. . .
Date: July 22, 2007
Location: 11°22.4′N 142°35.5′E.
. . .
“Wait a damn minute… this is it… right?”
“Yeah,” I managed to nod, “this is it…”
“So why the hell are we looking at literally nothing?” Captain Tomes demanded, gesturing agitatedly over at the viewing screen–to the sandy ground faintly illuminated in front of us thanks to the headlights.
Ahead of us… there was nothing but plain darkness stretching just on and on as far as the eye can see.
“We… we could try looking around?” I ventured.
“Fine,” Captain Tomes gritted his teeth, frustration and unease clearly written all over his weary face as he steered our submersible over to a random direction, not moving any further from the 18000m mark, “…hopefully, the Submerged should be somewhere around here.”
“Don’t jinx it,” I teased, trying to keep things light.
…Too late.
A good thirty minutes must have passed us by or something maybe more and still nothing… I’m not sure but all I know is that took us a very long time aimlessly searching through the darkness.
For the love of God, I swear Captain Tomes and I did try our best to look around for any signs of said submarine, even a sign of the wreckage itself… but between the darkness and our very limited source of light range; we couldn’t really do anything else here…
I’ve been so close to admitting defeat in any second now, but I didn’t want to ruin the frail, bubble of hope Captain Tomes was still desperately clinging on to that there were survivors…
So it honestly came out as a shock to us when all of a sudden, we saw it. Looking like it just popped out of the darkness when our headlights accidentally grazed the large, government-issued submarine that was… literally just there.
The Submerged is officially lost to the sea.
“I… I think… we should go take a closer look,” I managed to force myself to say, never mind the way my voice shook and barely cracked right over at the end.
No answer.
I glanced at him worriedly, “…Captain?”
In the end, Captain Tomes must have managed to shake himself out of his stupor because he wordlessly obeyed my request as he slowly steered our submersible around the fallen submarine.
Swallowing the lump already forming within my throat as I mentally braced myself for what we were about to find… because the longer we look around, the more it became clear that the Submerged doesn’t just suffer from a mere hull breach that caused the vessel to malfunction–the external damages alone (and yes, I did say damages: as in, plural) is such a devastating sight.
It’s a mystery if anyone does survive this.
At first glance, it looked like a colossal squid or… or something awful had just wrangled and squeezed a submarine that big like a stress ball until it looked like the middle has been sandwiched in the midst of the scuffle, painting the exterior with a ghastly red that still tainted the waters.
There were crushed glasses glinting ominously whenever our lights hit it, the hull itself looked like it had gotten in a crash with something so… so large… and oh God, there’s a even gaping hole on the bottom!
This isn’t just a hull breach…
A lone glove floated aimlessly in front of us.
…this looks like a massacre.
“Oh fuck, what the hell,” Captain Tomes choked out in the silence, his voice thick with emotion, “What the actual fuck just happened here? Did they get in a fight with a whale or something?!”
“Whales don’t venture these further, Captain… they couldn’t… they wouldn’t be able to survive,” I distractedly watched that lone glove move past us–right until I caught sight of something that made my eyes grow wide, so I hurriedly pointed it out to him, “Wait, wait a minute Captain, look… LOOK! One of the submersibles had been successfully ejected… which means some of them must have still gotten out safely!”
“Y-You mean… there are survivors…?”
“Yeah, come on, it’s not too late. We could still go after them,” I insisted, nodding my head at him, “Head to the estimated position at once where they could have drive themselves off…”
“You’re right, good thing we do have a built-in tracker for this,” Captain Tomes chuckled weakly, now steering the submersible around the direction as he pressed some of the buttons, “They couldn’t have been that far…”
His words quickly died down.
Stumped, we both stared at the sight in front of us.
We were wrong.
All this time, the submarine wasn’t just sitting there on the ground; it had been precariously dangling right over the edge of a cliff, so close to tipping itself right off… which reminded of the horrible drop that Martin and Cory from Finding Memo have somehow found themselves in.
