Into the Depths
The ocean darkened around Jackie as she descended past the reach of sunlight. Tiny motes of suspended plankton glimmered briefly in the beam of her cybernetic eye before vanishing into the black. Pressure pressed against her suit and body with every meter, but the adaptive fields and micro-pressure compensators hummed, holding her in a delicate balance between human fragility and technological resilience.
Her cybernetic suit's veins of nanobots pulsed like a circulatory system, millions of nanites flowing back and forth to maintain delicate human systems with the ever increasing pressures. The side of her body maintain a calming warmth, and she felt alert and ready.
She paused for a moment, letting her ocular implant scan the immediate surroundings. The first misaligned pillar loomed ahead, massive and unyielding, yet leaning at an angle that could jeopardize the entire hover plate system. Jackie adjusted her trajectory, micro thrusters on her suit firing in brief, precise bursts to stabilize her and control her descent. Her human lung, pressurized and augmented by the ocular-defense system interface and the cybernetic suit, drew air from the system in measured, rhythmic cycles. She could feel the pulse of it all, the subtle tick of cybernetic suit all of her natural systems in real time, keeping her alive.
"Depth: 80 meters. Temperature: 12 degrees Celsius. All systems nominal," BDJ reported, calm and precise.
Jackie didn't respond immediately. She was too busy observing the pillar. Two massive cracks ran along its surface, faintly glowing with strain lines her eye could detect. They were small but significant—tiny deviations that could escalate into catastrophic failure if left unchecked. The tilt above, in the hover plates and the island, was subtly transmitted through the structural grid overlay of her ocular system.
The subaqualis webbing straining to hold the structure in position.
"BDJ," she said, her voice echoing faintly inside the suit's sound compensation field, "how's the other pillar?"
"Secondary structure is stable at this time. Stress fractures are detected.. Adjustments being calculated. Structural integrity holding at 93 percent. Depth: 80 meters," BDJ replied.
"But cyborg signature detected in that location. Repairs are probably being completed." Tally's voice smoothly passed through her comms.
"Confirmed. Operative Orion detected at the second compromised pillar." BDJ answered as if she were busy doing something else.
Jackie's cybernetic eye highlighted the tension points in red, while the nano-lens protected her human eye from the corrosive saltwater and helped her to see perfectly. She flexed her fingers, feeling the subtle haptic feedback from her cybernetic suit, a faint vibration each time a stress point shifted. The ocular system's weapon-feedback loop combined with the ocular sensors allowed her to react almost preemptively—an instinct encoded in code, not in muscle memory.
Her descent continued, water pressure increasing, darkness swallowing the edges of her vision. Somewhere beyond the reach of her lights, she sensed movement—not animal, not familiar. BDJ detected nothing yet.
"Depth: 120 meters. Micro-currents increasing. Maintain trajectory," BDJ noted.
Jackie tilted her head slightly, ocular overlay projecting the currents in blue vectors across her vision. She adjusted her descent angle, allowing the currents to carry her without fighting them directly. It was delicate, a balance between trust and control. Her cybernetic systems corrected automatically for every subtle shift. Her human reflexes reacted slower than the machine, but she let that slide, relying on BDJ's computations and her ocular predictions.
Suddenly, Lyra's voice cut in. "Detecting unusual energy signatures below your trajectory. Large-scale, dense population. Not yet within visual range. Estimated: thousands of occupants."
Jackie's fingers froze, gripping the micro-thrusters. "Clarify," she said, though she wasn't alarmed—curiosity was sharper than fear.
"It is not fully within our current sensory range. The pattern is consistent with a large urban infrastructure. Unknown origin," Lyra continued. BDJ chimed in.
"Possibly one of the domed underwater cities. Closer proximity needed for complete assessment."
Jackie's heart didn't race. Her mind cataloged, analyzed, and prepared. The city below—or whatever it was—was irrelevant for now. She focused on the first pillar. She had a job, and the job came first.
Depth: 150 meters. The water was colder here, heavier. Pressure grew perceptibly against her suit, though adaptive compensators maintained balance. Small micro-fractures in the pillar pulsed faintly in response to her presence, reflected in the red highlights of her ocular interface.
BDJ's voice reminded her, "Structural deviations remain within tolerances, but leaning angle increasing. Corrective action recommended."
Jackie exhaled softly through her human lung, the nano-lens flickering with micro-adjustments as her cybernetic eye calculated vectors for corrective maneuvers. "Understood. I'm going to make contact. Prep for force application—localized kinetic adjustments, not full-scale strikes."
Lyra chimed in, "Energy readings stable. No unexpected environmental hazards detected at current depth."
Jackie nodded to herself. "Advise when you are in position, it is best if we work in tandem."
"Copy that."
Jackie's hands adjusted, thrusters firing lightly, controlling every movement as she approached the pillar. Nanites in the cybernetic suit reinforced her grip on the water's density, allowing her to manipulate currents subtly without resistance. She could see the pillar lean almost imperceptibly toward disaster. One wrong move here could ripple all the way to the island above.
Her human mind focused, her cybernetic systems precise. Together, they were seamless.
Depth: 180 meters. The bottom of the pillar loomed, anchored impossibly into the darkness below. Jackie knew the descent was far from over—there were two pillars, and she had to stabilize them both before returning to the surface.
And far above, on the hover vehicle, marked only a faint point of light, Patrick, Clarissa, and Sura monitored it all. There was silence in the lab as they all sat astonished at what they were seeing on their monitors.
Sura could not help but think, 'Can Jackie truly be trusted? With all of her untested power, who would she stand with, the Directive or the Resistance?'