The briefing room smelled like iodine, old rubber, and quiet dread. Gin sat on the metal bench while three senior sinkers stood around a table with a map of the trench. The projected depth-lines dropped steeply, then vanished into the darkness beyond the measurable range.
No one liked looking at that part.
Foreman Vexa pointed with a calloused finger. "He went down here. Past safe range. Past the tether's end. Past sense." She exhaled sharply. "Idiot was a Floodborn—thought his reef made him invincible. Shit, he just got here too…"
Gin swallowed. Floodborn…
That meant the guy was not only trained, but valuable. And dangerous to lose.
The Hydrarchy didn't care about sinkers, but they cared about assets.
And Floodborn were exactly that — living weapons, living tools, living mysteries.
They weren't just "divers with mutations"; their bodies housed microbial colonies from the thaw, symbiotic reefs that granted unique abilities depending on strain. If well-fed, they could perform miraculous feats. If neglected, the microbes began to consume their host.
He had read a few currentscrolls about them — mostly rumors.
One of them echoed in his memory now, almost eerily.
-
Currentscroll Fragment – Found in a cracked bottle near Hull-3
(Copied into Hull-9 records)
To whoever finds this…
The Floodborn are not chosen — they are infected.
The thaw microbes burrow into the soft places between the spine…
They live if you feed them.
They change you if you let them.
And if you starve them… they eat their way back out.
-
Gin wasn't a Floodborn.
Never wanted to be.
Never thought he would understand them either.
Vexa snapped him back to the moment. "Farcast. The tether doesn't reach into the trench. You'll go down to the end, unhook, and proceed free. You know the procedure."
Gin nodded. "Yes, ma'am."
"You find him, alive or dead, you haul him back. We can't lose a Floodborn. Hull-9 can't afford it." Her eyes softened by the smallest fraction. "Stay sharp. The trench is… wrong."
Wrong.
He knew that word. Everyone did. Every diver learned it on their first day:
Stay away from the trench.
But he also knew why he was chosen.
Because he would say yes.
The water closed over his helmet with a hollow whump, muting the world instantly.
Light from the surface died quickly, swallowed by the slow pulse of drifting plankton and silt. The tether line hummed at his waist, feeding him data through gentle vibrations.
Depth: 30 meters.
50.
120.
Gin breathed steadily, though his pulse quickened with each drop. Not fear — not exactly. More like a tight, rising thrill he didn't recognize. He had never gone this deep. Never broken the line of the known.
He should have been terrified.
Instead, he caught himself whispering:
"…wow."
Schools of ribbonfish drifted past — long translucent bodies bending and folding like shifting glass. Soft blue lights glowed in their veins. Farther down, a bloom of lantern kelp unfurled like floating constellations. Their fronds shimmered with tiny organisms that pulsed in patterns, almost like song.
Alien.
Silent.
Beautiful.
His breath fogged the inside of his visor. He grinned without meaning to.
"Get it together," he muttered, embarrassed even though no one could hear.
Still — he felt it. A strange, bubbling excitement in his chest, like something deep inside him was waking up for the first time.
The tether vibrated twice — the signal that he was nearing its end.
Depth: 190 meters.
Below this point, the trench dropped almost vertically.
Gin reached the anchor bolt, steadied himself, and unclipped the tether.
Now he was truly alone.
The sea changed immediately.
The water felt heavier.
The silence deeper.
The creatures larger — shadows drifting in the blue-black distance.
Far below, the trench yawned open like a wound in the world.
And there — a faint glint of metal. The missing diver's helmet.
Gin kicked downward.
He reached the ledge where the man lay half-submerged in something that was… not water.
A pool of shifting, multicolored ooze sloshed gently with the trench's faint currents. It glowed softly—iridescent blues, purples, greens—but in a way that felt alive, not chemical. It clung to the dead sinker's suit like honey.
Gin's instincts screamed at him. Get away. Get out.
