The corridor is a cathedral of silence.Every sound Shane makes, every kick, every brush against the wall, echoes like prayer in the drowned halls of the university.The light from her flashlight flickers with each motion, scattering over floating debris, exam papers, a framed photograph, a backpack caught in a doorway.
Her brain keeps whispering the same rhythm beneath the panic:One breath. One move. One more second alive.
The glowing light she saw earlier pulses brighter ahead. She steadies herself, aims the flashlight, and kicks closer. The doorplate reads Dormitory C-5. Its frame is warped, the hinges bent outward like something had forced it open from the inside.
Her pulse spikes. She grips a nearby locker, steadying her float, and listens.
Nothing.Then,
A sound. Muffled, low. A thud. Then another.She hesitates. Someone's inside.
Shane pushes the door open, forcing herself through the gap. Inside, a cluster of floating figures turn, wide-eyed faces illuminated by her flashlight.Three survivors.Two girls, one boy, drenched, exhausted, eyes swollen from crying.
One of them exhales shakily. "Y-you're alive…"
Shane's throat catches. "You too." She switches to a calm tone, the kind her old instructors drilled into her during rescue simulations. "Anyone hurt?"
The boy gestures weakly. "Her leg. Broken, I think. We... we didn't know if anyone else.."
"Save it for later." Shane drags herself toward the injured girl and checks her leg. Swelling, not bleeding. She tears off a strip of fabric from a curtain and starts wrapping it tight. Her fingers tremble, but her mind stays sharp. "We're moving up. There's an air pocket in the main stairwell."
"You've been outside?" the boy asks.
Shane nods, tightening the knot. "You'll see. The whole building's… under."
The smaller girl clutches her jacket. "How far under?"
Shane meets her eyes. "Far enough that you shouldn't look out the windows."
They exchange silent glances, that quiet, awful acknowledgment of a world that's gone somewhere unreachable. Shane doesn't let the silence linger.
"Grab anything that floats. Stay close. We're heading up."
As they push through the corridor, she keeps checking every side, not just for escape routes, but for movement. The water feels alive around her, thick with unseen motion.Twice she catches herself glancing back at the windows, searching for that earlier shadow. Each time, nothing.
Halfway through the hall, the building groans again, a deep, strained sound that shakes dust loose from the ceiling. The survivors flinch.Shane steadies them with her voice. "It's just settling pressure. Stay calm. Keep moving."
Then something changes.A new sound joins the building's groan, faint at first, like static through a speaker. Then a hum.It grows deeper, resonant, too rhythmic to be random.Her chest tightens. The survivors look at her, terrified.
"What is that?" the boy whispers.
Shane listens.The hum isn't around them. It's below them.
The vibration ripples through the water, rattling the metal frame of the stairwell door. The emergency lights flicker in sync with it, like the whole structure is pulsing with one heartbeat too large to belong to anything human.
Shane grips the railing. "Move. Now."
They ascend, hand over hand, up the submerged staircase. The hum deepens once more, then stops, as suddenly as it began. The silence that follows feels heavier than the noise ever did.
When they finally surface at the top, gasping into the next air pocket, Shane collapses against the wall, catching her breath. Her chest aches from effort, but her eyes stay fixed on the stairwell below.
The water there is still vibrating.Tiny ripples dance across its surface as though something enormous has brushed past the outer foundation of the dormitory.
The boy beside her mutters, "It sounded like it was… singing."
Shane doesn't answer.She just stares at the water and whispers under her breath, too soft for the others to hear:
"Aaroon… if you're out there, please tell me you heard that too."