Not even our headlights could dare to make out what could possibly below–there was literally nothing but thick darkness just overhead.
It literally looked like the Submerged had just been a second away from being sucked right in by the void itself. Had we been a few moments too late, could the submarine have fallen down straight to its doom, never to be seen again?
We would have never known of the Submerged’s real fate too but… but if that’s the case, then where the hell had the crew’s submersible just ejected itself into?!
“…Doctor?” Captain Tomes called.
“Yes?”
“It’s just… I think you should know…”
“And I think it’s worse if you drag it out like that, Captain,” I warned, already not trusting the way his voice wavered.
“Right, sorry… so there’s this distress signal coming from one of the submersibles that has been ejected by the Submerged,” the captain informed me as he motioned over to one of the screens. He looked perturbed, “I think the remaining crew just sent it a few minutes ago.”
“Wait, what?” I blinked, “You mean the one they sent to HQ?”
“No… no, I mean, there’s a new one.”
“HA! I KNEW IT!” I let out a relieved, slightly hysterical laugh, slumping right back on my seat at that as I slapped my knee, “So there are survivors… thank God! Let’s go find them then!”
Captain Tomes only stared at me.
“Well?” I demanded, “Let’s get going!”
“Doctor,” Captain Tomes slowly began, and that’s when I realized that whatever he was going to say, I wasn’t going to like it… “Their submersible… it’s roughly 1600m below this thing.”
…
…
…Huh?
“What…?” I finally managed to force out, my voice no louder than a mere croak, “How the fuck did they got themselves down there?!”
Captain Tomes shook his head, looking just as bewildered as I am, “I seriously have no idea… but wherever, they are, there’s no way it could be safe down there. The submersible can theoretically go down a few 1000m more but if they’re in a suit, they could also wander around a bit further–“
“…No way, that’s even worse.”
“In any case, we really should have a proper contact with HQ before we attempted to venture further down ourselves,” he suggested, “You heard what they said, they wouldn’t be able to afford to send back up if we got ourselves in trouble…”
I blankly gestured to the comms.
He visibly deflated at that, “Still nothing?”
“Still nothing,” I affirmed.
“Yeah but... but we still got to help them. Those suits could let them get by for a few minutes or so but if they run of oxygen down there–and who’s to say that whatever attacked them hasn’t followed them down there?”
“What could possibly have attacked them?” I wondered.
The Captain groaned, laying a palm flat on his face, “No, the better question here is: what the hell are we going to do now?”
So far, none of the options are looking good.
“…you know what?” I sighed, making sure that I’m still properly strapped in on my seat before I turned to look at my partner’s weary face, steeling my nerves, “Screw it. Let’s go find them.”
Captain Tomes stared at me for a moment, as if he was wondering if I was serious. I only stared back–because no shit, I am dead serious here–before he reluctantly placed his hands over on the wheel. And then, he gently guided the submersible down into the abyss.
Forget about the dysphotic or abyssal zone, we’re literally going somewhere even deeper than any of those now.
This is literally a place where we barely come across any sort of sea life, let alone anywhere that has been safely explored by humans. There’s a reason why even after all this time humanity has only discovered about 5% of the earth’s oceans, after all.
Just thinking about that fact immediately made me feel so uneasy the more we go deeper… and looking over the darkness that seemed to grow longer, larger, thicker and with seemingly no end on sight–it made me feel so small and insignificant. I’d seriously hate to be in the survivors’ position right now, falling down to this darkness just after their submarine gets pureed like a flat cake. If I were in their case, it’d feel like being thrown into one horror after another…
. . .
“Doctor,”
“Huh? What?” I blinked, “What is it?”
“Remember what I said about sonar activity?”
“What of it?” I cautiously asked, frowning.
Please not another bad news, I internally prayed.
“Here, take a look at this,” the Captain said, gesturing to the sonar screen which had showed no signs of activity or anything living we have encountered for some time.
I squinted, “What am I supposed to be looking at?”