But the words from the currentscroll in his pocket echoed louder:
"If you feel trapped, the sea is bigger than your cage."
And there, at the bottom of the world, he felt something else — the familiar weight of duty.
He moved closer.
"Hey… I'm here to bring you home," he whispered to the corpse.
He reached for the man's arm—
The ooze reacted instantly.
It surged up his glove, pierced through the reinforced seam of his suit like it wasn't there, and stabbed into his skin.
Gin screamed.
It wasn't a vocal scream — it was a soundless, primal burst of agony that rattled through his helmet.
The ooze writhed, splitting into strands that burrowed through his veins, hunting deeper—deeper—until they found bone.
When the first tendril sank into his humerus, white-hot fire exploded up his arm.
He convulsed, clutching at the rock shelf.
More strands burrowed into his ribs. Another stabbed into his shin bone. Each one found the marrow and forced itself inside like molten, invasive life.
His vision blurred.
His lungs seized.
His heart stuttered in arrhythmic terror.
He thought he was dying.
He should have died.
But after endless burning minutes — or seconds, he couldn't tell — the pain shifted. Not softer. Not kinder. But… controlled. Contained.
As suddenly as it had begun, the frantic burrowing stopped. Something flowed into the wounds in his marrow, settling into the hollows the ooze had carved—filling his bones from the inside out.
He gasped, shuddering, and forced his shaking limbs to obey.
The body of the Floodborn lay limp beside him.
Gin reached for him again.
The ooze didn't stop him this time.
Almost as if it had taken what it wanted.
With the last of his strength, Gin hooked an arm under the dead man's straps and kicked upward, each movement a fresh eruption of pain.
Up.
Up.
Up—
His fingers found the tether anchor.
He slapped the line twice.
The winch dragged him upward fast enough to make his stomach twist.
His limbs felt wrong.
Heavy.
Alive in ways they shouldn't be.
When he broke the surface, hands grabbed him and hauled him onto the platform.
"Where is he?"
"Is he alive?"
"Please tell me you got him—"
Gin dropped the body onto the deck, collapsed beside it, and tore off his helmet, choking on air.
Vexa knelt, checked the corpse, and her jaw tightened. Around her, the others murmured:
"If only he'd been faster…"
"He's the only Floodborn we had…"
"Such a waste…"
Gin blinked in confusion.
He just nearly died.
He brought the man back.
Why did they look at him like he'd failed?
Lira shoved through the crowd.
For a heartbeat, Gin thought she would kneel beside him.
Instead, she snapped:
"Why did you even go down there?! Are you trying to get yourself killed, Gin?"
"I—" His voice cracked. "They asked me. He was—"
"You should've said no!"
He stared at her.
She didn't ask if he was hurt.
She didn't ask if he was okay.
She didn't even look at him — really look.
Vexa cut in, her tone brisk, already shifting to logistics. "We'll need to reassess Hull-9's Floodborn quota. Maybe file a requisition. If the Hydrarchy denies it, we'll be down a combat diver for months."
Someone else sighed. "This will hit the Rimark trade cycles hard."
Gin felt himself fading.
Their voices sounded distant, distorted, as if he were still underwater.
Nobody thanked him.
Nobody asked what happened.
Nobody asked why his hands were trembling, or why he kept pressing a palm against his ribs as if something inside them was glowing hot.
While they debated resources, assets, quotas, and losses…
Gin quietly stood.
Quietly walked.
Quietly disappeared.
He reached his dorm, closed the door, and slumped onto his cot. The room tilted. His bones pulsed — a dull, rhythmic throb like distant drums.
Something alive was inside him.
Something wrong.
He curled on his side, breath shaking, sweat chilling on his skin.
Outside, Hull-9 kept humming, grinding, living its tired life.
Inside, Gin Farcast lay alone in the dark, exhausted, hurt, and utterly unseen.
But beneath all that pain…
A whisper, a memory, a spark:
"…the sea is bigger than your cage."
And for the first time, the words didn't ache.
They burned.