Chapter 3 – The Ocean is Far Deeper Than You Think

Unknown Timeline Day 5

The universe was on mute. I stumbled into the cockpit with Alex doubled over in pain behind me, his shirt stained with blood. Our heavy boots made a racket on the loud steel floor as we clumsily made our way to the bulkhead. Or I assume so, because I couldn’t hear any of it, even after we took off our hearing protection.

I was paranoid that the remaining corrupted were waiting to ambush us just outside the hallway. We didn’t need to worry.

We later found out that our brave fighters in the med bay were able to hang on long enough to attract and deafen all the corrupted that could reach them.

In my pain-induced daze, I’d nearly forgotten why we’d come here. I was reminded by Alex’s medical-grade professionalism (and sometimes assholery) as he promptly kicked me in the shin and pointed a flashlight at the center console, all while cupping his left ear with a bloody hand.

The controls to the sub seemed relatively untouched, save for a concerning stream of water that was leaking from some unknown metallic corner of the room. I shined a spotlight on the enormous class dome at the bow, examining the almost-silky webbed cracks for any signs of leakage. Nothing. If it was the glass, we’d probably already be swamped, frozen, and crushed to death already.

The silence slowly gave way to a quiet whine, and then a loud ringing in my ears. I sighed in relief. I wasn’t permanently deafened, at least. Any hearing damage I had was the least of my worries.

I switched my attention to the navigation console and pulled up an interior camera view of the hallway. Nothing. The sub was completely quiet. Too quiet. I’d gone temporarily deaf from the flare detonations, but most concerning was that the singing was missing as well. Maybe it’s because we’ve drifted away from the city? That’s the only reason we’ve been brave enough to use flashlights, after all.

I checked the cameras in the mess hall. Nothing. The most direct path rearward from the cockpit had been cleared. The camera view switched to the medical bay.

Initially I believed something went wrong with the camera because the view was pitch black. It took a few seconds for my eyes to see that the blackness was uneven, rippling, pulsating. The camera hadn’t malfunctioned, there was really a black filament of oil coating the walls of the room. The only place not completely blacked out by the film was the center where the detonation went off. There, I could barely make out three skeletons of our brave baiting crew.

Three.

Alex squinted his eyes at the screen, and then his eyes opened wide with surprise.

“Somebody might’ve survived.”

At that very moment, a large clang reverberated throughout the room. Out of the gaping vent came a battered and bloody crewmate.

He was tall, all six feet of him, but skinny and covered with bruises and cuts. I recognized him as Eliott Barnes, an engineer who was part of the med bay party. By the way he barely seemed to acknowledge our existence, Alex figured he might have been concussed. He sat him down and told him to rest.

“What happened to you?” I asked.

“I-uh.. I think I might be injured”

No kidding.

“If you don’t mind me asking, what happened in the med bay?”

“We stuck to the plan. Made as big of a racket as we could, got… got as many of those things in with us so we could stop them”

“You got out”

“Yeah. The other guy… Anton? The copilot. He bolted across the door right before the flares were set off. For some reason the corrupt avoided him as he escaped.”

Eliott looked pretty uncomfortable. His eyes started to glaze over and unfocus, as if he was staring over my shoulder.

Something wasn’t adding up.

“What happened when the flares went off?”

“The blast deafened me for a few seconds even with ear protection. I couldn’t see exactly what happened at the moment because we had to briefly put on the blindfolds.” Elliot stopped to take a minute to breathe. Alex looked at me worryingly. Elliot was now bleeding copiously out of his nose.

“When the blast ended and my hearing came back a few seconds later, I realized that the corrupt were screaming and tearing at their ears. That’s where all this blood came from”

Elliot gestured vaguely at his shirt.

“And then… I guess when they realized they couldn’t hear that song anymore… they came after us. Everyone else was eaten alive. I managed to slip into the vent and seal it behind me before they got to me and I must’ve passed out for a good fifteen minutes before I got out this end.”

I couldn’t quite place it.

The hallways and major rooms were clear, and the only thing left to do was to secure the submarine. Alex handed me a knife and hammer and told me to go look for survivors and get rid of any remaining corrupted while he treated Elliot.

