Day 1:

You were not surprised by the Bubble.

"Most people don't expect it to be this large," Commander Afua says, ducking under the swaying roof of the Bubble's pod.

"I did," you say, following him and stepping onto the bobbing deck, open to the sky. It was all dark wood, wet with the dampness of the day. He glanced at you, then turns back to pacing the deck. The floorboards creak underfoot.

"Of course you did," Afua says appraisingly, raising an eyebrow as he turns back to you. "You were top of your class at the Outsider Action Team Academy. I'd be surprised if you didn't do any research." He kicks at the floorboards, and a gull crows somewhere in the twilight distance. "What did you do to deserve a Bubble Shift, anyway?"

Your stomach tightens, and you try to wave it off.

"It's not important," you say, shrugging and striding over to the edge of the floating platform, playing with a piece of net caught in the wooden guardrail that separates you from the choppy water. The Bubble is more like a raft, you think, a raft with a guardrail and its iconic sphere inside of it. And somewhere, inside that sphere...

"It's spherical," Afua explains, pointing to the sphere inside the ring of wooden deck we stood on now. It almost seems planetary, like Saturn with its rings. "You'll stand out here to check your location in the stars at night. Inside, in the top of the bubble, are your living quarters. Down below..."

He trailed off, then stomped hard on the wood of the deck.

"I can handle him," you say, stepping forward. "I was trained for a-"

"Yes," Captain Afua says shortly, "but this is no ordinary shift. It's a Hyde." He pauses. "And a manipulative one, at that. Rumor has it he pretended to date one of the Nevermore girls so he could leave her for dead."

"Wednesday Addams," you amend, remembering the file you'd been handed two days ago. You'd skimmed it last night, but a part of you had hesitated when you turned the pages. Was it right to read the Outsider's history? Even if he was a Hyde, even if he was dangerous. Reading what he'd said in therapy felt like a violation.

Afua shoots you a meaningful look. "She was about your age."

The blazing sunset beams the gold on his wrist cuffs like they are melting, smoldering away with the last strokes of daytime. Afua shifts, unconsciously shifting back towards the dock.

Afua knows what he is doing. Afua is a strategist, a master of all things weaponry. And if he's scared, that means you should be, too.

But you have no license to be scared, even though the fear pinches at your muscles and writhes in your stomach.

"Remember, Y/N," he says, looking up at the sky. "'You can't make friends with time.'"

You knew the saying, one you heard over and over at home and at the school. Bitterly, from your mother. Cautiously, from the teachers that believed in you. Echoing, inside your own head, when you wondered if you were really cut out for a job with USOAT.

Some things were not to be talked to, not to be befriended, and if any Outsider was dealing with the US Outsider Action Team, they had crossed that line long ago.

"Come on," Afua says, looking up at the sky and hurrying over to the stairway. "I'll show you your living quarters before we send you off."

A knot twists in your stomach like a knife. Send you off. And then you'll be floating in the middle of the ocean, trapped with a mysterious beast, for an entire year. Alone.

You try not to think of it as you descend into the middle sphere surrounded by the raft, taking one last gulp of sky before you close the hatch behind you. It thuds, a final noise, and then all you hear are Afua's boots on the metal stairway.

A switch flicks on, and the stairway is filled with a sudden, cheery light, revealing a door at the end with an autumnal wreath on it. USOAT Holding Boat 213, a wooden placard in the middle reads in white-painted calligraphy.

"The previous occupant dabbled in interior design," Afua says, smiling as he pulls open the submarine-style door.

You peer over his shoulder and find a white-painted room. Directly in front of you is the kitchen, you note as you walk in, with a white marble table with gold veins running through it. The glass of the drawers reveals the various bowls and plates to have the same white with gold-veined cracks. Afua pulls open a door, and you stare into a massive storeroom, with floor-to-ceiling shelves of food, each with the USOAT stamp on them.

"Enough for a year, and then some," Afua explains, but the dank, dripping concrete walls of the storeroom seem to make him uneasy, too. You can't explain it, but something about the darker room seems hostile, unfriendly.

You shut the white-painted door, finding yourself once again in the white kitchen. Directly to the right of the kitchen is a white sofa with a fluffy, knit blanket slung over it in warm autumn orange, a flatscreen TV in front of it.

"That's where you'll conduct your meetings," Afua says, and run your fingers over the fuzzy, soft blanket. You can imagine curling up here after a long day, maybe watching a movie or a show.

