Pressing himself against the bow of the boat, as he sat just beneath the cash register, Scooter tucked his knees up to his chest and furrowed his brow as if the look of concentration would help him hear what the men walking out of the Krusty Krab were saying. They had opened the front door and allowed the almost cartoonishly loud sounds of the storm outside to invade and fill the restaurant's acoustically-conducive lobby, rendering any dialogue between the two intelligible to the fish behind the counter.

Scooter tucked and furrowed for several seconds, desperate to hear at least a little more of the conversation; desperate to learn a little more about the men who, for some reason, wanted to find Alex.

The last words Scooter had been able to make out, your base, were as vague and as useless as a description could be. Couldn't the goon be more specific? Scooter thought. "Back to your secret volcano lair," or something?

Goon. The word lingered in Scooter's mind. He began to think that perhaps he was being too quick to assume that the men were here to do him and Alex dirty. Perhaps they had spoken Alex's name not with malicious intentions but instead with the bespectacled kid's best interests at heart. The voices did sound familiar, didn't they?

As he carefully scrunched himself as deep into the shadows as he could, Scooter thought about the possible motives of the visitors and how important they were for him to consider. Maybe the men weren't worth hiding from at all. He began to reflect on the words he had heard the two share since they had entered the building; they had to have said something that would give at least some indication as to why they had come to the Krusty Krab in the middle of a rainstorm. Why were they searching for Alex? Why did they knew he would be hiding?

Scooter's fingers, still resting on the hardly-opened tray of the cash register, gripped tightly against cold metal. It was obvious, he thought.

He closed his eyes and saw the bright red dot that had danced carefully on Alex's forehead. Scooter felt sick knowing that he had even entertained the idea that the guys poking around the Krusty Krab could be on his side. It was like he had forgotten the reason he had instinctively hid beneath the cash register in the first place. After all, on the floor of the boat, enveloped within the shadows that laid over the Krusty Krab like a melancholic blanket, time seemed to move slower than it did in the comfort of fluorescent lighting; the events that had just taken place in Mr. Krabs' office felt like a lifetime away.

Scooter pressed his eyes shut tighter and again he saw the clueless innocence that had been suggested by Alex's wide eyes and confirmed by his bright smile; all of this only seconds before Scooter had been forced to tackle his friend and, as far as he could tell, save the kid's life. Sure, he didn't remember actually hearing a gunshot go off, but the intent of that carefully moving red dot had been a lot easier to discern than the intent of the goons still standing in the open door frame of the Krusty Krab. It was always best to assume the worst. He knew that now.

As another gust of cold wind walloped just above his head, Scooter again couldn't help but feel that he wasn't as safe from the storm raging outside the Krusty Krab as he had once been. There used to be a time when he could stroll into the restaurant after a rough day at the beach, grab a Kelp Fry combo, and forget about the world outside. With the smell of fried grease in the air and the active chatter of content customers around him, it had been so easy to feel as if he belonged. Bikini Bottom used to be a community, and as much as he loved the bookshelves at the library or the waves at Goo Lagoon, he knew that it was the sanctity of the Krusty Krab that kept the city's heart beating. Now, as if it wasn't clear from the dust covered register and the nearly burnt-out bulb struggling to keep Mr. Krabs' office lit, Scooter could tell from the two men letting the cold into the lobby that any sense of community had left Bikini Bottom long ago.

Outside, the uncomfortably familiar sound of the storm continued to cover the sounds of any possible conversation. Scooter, sitting as still as possible on the wooden floor, unintentionally let out an exasperated groan. Just as instinctively as he made the sound, he covered his mouth with his hands, realizing that his frustration may have just let the visitors know that they weren't alone.

Scooter carefully slowed his breathing and waited for the men to begin approaching the boat. A second passed. Breathe. A few seconds more. Scooter expected the storm to become muffled as the front doors swung shut while the men re-entered the lobby. He expected to hear the floorboards creak under their feet as they made their way to the back of the restaurant and approached the boat. He expected to feel their gaze as they leaned over the register and peered into the shadows that tried their best to hide him. He expected to be found.

