"Hey," she said softly. Her voice had that gentle, uncertain lilt, like a cautious wave testing the sand before the tide came in. It was a sound that instantly cut through the low, pervasive drone of the deep-sea habitat.
"Hey," Zander replied, his tone consciously even, though he felt the faint, dull echo of hesitation settle beneath it. He stood leaning against a reinforced bulkhead, the cool metal pressing through the thin fabric of his undersuit. The air in the corridor was damp and smelled faintly of ionized sea salt and recycled oxygen.
For a moment, neither spoke. The silence was thick, charged not just with the unspoken words between them, but with the rhythmic, deep thrum of Hydraxis' central core, a massive, engineered heartbeat that reverberated faintly up through the floor beneath Zander's boots. The holographic light that projected Lyra's image shimmered faintly between them, translucent and alive, casting soft blue and cyan flares across his face. He watched her digital form breathe, her eyes fixed on him with a mixture of hope and anxiety.
Lyra finally broke the profound silence. She shifted slightly, causing the light from her end of the transmission to waver. "Listen… I wanted to say I'm sorry. For what you saw."
Zander blinked, his brow furrowing. The air suddenly felt tighter, the faint hum of the core growing louder in his ears. He knew exactly what she meant—that fleeting, sharp moment from a few days ago. He had connected to the Academy's holo-feed for a supply requisition mid-briefing, and the system had accidentally cross-linked to a social channel. For a single, agonizing second, he'd caught a glimpse of Lyra and Joran sitting together in a brightly lit cafe back on the surface, laughing over shared data pads. He hadn't said anything then, hadn't even reacted on the feed, but the image had stuck with him like a piece of grit in the back of his mind, a tiny, annoying friction point he hadn't known how to address.
Lyra exhaled, a visible, shaky breath even through the digitized medium, and her voice trembled just slightly. "It wasn't what it looked like. Joran has been... persistent since we left the Academy. He kept asking me to go out with him, to talk, to just 'catch up,' he said. He was showing up at my apartment, waiting outside the orbital transfer docks—it was exhausting. I got tired of him showing up everywhere, constantly infringing on my space. So I thought if I agreed just once, in public, in a place I knew I could control the narrative, he'd finally stop."
Her eyes flickered down, unable to meet his for a moment, tracing the faint lines of the digital console she must have been operating. "It was a tactical mistake, Zander. It didn't mean anything. Nothing happened. We talked about logistics and Academy politics for twenty minutes, and then I left. I promise. I just wanted to get him out of my hair for good. But when I realized you saw it… when I saw the timestamp of your connection and realized you might have misinterpreted it... I felt horrible. That's why I've been trying to catch you."
Zander stayed quiet at first, processing the rapid torrent of explanation. The faint, high whine of distant magnetic turbines—used to stabilize the habitat—filled the charged silence between them. His throat tightened—not from the sudden surge of anger or jealousy he might have expected, but from the sudden rush of relief that came when something he didn't even realize mattered suddenly mattered a great deal, and was suddenly resolved. He realized he had been holding his breath since he saw that image.
He finally asked, his voice low, measured, and stripped bare of judgment, "So… it was just one time? A way to manage him?"
Lyra nodded, her cheeks tinged with a delicate flush that reached the visible edges of her ears, a faint pink glow against the blue holographic light. "Just one time. And I regretted it almost immediately. I regretted even giving him the idea that I might be open to it. Especially after realizing you might've thought there was something more... that I was careless with your feelings, or indifferent."
She looked up, her expression one of acute, honest vulnerability. Her voice softened into a near whisper, fighting against the ambient noise of the habitat. "Because… there isn't. There never was. Joran is a ghost from the past, an easy choice that I have no interest in. The truth is—" she hesitated, drawing in a long, steadying breath that seemed to pull all the scattered light in the room towards her. Her eyes, magnified slightly by the digital rendering, lifted to meet his—direct, unwavering, and luminous.
"The truth is, I've been having feelings for someone else. Strong feelings. For a while now. I didn't really want to admit it to myself at first, because I didn't want to complicate things, especially with the mission and the distance. But," she trailed off, the corners of her mouth twitching into a shy, uncertain smile that quickly brightened her entire image. "It's you, Zander. It always has been."
The words hung there, raw and real, suspended in the space between the holographic projection and the cold metal wall. They hit him with the force of an actual sonic wave, momentarily eclipsing the hum of the core and the distant turbines. It was a clarity that cut deeper than any blade.
For a few precious seconds, Zander didn't move. He felt the cold shock of the metal bulkhead against his back, the sheer magnitude of the abyss outside, and the staggering weight of her confession, all colliding in his chest. The light from the hologram flickered faintly across his face, catching the stunned, disbelieving look in his eyes. He realized the question wasn't if he liked her, but how long he had been desperately hoping to hear those words.
