trees—’

Without warning, the ship shudders violently, as if its keel has run aground. May screams as she’s tossed from her feet, along with hundreds of other passengers, everyone looking around, confused and fearful.

‘Did we hit something?’

‘Are we sinking?’

Dave Mohr yells to regain his wife’s attention. ‘Jen, what is it? What’s wrong?’

‘I don’t know. It felt like the engines seized. Maybe we hit … whoa!’

Without warning, the ocean liner rolls hard to port. Passengers scream, the listing deck causing hundreds of levitating lounge chairs to flip like concentric circles of stacked dominos.

Evelyn tumbles forward, landing hard against the starboard rail. Passengers are flung haphazardly across the shifting deck as the ship executes a radical course change.

After a long terrifying moment, the cruise ship levels out, continuing on its new heading—due west.

May helps Eve to her feet. ‘Jennifer, what’s happening?’

‘I don’t know. Find Anna.’

The girl fumbles with her bikini top as she runs off.

Eve turns her attention back to her husband. Dave appears in her right eye lens, the physicist frantically operating his projection screen computer, the free-floating images of the ocean liner appearing via satellite feed.

‘Dave, what happened? Why have we changed course? Was it a tsunami? A rogue wave?’

‘No seismic activity. No telltale ripples. No other ships in the area. I don’t—’ The scientist pauses, his already pale complexion losing color. ‘What in God’s name is that?’

Robert Gibbons, Jr., rushes into the bridge, the disheveled captain demanding answers. ‘Mr. Swartz, report!’

First Officer Bradly T. Swartz hovers over his navigation board, clearly baffled. ‘Sir, it wasn’t us. The ship appears to be caught in some sort of rogue current.’

Captain Gibbons focuses his binoculars on the surface of the Atlantic, now rippling like a swiftly moving river.

‘Captain, ship’s compass has gone haywire. Zero degrees is now pointing … due west.’

‘What?’

‘Sir, lookout has spotted something! Requesting your immediate presence.’

Gibbons rushes out of the bridge, ascending a narrow flight of steel steps to the lookout post. An ensign steadies the deck-mounted scope, his eyes filled with fear. ‘It’s a mile straight off our bow, sir. Never saw anything like it.’

The captain presses his right eye to the spyglass’s rubber eye guard. ‘Good God …’