What Lies Beneath

In the deep, far, far beyond where the last flicker of sunlight fades away into an inky blackness, where the cold slows heartbeats to a nearly imperceptible pulse, and the incredible pressure of the ocean above warps the bones of ancient ships that lay deathly still on the seafloor, an unseeing eye blinks sleep away. Eons had passed along the surface as the creature slept. Puffs of clay muddies the water as it slowly writhes, working out its body's stiffness from its long slumber.

In the deep, something dark stirs, one thought rippling across its neurons - "We hunger."

***

"Tektite IV to Support Barge, reporting for day eight check-in." Sylvia adjusted the headset to sit more comfortably on her ears as she started her rotation managing Tektite IV's communications system while the rest of the small crew bustled around the habitat, getting started on their assigned daily tasks. She updated the surface support team on their status – all systems and personnel functioning normally – well, as normally as one can get at the bottom of the ocean, at least.

Off the coast of Guam, the Tektite IV habitat was installed six feet above the seafloor in the Challenger Deep, anchored by tethers sunk through the 1600 feet of accumulated sediment into the oceanic crust in the trench. At 35,870 feet deep, the Tektite IV crew were collecting world records daily, breaking new ground in time spent in the deepest reach of the ocean. Eight days into the 30-day mission, the crew of Tektite IV had already firmly secured their place in scientific history, advancing human knowledge in a wide swath of disciplines – engineering, geology, biology, mineral resources, and medicine.

Sylvia glanced at the biological sample storage area, knowing that even more exciting discoveries awaited once they started identifying organisms – she was sure there would be scores of new species discovered within the jars of samples that were packed carefully in storage crates. As the biological mission specialist on the team, those samples were her babies. She couldn't wait to get into her lab back at Scripps Institute of Oceanography to begin studying these creatures.

While she was responsible for directing communications today, a task they all rotated through, she also poured through the hours of video footage collected on each of their EHAs – extra-habitat activities. The high-definition camera mounted on their helmets recorded a nearly 360° view, illuminated by the helmet lights. The smart lights increased their intensity automatically as the suit moved further away from other suits or the habitat – finely balancing recording as much information as possible without blinding the rest of the crew.

In hour 02:13 of Uri's day seven footage, Sylvia thought she caught something unusual in the view behind Uri and immediately paused the playback. She pulled up the map to see where he was and what direction the camera had been facing. A plume of sediment rose from the seafloor close to the plate boundary. She checked the seismographic records to see if a small earthquake could be responsible for the plume, but there had been no tectonic movement. They hadn't seen much macrofauna yet; life was slow in the cold, deep water, and big things were rare. This could be their first sighting of something big enough to disturb the sediment.

Rewinding the recording, she watched again, timing how long she could see the plume – the densest, most compact plume persisted for about four seconds before it spread out enough to no longer be distinguishable from the infinite black of the deep ocean beyond. "But wait," she thought, "what's that?" Playing the same section back and forth, she squinted at the screen, focusing on the bottom of the plume. She paused to rub her burning eyes, wondering if she was just imagining motion at the bottom of the plume. In the mission log, she made note of the strange plume, recording the location, time, and video file, identifying it as worth investigating later. Notes made, she tried to get back to her regularly scheduled tasks.

After twenty minutes, however, her curiosity got the better of her, and she looked at her teammates' current positions. "If someone is near that location, I'll have them do a quick evaluation." Likely, whatever had made that plume had moved on and was far away, and this all would just be another mystery for the books, but maybe they could get lucky and find tracks in the sediment or something that could help shed light on the source of the plume and advance humanity's knowledge of the deep sea.

Pulling up the map, she pinned the plume's coordinates and looked at the blinking dots representing her teammates. One dot was blinking within 300 feet of the plume's pin – Alina, the geologic mission specialist, was close by, currently extracting a core of deep-sea sediment located right along the plate boundary – one of many the team was scheduled to collect in their 30-day mission.

"Tektite IV to Alina, come in." This made it official. While making a note would, of course, be part of the official record of the mission, actively investigating makes it so much more important and notable. Sylvia's heart picked up a swifter beat as her nerves caused her to second-guess her instinct. "We were encouraged to follow our curiosity, so no one is going to be mad at me," she reminded herself, "we have dedicated time for open exploration. That's all this is."

"Alina to Tektite IV, whatchu got for me?" Alina's Brooklyn accent brought a smile to Sylvia's face. The crew of Tektite IV was chosen, in part, for their camaraderie; being in such close quarters for several weeks required a group of people who could work and live well together. Alina hid her intellect, wit, and heart behind the kind of brashness one could only hone over a lifetime navigating crowded NYC subways during rush hour. Still, that brashness also made her a fierce peacemaker on the team.

