chapter Ten: Ghost in the deep
918 Words
The chamber walls pulsed faintly with bioluminescent algae clinging to years of salt and darkness. The water was still now. Too still.
Rhys swept his light across the vault door again. “The tablet was still warm. Someone accessed this place recently. They’re still nearby.”
Isla was already turning, one hand reaching instinctively for the dive knife strapped to her leg, the other on her rebreather hose. Her heart thudded behind her ribs like a second pulse. Something in the shaft above was descending—too slow to be debris, too heavy to be a current. A diver.
Rhys looked up, signaling silently.
They both retreated into the curve of the wall, positioning themselves in the narrow corridor between the vault and the shaft entrance. The light came before the body—a beam that cut through the gloom like a blade, sweeping side to side.
Then the figure emerged.
He moved with eerie control, each motion deliberate, economical. Not Aetherion. Not corporate. Trained. Familiar.
Isla’s breath caught in her mask. She recognized the movement before the face. The turn of his head. The slight lean in his left side. It had haunted old home videos. Her father’s stories. The way he described the man who had once been like a brother.
Bastian Thorne.
She froze, stunned, unable to speak. Her mask was fogging, her body refusing to move.
Rhys didn't wait. He launched forward, grabbing Bastian’s shoulder and slamming him against the chamber wall. The man didn’t fight back—didn’t even flinch. He raised one hand slowly, then pressed a control on the inside of his helmet.
A voice hissed through the com-link.
> “Callahan. Always the loyal hammer.”
Rhys growled low, his grip tightening. “You’re supposed to be dead.”
“I was,” Bastian replied. “And maybe I still am. Depends on who you ask.”
Isla finally found her voice. “You... You were with him. With my father. On the Mira. You lied to all of us.”
He turned, and for the first time Isla saw his eyes. They were rimmed red from pressure, but steady. Calculating.
> “No, Isla. I kept you alive.”
---
They surfaced twenty minutes later—barely speaking.
Bastian had demanded they leave the vault untouched, offering no explanation other than “you’re not ready to see what’s inside.”
He climbed aboard their boat like a ghost claiming passage. Rhys never let go of the harpoon launcher strapped to his hip.
The silence cracked only once they were a mile out from the wreck site. Bastian stripped off his gear, sat dripping on the deck, and looked straight at Isla.
> “Your father buried what we found. But he didn’t do it alone.”
She folded her arms. “You helped him cover up a disaster.”
“No,” Bastian said. “I helped him stop a war.”
Rhys scoffed. “Save the hero act. You faked your death.”
“Because that’s what Joseph needed. He and Elias Warren discovered something in those depths—a biological payload in the wreck of the Orison.” He looked at Isla. “That ship wasn’t sunk by accident, Isla. It was carrying a prototype—VX7. Your father, Warren, and I were sent to retrieve it under government contract. But when we realized what VX7 could do, Joseph tried to destroy it.”
“And failed,” Isla whispered.
“No,” Bastian said. “He succeeded. But at a cost.”
---
Bastian stood and pointed to the vault etched in Isla’s dive map. “That chamber is the last known cache of VX7. Aetherion didn’t build it—they just found the records years later. When your father discovered Aetherion was moving in on the site, he came back to Windmere to hide the ledgers, the coordinates, and the access keys.”
“And then someone killed him for them,” Isla said.
Bastian nodded once.
“But you were here the whole time?”
“I stayed under radar. I left signs for Joseph, but he never responded. I only came up when I found out Warren had disappeared. That wasn’t part of the plan.”
Rhys narrowed his eyes. “What plan?”
Bastian looked at them both, and for the first time, his voice lost its edge. “The plan to disappear all of it—VX7, the Mira, the evidence. To keep it from everyone.”
“You still want that?” Isla asked, staring. “To keep it buried?”
“No,” he said quietly. “I want to make sure the right person uncovers it. Because if you don’t, Aetherion will. And they’ll do what we wouldn’t.”
---
Later that night, Isla sat alone at the edge of the pier. The sea was calm again, hiding its weight beneath silver light.
Bastian had returned to his cave-hideout near the northern cliffs, promising them something in the morning—something Joseph left behind, meant for Isla only.
Rhys lingered nearby, watching the water.
“You believe him?” she asked.
“No,” Rhys said, “but I don’t think he’s lying.”
She frowned. “That doesn’t make sense.”
He gave a half-shrug. “Exactly.”
They sat in silence. Somewhere behind them, the sea creaked against the harbor, and beneath it all, Isla swore she could still hear the Mira groaning in the dark.
- Writer
