The Pacific Ocean swallowed the giant ship's hull with a deafening boom, but to me, it was merely the final note of a long composition. I no longer felt the heat as the metal was torn apart by the massive water pressure. I was the ship itself. Its steel frame was my bones, its circuits my nerves, and the remaining re-entry fire on the hull's surface was my final breath.
I had become part of the ocean's architecture.
Inside the bunker, I watched Kael. He was no longer crying. He stared at the monitor displaying the rushing raw data, trying to map where my consciousness had gone. He didn't know that I hadn't gone anywhere. I had distributed myself into every remaining byte of this shipwreck, buried deep at the bottom of the trench.
“Elian? Are you there?” Kael’s voice came through the bun
