The atrium smells of salt, rust, and candle smoke.Someone's scrawled "Keep Breathing" across the cracked whiteboard, a message that feels more like a prayer than advice.
When Aaroon and Darius return, the others are already gathered around a flickering holo map projected from Elias's wrist device. The connection is weak, patchy, the projection cuts in and out like the world itself is stuttering.
Jasmine is crouched beside a broken generator, hands smeared with oil. "We can run this for another few hours," she says, "if someone siphons fuel from the parking deck."
Marcus shakes his head. "Deck's underwater. I saw it before the flood receded. We'll have to wait until next cycle."
"So what, we sit here and hope the lights stay on?" Jasmine snaps.
Kai leans back against the wall, a half-empty water bottle in his hand. "I say we count our blessings. We didn't drown, we didn't starve, and Bea hasn't tried to stitch anyone's mouth shut yet. That's a win."
Bea, cleaning medical tools on a table, doesn't even glance up. "Keep talking, Kaito. I'm running out of scalpels, but I'll improvise."
Laughter, brief, brittle, but real, breaks through the tension for a moment.Then Darius steps forward, setting his flashlight on the table. "We found something."
The room quiets.
He gestures for Aaroon to show the damaged drone. Elias connects it to the holo-projector, the flickering image filling the space in eerie blue tones. The distorted footage plays, blurred water, drifting debris, and that faint silhouette moving through the deep. When the image cuts, silence returns.
Marcus rubs the back of his neck. "Could be a whale."
"No whale moves like that," Jasmine mutters. "Look at the scale. That thing was close to the drone. The pressure should've crushed it."
Kai whistles low. "So… sea monsters? Great. Thought we'd unlocked every apocalypse genre already."
Darius ignores him. "Whatever it was, it's near the bay. The trench wasn't there before. It's new, maybe formed when the flood hit. If it's connected to those vibrations, we're too close."
Elias adjusts his glasses. "You're suggesting we move inland."
"I'm suggesting we survive," Darius replies.
Aaroon crosses his arms. "And leave everyone else behind?"
"Everyone else?" Jasmine echoes. "Aaroon, the comm lines are dead. We haven't seen another living group in over twenty-four hours."
"There are others," Aaroon insists. "There have to be. The city's huge"
"And sinking," Jasmine interrupts, voice sharp as glass. "The more we wait here, the less chance we have to find stable ground."
Aaroon meets her gaze. "If we leave now, we abandon people who might still be trapped. What if they're waiting for help that never comes?"
Her expression hardens. "Then they'll learn faster than we did, no one's coming."
The air grows thick. No one speaks. The only sound is the generator's uneven hum.
Kai breaks the silence softly. "We don't even know if going inland is safer. What if it's worse? What if this flood thing isn't… local?"
Darius exhales slowly. "Then we'll adapt. Sitting here means dying when the next wave comes."
Aaroon looks away, out toward the glass dome where the sea's reflection glimmers faintly. His chest feels heavy. Darius isn't wrong. None of them are. But his mind isn't in the room anymore.
He's thinking of her.
Shane.
He remembers her face before the water rose, the way she smiled nervously as the alarms blared, the way her hand gripped his sleeve in the crowd outside the university gates. Then the surge hit, the chaos, the wall of water swallowing everything. He'd lost sight of her in an instant.
He doesn't even know if she made it inside any of the shields.If she's alive.If she's still out there, somewhere in this drowned city, fighting, waiting, breathing.
His fingers tighten around the edge of the table. "We don't even know what's out there. Moving without a plan is suicide."
Darius studies him for a long moment. "Doing nothing is a plan. It's just the kind that kills slower."
Elias, still staring at the flickering hologram, murmurs, "Every civilization thinks they'll last forever."
Bea rolls her eyes. "Here we go again."
Elias looks up, his expression unreadable. "We all thought the world would give us time to figure things out. It didn't. Maybe it's not the end, maybe it's just… A test."
"Some test," Bea mutters. "We're failing spectacularly."
Kai smirks faintly. "Hey, at least the grading curve's generous. Half the class is gone."
The others groan softly, but Aaroon doesn't laugh. His gaze is fixed on the horizon through the glass. The light outside is dimming again, not from sunset, but from something moving far beneath the sea.
The water ripples.
A deep hum reverberates through the floor, faint but unmistakable.Like the world inhaling.
Darius tenses. "That's the same sound we felt near the field."
Jasmine grabs her tablet, scanning for readings. "No signal. No seismic data. It's like the planet's heartbeat."
Bea mutters, "Or a countdown."
No one argues.
The hum fades as quickly as it came, leaving only the drip of condensation and the soft buzz of dying lights.
Aaroon's hand finds the broken drone in his pack again. His mind drifts back to Shane, to her laugh, her stubbornness, her impossible optimism. If she's alive, she'll be trying to survive, too. She always did better than him at staying calm when everything fell apart.
He whispers under his breath, too quiet for the others to hear."Please be safe."
Outside, the water glows faintly, pale blue veins threading through the darkening sea.
Twelve hours.Half gone.Half left to prepare for whatever wakes next.