Instead, the sounds of the storm continued to invade the Krusty Krab as audibly as they had since the doors were first opened. The men were still standing in the doorway. They had to be.

Fuckin' lingerers, Scooter thought, but he knew that, in this moment at least, he was grateful. Scooter didn't know why the men seemed to be halted on the brink of the outside world, or what that said about their motives, but he now understood that if he couldn't hear them, they couldn't hear him either. He began to jostle the rickety tray of the cash register.

The men had been standing in the doorway for so long already; Scooter knew that if he wanted to discover whatever it was that had been tingling his spidey senses and dig into the register without being heard, he needed to act fast; make up for all the time he had lost cowering beneath the register. Cowering.

He gripped the front of the tray and shook it a bit more aggressively, feeling it begin to unhitch from the rest of the machine. He hadn't taken any action since the two men had entered the Krusty Krab, and the ease with which the tray now began to separate from the rest of the register made him feel ashamed. He had seen something – someone – standing behind the register, he knew he had, and he had approached the boat out of an obligation to learn more. If he was sitting underneath the register and monitoring his own breathing in an attempt not to be heard, though, he wasn't learning anything. He hadn't spent hours upon hours enveloped in between bookshelves of the library to come to a point where he would forsake progress for the comfortable state of complacency.

The register let out a diminutive ding. Scooter began to salivate, anticipating the breaded crunch of perfectly cooked Kelp Fries. If only. He blinked and realized that, while the familiar chime didn't mean that Spongebob would soon be happily deep frying his order in the kitchen, it did mean the tray was completely opened – the first transaction the Krusty Krab had housed in months.

Scooter licked his lips and reached his hand up and into the tray. His fingers scraped the metal at the base of one of the compartments where Squidward would organize the bills. He moved on to the next slot in the register, expecting to come in contact with something other than the tangible dust that lived in the tray but not being surprised when that was all that greeted him.

Still, despite not yet finding anything that would justify the draw he felt to the register, the fire inside his belly that had sparked when he had first stepped into the boat was now burning stronger. Reading books and learning how to hacktively encrypt a PC hardwire lappitytoppity was a large part of Scooter's identity of course, but even when he was pulling algorithms from the filing cabinet of his mind, he never forgot about the value of intuition. He could read every book on computing in the library – hell, he had – but none of them told him that Ms. Balls would be the key to his first ever technological success. He only had his head, his mind, and his brain to thank for that. And that's all he had now.

He reached down into another slot. His flipper tip… his finger… his, uh, his fin… thing brushed against something coarse. Scooter flinched, bumped his hand… thing against one of the register's metal dividers, and then grabbed the obstruction. Scooter almost expected it to put up a fight as he pulled it from the bottom of the tray, but it was light and seemingly unattached to any part of the register. He held it easily in the fingertips of his left hand and squinted forward. The shadows cast by the storm outside made it nearly impossible to see what he was holding and the crashing thunder made it nearly impossible to think. Fortunately, even in this pressing situation, Scooter's spidey sense wasn't the only tool in his arsenal he could rely on. He ran his fingers over the edges of the object, feeling where it ended and began. Using his thumb and forefinger, he began to fold it against itself. Paper. It was a piece of paper, no bigger than his palm… thing.

This had to be it, Scooter thought. This is what he was meant to find. It was too small and too crudely shaped to be a leftover dollar bill. In fact, the paper felt too crisp to be a leftover anything. The Krusty Krab had been vacant for months and something told Scooter this piece of paper was a recent addition.

Scooter tucked the paper into the deep pocket of his swim shorts and began to push himself away from the register and toward the stern of the boat. He couldn't wait to get a good look at what it was that had been tucked away inside the stubborn old machine – and it was very possible that whoever put it there couldn't wait for him to get a good look at it either.

With his back pressed against the rear wall of the boat, he now had a better view of the lobby of the restaurant. Though it was still far too dark to see anything within the elephant graveyard that was the center of the dining area, the dim grey sky outside made it possible to identify the building's large windows. Lifting himself slightly from his sitting position, Scooter peered over the register, through the thick darkness, and toward the entrance.

