The Black Sea stretched before them, ancient and impenetrable.
Elara Voss stood at the bridge's forward viewport, watching the coastline of Turkey recede into morning haze. The Aegis cut through gray-green water, her reinforced hull cutting a clean line through centuries of accumulated myth. Behind them, Istanbul's minarets and towers became silhouettes, then memory.
"Last chance to turn around, Captain."
Elara didn't turn at the sound of Igor's voice. She'd known he would come. Igor always came when he thought she was making a mistake.
"We're not turning around."
"I know we're not." The heavy boots approached, stopped at her side. "That's why I'm not asking you to. I'm just noting it for the record."
Elara finally glanced at him. Igor's beard was salt-and-pepper, his eyes deep-set and permanently evaluating. He wore the same expression he'd worn when she'd told him about the Mariana Trench seven years ago—concern wrapped in professionalism, affection buried beneath layers of training.
"How are the others?" she asked.
"Restless. Lena is in the laboratory, already going through the sonar data. Chen is muttering about acoustic interference. The rest are pretending they're not scared." He paused. "They don't know what we're really looking for, do they?"
"They know what I told them."
"And what did you tell them?"
"That we're looking for ancient ruins." She turned back to the sea. "That's not a lie."
Igor didn't respond immediately. The Aegis's engines hummed beneath their boots, a vibration that had become familiar over the past months of preparation. "I read your after-action report from the Mariana mission," he said quietly.
Elara's spine stiffened. "That's classified."
"Everything about that mission is classified. That doesn't mean it doesn't leak. I know what happened down there." He waited. "I know you heard voices."
She didn't deny it. She'd never denied it, not really—not to anyone who mattered. "They weren't voices, Igor. They were... suggestions. Feelings. Ideas that weren't mine but felt like they should be."
"That's what voices usually are."
"Not like this." She touched her left forearm, where the tattoo was hidden beneath her uniform sleeve. A simple circle with a central point, surrounded by radiating lines. She'd gotten it the year after the Mariana mission, in a haze of whiskey and unresolved grief. The tattoo artist had asked if she was sure about the design. She'd said she didn't choose it. It chose her.
Igor watched her hand. "That symbol again."
"I don't want to talk about it."
"You don't want to talk about anything." His voice dropped lower. "Elara, we're heading into the same waters where a Soviet submarine vanished in 1972. Where NATO heard things they won't describe. Where the acoustic anomalies you've been tracking for three years all seem to originate. We're sailing toward something you've been running from for seven years."
"I'm not running," she said. "I'm confronting."
"There's a difference."
"There has to be."
He sighed, the sound heavy with years of shared history. "I'll be in the engine room. Chen says the acoustic dampeners need adjustment." He started to turn away, then stopped. "Whatever's down there—we face it together. That's how this works."
"I know."
"Good." He walked toward the bridge exit, his heavy footsteps fading. "Because together is the only way we're getting back."
The laboratory smelled like chemicals and anxiety.
Lena Marquez stared at the tablet in her hands, her fingers tracing the sonar readings. The Aegis's sensors were the most sophisticated available to civilian researchers—military-grade sonar, LIDAR systems, gravitational anomaly detectors. They were designed to find things. The question was whether they were designed to find things like this.
"Dr. Marquez?"
She jumped, nearly dropping the tablet. Standing in the doorway was a young man in a crew uniform—Chen, the acoustic specialist. He looked exhausted, his eyes rimmed with exhaustion, his posture stiff.
"Yes?"
"The captain asked me to check the preliminary data from the target coordinates." He gestured toward her tablet. "Have you found anything interesting?"
"Interesting?" Lena laughed without humor. "That depends on your definition. There are anomalies at 1,800 meters. Massive ones. But they shouldn't be possible."
Chen stepped closer, his eyes narrowing at the readings. "Structure?"
"Something like that." She turned the tablet so he could see. "Look at the density readings. This pattern—these geometric formations—they suggest buildings. Streets. An entire city. But nothing can survive at that depth with that structural integrity. Not unless it's made of something we don't understand."
Chen stared at the display, his face pale. "How big?"
"Hard to tell from this range. Maybe several kilometers across." She hesitated. "But that's not the strange part."
"There's a strange part?"
"The acoustic signature." Lena pointed at a frequency reading. "The sonar is picking up a low-frequency vibration from the same location. It's not biological—at least, not like any biological sound we've recorded. It's almost..." She struggled to find the word. "Almost musical. But a music that predates instruments. A music that was here before humans existed."
Chen didn't respond. His breathing had become shallow, his eyes fixed on the frequency reading as if it were something dangerous.
"Chen?"
He jumped, blinking rapidly. "Sorry. It's just—I hear something."
"You hear it?"