We’d planned on staying together for safety, but given Elliot’s steadily worsening condition (he began coughing up blood), Alex had no choice. I swallowed my fear and stepped out the door.

I made my way toward the back of the Enigma, through the mess hall and living quarters. Both were empty. The medbay was already cleared, and the cargo hold (being right across from the medbay) was emptied as well. It was when I reached the engine bay that my hairs began to stand on end. The stench of iron permeated the hallway, and if I stood still enough, I could hear moaning and movement on the other side. I grasped my hammer and knife firmly on each hand and, with one swift motion, kicked down the door.

My nose was immediately hit with the putrid smell of rotting meat. The room was completely gutted, as if a violent fight had taken place. A control panel was missing, a table corner was soaked with blood and grey matter, and the lights were shattered. The only source of illumination was from the hallway behind me.

Suddenly, out of the shadows came five screeching corrupted men. Their skins were greying, peeling, raw and exposed. Pieces of flesh were missing from their arms and legs, and one was missing his lower jaw. They carried no weapons but their fists and teeth, so I was able to swiftly dispose of them, driving my knife straight into their temples and smashing skulls in with a hammer before I could be overwhelmed. There was no longer any remorse for these creatures in my heart. As the last one fell from the tip of my knife, I felt my old wounds tingle. A faint tune played in the distance.

“Lana?”

The voice took me by surprise. I jerked my flashlight to point at the source, and at the center of a cone of light sat Simon, crouching under a table and covered with dark stains and scratches. I must have instinctively raised my hammer, because he immediately put up his hands and assured me that he was not corrupted, much to my surprise.

“How are you not dead?”

“Help me up first”

I noticed that Simon had a large bite mark on his leg. Once I pulled him back on his feet, he started talking.

“Our crewmates went crazy, they started to tear each other apart. It was like they were possessed.”

“I know, we were attacked too”

Simon nodded.

“They tried to get me too, which is how I got the bite mark. But I found out that if I rolled myself in their blood (he pointed at the body parts on the ground), they lost interest in me. Maybe it has to do with smell.”

“That’s quite a useful discovery… I’m glad you made it.” My conscience lightened a little. At least I didn’t doom everyone when I locked the med bay doors.

Together, Simon and I checked and secured the rest of the rooms of the submarine before heading back to the cockpit to create a plan of action. When we met Alex again, he was sitting next to Eliott, looking spent and grim.

“You okay?”

“Eliott’s dead.”

I looked at Eliott’s body and gasped. So much blood had come out of his nose that it soaked the front of his shirt. I bent over to take a closer look, but Alex stopped me on concerns that he could be infected.

“You could be infected too, Alex. Even with protection, you’ve been working on all the sick patients.”

“Of course. I’d recommend you stay away from me as well.”

Alex and Simon nodded at each other in acknowledgement and were exchanging brief condolences when Anton burst into the cockpit as well. He was still holding defibrillators and looked absolutely rabid. Alex and Simon immediately drew their weapons and told him not to come any closer, but I was surprised to see what looked like genuine fear in Anton’s eyes as they darted around, wide as quarters.

“Are they all gone?” He whispered.

“If you aren’t one of them” said Alex.

“Oh, thank God” Anton sighed, and the uneasy grin that had made me so uncomfortable before returned to his face.

Unknown Timeline Day 6

Today was the day we were supposed to make our escape back to the surface.

Anton and I prepped the sub for propulsion, while Simon and Alex oversaw the other systems. If my hunch was correct, all we had to do was outrun the city of corpses until we reached the edge of the circle where the seafloor reappears, and we’d be able to resurface.

Of course, I made sure to keep an eye on Anton in case he tried to do anything malicious to either me or the vessel. He made sure all the controls were being recalibrated properly, while I finally managed to reroute sonar data to the main cockpit display.

Suddenly, sounds of scuffling and yelling came from the engine room. I ran over to see Alex and Simon staring at each other, red in their faces and pointing their tools at each other. Simon gripped a wrench, while Alex pointed a screwdriver back at him.

