Chapter 22 #2
She nods once. “Then let’s not waste the weather window.”
I could kiss her.
The room steadies because Evelyn Ellery has decided panic is gauche.
The first rotation is the Alvarezes and the other honeymoon couple, because Mrs. Alvarez deserves to stop collecting haunted corridors like resort amenities. They move with Lina and a bay tech. Dutch walks in front.
At the bay entrance, Reyes has turned the staging area into an emergency spine. Supplies line the wall in clear groups.
The bay doors remain closed for loading.
Vessel L-1 sits in the cradle, pilot already inside, systems green.
The Alvarezes strap in first. Mrs. Alvarez’s wife keeps hold of her hand until the harness makes it awkward.
The second couple follows. The woman from the second couple is crying quietly.
The husband isn’t crying only because he’s assigned himself the job of kissing his wife’s knuckles every few seconds.
The first launch is clean.
Outer gate cycles. Vessel releases. Pressure equalizes. L-1 slides into the approach corridor, small and bright against the dark, then rises out of view. I watch every second on the feed until topside confirms ascent path stable.
One down.
The second rotation takes Dane, Evelyn Ellery, her daughter, and Dane’s private security man.
Dane boards stiffly, face pale under his tan. He looks at me through the submersible glass as if I personally engineered mortality to inconvenience him.
In a way, perhaps.
Reyes is at the bay control station, one hand on the console, eyes on the support readout. His head turns before the alert appears on my tablet.
Exterior stress rise. Bay support B-9. Labeled current shear.
“No,” Reyes says.
Everyone who matters hears it. Dutch stops halfway between the vessel and the staging line. Holden steps closer to my shoulder, close enough to see my tablet. Lina, in the atrium feed, says something to the waiting staff and smiles.
I pull up the exterior camera.
At first, nothing.
Just bay lights cutting into dark water. The closed shape of the outer gate. Suspended particles moving in the current. The submersible cradled and ready, four heartbeats inside a machine that suddenly looks too delicate.
Something passes between them and the camera.
A shadow moves beyond the outer gate.
Large. Slow.
The system tries to identify it. The label flickers once, fails, and leaves the feed blank.
I don’t need the label.
In the vessel, Dane turns toward the forward glass.
Dutch steps into the passengers’ sightline from the platform and raises one hand, calm as a sealed door. “Look at me.”
Everyone looks at him.
Reyes’s voice is low. “Stress rising along B-9. Cradle can hold if we launch now. If we wait through another pressure surge, I can’t guarantee the cycle stays clean.”
Holden says nothing.
The shadow stops outside the bay.
The water around it shifts in slow pressure waves. Part of the shape catches the bay light. A long curve. Appendages beneath. Too large for the camera to make sense of at this angle.
My hand rests on the launch control.
Abort keeps the guests here, inside the compromised facility, with Kevin at the bay.
Launch sends them through the door while Kevin watches.
“Maren,” Reyes says.
I press launch. The bay sequence begins. My whole body goes cold.
The outer gate cycles. Cradle release confirms. Pressure equalizes. L-2 slides out of the bay with Dane Whitcomb, Evelyn Ellery, her daughter, and Dane’s private security man strapped into the small bright capsule, all four of them visible through the interior camera feed.
Reyes watches the stress readout. Dutch stands on the platform, eyes on the remaining guests and staff, body positioned between them and the bay feed without making it obvious. Holden’s beside me, close enough to see the telemetry.
The shadow shifts below it, matching.
“Attention forward,” the pilot says, calm but too quick.
“Stress rising at B-9.” Reyes’s voice is low.
“Launch path?” I ask.
“Still open.”
The submersible clears the gate.
L-2 rises into the approach corridor, small and bright against the basin dark. Kevin’s shadow remains below and to the east, watching the door work.
Then the lower dark opens from the other side.
Smaller. Armored. Fast.
The Dunkleosteus analog hits L-2 broadside hard enough for the exterior feed to lose horizon. The submersible jerks sideways, lights swinging wild through black water. The camera catches jaw plates, armor, the white oval of Dane’s face behind the forward glass.
Then static takes the feed.
The bay erupts in alarms. Telemetry alarms. Comms alarms. The awful electronic language of a system losing its grip on something that still has people inside it.
“L-2, report,” I say.
Nothing.
“L-2, report.”
Static.
The pilot’s voice cuts through once, broken and sharp. “Stabilizers hit. Losing orientation. Attempting correction.”
The feed flashes back for less than a second. Dark water. Tumbling lights. Evelyn Ellery’s hand pressed hard against the glass. Dane’s mouth open around a sound we can’t hear.
Then nothing.
Telemetry drops.
The submersible icon flickers on the bay map, jumps six meters off path, then vanishes into SEARCHING.
Holden steps to the console beside me. He looks at the telemetry, then at me.
Reyes is moving through the bay data. “Outer gate intact. Cradle intact. Bay pressure stable. L-2 telemetry lost outside the approach corridor.”
“Topside?” I ask.
“Searching,” Lina says over comms. Her voice is still calm. I can hear what it costs. “They lost contact too.”
The word lost doesn’t belong in a facility I built.
I grip the edge of the console. For one second, the whole room narrows to the map where L-2 used to be.
Dane Whitcomb. Evelyn Ellery. Her daughter. Dane’s private security.
Unknown status.
The phrase appears in my head with the clean brutality of official language.
Unknown status.
Reyes looks up. “We can’t launch another vessel until we know if that was targeted.”
Dutch has the remaining guests moving back from the bay doors, calm hands, calm voice. Holden’s still beside me, close enough that I know he chose not to leave.
I make myself breathe. One count in. One count out.
The next decision is already waiting with its mouth open.
The partial evacuation stops being a rotation and becomes a triage problem.
Guests who were waiting for the next vessel are moved back to the atrium under Dutch’s command. Lina takes over the lounge. Holden opens a crisis channel to topside and the board. Reyes keeps the bay feed up and starts building the rescue math in silence.
I look at the empty place on the map where L-2 should be and understand that there’s no version of this decision that will ever be judged by the logic that made it.
Only the outcome.
And the outcome is currently static.
The Hadal Luxe settles around the people left inside, smaller now because the exit has teeth.