The pressure gauge rattled. It was an ugly sound. Like teeth chatter.
Kian tapped the glass of the dial. The needle hovered over the red zone. 300 ATM. Three hundred atmospheres of crushing black water, just waiting for an excuse to turn him into paste.
"You good, Kian?"
The voice in his earpiece was static and nerves. Jory. The kid was shaking. You could hear it in his breathing. Short. Shallow. Like a trapped rat.
"Solid," Kian lied. He tasted copper. Bit his tongue when the rig jolted earlier. "Keep the torch steady. You're drifting."
Outside the thick glass of Kian's helmet, the world was a void. Just an endless, suffocating dark. The only light came from the twin halogen beams mounted on their shoulders, cutting narrow cones through the silt.
They were hanging off the side of Sector 4. The Dome.
To the people inside, the Dome was the sky. It was safety. To Kian, it was just a dirty wall of glass separating humanity from extinction. And right now, it had a crack.
"I don't like this," Jory muttered. "Sensors are picking up movement. Big movement."
"It's just the currents. Thermal vents acting up."
"Doesn't look like vents."
Kian gritted his teeth. Coward. Kid had no business being a Breaker. One mission in, and he was already falling apart.
Kian focused on the weld. The mag-torch spat blue sparks, sealing the hairline fracture in the glass. It smelled like burnt hair inside his suit. Terrible ventilation. The Synod always promised new gear, but here they were. Wearing diving suits older than their fathers.
Clang.
A sound vibrated through the water. It hit Kian's chest like a physical punch.
He froze.
"Kian..." Jory's voice was high. A squeak. "Kian, look at twelve o'clock."
Kian looked up.
At first, nothing. Just the particle-filled gloom. Then, the darkness shifted.
It wasn't a fish. It was a mountain.
A Leviathan.
It drifted into the halogen light, silent as a ghost. Pale, translucent skin. Scars running down its flank like trench lines. It had to be sixty meters long. Maybe eighty.
"Kill the lights," Kian hissed.
"What?"
"Kill the damn lights, Jory! It sees the heat!"
Kian slammed the switch on his chest. Darkness swallowed him. He floated there, tethered to the Dome, heart hammering against his ribs. Thump. Thump. Thump. Loud enough to give away his position.
He waited.
Seconds stretched. Ten. Twenty.
Maybe it passed. Leviathans were blind, mostly. They hunted by vibration and heat. If they stayed still—
A light turned on.
Not Jory's light. Not Kian's.
It came from above.
Kian craning his neck, fighting the stiffness of the suit. He looked up toward the surface. Toward the "burning hell" where nothing was supposed to survive.
A single point of light was drifting down. Soft. Golden. Unlike the harsh blue of their mag-torches. It wiggled as it sank, dancing through the water.
A star?
Kian forgot to breathe. The legends said the surface was ash and fire. But that light... it was gentle.
It drifted closer. It wasn't a star.
It was a bottle.
A small, clear glass bottle. Corked. And inside, a piece of rolled-up paper.
Kian's brain stuttered. Impossible.Paper dissolves. Glass breaks at this depth. Unless it came from somewhere else. Unless it came from—
The water displaced violently.
The Leviathan didn't roar. It didn't scream. It just opened its mouth.
A vacuum of suction pulled Kian forward. The tether at his waist snapped. Just like that. Cheap Synod garbage.
He tumbled through the black water. Spinning. Out of control.
"Kian!" Jory screamed. The kid was sobbing now.
Kian's floodlight flickered back on as he crashed against the creature's hide. He scrambled, gloves slipping on the slime. He looked up, straight into the face of the monster.
And the monster looked back.
It didn't have the eyes of a fish. It didn't have the blank stare of a shark.
It had blue eyes. Human eyes. Buried deep in the swollen, mutated flesh of its skull.
They looked sad.
The massive jaws unhinged. Rows of jagged, needle-teeth. But Kian didn't look at the teeth. He looked at the impossible bottle drifting right past the monster's lip, swirling into the abyss of its throat.
A message. From a place that didn't exist.
"It's a lie," Kian whispered, the realization colder than the water. "It's all a—"
The jaws snapped shut.
Silence.
Only the pressure gauge remained. Rattling in the dark.