Soren sat in the briefing room, watching Commander Garrin speak from his normal spot. Aurania, Violet, Amalia, and Elias were all present, but the room felt conspicuously empty. Riza, Inelius, Veolo, and Tamiyo had all been requested for a separate operation yesterday. So when the call came this morning for a new, high-priority mission, Soren felt a knot of unease start building in his gut. He didn’t like the idea of them being split up like this.

  He glanced at Aurania.

  She was leaning against the wall with her arms crossed and brow furrowed. He didn’t need his mental link to tell that she was even more unhappy about it than he was. But with Nox still hanging in the balance and reliant on the LU to help find a solution, she had little choice but to play along.

  “Over 80% of Luqarais is covered in ocean,” Garrin was saying. “It is teeming with unique aquatic life and deep-sea biomes.” He tapped his tablet, and the holographic display above the table shifted from a planetary view to a cutaway of a sprawling underwater structure. “The research station at Palven Reef is used for ecological study. It went dark last week. Several local shorn rescue teams have been sent to investigate, but none have returned.”

  Amalia let out a low whistle. "No radio contact?"

  Garrin shook his head. "Nope, nothing. It’s like they just vanished. So, it's time for us to step in." He paused, clearing his throat. "Given the strategic and cultural importance of this station to my people, and the fact that your team is currently short-handed, I will be accompanying you to assist on this mission."

  A smirk flickered across Violet’s face. "Aww, did you feel left out on our last mission?"

  Garrin’s shoulders tightened as he narrowed his eyes at her. "My presence is a tactical necessity. Lauriam has nothing to do with it. You all did great work disarming the bomb."

  “So this isn’t about proving you’re not just some glorified dispatcher?” Amalia chirped, her voice dripping with playful innocence.

  “Hey,” he growled, gripping his holo table with one hand and aggressively jabbing a finger toward her with the other. He didn’t say anything else.

  “Yes?” Amalia’s smirk grew wider.

  Garrin let out a long sigh then glanced at Aurania. “Why is she so hard to stay mad at?”

  “She’s a force of joyful nature,” Aurania shrugged.

  The LU shuttle touched down with a soft hiss as the landing struts settled onto the gleaming white platform of Shelkar City. The view on the way down had been breathtaking. It was a technological wonder, a city that gave the impression it floated atop the ocean like a magnificent disk of elegant spires. While Luqarais did have landmass present in certain areas of the planet, the surface all around Shelkar City was ocean as far as the eye could see.

  The moment the ramp lowered and the clean ocean air washed over them, Garrin was already moving. “I need to get in the water and start acclimating.”

  Everyone else nodded as if what he said was the most normal thing in the world. But as Soren stepped out into clear skies and warm, bright sunlight, he asked, "Acclimating to what?"

  Everyone stopped and looked back in confusion. Garrin cocked a single brow at him, as if Soren had just asked why the sky was blue. But Elias stepped in, reassuring as ever. "Shorn are aquatic, Soren. More at home in the water than out of it. If they spend too much time on land or in standard ship environments, their gills go dormant."

  Soren’s eyes widened. He looked back at Garrin, who was already stripping off his upper uniform jacket. "You guys can breathe underwater?!"

  A ripple of quiet chuckles went through the group.

  “Yeah,” Garrin said with a faint smirk on his face. "And we can survive the immense pressure of the deep, too."

  “Also,” Elias added, “the primary purpose of those wrist blades isn't actually combat. It's to help swim."

  Soren’s brow furrowed. "So they're fins?"

  Everyone winced. Amalia bit her lip to keep from laughing. Violet just shook her head slowly.

  Soren looked around, completely lost. "What?"

  "It's just… a little insulting to refer to them like that,” Elias said. “But I see where you're drawing that conclusion from.”

  "Oh." Soren said. He still wasn’t sure why it was insulting, but he said, "Okay. I'm sorry, Garrin."

  "I know you didn't mean anything by it,” the commander said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Let's just hope your combat skills are better than your conversation skills."

  Soren opened his mouth to respond—

  This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

  But Aurania's voice cut him off. "They are."

  Everyone's head snapped toward her in surprise.

  She stood with her arms crossed, her gaze fixed on Garrin. Then she seemed to realize the change in her normal tone about Soren, and her eyes darted around to the rest of the team. Instead of addressing it further, she just huffed sharply, turned, and walked away toward the submersible prep area.

  They followed after her, and after allowing Garrin a short time to acclimate to the water, they all travelled to the transport bay. The air inside was cool and smelled of more concentrated salt than the open air. In the center of the chamber sat their vehicle, floating idly in a recessed pool. It was a sleek vessel with angular wings sweeping back from a central, reinforced cockpit. If it wasn’t floating in the water, it wouldn’t look out of place if someone told Soren it was actually a space craft.

  They boarded in silence, the interior just barely large enough to hold all of them. Garrin, a faint lattice of gills now visible along the soft, carapace-like section between his neck and shoulders, took the pilot’s seat. The acclimation was apparently more of a “just-in-case,” as the submersible could still move faster than he could swim.