"I've never really had my own space before," you admit, a smiling brushing onto your face. Maybe this won't be so bad, after all. You'll have your own living quarters to manage, spend your days painting and weaving, and at the end, you can return home with a small fortune, enough to buy you that year in Paris you've always wanted.

You can already taste the buttery croissants and feel the strokes of your paintbrush as you weave the Eiffel tower into your canvas.

But then your mother's sharp face enters your mind, sending you plummeting back to the real world. You can't tell her you're not going to stay with USOAT, not when it was your Dad's last real legacy. You're supposed to be an agent, a real one, in the field next year.

Afua pulls a laptop from one of the white bins lined neatly under the TV shelf and presents it to you. "You'll call into the Academy every morning for your fitness training," he says, smiling and waving at an organized rack full of white equipment, "and in the afternoons, every other day, you'll call your mother and the USOAT board to update them on the progress of the Hyde. In the evenings..." his voice trails off, and he glances at you before glancing quickly away, the smile pasting back on his face. It was so quick, you wonder if you'd imagined it. "In the evenings," he continues, setting the laptop back in its place, "you'll call me."

To make sure you're still alive.

He didn't say it, but he didn't need to. You stride over to the unopened door, the one right next to the submarine door that led out onto the outer raft.

"That's your bedroom," Afua says, and you pull it open to find all of your things already in their trunks on the white-carpeted floor. Your easel is already set up, paints lined on the rim, ready to splash across the blank canvas in front of it. You shiver, all but ready to splash it against the colorless walls.

The bed itself is a plain white, a fuzzy, thick blanket that sparkles like fresh snowfall spread across it. You throw yourself back on it, the springs bouncing you up.

"I'll be fine, Afua," you say, looking up from the bed. "I'll be back from my shift in no time."

Afua shifts his feet. "Y/N, your father-"

"Was in a different situation," you say, abruptly sitting up. "This is a different Outsider, and we have reinforced Plexiglass on the cell now."

"Y/N-" Afua starts, but you hop off the bed and hurry out of the room.

"It doesn't matter, Afua," you say, walking over to the door at the very end of the living quarters, past your kitchen and living room. "I never knew him."

The words hang there like frozen seconds, but your hand shakes as you lift it towards the door at the end of the hall, another white-painted submarine-style door.

"Wait," Afua says quietly, then points to a smaller door right beside it. He presses a touchpad and it hisses open, revealing a small, blue-green chamber to your right, just wide enough for someone to stand in. "When you're floated out, your Bubble will dock to the tubes under your station. In the case of an emergency-"

You suddenly realize what this is, and a wave of nausea rolls over you.

"The ejection pod," you say. "Where I'll stand and eject myself through the tubes if he escapes."

Afua nods, smoothing the door closed with a hiss of steam. "It rarely comes to that, but if he gets out and your tranquilizers aren't working, it's faster than a bullet train. It'll send you shooting through USOAT's tubes, back to the mainland."

You nod, then turn to the door. "Then we should-"

Afua turns to you, stepping in front of the door. "Y/N," he says seriously, "this Hyde is not a joke. He's killed before, killed people like you. He's the kind of Outsider that killed your father."

You feel like someone punched you in the gut. "I know that," you manage, brushing past Afua. "Let's meet him."

Afua doesn't budge. "He will try to be nice," Afua says. "I guarantee it. He's a manipulator, Y/N, but you can't be fooled. The second he is out of that cage, he will kill you."

Your throat feels like someone is curling a rope around it. "Okay."

"I give him a week," Afua says, finally turning to open the door. "Give him a week. Budge for nothing. See what side of him comes out then."

He opens the door, creaking it open to reveal more stairs underneath, but this time, you hear an ominous sound from below. A thrashing, tortured, yell of a sound, punctuated by shrieks of rage and the tearing of claws.

Afua flicks on the light switch, and, all of a sudden, it stops.

You bravado washes away, leaving you gripped with fear. You heard its claws, which you've been told are razor-sharp, enough to cut through metal, and the thrashing. But even scarier than the noise is the silence, only broken by Afua's careful footsteps.

"It's okay to come down, Y/N," Afua's rumbling voice calls, and you realize you'd stopped on the top stair, gripping the banister. Your heart races in your chest as you hurry down, trying to hold your head back as you turn to look the monster in the eye.

Its eyes are warm, green, and human.