“What is going on here?” We’d all agreed to be careful and take action if anyone caught another acting strange or displaying symptoms of corruption.

“Did someone get hurt?”

It was Simon who answered me.

“Don’t get involved with this, Lana. We just had a small disagreement to sort out, that’s all. Nothing else.”

I opened my mouth to retort, since we really all should be communicating with each other given the situation we were in, but Alex interjected:

“It’s alright. We don’t have to make a big deal out of this.”

I was baffled. I had never seen Alex and Simon act like this toward each other, and I never knew if they had any history together. But if it was something personal, then I wasn’t interested in getting nosy about it.

“This better not be a problem going forward then, whatever beef you two have with each other.”

I made a mental check to separate them on their tasks from now on.

With the engine set up and ready to go, and all other systems online in the cockpit, Anton and I settled in for our run toward the seafloor. I knew that the moment we activated the drive, we’d attract a whole lot of angry corpses, so everything had to go right. Looking through the controls of the dimly lit cockpit one more time (lights were kept to a minimum to lower the risk of attracting unwanted attention), I flipped the switch and felt the engine roar to life.

The effect was immediate. As the Enigma surged forward, pushing itself along a column of churning black seawater, I heard- no, felt– the wave of angry souls turning themselves toward us. Anton turned toward me and said something, but I couldn’t hear him. My ears were filled with the songs of the dead.

My knuckles went white on the yoke as I guided the Enigma straight and true. She ate up the water, slicing through like an arrowfish and then tearing it up with her massive bladed propellers as I brought her up to maximum power. I instantly began to feel the pull of the infinite drop below us, as if the gaping hole to nothingness below us was trying to suck us in. She groaned, her hull complaining audibly, engines and pumps struggling to maintain altitude against the downward current. As we drew close to the sheer infinite cliffside that marked the return of the ocean floor, I couldn’t help but feel my chest tighten with anticipation and hope. Maybe we have a chance after all. I looked around the cockpit. Anton, beside me, was grinning from ear to ear, looking genuinely happy. Behind me, Simon looked as serious and unconcerned as he always was, albeit a bit colder than usual. Alex looked like he was about to be sick.

Suddenly, a red light flashed throughout the cabin followed by a ringing female voice: “PROXIMITY ALERT”

“OVERHANG”

“DESCEND”

I snapped my head back forward and saw something that chilled me to the bone. The sonar display revealed that what I believed were massive undersea islands had moved ahead of us at what must’ve been impossible speeds. I squinted through the cracked glass.

In the dimly lit shadows of the sea, there were rows and rows of hooked needle-sharp teeth the size of buildings, pulsating and quivering in anticipation.

———————————————————————————————————–

The Enigma shook under the pressure as I flicked my wrists downward, commanding the sub to descend. Anton slammed his hand onto the floodlights, and we got our first good look at the thing.

It had a cluster of thousands of eyes, each entirely pupil, black and unmoving. Nearby were circular rows of needle-like hooked teeth that wiggled and jerked around as they rotated around the monster’s gaping mouth. But the most captivating part of the creature was its legs. There must have been hundreds of them, spindly, spiky, and white in the light of our floodlights. They seemed to spasm and jerk, almost as if in pain. Because the monster’s body was mostly its legs, it looked like the creature was barely containing an uncontrollable anger. Upon its massive pillar-like legs were rows of suckers, barnacles, tentacles, and tiny eyes, and as I traced them downward I saw that there were rows and rows of armored joints that gave the creature’s legs seemingly infinite flexibility. There was no bottom to the legs as far down as I could see. As far as I knew, they could extend down forever, standing on an ocean floor that never existed.

Out of its mouth came a sickening grinding sound and a low moan that ripped across the hulls of the submarine and straight through my chest. At the same time, a bang reverberated from the engine room and we lost propulsive power. As the lights flickered for a split instant during which Enigma rerouted to auxiliary power, the floor shook and rolled almost onto its side as the monster lurched toward us.

I commanded the ballast tanks to fill up completely, which destroyed our buoyancy and caused us to sink like a rock. Even then, I could tell the sub was sinking slower as the monster, the source of the current, I realized, reversed the flow of water and began to suck us upward. At the same time, its ungodly legs folded and contorted on themselves in a skin crawling way as it bent over to try and consume us.