"When you're done with your current task, I'm assigning you extra credit to investigate something funky I picked up in Uri's footage from yesterday."

"Mr. Grossman, my sixth-grade teacher, would tell you he had a hard enough time getting me to do the regular credit work, much less the extra stuff. But for you, kid, I'll do your extra credit. Plus, I love funky stuff."

Sylvia relayed the coordinates of the plume and a quick rundown on what to keep an eye out for. If no tracks or animals were visible on the sediment's surface, she would dig down about a foot in a small transect to see if anything could be nudged loose.

"You got it. I'm just about done with this core. I'll cap it and set the inflatable to send it up to the surface and then head toward your mystery."

Sylvia activated the live feed from Alina's helmet camera. She watched as the bulbous arms of the deep-sea dive suit put pressure caps on both ends of a six-foot-long tube filled with finely striped sediment, secured a strange, deflated balloon to the tube, and activated a chemical reaction, causing the balloon to fill with air and float away toward the surface. Needing to rise over 35,000 feet of ocean depth, it would take about seven hours to reach the surface before the GPS beacon would activate, summoning the recovery team on the support barge.

Alina took several minutes in the lumbering dive suit to make her way toward Sylvia's mysterious plume. Stuck in the habitat, she paced in front of the communication cubby, trying to work off her excitement.

The crackle of the radio startled her.

"Alina to Tektite IV, approaching pinned location, turning lights up to maximum."

Sylvia dropped into the desk chair and pulled herself as close to the live feed as she could, straining to see through the water as Alina approached the mark. Her spirits fell as nothing unusual appeared in the sediment.

"Alina to Tektite IV, all looks quiet on the western front."

"Tektite IV to Alina, dig a one-foot-deep trench six feet across the plate boundary."

"Alina to Tektite IV, roger, leaving the channel open."

The dive suit's arms deployed a spade and began to dig in the sediment. The water in front of the camera slowly began to fill with brightness as the fine sediment became suspended as Alina dug. The radio transmitted her ragged breaths from the exertion of manipulating the arms of the dive suit.

A loud snap reverberated through the open radio line. "What the…" but Alina's transmission suddenly ended in a burst of static and then an eerie silence. As Sylvia watched the feed, the bright sediment illuminated by the suit's light suddenly went black as though the light had been switched off.

"Tektite IV to Alina, come in."

Silence.

“Tektite IV to Alina, don’t play games, report.”

Still silence.

"Tektite IV to Alina, REPORT."

Only silence followed.

"Fuck. Okay, don't panic, think. There was probably a connection failure on Alina's suit. I'm sure she's fine. I'll just send someone else to help her."

Sylvia scanned the map, trying to ignore that there were only two teammate positions on the map when there should have been three. "Conrad's position is next closest."

"Tektite IV to Conrad, Alina seems to have had a transmission failure, please redirect for an assist."

"Conrad to Tektite IV, roger, I was already on my way. That last transmission was way too creepy for my taste. Getting to her last known position will take me some time."

"Uri to Tektite IV, I'm also on my way to last known position for Alina. If the suit is dead stick, it may take the two of us to get her back to the habitat."

"Tektite IV, copy. I'll start the entry sequence on the habitat to get you all in quickly."

Conrad and Uri left their comms open, so she heard their quickened breathing as they moved as swiftly as the dive suits could go. The two red dots were slowly converging on the pin Sylvia had set for the stupid sediment plume. She activated the live feeds for both of their suits on separate monitors – one monitor still showed the black from Alina's, and the other two showed Conrad and Uri's movement through the subtly changing landscape.

After what felt like an eternity, Conrad and Uri reported being within visibility range of Alina's last known position.

"Look, isn't that the spade from her suit?" Uri's suit arm pointed off towards his left in the live feed.

"Damn, the thing is snapped in half!" Conrad approached and angled the camera to record the damage. He then straightened and slowly moved himself in a circle. "Tektite IV, can you identify any disturbances in the sediment from your view in the cameras?"

Sylvia carefully scanned the 360° views in both feeds. "Conrad and Uri, the only sediment disturbance I can see is your tracks and about a foot of the trench Alina had started. Where did she go?"

"Yo, Uri, look off towards bearing 272. Do you see what I think I see?"

Sylvia panned Conrad's feed to bearing 272 and strained to make anything out other than empty seafloor.