He stared forward and allowed his eyes to adjust to the weak illumination as best they could. No more than twenty seconds passed before he was able to admit to himself that there was no trick of the eye at play here. One of the swinging doors was open but there was no one in the doorway.

Scooter's mind raced backward, trying to recall a moment where it sounded like the two men's voice had faded as they walked out of the building. The storm's volume had been too powerful though, and when his fingers found the paper in the register, it was if his intuition began screaming in his ear, making it impossible for him to pay attention to anything but his immediate goal.

Despite knowing how important it was to track the movements of the front door lingerers the best he could, he had become distracted. He had become so concerned with following his heart that he had forgotten to keep an eye on the data: two dudes standing in one open doorway was okay; one open doorway minus two standing dudes meant there was a 100 per cent chance that Scooter was about to get fucked up.

Besides, even if the door had stuck open, Scooter thought, the biting winds outside should have taken care of that real quick.

It was always best to assume the worst.

Frantically, Scooter climbed to his feet and reached up toward the small window leading into Spongebob's kitchen. If the two men were still in the building, Scooter wasn't going to step foot on the floor outside the boat and allow the squeaky boards to declare his presence. He gripped the edges of the opening and pulled his head and stomach through the window. He felt like a doofus awkwardly trying to fit himself through the window, but this isn't high school and he wasn't going to let the fear of feeling like a doofus trump the fear of being blindsided by two questionable characters. If it did turn out the two weren't hot on his tail after all and had in fact left the Kursty Krab none the wiser, he could always justify the sloppy escape to himself and others by saying he was eager to use the best light in the house – the lamp in Spongebob's kitchen – to examine the paper.

Scooter's heart was beating too fast to allow for all the consideration necessary to keep track of each one of his limbs. He attempted to fit his left knee through the wall's opening while reaching downward and pulling the paper from his pocket of his shorts, but the implied direness of the situation made it difficult to be as tentative as a darkened room requires one to be. Lying on the window sill, his body only two thirds of the way into the room, Scooter placed his free hand on the kitchen wall and pushed, effectively hurling himself the rest of the way through and sending him crashing to the kitchen floor.

Scooter grunted when his elbow struck the ground, but it was the sound of something toppling to the ground on the other side of the room that gave him the most shock. This explosion of noise was so close and so immediate that, to Scooter, it seemed louder than any clap of thunder could ever be. It sounded like his clumsy mother had once again dropped all of the Christmas ornaments on her way down the stairs, allowing countless glass baubles to noisily sprawl across the floor.

Now holding his elbow, Scooter lifted his head from the floor and toward the direction of the crash that was still ringing in his ears. He could now only pray that he was the only fish in the Krusty Krab, as there wasn't much that declared one's presence moreso than the sound of dropped Christmas ornaments, squeaky floorboards be damned.

"What are you doing?" said a deep voice.

Scooter's head jerked to the left, away from the corner of the room that initially captured his attention. The voice had cut through the room so abruptly that Scooter at first wasn't sure how accurate his hearing was being to him after all, but the feeling of dread now instilled deep within him could almost certainly be trusted. He knew he was not alone.

He looked up from above his near-floor level eye line, but he couldn't see what was in front of him. The voice had come from just above his head, as if he had landed directly at the man's feet. Even worse to consider, however, was that the man was the one who had approached him.

When Scooter had fallen into the room, he had been startled, but if asked, he would have guessed he was alone in a dark and empty room. Now, with this presence declared, he felt small. Cornered. Restrained.

He opened his mouth to respond to the man's question but a sickeningly bright light attacked his eyes before he could get a word out. He instinctively turned his head away and held up the back of his closed fist to his eyes.

"You look like such a doofus," the man said. Scooter could tell now that this was the voice of one of the visitors – the one who had told his partner to find Alex. His voice was more confident than the other's, and even now, he spoke with a sense of aggressive conviction that condescended enough to either make you feel compelled to listen or to fight back.