He presses his hands to the thick glass, watching you. You stare at him, pacing around to examine the enclosure. The room where you and Afua stand is relatively small, with a food slot system, and no furniture. The enclosure where the Hyde stands is like a large racquetball court, with a foot and a half of Plexiglass between you. His side is empty except for a curtained off bathroom area and a hole in the wall for laundry. That's when you turn your attention to the Hyde himself.

The Hyde is muscular, with curly brown hair and the kind of hands girls wish would hold their face when they have their first kiss. He watches you, then raises a hand.

"Hi," he says, eyes watchful, wary. "I'm Tyler."

He presses his hand- one of those hands, you think- to the glass. He looks so normal. Would it be so bad to talk to him?

But then you notice Afua's eyes on you, and immediately take a step back. Afua said he was a manipulator. You can't let him get close to you. The monster lifts his hand back, glancing at it.

"So you're my warden, then," he says, lifting his chin.

"I'm Y/N-" you start, but then Afua tackles you out of the way as Tyler's skin rips into swollen gray muscles, eyes bulging into bloodshot globes. The monster roars, raking its claws along the glass, and you stumble back, clawing at the ground.

You hear a tangle of shouts and the roars, sending you running up the stairs, slamming the door closed and pulling Afua in beside you. You collapse against the door, your stomach heaving as you claw at the doorknob to make sure its locked, all three bars locking the metal closed.

Your eyes are crazy, darting, and you grab Afua.

"Commander," you gasp, surging back, "Commander, please, I can't go- I can't spend a year-"

Your words won't form as you stand there, shaking and mumbling and gripping onto the wall for dear life. "He's a monster," you say, squeezing your eyes shut. "He'll kill me, Commander. Don't leave me here, please-"

Afua is breathing hard, but he shakes his head. "I wish I could take you back," he says, turning to grip your hand. "I wish I could, Y/N, but the board, your mother-"

"My mother can-"

"No," Afua says, shaking his head and pressing off the wall. "Your mother is the one who sent you here. Y/N." His voice softens, and he grabs your shoulders. "Be strong. The monster is contained. All you have to do is nothing. Wait a year, and then you'll be back in the field."

He lets go, and leads you back up the stairs to the bobbing outer raft.

The sky is dark blue velvet now, dotted with crystalline stars. You and Afua step off the raft, back onto the dock, and you wish you could wrap your arms around the dock supports and never let go. You try to memorize the feeling of solid ground, of wood beneath you that doesn't sway and sky above that doesn't bob with the waves.

Afua taps the video camera. It will log your beginning. Hopefully- you pray- it will log your ending in a year's time as well.

He meets your eyes. "Are you ready?"

You swallow, lifting your chin high. "Yes, Commander," you say.

He gestures to the raft. "Then enter the Bubble and begin your shift."

You look down at the bobbing raft boards, placing a shaking foot on them. They shiver, bobbing with the waves to adjust to your weight. You brace yourself for the lack of solid-feeling for the next year, then remove your other foot and step onto the swaying Bubble craft.

Afua looks at you, and you see a hint of sadness in his eyes. "Your Bubble will drift to its assigned spot tonight, and will reach the docking point by midmorning tomorrow. See to it that you dock to the tube and anchor as assigned in your instructions. In one year, the lock holding the Bubble craft will release, and it will move back here, back to our home shore."

He flips open the hatch embedded in one of the supports, the one that releases the Bubble to drift to its homing site. "I will see you in a year, Y/N. Be strong."

With that, he pulls down the lever, and a clank of chains being pulled up, out of the ocean shore sounds. You grab the barrier around the raft and watch as the craft begins to drift away from shore, dipping up and down in the waves.

The shore, dotted with the lights of home and houses, begins to drift away. In ten minutes, you can no longer make out Afua on the dock. In twenty, the dock itself is beginning to blend into the coastline, and in two hours, the coastline itself, with its warm, twinkling lights, is lost to the cold and inhospitable sea.

You shiver at the night breezes, the wind weaving its chilly fingers through your hair. It must be almost midnight by now, the night dark. You pick your way back through the floorboards of the raft and open the door to your new home.

Tomorrow, you think as you clomp down the metal stairs that lead into the main sphere of the Bubble, you will dock the ship for the year. Tomorrow, you will need to take inventory of your supplies, to plan your meals accordingly to make them last. But perhaps most terrifyingly: tomorrow, you will have to descend down the stairs at the end of your living quarters and feed the monster.

You close the submarine door with a thump and enter your year on the ocean.