“Last year, HQ had it updated… not only we are able to just sense sonar or any signs of life at sea, but it also shows impending hazards… say, like walls and rocks that the submersible could possibly crash into. It was a big deal because it helps us avoid having unnecessary external damages since the Diamond has been specifically designed to be venturing into god-awful places such as this.”
“Doesn’t the Submerged have the same features?”
“Yeah,” his eyes turned a little sad at the mention of the fallen submarine, “So it really bothers me how on earth they could have crashed on to something. This little beauty here ought to have alerted them of an incoming threat, after all… and I hate to blame it on carelessness.”
“Maybe it really was an animal that attacked them out of nowhere,” I mused, looking over the screens as well, “But the question is… what kind of animal could have caused such damage?”
“I dunno,” he blinks, “Whales?”
I sighed, exasperatedly, “Look, I just told you, whales don’t venture in the abyssal zone. They still need to come up for air for time to time, after all.”
He shrugs, “Eh, worth a shot…”
“That’s weird…” my brows furrowed as I pointed over to the large circle that seemed to be growing smaller and smaller around the tiny dot that I faintly identified to be our submersible, “Is that normal? What is that thing surrounding us for, by the way?”
The Captain shifted on his seat, “So you noticed too, huh?”
“Why? What is it?”
“Remember what I said about potential threats? That appeared as soon as our submersible made its way down the cliff.”
A sinking feeling clawed its way to my chest at that.
For a moment, I can only stare almost unseeingly at the depth modulator. The numbers rapidly shifted from 19000m... 19400m… 19800m… 20000m.
Fuck, why does everything feel like everything’s just about to get a whole lot of worse? “…I think we just found ourselves in the inside of another Trench, Captain,” I managed to say as I absentmindedly leaned back on my seat.
“Or a sink hole,” the Captain offered.
…weirdly enough, I suddenly felt claustrophobic.
“The ocean sure do have a lot of those,” he added.
“A sink hole, huh. That… that just sounds even worse,” I muttered, busying myself with comms once more before I got myself sick from staring at the screen, “HQ, this is Doctor Tetsuya Origami speaking from Diamond, over. We’ve found the wreckage of the Submerged near the edge of a cliff… or a sink hole. We aren’t sure which–”
“This is HQ, over.”
“YES!” Captain Tomes groused impatiently beside me.
“Diamond–” the audio cut off, “…any signs of the blue baby?”
For a second, I was confused.
And judging by the look on the Captain’s face, I think even he was just as loss as me. What the hell are they talking about?
Then, that’s when it hit me.
Right, the mission is to retrieve it should the Submerged has no survivors, of course… whatever it was, securing it was supposed to be the main priority. And I still have no idea what that thing was supposed to be.
“Negative,” I muttered, “As of now, we’re still tracking one of the ejected submersibles from the Submerged. We suspect some of the crew’s survivors managed to get out of the crash, over.”
“Diamond, state your location, over.”
“Diamond has currently reached…” I glanced over at the depth modulator, “24000m. Estimated location of the submersible is 34000m–or maybe even deeper, over. We’ll be heading there.”
…static.
I bit the inside of my cheek, “HQ? Do you copy…?”
Nothing but static answered on the other end.
Fuck this shit.
“Oh, COME ON!” I very nearly slammed the comms.
“Well… at least they know where we are going now, right?” Captain Tomes said, before he straightened up on his seat, “Wait. Do you think they copied that part?!”
“I don’t know,” I huffed.
We’re close to approaching the depth of 30000m now.
If I wasn’t looking over the depth modulator, I would have thought nothing has really changed with our surroundings, which means we haven’t even moved from one spot or something but based on the numbers… they don’t lie.
It just steadily gets higher.
This is the furthest I’ve been away from the surface.
“You know,” I began, “It’s kind of weird…”
“Our job is weird, what else is new?”
I gave the Captain a look.
He sighed, “Sorry… what is it?”
“The Mariana’s Trench has been reported to be brimming with life, you know. Last year, we even found human waste such as plastic just floating by somewhere around the Sirena Deep but ever since we entered the Challenger Deep, the sonar hasn’t even acted up…” I mused out loud as I scratched at my chin thoughtfully, “It’s kind of… odd that we haven’t encountered any sea life, let alone detected any is all.”