  The upper dome that closed above them was made of thick, reinforced glass that gave them a wide, overhead view. A few digital displays showed camera feeds underneath the vessel, and the controls looked fairly simple to operate. A few soft clicks shook through the vessel as it disengaged from its clamps, then they began to sink beneath the surface.

  For a moment, all was silent as they descended through the clear, sunlit water, watching the city's underbelly. But as they dropped lower, the world outside went from bright blue to a deep indigo. Soon, vast schools of alien fish swarmed past, their scales shimmering like scattered jewels in the submersible's lights. Garrin began pointing out the different species with a hint of pride in his voice. "Those are Glimmerfin shoals," he'd say, "and that... that's a juvenile Void Ray."

  “Damn,” Soren said, “Inelius is gonna be pissed he missed this. He loves fish.”

  Before long, the only light came from the sub's powerful external lamps, mounted on the tips of the wings. The closer they moved toward Palven Reef, the more a strange, prickling sensation crawled up the back of Soren’s neck. It wasn't fear or anxiety, but something else at the edge of his senses, like a mis-tuned instrument playing a note only he could hear.

  Elias, seated across from him, noticed how tense he looked. "You alright, Soren?"

  Soren didn't answer right away, his gaze fixed on the grainy camera feed showing the inky blackness outside. Finally, he said, "I don't know how to describe it, but something feels... off. There's something wrong down here. I can feel it."

  The comment drew skeptical looks from everyone. Garrin shifted completely around in his seat to look back over his shoulder for a moment.

  Then Violet quipped, "If something wasn't wrong, we wouldn't be going down to investigate."

  “No,” Soren shook his head, turning his gaze first to Violet, then to Amalia. "It's not just a feeling. It's like... like when I sensed the quake coming in Berilinsk."

  Amalia's eyes widened just a fraction. Then she shrugged with a small smile. "I promise I won't shoot you this time."

  Garrin looked back again before facing forward and muttering, "I feel like I'm missing some context here."

  A collective, "Yeah" echoed from all of them in near-perfect unison, though none chose to elaborate further.

  The descent felt like it went on forever. The hull creaked under the immense pressure, and Soren could almost physically feel the weight of the ocean pressing in around them. Faint flashes of bioluminescence appeared in the distance, ghostly trails of light that danced at the edge of their vision. And as they dropped deeper, the wildlife grew larger, more primal. Giant, armor-plated sharks, which Garrin identified as Pyrexian Stalkers, drifted silently through the abyss.

  Then, Amalia gasped, pointing at the forward viewport. "What the actual fuck is that?!"

  A creature floated into the beam of their lights, a nightmare, jellyfish-like fusion of alien biology. Its head was a dark, fungal-looking cap, iridescent and almost insectoid, perched atop a segmented torso. Six long limbs curved downward from a body that tapered into a translucent, pulsating mass of muscle and sinew, culminating in a long, sharp stinger that trailed behind it like a ghostly tail.

  “That,” Garrin said, “is a euchilles.”

  “Yoo-chillees?” Amalia exaggerated her pronunciation.

  “Yeah, close enough,” Garrin chuckled. “They’re ancient. The myths say they are the guardians of the deep."

  A distorted sound crackled through the sub’s sonar—a high-pitched, skittering noise that sounded like static and nails on a chalkboard. They all flinched for a brief moment, but when the rest of them relaxed, Garrin’s hands stayed tight on the controls.

  "Everything alright, Commander?" Aurania asked, her tone sharp and analytical.

  "Fine," he snapped back, a little too quickly.

  But the sounds continued, intermittent and strange, and Soren could see Garrin growing more agitated. Before long, anxiety felt like it was radiating off his very body. The rest of the team exchanged uneasy glances. Soren's gaze met Aurania's last, and a shared thought passed through their mental link:

  He's not fine. Something down here is getting to him.

  Finally, the Palven Station appeared in their lights, a skeletal lattice of metal and glass tucked into the sea floor. Where external observation lights protruded from the structure, only powerless darkness lingered. They pushed into the docking bay and surfaced in the pocket of air. The docking clamps engaged and a jarring CLANG vibrated through the entire submersible, echoing like a tomb all around them.

  When they cycled the air, a sick rotting smell immediately greeted them.

  “Helmets on,” Aurania ordered.

  As everyone complied, Garrin noted, “Hopefully nothing is submerged inside the station. Even if your armor’s airtight, it won’t do much to protect you against the water at this depth. It’s a couple hundred times more pressure than your standard atmosphere.”

  They climbed from the submersible and Amalia squeaked, “How many atmospheres is our armor rated for?”

  “Well,” Elias spoke up next to her. “It’s space armor. So anywhere between zero and one.”

  They made their way to the first main corridor, the only light coming from their weapon-mounted flashlights. The beams cut through the oppressive darkness, revealing a scene of utter chaos. Deep gouges were torn into the metal walls, and shattered equipment was littered across overturned consoles.

  And there, in the center of the corridor, lay a single, severed wrist blade in a pool of dried, dark fluid. From the darkness ahead, a wet, scraping sound was echoing down the corridor, the sound of something heavy being dragged across the metal floor.

  And it was getting closer.