Read Chapter 13: Flight

The duct was a coffin of black steel and stale air. Jack crawled on his elbows, the keycard clenched between his teeth like a dog with a bone, Voss’s glove slick against his palm. His left hand—his actual hand, beneath the glove—was a dead weight. The sheen had climbed past his knuckles, and the numbness was creeping into his wrist, a cold that had nothing to do with temperature.

He counted vents. Three. Four. Five. Each one sealed with rusted bolts. The duct narrowed, and he had to exhale fully to squeeze through, the metal scraping against his shoulders. Below him, through a grate, he saw a slice of Deck 3. Empty. Too empty. The station had a way of holding its breath now, waiting to see what he would do next.

The sixth vent opened onto the vehicle bay.

Jack braced his boots against the duct walls and kicked. The grate popped free and clattered onto the deck below, the sound echoing far too loud in the silence. He dropped, landing in a crouch, the keycard still in his teeth. The bay was vast and dark, lit only by a few emergency strips that hummed with a sickly amber glow. The water outside pressed against the viewport walls, black and thick, a pressure he could feel in his sinuses.

And there, in the center of it all, sat the probe.

It was a compact deep-sea vessel, more shell than ship. A pilot’s cradle in the front, a cargo lock in the rear, and thrusters that looked barely maintained. But it was whole. It was sealed. It was his way out.

Jack crossed the bay, his footsteps too loud, too human in the space. He slid the keycard into the probe’s hatch reader. The light flickered green. The hatch hissed open, and a smell of stale coolant and old metal washed over him.

He climbed inside. The cradle swallowed him, the restraints clicking into place automatically. His fingers—his dead left hand especially—fumbled over the console. He powered the systems. The screens blinked to life, showing a navigation map. There was a drilling rig, the *Mercator Alpha*, twelve nautical miles northwest. Close enough to reach on a full charge. Close enough to be saved.

He keyed the thrusters. The probe hummed beneath him, a familiar vibration he could feel in his chest. He reached for the bay door controls.

Locked.

He tried again. The console flashed a series of error codes. Jack’s stomach dropped. He looked out through the probe’s small viewport. The bay doors loomed ahead—massive, hydraulic, built to withstand the crushing dark. And they were shut tight, a faint shimmer dancing between them like heat haze underwater.

A force field.

The network had sealed him in.

“No,” Jack muttered. He punched the override. Nothing. He tried manual release. The handles didn’t budge. He slammed his palm against the console, and the sheen on his left hand glistened under the amber light, the skin beneath cracking like old paint.

He sat back, breathing hard. The probe’s systems hummed, indifferent to his panic. Twelve miles. Twelve miles away, there were people. Satellite phones. Evacuation. A whole world that didn’t know this place was sick.

He stared at the force field. It pulsed. A slow, rhythmic pulse. Like a heartbeat.

Like the walls on the lowest deck.

Jack’s jaw tightened. He killed the thrusters and clambered out of the cradle. The bay was colder now, or maybe that was just him. The pulse of the force field seemed to sync with something deep in his chest, and he had to fight the urge to step toward it. To press his hand against it. To feel what it felt.

No.

He forced his gaze away. The bay had other exits. Emergency hatches. Maintenance passages. He spotted one near the rear of the vessel, a small circular door marked with peeling paint. He crossed to it, the keycard still tucked into his vest. He swiped it. The lock clicked. The hatch swung open.

Beyond it, a narrow ladder led up into a dark shaft.

He glanced back at the probe. So close. So goddamn close.

Then he climbed.

The shaft opened into a maintenance module—a prefab room bolted to the station’s hull, built to be jettisoned in an emergency. It was small, cramped, filled with tool lockers and a single comm terminal. A dead-end, by design. But it had its own power supply. Its own air. Its own viewport.

And through that viewport, he could see the sea. The real sea. Not the station’s water, not the entity’s water. Just water. Dark, endless, and indifferent.

Jack moved to the comm terminal. The console was older than the rest of the station, a relic of the original construction. He pulled a panel off the side and began rewiring it, bypassing the station’s main grid. He worked fast, his bad hand slowing him down, the glove making it worse. But he didn’t take it off. He didn’t want to see what was underneath.

The terminal crackled. Static. Then, a voice—thin, fractured, like it was being pulled through water.

“…Mercer… you there…”

Jack leaned in. “Director? Director Keane?”

The static shifted. For a moment, the signal cleared, and he heard Keane’s voice, ragged and low, almost a whisper.

“Jack. Listen to me. It is a memory.”

Jack’s hand froze on the console.

“They are not infected,” Keane said, the words broken by interference. “They are not… they are remembering…”

The signal died. The static returned, a hollow hiss that filled the module.

Jack stared at the terminal. His chest felt tight. His left hand, inside the glove, twitched—the first movement he’d felt in hours.

Remembering.

Not infected.

He looked down at his hand. At the sheen climbing toward his wrist.

And the force field throbbed beyond the bulkhead, patient, waiting.