Read Chapter 5: Debt Collector

The satellite phone buzzed against the chart table like an angry insect. Elias stared at it, coffee cup halfway to his lips, the familiar weight of Mikhail’s number settling in his gut.

Aiko looked up from the helm. “He’s calling again?”

“He’s patient.” Elias set the cup down and picked up the phone. The screen glowed with the tenth missed call in two hours. He thumbed the answer button. “Mikhail.”

“Captain.” The broker’s voice was clipped, stripped of the oily charm he usually wore. “You’re still on that ship’s tail.”

“I’m towing her to the Faroes.”

Silence stretched across the satellite link, heavy with the crackle of static. When Mikhail spoke again, his voice had dropped to something almost gentle—and that was worse. “Elias. Listen to me like a friend. Not a broker. Not a creditor. A friend who has known you for twenty years.”

Elias gripped the handrail as the Remora rolled through a trough. The Artemis loomed in their wake, a dark shape against the grey horizon, her list to starboard growing more pronounced with each hour. “I’m listening.”

“You don’t know what’s on that ship.”

“I know what I saw. Aquariums. Specimens. A lab bigger than most hospitals.”

“You saw the merchandise.” A pause. “They shipped merchandise on that freighter. But the ship itself—the structural damage, the way she was abandoned—that wasn’t the sea. That was a containment breach.”

Elias felt the words settle cold in his chest. He thought of the parallel gashes, the warm, melted metal. The bore hole that looked like something had drilled through steel. “Containment of what?”

“Things not meant for the surface.” Mikhail’s voice cracked on the word *surface*. “You read the manifest. Meridian Deep. You know that name, don’t you? Don’t pretend you don’t.”

Elias pulled the brass chronometer from his pocket. The symbol on its face—a downward spiral, like a stylized whirlpool—matched the logo on the manifest pages Aiko had printed. Meridian Deep. He’d seen that spiral before, eight years ago, on a rusting research vessel that had limped into Reykjavik with half its crew missing.

“I know it,” he said.

“Then you know what they do. You know the kind of money they have, and the kind of lawyers. And you know they’ve already sent someone to clean this up.”

Elias frowned. “Who?”

“Doesn’t matter. What matters is I called in your debt. You owe me from the Barents Sea. You owe me for pulling you out of that ice when you had no chart and no engine and no hope. You do not get to die on this tow.”

The words hit like a wave. Elias said nothing. The memory of the Barents Sea rose unbidden: hypothermia setting in, his crew dead or dying around him, and a Russian voice crackling through the static that promised salvation for a price. He’d paid that price in favors ever since.

“Mikhail,” he said slowly, “when you called in the debt, you told me to investigate that distress call. You told me to go find out what happened to the Artemis. Why?”

Another silence. Longer this time. When Mikhail spoke, his voice was barely a whisper. “Because I thought you’d find nothing. I thought you’d report back empty, and Meridian Deep would stay quiet, and I’d keep my mouth shut and my accounts open. But you found the timeline, didn’t you? You found the records that didn’t add up. And now you’re towing the proof to shore.”

“Proof of what?”

“Proof of the trial. Dr. Reyes. The initial run on the specimen.” Mikhail’s voice tightened. “You think they hurt people in those labs? You think the bodies are only on the Artemis? The Barents Sea—my ship that retrieved you—do you know why it was there?”

Elias felt the floor drop out beneath him. “You were working for them.”

“I’m a broker, Elias. I move things. Sometimes I move information. Sometimes I move equipment. I didn’t ask questions, because asking questions is how you get your family disappeared. But I saw manifests. I saw the pattern. Meridian Deep’s first containment site was a submersible research platform in the Barents. The same symbols. The same cages. It went quiet three years ago. Just—gone. Two hundred men, women, scientists. All gone.”

“And you never told anyone.”

“I told myself I didn’t know enough. That it was all rumors.” A bitter laugh crackled through the speaker. “Now I know enough. And I’m telling you: cut the line. Let that ship sink. Whatever is on her, whatever comes for her, you do not want to be attached to her when it arrives.”

Elias looked through the bridge windows at the Artemis. Rain had begun to fall, streaking the glass, distorting the derelict’s silhouette into something less solid. Less real. When lightning flashed, he swore he saw movement on her deck—a shape, too large to be a man, ducking behind the cargo containers.

“I can’t,” he said.

“You can. You have the controls. Cut the tow. Increase speed. By morning, she’ll be off the shipping lanes, and whatever’s aboard her will sink with her.”

“That’s not salvage. That’s murder.”

“That’s survival!”

Elias pulled the phone from his ear, looked at it, and brought it back. “You said you pulled me from the ice in the Barents. You want the truth? That day, I wasn’t there to salvage that rig. I was there to find the *Kraken*. Meridian Deep’s research vessel. I had a contract to bring back its black box, and it went wrong when the ice took my crew instead.”

The silence on the other end was total now.

“They were good people,” Elias continued. “They died in cold water, screaming, because I took a job I didn’t understand. I’ve spent eight years wondering what was on that vessel worth so much money and so much secrecy. Now I know. And I’m not turning my back on it again.”

“They’re not dead because of the ice, Elias. They’re dead because of you. And if you take that ship to the Faroes, you’re going to add another dozen names to that list.”

Elias closed his eyes. Rain drummed against the glass. Somewhere aft, he could hear the creak of the tow cable, the wind singing through the rigging.

“You’ll have your debt paid,” he said. “I’ll wire the funds from salvage once we dock. But I’m taking her in.”

“If you dock.”

“When I dock.”

A long, slow exhale crackled through the speaker. “I’ll tell you one more thing. The reason I had you investigate—the real reason. Meridian Deep didn’t lose the Artemis. They scuttled it. They wanted her to sink to the Challenger Deep. They wanted whatever was left onboard buried under a mountain of pressure where nobody could ever find it. Someone interfered with their plan. Someone sent that distress call on a frequency that wasn’t theirs. I don’t know who. I don’t know why.”

“Maybe they wanted someone to find it.”

“Or maybe they wanted an audience.”

The line went dead.

Elias stood for a long moment, the phone warm in his hand, the Artemis listing in his wake. Aiko had turned from the helm, her face pale.

“What did he say?” she asked.

Elias pocketed the phone. “He said there are things not meant for the surface.”

“And what did you say back?”

He met her eyes. “I said we’re going to the surface anyway.”

Behind them, the lightning flashed again. And this time, Elias saw it clearly: a shape on the Artemis’s stern, vast and glistening, coiling up from the water like a serpent rising to breathe.