Pressure. Oxygen. Choice.

The sub Mercy Jane drifted through the blue-black murk like a bead of dust caught in oil. Her floodlights cut narrow tunnels through suspended silt, illuminating fragments of old steel hull plating and ghostly tendrils of seaweed clinging to the wreck below.

Captain Edda Raines leaned over the console, eyes flicking between sonar pings. “Hold her steady. That’s our target—cargo bay three.”

“Copy,” said Vega, the diver tech, his gloved hands already on the drone controls. “Hull breach about ten meters wide. Structural scan’s iffy. Might be pressure fatigue.”

They were three days out from the nearest relay buoy, running lean on oxygen and even leaner on patience. The job was a mid-tier contract: recover a sealed crate from the Harlow’s Dream, a drowned luxury cruiser from before the Drowning. No one said what was in the crate, just that it was sealed and stamped with a corporate sigil no one recognized anymore.

Edda watched Vega’s drone snake into the breach. The feed flickered, static crawling across the image, then stabilized to show a long corridor sagging under pressure. Chairs, porcelain cups, and a child’s toy drifted lazily past.

“Getting something,” Vega murmured. “Crate matches the manifest. Still sealed.”

“Latch it,” Edda said.

The drone’s manipulator arms extended, clamping to the crate’s corners. Then the signal jittered—camera freezing for half a second. When it returned, the image had changed. The corridor was darker, narrower. Something—someone—moved just out of frame, drifting backward into the shadows.

Edda frowned. “Playback that last—”

The feed went black.

“Drone’s dead,” Vega said. “Full disconnect. That’s not a signal loss—something fried the link.”

Raines turned to the others. “We go in.”

Inside the wreck, light behaved like something alive—bending, twisting, caught on invisible currents. The team’s lamps illuminated flaking paint and rotted fixtures, bubbles spiraling upward from cracks in their suits.

They found the crate in a tilted ballroom, half-buried in silt and broken glass. The floor groaned with every step.

Vega knelt by it, brushing sediment away. “Looks intact. But the markings… these aren’t Union seals.”

Edda’s wrist display blinked—depth telemetry spiking. The pressure around them shifted, like the ocean itself inhaled.

Then, from the corridor they’d entered, came a low vibration. A hum.

The lights flickered.

Something floated into view—a shape like a person, but boneless, limbs trailing like ribbons. Its face was a blur of light, refracting their beams back at them.

Edda’s breath caught. “Fall back—”

The shape rippled, and the sound hit them—not a roar, but a resonance deep enough to shake their bones.

Their comms flooded with static. The crate behind them began to vibrate, faintly glowing where the seals had cracked with age.

“Vega, move!”

He grabbed the crate’s handle and kicked off toward the exit. The shape followed, slow and deliberate.

Back aboard the Mercy Jane, they sealed the hatch and flooded the chamber dry. The crate sat between them, dull and wet.

Edda looked at the condensation forming along its edges. It pulsed faintly, like a heartbeat.

“Don’t open it,” Vega said quietly.

Edda nodded—but she didn’t look away.

Outside, the sonar pinged once. Then again. Then again, closer.

Whatever was in that wreck wasn’t staying there.