[LOG — ALTITUDE 260M — AUDIO DEGRADED — WIND RISING — LINK: INTERMITTENT]
The drone was never built for weather like this.
It follows the boat because the boat is where the story went — twelve men on a lake that was glass an hour ago and is now closer to an argument. The wind came up fast, the way it does on water shaped like a bowl between hills, and by the time anyone in the boat thought to be afraid, fear was already the reasonable response.
Fourth hour of rowing against it. Andrew bails with a hand that is not steady. The math disciple grips the mast like the last true thing in a night that stopped making sense. And somewhere in the dark — somebody sees him.
Walking.
Not on the shore. Not toward the shore. On the water. Soles finding the surface the way souls were meant to find their Maker — upright, unhurried, a shape the storm is somehow not touching. The sea, see, has been trying to drown these men all night. Under his feet, the waves waive their claim.
"It is a ghost!"
They scream it — real terror, the kind the audio can barely hold onto through the wind, distorted and thin and utterly human. This is older fear than the hillside's. Water fear. Night fear. The fear that predates language, that every sailor in every century has carried onto every boat that ever left a shore.
And through the wind — impossibly unswallowed —
"Take courage. It is I. Do not be afraid."
The frame drops for six full seconds. Call it storm interference if you need to. Whoever reviews this footage will.
When signal returns, one man is standing up in the boat. Peter.
"Lord, if it is you, tell me to come to you on the water."
The answer, one word wide:
"Come."
Three steps. Four. Grainy, wind-torn footage of a man standing where standing is not offered — and for those steps, the water holds. Then he looks down. Not up, not at the voice — down, at the very thing holding him — and the moment he does, the sea remembers what it is for.
"Lord, save me!"
A hand closes around his wrist faster than the sensor can track cleanly — less a teacher scoring a failure than a father catching a fall.
"You of little faith. Why did you doubt?"
They climb in together. And the wind does not fade, does not lose interest and wander off the way wind usually does. It ends — all at once, a held breath released — and the lake goes glass like it never remembered being anything else. The link stabilizes at the exact same moment. Full signal. Full frame.
Twelve men stare at him, wearing the oldest expression there is: the look of people who just watched the floor of the world hold weight it was never built to hold.
"Truly you are the Son of God."
[END LOG — NEXT: FOUNDATION]