Written in 62 minutes. Had to stop a few times to check some hurricane facts, lol. You know how I try to be accurate.

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Late June 2000

They’d closed and locked down every window in the house, blocking out all views outside — but nothing could keep out the sound of the winds swirling so fast and heavy that it reminded Elizabeth of a train like the one that had roared past the house where she’d lived in Boulder, Colorado. The rain pelted them from all sides—the roof, the terrace doors, and the front of the house.

She’d built them a makeshift bed on the floor in front of the sofa, though it had been a battle to get Jason to lay flat on his back. He didn’t want to fall asleep, he’d told her over and over again. No matter how bad the storm was outside, he worried that Dario Colon hadn’t gone very far.

Elizabeth shared that worry, but he’d fallen down the list of concerns as the radio station out of Turks and Caicos reported that the storm continued to baffle the metereologists who had forecast it as a tropical storm destined to weaken as it approached the Bahamas.

Instead, it had picked up strength over the warm waters of the Atlantic, and shifted to a path that no one had predicted, skirting Turks and Caicos, and heading straight for Cuba with West Plana Cays directly in its path.

By the time Hurricane Mariah made landfall just after one that morning, it was measuring wind speeds of nearly 103 miles per hour, which meant—

“Category two,” Jason muttered, switching off the radio and shoving it aside. He laid back, stared at the ceiling with frustration. Despite doing nothing but resting for nearly an hour, the fatigue had not only lingered, but deepened.

He needed sleep, Elizabeth thought, though he’d never admit it. She leaned over the pillows she’d tossed on the floor, and found the last of his travel books. “We just need to distract ourselves,” she told him. She sat up, folding her legs, and spreading the book across her lap. “I could read to you—”

He rested his arm across his forehead. “I can read to myself,” he muttered. “And we shouldn’t waste the batteries on the light—”

“We still have candles,” she reminded him. “And—” She flinched when she heard glass shattering. Jason sprang to his feet, his hand snatching up the revolver on the table by the sofa.

“It came from the back of the house—” Jason said. Elizabeth set the book side and rose, staying closing to his back. She could feel the tension radiating from him—and felt the swaying of his body as he fought to stay still.

“It’s probably—”

More glass shattered, and Jason spun, his other arm sweeping Elizabeth behind him as he aimed towards the terrace. But nothing happened.

“The storm. It’s shattering the windows,” Elizabeth murmured, her fingers twisting in the soft fabric of his shirt. “There were a few that didn’t have storm shutters on the outside, remember? We locked them from the inside and boarded them up. There’s no one out there, Jason. The wind is too strong—”

“I’m not taking that chance,” he said, but he lowered the gun to the side. “We should have stayed in town after dinner—”

“This was supposed to be nothing more than a summer storm,” Elizabeth reminded him, and he looked at her, his eyes shadowed in the dim light cast by the battery-operated lanterns. “You heard the radio reports. This was never supposed to happen.”

“Yeah, well—” His mouth was grim. “A lot of good that does us now. Even if we wanted to get out of here, the roads are definitely washed out if they weren’t already.”

“Come on. Let’s sit back down—” She tugged on his shirt. “You don’t look so good—”

“You think I don’t know that?” he bit out, then closed his eyes, dragged his free hand over his forehead where beads of sweat had formed. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.” She took the gun from him, and the fact that he let her only heightened her worry. “Come on. Lay back down and rest.”

He reluctantly followed her directions, and this time didn’t argue when she picked up the book and began to read. “Piazza San Marco is often referred to as the living room of the Venice. It’s been the focal point for Venetian life and culture for over a millennium…”

——

A few thousand miles away, Emily was having trouble sleeping. She’d tossed and turned half the night in bed, a bit worried since Elizabeth hadn’t called her all day. She was planning to track down Sonny in the morning and demand an update, but at one in the morning, there wasn’t much else she could do.

So she settled for scooping up a bowl of Rocky Road and curling up on the sofa to find a terrible late night movie on television. As she flicked through the channels, she hesitated when she saw someone standing in front of a map—

Emily turned up the volume.

“Hurricane Mariah continues its mystifying path across the Carribean, strengthening over the warm waters of the Atlantic Ocean. It’s made its first landfall on West Plana Cays, a tiny  island of nearly two thousand permanent residents. We don’t have any damage or injury reports, but the local authorities have radioed that most major roads have been washed out, and that nearly five hundred of the island residents remain unaccounted for, as they lived near the coast and were unable to evacuate before the leading edge of the storm hit.”

Emily’s eyes bulged as she dropped the ice cream on the table with a clatter and leaned over to scramble for the cordless phone, her fingers shaking.

“The eyewall is over the island now, measuring the worst of the winds at nearly 105 miles per hour. Mariah is a category two, and may be a category three before it makes landfall in Cuba later this morning—”

“This better be good—” came the sleepy voice on the other end of the line.

“Nikolas! Nikolas! Are you watching the news?”

“It’s—no! It’s one-thirty in the morning, Emily—what’s going on?”