In the distance, I could tell there were many more of these city-sized horrors hungrily crawling their way toward us. They weren’t singing to me, they were begging. I said a quick prayer, imagined the balmy sunny blue skies of my home for the last time, and braced for death.

It didn’t come. The monster pressed a single slimy grey eye against the glass canopy, wishing to observe its prey before finishing us off. Suddenly, it jerked away, recoiling faster than it gave chase as if it spotted something disgusting or terrifying inside. A few moments later, it was too far away to see.

“What the fuck happened to the engine?” I blurted out, heart still pounding and furious.

“What did you two do?”

Alex looked puzzled.

“Maybe we accidentally broke something when we were back there.”

Simon said nothing. He only nodded, looking strangely vacant in his expression.

“Anton, go find out what happened and fix it if you can. We need to get out of here.”

With all the ballast tanks filled, the Enigma was sinking faster than a rock. The depth gauge, which hasn’t been working for…days? Weeks? Now read zero. But when I tried to activate the pumps to empty the ballast, the Enigma flashed me a master warning and told me all auxiliary power was down. Not this shit again.

At the same time, the lights went out.

A strangled yell drifted across the darkness. Thinking that something happened to Anton, Alex and I grabbed our flashlights and ran toward the rear of the submarine, leaving Simon at the controls.

Anton was grinning.

“Someone planted a bomb. Genius, isn’t it?”

The entire driveshaft of the submarine was blown apart, jagged molten edges of steel were embedded everywhere in the electronics and walls of the room. Anton held a small piece of fuse in his hand.

“Genius?” I asked, stunned.

“Someone is trying to prevent us from getting back home.”

By the gleeful tone of his voice, Anton didn’t seem particularly bothered by this revelation.

I paused for a moment to consider his words, and then slowly turned to look at Alex.

“You and Simon were the last ones here. Do you care to explain what you were doing?”

With my spare hand, I fingered the handle of my knife.

“Why would I want to do something like this?” Alex said, with an air of hurt and incredulity in his voice.

“I saved your life, remember?” He gestured at Anton and me, pointing at the bandages on my shoulder.

“And busted my ass trying to help you, so no, I’m not trying to sabotage anything.”

Anton stared off into the distance, eyes furrowed. Alex looked at him intently, waiting for an accusation to come. But Anton only sighed, seemingly unable to recall something

“What were you doing with Simon earlier?” I asked, still not completely convinced.

“He… he got angry with me, that’s all. Said that we didn’t try to save him soon enough, and blamed me for his suffering in this room the past few days. He was trapped just outside the med bay when everyone was corrupted and barely survived.”

“Why wasn’t he angry with me? I locked him out.” A pang of guilt rippled through my chest

Alex just shrugged.

“It still could’ve been him though, the engine room is like a labyrinth. I was calibrating the electronics that interface with the pilot controls and I wouldn’t have been able to see if Simon planted an explosive. Anton can corroborate that for me from the cockpit.”

Anton looked blankly at me and nodded, still deep in thought.

I frowned. Simon was a stoic and stern figure, with a strong moral character that made him a great leader. He wasn’t someone I’d say was sneaky and slimy, although he definitely is clever. Alex’s account of him losing his temper seemed out of character as well.

“Simon’s the mission director, we’ve done thousands of dives together. Besides, why would he sabotage his own vessel?”

“He brought us down here.” Alex said, darkly.

“What about mission control back up on the surface? You think they knew about this?”

No one had a good answer.

Unknown Timeline Day %

I had a hunch about something regarding Simon today. As mission director he has master access to pretty much all the systems on the Enigma, including navigation and piloting. I made my way to communications with a usb stick and started to download information. Logs, sensory data, interior and exterior footage, even my own personal journal entries. If there were any inconsistencies, I’d spot them here.

Suddenly, I heard heavy metallic footsteps approaching the room.

My hands trembled as I waited the final few seconds for everything to wrap up, and then with one swift motion, I pulled the stick out and pulled up a generic transmission screen.

