chapter Nine: beneath pressure
551 Words
The next morning, the sky broke into sudden blue—as if the storm had never existed.
But Isla felt it pressing against her, heavier than ever.
She sat on the edge of the harbor wall, flipping through the dive log Elias Warren had left behind. Each entry was terse. Coordinates. Depth. Warnings.
And at the end, the words: No return without B.T.
Bastian Thorne.
“Your father trusted him once,” Rhys said, crouching beside her. “Maybe he still did. Or maybe he didn’t have a choice.”
Isla closed the book and looked out at the sea. “There’s something down there. And if we don’t find it first, someone else will.”
---
They gathered supplies in secret—oxygen tanks, dive lights, cold-water gear. Rhys called in a favor from a trusted former marine who kept a vessel just off the inlet. No coast guard backup. No paperwork.
They couldn’t risk interference now.
Malik intercepted them as they were loading the boat.
“You’re heading to those coordinates,” he said flatly.
Isla hesitated. “We don’t have time for official channels.”
“I’m not here to stop you,” he said, glancing around the dock. “But someone else might. The station’s phones were tapped. I found a call traced back to Aetherion Biotech… referencing the Mira. You’re not the only ones searching.”
He handed her a sealed folder. “These were left in my locker this morning. I didn’t put them there.”
Inside were underwater blueprints—schematics of a chamber buried beneath the Mira’s wreck. Reinforced steel. Submerged containment units. Experimental materials.
And stamped in the lower corner: VX7.
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They launched at first light.
The boat cut across the water in silence, slicing toward the coordinates like a compass needle pulled by truth. Rhys steered while Isla stared at the sonar monitor, watching the ocean floor rise in peaks and folds.
Then—something flat. Artificial. Covered in silt.
“There,” she whispered. “That’s it.”
They suited up and descended.
---
The water was clearer than expected, cold and thick with pressure. As they sank, the outline of the Mira’s hull emerged from the gloom—torn and gaping. A rusted leviathan resting in silence.
But Isla didn’t stop at the ship.
They followed the seafloor down another thirty meters until they reached it: a metal hatch half-buried beneath barnacles and algae. The schematic was real.
The chamber existed.
Rhys tapped a button, activating the hydraulic winch on his gear. The silt churned. Metal groaned.
And then the hatch opened.
Inside: a narrow shaft, descending into black.
They clipped into the safety line and went down.
---
The pressure was intense. Visibility dropped to a few feet. Isla’s heart pounded with every pulse of her dive light. The chamber wasn’t large—but what it held was chilling.
A single vault door. Sealed tight.
Beside it: a keypad—cracked, corroded. Dead.
But something was left beside it.
A waterproof tablet. Modern. Recently used.
Rhys picked it up and turned the screen.
A live satellite uplink.
The chamber had been monitored.
And it had been accessed—yesterday.
Isla turned as a noise echoed above. Movement in the shaft.
A second team.
They weren’t alone.
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- Writer