"Wait, is that…" and then Sylvia heard a cacophony of unintelligible overlapping transmissions from both men, and the screens went blindingly bright with sediment before going entirely dark. "Oh fu…" but Uri never finished that syllable.

Only a single pin pulsed on the map while three black screens stared at Sylvia.

A thundering sound filled Sylvia's head, a deafening pulse that didn't abate even after she whipped the headset off and pressed her hands against her ears. Only then did she realize the thunder was only the rapid pounding of her heart.

Her body was in motion before she had fully thought about her actions – she had her dive suit on and was heading towards the exit chamber. She had already prepped the system for entry, so getting herself out into the ocean was a quick process.

While the dive suits had a heating system, she hadn't given hers time to warm up, so the chill of the deep ocean quickly worked its way through the suit. Her shivers were half in response to the temperature and half from fear. She grabbed the quick jet, as the suit's independent propulsion system was too slow. She needed to help her teammates.

The screen on her suit's arm helped her navigate swiftly toward where only a single pin blinked on the map. The dots representing her three teammates were disturbingly absent. When she was on top of the pin, she slowed the quick jet and set its anchoring tether into the seafloor. She stood still, looking for any evidence of her missing teammates, but the darkness seemed to be pressing in around her. She saw the snapped spade, half covered in sediment, next to the abandoned trench.

A glint of something in the sediment caught her eye, and she stepped towards it to get a better look. It almost looked like a piece of a dive suit, but whose? And what happened to the rest of it?

As she got closer, the darkness became even more oppressive. She had initially attributed it to fear for her teammates but then realized that the light on her suit was getting dimmer. Her wrist buzzed, and she looked at the map. A blinking dot suddenly appeared just a few feet away from her. Another buzz, another dot, and then another. Three blinking dots, almost on top of each other, moving towards her. And her light was getting dimmer. Her suit recognized the proximity of her teammates, but why couldn't she see them? They should be right there, right above where the dive suit fragment lay in the sediment. But the darkness was so rich and deep and full of body that Sylvia was sure she could reach out and touch it. And at that moment, she was certain of the darkness’s solidity.

An instinct shuddered through Sylvia's nervous system, something deep and primal that bypassed all modern evolved rational thought. As swiftly as her body had been in motion to leave the habitat and get to her teammates, her body was again in motion, away from the body of the darkness and back towards the safety of the habitat. Her legs moved to run, but the lethargy of the dive suit and the viscosity of the water recalled the painful and agonizing slowness of running in a nightmare. Except she knew this wasn't a nightmare, at least not one she could wake up from.

One foot in front of another, she ran towards the habitat, focused intently on the red light of the entry hatch, a hopeful beacon just out of reach. "Two more steps, and I'm safe."

And then all went dark around her, the habitat disappearing from view.

***

Crackle. "Support Barge to Tektite IV, come in." Crackle. "Support Barge to Tektite IV, come in."

***

The hum of chatter from the crowd of reporters died down, and recorders were held up as a man in a rumpled suit solemnly stepped to the podium. The scruff of his beard and the deep purple shadows under his eyes exposed the profound toll of months of sleeplessness.

"After an extensive investigation, we have concluded that the tragedy that befell the Tektite IV aquanauts three months ago was due to systemic flaws in the dive suits. Under repeated use at over a thousand atmospheres of pressure in the Challenger Deep, the dive suits experienced catastrophic and instantaneous collapse. It will take years for us to fully identify and fix the fundamental flaws in these suits, and we are suspending the Tektite project indefinitely. Though this tragedy is unimaginable for the families of the Tektite IV aquanauts and for humanity at the loss of these brilliant and brave scientists, we can take a small measure of comfort that they did not suffer. The rapid failure of the suits would have happened in a fraction of a millisecond, faster than the brain can transmit information. We honor our lost friends by continuing their work and ensuring their sacrifice was not in vain. We have already identified thirty-two new species and deepened our understanding of the complex forces of the subduction zone. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the family and friends of the crew of the Tektite IV. Thank you."

**

In the last frame recorded from Aquanaut Sylvia Parker's dive camera, in the front-facing view, the red ring glowed, marking the entrance to the Tektite IV habitat. But that's not what the graduate student was fixated on. It was the rear-facing view, where she could just make out three faint glows with a dark web of veins crisscrossing across them as if the lights were deep inside an unimaginably large dark creature.

The sound recorded on the Parker feed was her rapid, panicked breathing that suddenly ended in a gasp, but the graduate student thought she heard something else, the faintest ripple of sound from the water.

"We hunger."

And then silence.