“A hurricane—it’s hit the island. Like a bad one. A-and Liz never called me back, and they say all the people living near the cost didn’t have time to evacuate because the storm got really strong without warning—”

“Okay, yeah, that doesn’t sound good. What do you expect me to do about that?” Nikolas demanded, some of the sleep washed out of his tone. “We’re in New York.”

“Well—” Emily pressed her lips together. “Okay, yeah, but you’re a Cassadine.”

There was silence on the other end of the line for a beat. “I can’t teleport, Emily, unless my uncle is keeping even more secrets—”

“Well, no, but—” Flustered, Emily raked a hand through her hair. “Don’t you guys have a weather machine in the basement or something?”

“Uh, no. No, we don’t. The WSB seized that a few decades ago.”

Her throat tightened as she stared at the satellite map, with the radar image of the hurricane swallowing any sight of the island where her best friend and brother were trapped. “Okay. But I can’t do nothing.”

“No, I guess not. Look, let me make a few calls. See what I can find out. And then I’ll come over, and we can wait together for news.”

—

Emily wasn’t the only one watching the news and worrying. Luke and Sonny had landed in Miami, and were holed up in one of the hotels near the airport, watching the same coverage.

Sonny stood motionless in front of the television while Luke paced. “There’s no point in getting more worried,” he told Luke. “We can’t change anything. The house was built to withstand most storms—”

“Most. Not all. And this Dario guy—”

“We don’t even know if he went after them tonight,” Sonny reminded Luke. “We might have lost connection because the storm. Where the house is located—”

“Your guy in town couldn’t get a hold of them either and his phone worked phone—”

“Pirate’s Well is located on the highest part of the island. Jason’s place is—” Sonny winced.

“Jason’s place is what?”  Luke pressed when his friend fell quiet.

“It’s on the lower side of the island, barely above sea level. Roads would have been washed out that way faster. Look, Jason’s smart, and so is Liz. She dragged him out of a parking garage, onto an elevator. My money is on them.”

“Okay, yeah, against this Dario guy, I’d take that bet, too. Against a hurricane? Mother Nature doesn’t give a shit how smart you are.”

Sonny didn’t have a response to that, and just looked back towards the coverage, hoping for a satellite update to show that the storm was weakening or that it had started to fall apart.

Instead, the newscaster had less than happy news. “Mariah continues to pick up strength thanks to the back edge of the storm still spinning out over the Atlantic. The eye is approaching West Plana Cays and is projected to last nearly thirty minutes which should give the island’s authorities some chance to take stock of the situation and maybe make contact with residents on the outer rim. There’s some indication that the storm path continues to deviate slightly and that the back side of the storm might spin away from West Plana Cays, towards the rest of the Bahamas as Mariah continues to move towards the Cuban coast.”

—

Jason was fighting a losing battle. He’d lost count of how many times he’d forced his eyes open, tried to focus on Elizabeth next to him, her soft voice reading about Venice and the history of some of the sites. He liked to listen to her, he’d told her that weeks ago, and he’d always paid attention to every word, soaking in anything she had to say.

But tonight, the words were beginning to slide together until her voice was just a continuous hum, soft and sweet, buzzing in his ears—

And he finally lost the battle, though he didn’t know it. His eyes had closed, and stayed that way, his chest rising and falling in an even pace.

Elizabeth stopped at the end of the page, watched him carefully for a few more minutes, waiting for him to jerk himself awake. But nothing happened, and she released her first easy breath in a while. Jason desperately needed to rest, and she’d worried he would continue his stubborn fight.

She wouldn’t let him sleep long, she promised herself, stifling a yawn. The last radio report said that the eye of the storm would be passing over them soon, and she knew Jason would want the opportunity to look around. To check for damage and for signs that Dario Colon had left the area.

She laid down next to him, tucking her hands underneath her check and watched Jason sleep. As soon as she heard the storm easing, she’d wake up, Elizabeth promised herself.

But instead, her eyes drifted shut, and she slid into sleep herself, the storm still raging outside the walls.

—

A smarter man would have run for the marina the moment he’d jumped over the terrace wall, but then again—a smarter man might not have challenged Jason Morgan at all.

It hadn’t gone the way he’d planned, Dario thought with some bitterness, as he crouched in the unattached garage that housed the motorcycle Jason kept on the island, and the car they’d rented. The storm had battered the garage and a piece of the roof had been torn off.

He’d meant to drag that bitch over the terrace and be out of the house before Morgan had realized they were gone — he was supposed to be recovering from a gunshot, but the asshole hadn’t looked injured at all. And on foot, Dario hadn’t been able to get very far before the worst of the storm had begun to hit. He’d doubled back to the house, deciding he needed a new plan.

Dario ducked as another piece of the roof crashed down, knocking the motorcycle over. He shook the rain from his hair, and glared up at the storm.

When the storm eased, when the eye made landfall, Dario would make his move. And this time, he’d be the last man standing. He’d make that bitch pay for humiliating him, and maybe he’d make Morgan watch.

It wouldn’t be long now.

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