“Huh? But what about that blue light?”
I froze, “The sonar didn’t… even read that.”
“No…?” now, even the Captain looked weirded out, “I guess? I mean, the sonar should have alerted us about that from the get-go. But so far, we got nothing… there wasn’t even a record that we did encounter it if it weren’t for the fact that we just did saw it for ourselves or we’re both tripping.”
“We’re not tripping,” I snapped.
“…so, is that normal?”
The look on his face told me it… probably wasn’t.
31000m… 31100m…
“This place probably used to be hunting grounds or something,” Captain Tomes suggested, “Maybe that’s why everything steers clear away from here.”
“Or maybe the temperature here is to blame.”
31300… 31400… 31500…
A worried look flitted over the Captain’s face, “Wait, if that’s the case then… they can still make do even with their suits here, right?”
I was about to open my mouth to answer when I suddenly caught sight of a very faint light blinking on and on somewhere from the distance below us. It was faint, very faint and normally, I think I wouldn’t have been able to notice something that dim… but here, in the never-ending darkness, it looked like a beacon.
“Holy…” I trailed off, bewildered.
The closer we got, the brighter it looks.
”It’s them!” Captain Tomes laughed, “Doctor, we found them!”
Despite my shaking hands, I managed to make the call for HQ again, albeit a bit frantically, “This is Doctor Tetsuya Origami speaking from the Diamond! HQ, we’ve found the submersible. I repeat: WE JUST FOUND THE SUBMERSIBLE–!”
I immediately cut myself off.
Wait.
Wait a minute…
Something’s wrong.
“Doctor…?” Captain Tomes turned to look at me.
I only stared, craning my neck as I watched the light as it continued to blink… no, it was flickering. On and off, on and off it goes, continuously, like…
Like a dying candle.
Something is definitely wrong.
And my gut feeling immediately proved itself to be true when our submersible managed to get close enough to get a better look.
“W-What… what the fuck…?” Captain Tomes managed to get the words out as we both stared in horror at the torn down submersible which we know for sure came from the Submerged itself. It looked like it had been hurled from above and hadn’t survived the damning crash in the process.
The front was literally mashed in from where it had landed over on the side while the middle looked like it had been ripped in half.
Huge shards of glasses were glinting all over the submersible, reflecting the faint light, still gleaming… and making the broken headlights look brighter than it has any right to be. “We should…” I swallowed uneasily, “I think we should start looking for survivors now. Don’t you think, Captain?”
Still shaken, Captain Tomes reluctantly reached his hands out to the controls and slowly steered our submersible around the wreckage without a word.
And that was when something caught my eye.
“Wait… is that…?”
Lifeless eyes ominously stared back at us.
A body of a dead man, still clad in the tattered remains of his diving suit floated not even a meter away from our submersible.
Some of the flesh on the back of one of his thighs looked like a chunk of it has been viciously bitten off while one of his arms has been clearly crooked in a way I know a limb shouldn’t have been able to–it was broken.
There were large gashes marked all over his left shoulder and running down to his back and it took me a several more seconds to even realize that his neck looked wrong because it had been somehow twisted into a complete 360 degree that got him facing us even though his body was literally turned away from us, revealing such a young face locked in what seemed to be pure, unadulterated terror. Whatever he had seen in his last waking moment, it hadn’t been pretty.
And as I stared, I have never felt so sickened, so sorry all my life. This man, he… he looked like a mangled puppet.
It made my stomach churn.
Not too far from where the only survivor’s body lies dead and broken, an equally broken helmet bobs up and down, in and out of our view, almost aimlessly.
Something floats to and fro behind him.
Like rope, like worms, it’s…
It’s…
“Oh, God…” I mumbled, raising an instinctive hand to cover my mouth, suddenly feeling like I was about to throw up there and then when I spotted it, realizing something absolutely awful–
…This man had been gutted like a fish.