Into the room walked Anton. Behind me, I slipped the data stick into my back pocket.

“Whatchu doin here?” Anton asked quietly. I was the only one in the room, but his eyes seemed to be focused somewhere far behind me.

“Just checking the comms” I said, sounding as confident as possible. Maybe too confident. Anton’s been acting very strange lately, and I couldn’t risk him, or anyone for that matter, to know what I was doing if indeed someone was trying to sabotage us. It was best not to trust anyone for now.

“Really? The comms haven’t been working for weeks.” Anton’s voice got even quieter, barely audible.

“Uh, it doesn’t hurt to try. I’ve been coming back here every other day.” I prayed that Anton didn’t spend much time nearby, he would know if I frequented as I claimed.

After a moment of silence, Anton shrugged vaguely and left.

I felt the weight lift from my chest.

I returned to my quarters and slipped the stick down a box of tampons for safekeeping.

Unknown Timeline Day ^*

I must have fallen asleep, because I was jerked awake by a scream, followed by frantic footsteps. Anton was laying in the hallway with a large gash on his chest. He was heaving in pain while Alex worked fast to patch him back up.

I turned to Simon.

“What happened?”

“He says he was attacked by a corrupted person.”

“He did? Where?”

“Got away, apparently.”

“I thought we killed all of them”

“So did I”

Anton’s cut was deep and squirming with a black infection. Alex hustled him into the med bay, pumped him full of drugs, and told us to give him some privacy to heal up.

Alex, Simon, and I then held a meeting in the cockpit, discussing what to do next.

“We need to figure out what’s been going on” Alex began, before he was interrupted by Simon.

“Alex, where were you just now? Before Anton was attacked.”

“I wasn’t anywhere near him! I was in the med bay cleaning up the bodies that some people decided not to help with.”

“Strange that you got so defensive. I was merely going to ask if you saw anything.”

“You’ve been accusing me a lot lately. I have a right to defend my honor.”

I interjected. “Guys, we don’t even know if it’s one of us! Maybe some corrupted survived and they’re doing all these things to keep us down here, following that damned song of theirs.” I desperately hoped what I said was true. It gave an easy out to the uneasy idea that one of my crewmates I’d known for years was trying to get all of us killed.

“A corrupt doing all of this?” Alex said, incredulous. “As a certified doctor I can say that insane, sick, brain damaged people don’t tend to build bombs well”

“They follow the song” I retorted. “I’ve heard it. It’s entrancing, and incredibly detailed in a way. Maybe there’s some malicious force out there that wants us dead, and the corrupt crew are their puppets”

Simon sided with me. “She’s got a point. It’s a simple explanation, and it matches up with Anton’s account. Otherwise you’d have to surmise that there are more than one saboteurs onboard, and there’s really not that much space on a submarine to hide in.”

Alex’s eyes were wide as dimes, and he almost cut off Simon before he finished talking.

“Hold on, are we just going to ignore the bombshell Lana dropped on us?”

“What? What did I say?” My heart began beating violently in my chest.

“You heard the song! The only people I know who heard it became dead, infected, or corrupted! How do we know she isn’t some sort of… high functioning puppet for them?” He looked almost insane with fear, spittle came out of his mouth as he gestured wildly at the window, at what I assume to be the monsters above.

“Do you remember what you’ve been doing the past few hours?” Simon asked, calmly but coldly.

“I-I dont know! I was… asleep?”

“I don’t know about you, but I haven’t felt the need to sleep for weeks” Simon responded, eyes narrowed into slits.

I felt my skin crawl. I instinctively reached for the wounds on my shoulder, where the corrupted had lacerated and grabbed me with their slimy, grubby hands. The cuts were tingling again.

——————————–

The only reason I wasn’t tied down and locked up right then and there, I assume, was because Simon never fully bought the whole “song” thing that his crew has been claiming to hear. He still thinks it’s some weird psychotic disease that makes people go mad, and mad people don’t build intricate bombs.