"Not with my ears." He touched his temples. "In here. It started this morning, after we left port. Low. Constant. Like someone calling my name but too far away to make out the words."
Lena felt a chill she couldn't explain. "That's impossible."
"I know it's impossible. That's why I didn't report it." He looked at her with eyes that were suddenly far too old for his face. "I've been doing acoustic work for fifteen years, Dr. Marquez. I know what sounds are. I know what frequencies do to the human brain. This isn't sound. This is something pretending to be sound."
"Chen, you need to talk to medical."
"No." The refusal was immediate, almost violent. "I'm fine. It's just... stress. This mission, everyone's on edge. I'm probably just picking up on the general anxiety."
"Chen—"
"I said I'm fine." He turned away, his movements stiff. "I'll check the other sensors."
Lena watched him go, her heart racing. She'd seen that expression before—not on Chen, but on her own face in the mirror, during the months when she'd first discovered the eye symbols. The realization that some doors, once opened, cannot be closed.
She looked back at the sonar readings, at the impossible city beneath miles of dark water, and felt her academic curiosity war with a growing dread. She'd spent years searching for evidence of a lost civilization, a culture that had influenced early human development before being forgotten. She'd wanted to be right.
She hadn't considered the possibility that being right might be worse than being wrong.
Night
The ship was different at night.
During the day, the Aegis was a vessel of science—equipment humming, crew working, the business of exploration. But in darkness, it became something else. A small fragile bubble floating on something ancient and vast. A temporary shelter in a place where shelter didn't belong.
Elara lay in her bunk, staring at the ceiling. The room was small, functional, designed for military efficiency rather than comfort. She'd slept in rooms like this for most of her adult life, aboard submarines and research vessels, in every ocean on Earth.
But she'd never been able to sleep on the Aegis.
Not really.
She closed her eyes, and she was back in the Mariana Trench. Back in the submarine that had stopped working at 8,200 meters. Back in the darkness where the lights had failed and the silence had felt alive.
You were chosen before you were born. You have returned.
The words weren't real. She knew they weren't real. They'd appeared in her dreams after the mission, echoes of whatever she'd encountered down there. But they felt real. They felt more real than anything else.
She sat up, unable to stay in bed any longer. Her feet found the floor, and she padded silently to the viewport.
The sea outside was absolute darkness, illuminated only by the Aegis's running lights. Miles of water separated her from the ocean floor, but she could feel it. The pressure. The weight. The ancient presence that waited.
She touched her left forearm, feeling the tattoo beneath the fabric. The symbol—an eye within circles—had appeared in her dreams for weeks after the Mariana mission. She'd sketched it compulsively in the margins of her reports. Finally, in a moment of drunken exhaustion, she'd gone to a tattoo artist in Seattle and demanded they put it on her skin.
The artist had asked where she'd gotten the design.
"I didn't choose it," she'd said. "It chose me."
She'd thought it was poetry at the time. Now she wasn't so sure.
Her father had disappeared in a submarine, just like hers. Official reports said mechanical failure. Unofficial whispers said something else. He'd been obsessed with ancient civilizations, with the possibility that human history wasn't what everyone thought. He'd spent his last years collecting evidence of something he wouldn't describe—evidence that had disappeared with him.
Elara had found his research journals after his death. They'd contained references to a civilization that had existed before recorded history, a culture that had mastered the oceans when humans were still learning to make tools. The journals had been filled with sketches of symbols—eyes within circles, lines radiating outward like sunbeams from some ancient sun.
The same symbol she'd tattooed on her arm.
She didn't know what it meant. She didn't know why her father had known about it, or why it appeared in her dreams, or why it seemed to be carved into the walls of a sunken city she'd never visited.
But she was going to find out.
Even if it killed her.
The thought brought a strange comfort. At least then she'd know. At least then the questions would stop.
Somewhere in the darkness beyond the viewport, something moved.
Not a physical movement—sonar would have detected that. A shift in pressure, a change in the water's density. The sea itself seemed to acknowledge her presence.
Elara Voss, daughter of James Voss, former submarine commander, current exile to the depths. She'd spent seven years running from what she'd encountered. Now she was running toward it.
She closed her eyes and listened.
Not with her ears. With whatever part of her had been touched in the Mariana Trench. With whatever part of her heard things that shouldn't be heard.
...return...
The word drifted through her mind, soft as water, ancient as time.
...long time... chosen one...
She opened her eyes, and her reflection in the viewport showed something that frightened her. Her own eyes, but different somehow. Deeper. Older. As if something vast had been poured into them, something that had been waiting for her to return.
She turned away from the viewport, turned away from the sea, and lay back down on her bunk.
Tomorrow, they would descend.
Tomorrow, the answers would begin.
Tomorrow, everything would change.