The impact did not come like an explosion.
It came like the ocean itself deciding they no longer belonged in it.
The submarine lurched sideways as something vast slid across the reinforced hull, not striking so much as colliding by sheer inevitability. Metal screamed—low, tortured, drawn-out—pressure groaning through every bolt and seam as the vessel was shoved meters off course.
Karl was thrown hard against the console, breath torn from his lungs. The lights cut for half a second, plunging the interior into total darkness before emergency strips snapped back on in a dull, panicked red.
No alarms yet.
That was worse.
Outside the viewport, the black water boiled.
Not violently. Not chaotically.
It parted.
A shape passed across the glass so slowly it felt deliberate. Too close. Too large to fully comprehend. The curvature of its body eclipsed everything else, swallowing the cone of light projected from the sub's forward lamps.
For a moment, all Karl could see was scarred hide—old, layered damage healed over wrong, like the creature had been broken and rebuilt too many times.
Then the eye slid into view.
It was enormous. Pale. Reflective.
And aware.
The submarine creaked again, deeper this time, as if the hull itself was reconsidering its life choices.
Agnes hadn't moved.
She stood beside the sonar display, completely still, her hologram dimmed to a muted glow. Not flickering. Not glitching. Just… quiet.
The sonar screen pulsed.
One contact.
So large the system struggled to render it properly, the outline smearing and correcting itself over and over as if the software refused to accept the scale. Each pulse of the scan returned the same result.
It was still there.
It hadn't rammed them by accident.
Karl pushed himself upright, one hand braced against the console, the other already instinctively feeding nanites into the hull. He felt the vibration change under his palm as the reinforcement thickened, lattice upon lattice locking into place.
The sound outside shifted.
A low, resonant groan rolled through the water—too deep to be sound alone. It pressed against the submarine, against Karl's chest, against his teeth.
Something massive was moving again.
Slowly.
Circling.
Agnes finally spoke, her voice quiet enough that it almost felt like it belonged only to him.
"…It's curious."
Karl didn't take his eyes off the viewport. "That's not comforting."
"I know," she said.
The shape drifted past the light again, closer this time. The dorsal fin followed, rising like a wall from the dark—and there it was.
Embedded.
Glowing faintly.
Not shining. Not blazing.
Watching.
The water around the fin distorted subtly, pressure bending around it in smooth, unnatural gradients. Every movement of the creature displaced currents large enough to tug at the submarine, nudging it like a toy.
Karl's jaw tightened. "It's sizing us up."
"Yes," Agnes replied. "And deciding how much force is necessary."
The sonar pinged again.
Another return appeared.
Much smaller.
Barely a blip compared to the massive contact, darting erratically around the edge of the screen. It moved fast—too fast—its path sharp and angular, looping close to the larger shape before veering away again.
Karl frowned. "That wasn't there before."
Agnes leaned closer to the display, her eyes narrowing slightly. "No. It was."
She adjusted the gain.
The smaller contact sharpened.
It was moving with intent.
Not fleeing.
Fighting.
Outside, the water suddenly surged.
A powerful current tore sideways across the viewport as the smaller figure streaked past, followed immediately by a violent displacement from the Megalodon's tail. The pressure wave slammed into the submarine a heartbeat later, rattling the interior and sending loose equipment skittering.
The growl returned—louder now, clearer.
Frustrated.
Agnes's glow brightened just a fraction. "They were already engaged."
Karl stared at the sonar as the two contacts converged again. The smaller one darted beneath the larger, vanishing into its blind spots, only to reappear moments later near the fin.
The Megalodon reacted.
The water around it twisted violently as it turned, jaws snapping shut on nothing. The resulting shockwave rippled outward, hammering the submarine hard enough to knock Karl back a step.
Nanite reinforcement screamed in his head as strain spiked.
"Agnes," he said through clenched teeth, "tell me we're not in the middle of this."
She didn't answer immediately.
The sonar flared.
The smaller contact suddenly stopped running.
Instead, it plunged downward—straight toward the trench floor—before executing a sharp, impossible turn.
The water around it collapsed inward.
Then exploded outward.
A massive current erupted through the ravine mouth, a rolling wall of force that slammed into the Megalodon head-on. The giant creature was shoved back, its bulk dragged several body-lengths away as the pressure differential tore at the surrounding water.
The submarine was caught in the edge of it.
Karl was thrown to one knee as the vessel pitched violently, warning lights finally screaming to life.
Outside, the Megalodon thrashed, its silhouette momentarily distorted as the current battered it.
And then—
It vanished from the lights.
The sonar contact surged.
Straight toward them.
"Karl—" Agnes began.
Too late.
The darkness ahead of the viewport filled with mass.
The Megalodon slammed into the submarine again, harder this time, its bulk grinding across the reinforced hull as if testing it. The entire vessel shuddered, metal screaming as pressure spiked to dangerous levels.
Karl braced himself, nanites flooding outward at maximum output, reinforcing, adapting, holding.
The eye appeared again.
Closer than before.
Unblinking.
And this time, it didn't drift past.
It stopped.
The Megalodon hovered there in the dark, vast and immovable, its core pulsing slowly in the fin above like a patient heartbeat.
Agnes's voice dropped to a near whisper.
"…Karl."
He met the creature's gaze through layers of glass, steel, and nanites.
"I know," he said quietly.
The legend had finished fighting something else.
And had chosen them instead.