Alex gave me a wide berth from then on, which is fine by me. I had business to take care of, anyway. I returned to my living quarters and locked the door after making sure no one was following me and sweeping the room for hidden cameras. As I pulled up a laptop and began uploading data from the stick, my eyes began intently picking apart the contents of the screen, looking for any inconsistent inputs, outputs, or anything out of the ordinary.

Blah, blah, blah. Crew count, technical specifications, inventory (strange, why do we have so much “Complex III” in storage? Some kind of medicine maybe?)

I skipped ahead. The command and electronics logs were what I wanted to look at.

It was a few minutes before I spotted something very strange. A master lock-out command issued from the command center was issued on January 23, 2020 and accepted by the co-pilot console from inside the cockpit. The intended use of this feature is to prevent tampering or alteration of drive controls by a rogue pilot during an emergency, and so it effectively locks down all controls by the pilot, rendering their inputs unresponsive. That date… that’s when we were sinking uncontrollably down the trench. I had thought some technical malfunction or some terrible external force was shutting down our controls, forcing us to dive straight down. In reality, the actual “malfunction” was internal. This was planned.

I read the command again. Accepted by the copilot console.

Having seen enough, I put away the stick and armed myself with a knife and wrench. Then, I walked out the door on the hallway to medbay.

The medbay is one of the most heavily monitored areas on the submarine. I knew that Anton probably had something to do with the hijacking of this mission, but I also knew that there was a co-conspirator in the command center. Assuming Anton didn’t just send himself the command, that leaves two of us innocent. I know I’m not one of the saboteurs, so the other is either Simon or Alex. That meant I had to be careful with revealing sensitive information, even if it seemed like Anton and I were alone.

But do I really know it’s not me? I reached out to my shoulder and pressed it, gingerly. Sharp pains shot down my arm from the wounds, and I bit my lip to stop myself from screaming. A soft whisper of music graced my ears. My eyelids drooped as sleep suddenly threatened to take over. No. Stay awake.

“Anton. How are you feeling?”

Anton jerked up in his bed unnaturally, his head pointed in oh-so-slightly the wrong direction, eyes hazy and unfocused. He seemed very ill.

“Is that you, Lana? I can’t really see.”

“Yes, it’s me. Listen Anton. I need you to focus and tell me what happened to you. Don’t leave out any details.” I needed to find out who was the co-conspirator, if there even was one. Anton had better get his details straight or I’d be able to tell if he lied.

“I was… in security. Looking at something.” He lifted a hand to cradle his head, seemingly in a lot of pain. It was hard to watch him struggle against his sluggish body and mind, and it felt like an eternity before his eyes became focused, looking at me.

“I think I was looking for something…evidence… I just can’t… remember.”

“You can’t remember? It was a few hours ago at most!”

Anton only moaned and clutched his temples. My confidence in his guiltiness was starting to fade. He looked like he was genuinely attacked, and plus, literally anyone could have snuck into the cockpit and accepted that command. Including me.

“Hey. Focus. Can you at least describe who wounded you and how?”

“It was… with a knife. Uh… b-black teeth… needles… screaming, singing?” He was sputtering almost incoherently.

“Who? Who?”

“L-long hair”

I felt my stomach drop. Anton continued:

“Not… what you think…”

Behind me, Alex suddenly walked in. Anton’s eyes snapped out of focus, head and body flopping almost lifelessly to the side. He was back to being uncooperative.

“What are you doing here, Lana? Anton needs his rest”

“I was asking him about the incident”

“Did he tell you what you needed to know?”

“What do you mean what I needed to know? Do you not need to know?”

“He’s nonresponsive. You think I haven’t tried talking to him already? I’m a medical professional, for Christ’s sake.”

I ignored what must have been Alex’s twentieth time reminding me about his profession and kept a straight face.

From what Alex said, it seemed like he didn’t overhear our conversation. I felt the knot in my chest loosen.

“Oh and Lana, we’ve been friends for a while now, but if I catch you misbehaving…” Alex’s face became serious, grim. “I won’t hesitate to eliminate the threat. It’s nothing personal, I just want to go home.”

I felt chills run down my spine as I left the room, with my eyelids getting heavier every step of the way.

Note: The massive sonar blips no longer follow the Enigma from this point onward.