He opened his mouth, closed it again, his mind racing through years of shared glances, quiet training sessions, and countless late-night data transfers that stretched into easy conversation. He finally let out a quiet laugh—the kind that carried disbelief and warmth all at once, a genuine, unguarded sound that felt utterly foreign in the tense environment of Hydraxis. "You really know how to drop things like that out of nowhere, Lyra," he said, shaking his head slightly, the shock giving way to pure, unadulterated joy.
Lyra laughed too, a melodic, bright sound that shattered the remaining tension between them. Her blush deepened, now a vibrant, joyful crimson. "I wasn't planning to say it like that! I had a whole speech prepared! It just… came out when I realized how worried I was about losing you because of my own stupidity."
"Well…" he began, his tone losing all remaining hesitation, softening into something warm and resonant. He pushed off the bulkhead, stepping closer to her shimmering image. "For what it's worth... I like you too, Lyra. More than just 'like,' actually. I have for a while."
That made her smile wider, shy but luminous. The kind of smile that momentarily eclipsed the crushing weight of the miles and the oceans between them. The kind of smile that made him forget, for a glorious, reckless moment, that he was in the middle of an underwater city surrounded by mechanical beasts and uncharted threats.
They shared a short laugh—light, uncertain, and yet instantly comfortable. The conversation, awkward and nerve-wracking as it began, shifted easily after that. The unease melted away like frost under morning light, replaced by a quiet, electric understanding. They talked for another minute, making plans for a proper, future connection once his mission cycle concluded—a conversation that tasted of promises and surface-world sunshine.
The call lingered for one last, deep breath, a moment of profound connection, then Lyra's image dissolved into a cloud of blue particles—fading into the damp air like light into mist.
Zander stood there for a long time, watching the particles settle. The silence that returned was different now; it was an expectant silence, filled with the echo of her voice and the promise of the future. The vast, cold reality of the ocean pressed in, but he felt a new, unfamiliar warmth in his core. He drew in a long, shuddering breath. The air tasted like salt, static, and something akin to hope.
He became acutely aware of the humming central core, the whisper of the ventilation, the cold sweat on his hands. It was the focus he needed. The emotional clarity Lyra had gifted him was a catalyst, sharpening his mental edges.
In the distance, one of the maintenance drones surfaced from a charging port—its metallic eye gleaming like a star briefly caught in the water. Zander watched it go, his mind already calculating its trajectory, its purpose, the subtle shift in pressure its movement generated.
He removed his gloves, letting the moisture of the night cling to his skin. His fingers, still slightly numb from the cold of the abyss, flexed slowly. Then, for the first time since the fight with the Leviathan, he reached for the specialised Aether-weave goggles strapped around his neck—the latest, high-frequency sensory array Sensei had engineered for deep-sea operation. He hesitated only a second before pulling them free and securing them over his visor.
The world sharpened instantly.
It wasn't just a matter of light or magnification; it was an augmentation of reality itself. Colors deepened, the deep black water outside the Hydraxis dome glowing faintly with bio-luminescent traces he hadn't seen before. Tiny organisms danced like vibrant, living sparks in the crushing dark, each one a miniature point of light in the boundless void. He could see further—outlines of ancient, titanic structures that would have been invisible to any other human eye, now rendered in spectral, faint blue and green.
And then, movement.
Not just sight, but feeling. A school of silver fish, maybe a new, mutated species, gliding past—thirty meters away, perhaps more—but he could sense them an instant before he saw them. The water vibrated faintly against his skin, every tiny pulse and current translating into an invisible language his augmented senses were just beginning to learn. The pressure field generated by the fish's frantic collective movement registered as a faint, complex texture across his perception.
Zander exhaled, closing his eyes briefly. His heart slowed, dropping to a deep, meditative rhythm. Every sound, every ripple, every tremor, every heartbeat of the ocean seemed to align with his own. He was not just in the water; he was of it. The lessons of the Flowing Current, the second sword form, suddenly snapped into place, no longer just a technique, but a truth. The terror he had felt fighting the Leviathan, the failure of his brute force, was replaced by understanding. The beast had tried to use the current to crush him; he should have used the current to evade it.
Something was changing, rapidly accelerating his training. Not violently, not suddenly, but deeply and irrevocably. Quietly, the universe was reorganizing itself around his will. His senses stretched, mapping the topography of the abyss in real-time, charting the heat signatures, the current speeds, and the ambient noise spectrum. He was processing data faster than Hydraxis' own external sensors.
He smiled to himself—just a faint curve of the lips, a private acknowledgement of the immense power he had just unlocked, catalyzed by a single moment of emotional honesty. "One step at a time," he murmured, his voice muffled slightly by the goggles. This was not the end of the challenge; it was merely the acquisition of the right tool. He slipped the gloves back on, now feeling the cold metal as a friend, an extension of his own skin. He looked toward the abyss, no longer with apprehension, but with anticipation.
Hydraxis waited, the fragile bubble of human endeavor suspended precariously between the surface world and the crushing unknown.