The man continued as if Scooter wouldn't be surprised to hear from him.

"You know, I was back there checking the closet when I heard you struggling through the window."

Was he pointing somewhere? Scooter tried again to look up, but the man was standing above him shining a flashlight directly in Scooter's face. Clearly this is a one-sided relationship, Scooter thought. You can see me but I can't see you. Great.

"I still had plenty of places left to check, but I appreciate the grand entrance anyway." The man spoke as if he wasn't surprised to see Scooter. He held the flashlight with seemingly no regard for its power, refusing to move it from Scooter's face. Or maybe he knew exactly the power of his flashlight.

"It was the boat, wasn't it? You were in the boat? I knew it. Y'know, I thought I saw someone in there. Damn it, it's always the last place you look."

The man was being playful now. Scooter always thought that his aptitude for reading books came from his aptitude at reading people, and this man was presenting himself as a walking page of braille.

It was clear from the man's seemingly calculated flippancy and his facetious tone that he wasn't only aware of the situation – he was aware of how he was coming across. He knew how jarring his presence would be and was now trying to subvert his aggressive demeanor by presenting himself as colourful. Yet he was still holding the flashlight in Scooter's eyes.

"So, listen Scoot, what do you have in your hand?"

Scooter's eyes shot open before being immediately quelled by the burning sun being imposed on him. He realized that he still had his forearm pressed over his eyes, and the right hand holding the paper was gripping it as tight as it could.

"It's my epipien, I have Crohn's disease," Scooter said to the floor.

"Tell me what it is," the man said. The pendulum has swung back to its rightful place, Scooter thought. I guess it's only funny when he does it.

"Sorry, I don't speak ubbi dubbi."

There was a pause, and then Scooter felt the air rush out of his body. The man had kicked him in the stomach. Hard. Scooter, who had been kneeling on all fours, was now sprawled on the floor a starfish, arcing his body and gasping for air. His fingernails dug into his palm as he clenched his fingers around the paper.

The man lowered the flashlight and began scratching at Scooter's hand with his own, trying to pry his fingers loose. Knowing that he couldn't fix the aching in his stomach, Scooter channelled all his pain and energy into making sure his hand was kept closed.

He could hear the frustrated sounds of the man grunting through gritted teeth as he gripped Scooter's wrist and raked at his fist. Whoever the man was, Scooter thought, he was definitely strong. If he hadn't been so concerned with protecting the paper, he may have felt the man digging into the skin on his arm.

The man let out another cry of anger, released his grip from the iron lock of Scooter's fingers, and kicked him again. This time, Scooter may have let his forefinger relax, if only for an instant. Once the integrity has been breached, even the strongest fabric can unravel. This was all the man needed.

He yanked Scooter's hand open and the paper dropped lightly to the ground.

The man picked up his flashlight and shone it over the floor as Scooter clutched his stomach and writhed at the man's feet.

He located the paper next to Scooter's face and bent down to pick it up. Scooter made weak attempt to lean his head toward the paper but it did no good. The man was again standing upright before Scooter could move any farther. He held the paper up to his face and shined his flashlight on it.

Scooter pushed himself against the floor and struggled to roll over and look up at the man, but the pain flowing through his body made it impossible for him to get off of his stomach.

There was a lull when the only sound Scooter could hear was the pulsing storm outside. He was thankful for that. And then the man spoke.

"Alright, Scooter, I guess we're going to do this in the basement. It sounds like your little buddy is expecting you. Hope he doesn't mind if I tag along."

The man pointed his flashlight down at Scooter again. Scooter, still struggling to collect himself, peered up at the man as best he could.

"Oh, come on. You don't believe me?" he said. "Read it for yourself, then."

The man dropped the paper and watched it flutter down toward Scooter's face. It landed a few inches from where he was gathered on the floor. Still lying on his stomach, Scooter stretched a shaky hand toward the paper and picked it up. The man aimed his flashlight at the paper.

Scooter,

He's dead, but I found it. Come to the basement. Don't let them see you.

X