The sonar stopped looking like a map and started looking like a warning.
The larger mass shifted again, this time with intent. Its outline tightened, portions of it folding inward as if immense muscles were drawing together. The surrounding water thickened on the readouts, pressure gradients spiking in uneven rings that radiated outward.
Karl felt it before he heard it.
A deep compression passed through the submarine, subtle but unmistakable, like the ocean itself taking a breath.
"That thing just changed posture," he said under his breath.
Agnes nodded slowly. Her glow dimmed, calculations racing behind her eyes. "It's adapting. The smaller entity has been targeting vulnerable zones. The larger one is compensating."
The sonar pulsed.
The small return darted again, faster now, but its movements were no longer clean. The arcs were tighter, more frantic. Each strike was answered almost immediately by a massive counter-shift from the larger entity, walls of pressure slamming outward in brute-force retaliation.
The ocean growled.
Not a single sound, but layers of it. Grinding pressure, low-frequency resonance, the sound of water being crushed and displaced in impossible quantities. The submarine's hull groaned softly as stress alarms flickered yellow and settled again.
Karl's hands tightened on the controls. "It's got the upper hand now."
"Yes," Agnes said quietly. "The larger entity is learning."
The sonar showed it clearly.
The massive shape surged forward, not fast, but inexorable. Entire sections of the smaller return vanished behind its bulk, reappearing moments later, forced into tighter and tighter space. The ant was being herded by a moving continent.
Another pulse.
The small entity clipped something solid. Its trajectory faltered for half a second.
That was enough.
The water convulsed as the larger entity lunged, its movement sending a shockwave that rippled outward like a collapsing mountain. The submarine rocked hard this time, lights flickering as ballast systems compensated automatically.
Karl swore under his breath. "It's cornered."
The sonar confirmed it.
The smaller figure was pinned against a sheer underwater rise, its movements compressed into a narrow cone of space between stone and living mass. Pressure readings spiked violently as the larger entity pressed in, forcing the water itself to become a weapon.
Agnes's voice dropped. "If it does nothing, it will be crushed."
The ocean seemed to hold still.
For a brief, terrible moment, everything slowed. The sonar pulses stretched out, returns delayed, distorted. The smaller entity stopped moving entirely.
Karl's heart pounded. "Agnes… what's it doing?"
She stared at the screen, eyes widening slightly. "It's charging something."
"Charging what?"
"I don't know," she said. "But it's drawing in water. A lot of it."
The pressure readings spiked again, then inverted.
Water began to move.
Not outward.
Inward.
Currents from every direction bent sharply toward the point where the smaller entity hovered, spiraling tighter and tighter. The submarine lurched as local flow patterns destabilized, alarms chiming briefly before being silenced by Agnes's overrides.
The ocean screamed.
A deep, violent roar tore through the water as the smaller entity released whatever it had been building. The sonar display exploded into chaos as a massive current erupted outward, a spinning wall of compressed water that tore through the abyss like a horizontal maelstrom.
The larger entity was hit head-on.
For the first time since the fight began, it moved unwillingly.
Its immense mass was shoved backward, sections of its outline distorting violently as the current slammed into it with catastrophic force. The sound that followed was not pain.
It was fury.
A bellow rolled through the ocean so powerful it drowned out every other sound, the submarine shaking as if struck by distant thunder. Sediment and debris were ripped from the seafloor, carried along in the monstrous current as the larger entity was driven back, carving a gouge through the deep.
Karl stared at the sonar, breath shallow. "That… that was insane."
Agnes didn't respond.
Her eyes were locked on the display.
The current did not stop.
It expanded.
The water between them and the larger entity surged violently, pressure waves racing ahead of the displaced mass. The submarine was caught on the edge of it, systems struggling to compensate as the flow shoved against the reinforced hull.
"Karl," Agnes said, sharp now, "it's coming toward us."
He didn't ask what she meant.
The sonar showed it clearly.
The larger entity, thrown off balance by the current, was tumbling.
Not end over end.
Sliding.
Straight toward their position.
Karl slammed the thrusters, trying to pull them clear, but the water itself was against him now, dragging the submarine along like debris in a flood.
"Too much mass," he growled. "I can't outmaneuver that."
Agnes's hands flew over the controls, reinforcing structural nodes with nanites, redistributing stress faster than any system was designed to handle. "Hull integrity holding. For now."
The roar grew louder.
Closer.
The darkness outside the viewport shifted as something enormous blotted out what little light there was, a moving wall of pressure and shadow rushing toward them.
"Karl," Agnes said quietly, "brace."
The last thing Karl saw on the sonar was the massive outline filling the screen completely.
Then the ocean hit them.
The impact was not sharp.
It was overwhelming.
A colossal force slammed into the submarine, metal screaming as nanites flared across the hull, reinforcing, redistributing, barely holding. The control room was thrown sideways, Karl crashing against his restraints as lights died and reignited in chaotic bursts.
The sound was deafening.
Not a crash.
A collision between something ancient and something fragile that had no right to be there.
The submarine was hurled backward into the dark, spinning as the ocean swallowed them whole.
And somewhere outside, the fight continued.