Read Chapter 10: Aftermath of Trust

The taste of diesel and salt hung in the air of the Nautilus’s main cabin, mixing with the bitter scent of cold coffee. Élise stood at the head of the folding table, the glow of a single swinging lamp casting long shadows across the faces of her team. Antoine leaned against the bulkhead, arms crossed. Dr. Petit sat rigidly, her fingers knitted together on the tabletop. Malik hovered near the server rack, his face lit by the pale blue of three monitors.

Élise pushed a manila folder across the table. Petit didn’t reach for it.

“I brought you all here because you deserve the truth,” Élise said, her voice steadier than she felt. “The funding for this expedition—the grants, the equipment, the permits—came through Marc Leclerc. I trusted that. I didn’t dig deeper.”

“But you dug now,” Petit said. It wasn’t a question.

“I had to. The site was taken from us this morning. The École Navale is moving in by end of week.” Élise paused, letting that land. “I confronted Leclerc. He admitted the money never came from civilian archaeological foundations. It came through a Ministry of Defense shell company.”

Petit’s jaw tightened. “You’re telling me we’ve been working for the military this whole time.”

“We’ve been working for the science,” Élise said. “But the hands that paid the bills weren’t clean.”

A long silence stretched across the cabin. Outside, the Mediterranean lapped against the hull, indifferent to the fracture forming below deck.

“Define shell company,” Malik said, not looking up from his screens.

“A holding entity called Equinox Maritime Partners,” Élise said. “Registered in Lyon. Paper trail leads to the DGA.”

Malik’s fingers paused. “Direction Générale de l’Armement. Defense procurement. That’s not just military—that’s military intelligence adjacent.” He finally turned to face her. “Captain, do you have any idea what you’ve been swimming over?”

“I’m starting to.”

Petit stood abruptly, her chair scraping against the deck. “You lied to us. All of us. We’ve been risking our lives—diving into a city that shouldn’t exist, finding equipment that’s centuries wrong—and you kept us in the dark about who was actually writing the checks.”

“I didn’t know until yesterday,” Élise said, keeping her tone level. “Leclerc played me as much as he played you.”

“Did he?” Petit’s eyes narrowed. “Or did you suspect something was off and chose not to ask? Because asking might have ended the gravy train.”

The accusation stung because there was a sliver of truth in it. Élise had noticed irregularities in the paperwork months ago—funding milestones that arrived suspiciously fast, invoices routed through unusual intermediaries. She’d told herself it was just bureaucratic complexity. She’d been wrong.

“You’re right to be angry,” Élise said. “I should have pushed harder, sooner. But I’m telling you now, with everything I know, because I need you to understand what we’re dealing with.”

Antoine uncrossed his arms. “What exactly are we dealing with?”

Élise turned to him. “Leclerc admitted the military has known about this site since at least the late eighties. There was a program called AEGIS—before my time, before most of ours. Something happened down there in 1988 that they’ve been keeping buried. And someone else has been monitoring the site since then. Someone outside the official program.”

“How do you know that?” Petit asked.

“A source,” Élise said. “Someone who was involved in the original survey. He’s been watching my work for years. He contacted me last night with information that matches what Leclerc admitted.”

Malik raised an eyebrow. “And you trust this source?”

Élise hesitated, and she hated herself for it. The anonymous text about Girard—he isn’t who you think—clung to the back of her mind like a barnacle. “I trust that he knows things he shouldn’t. Whether he’s on our side remains to be seen.”

“So we’re flying blind,” Petit said. “Military funding, shadowy monitoring, sealed chambers with biohazard canisters, and a ghost in naval uniform who points at you like a warning. And now you want us to keep digging without institutional cover?”

“No,” Élise said. “I want you to make a choice.”

She pulled three printed contracts from a second folder and set them on the table. “Effective immediately, I’m releasing you from your expedition obligations. The university will honor your salaries for the next quarter. If you want to walk away, you do so with my full support and my thanks. No hard feelings, no references withheld.”

Petit stared at the papers. “And if we stay?”

“If you stay,” Élise said, “you stay knowing there’s no safety net. No rescue if the Navy decides we’re a liability. We operate independently, quietly, and we finish what we started.”

Antoine didn’t move toward the contracts. “What about Girard? Your mentor. He’s coming aboard?”

“He’s coming to the site,” Élise said carefully. “But I’m not sure his agenda and ours are aligned.”

A beat of silence. Malik leaned back in his chair, the springs creaking. “I’m not walking away from the find of the century because the paymaster had a different name on the checkbook. I’m in.”

Petit shook her head slowly. “You’re asking us to commit career suicide.”

“I’m asking you to commit to the truth,” Élise said. “That city down there might be the most important discovery in human history. Or it might be the door to something that people have murdered to keep sealed. I don’t know which yet. But I know that if we walk away now, we never will.”

Petit looked at the contracts again, then pushed them back across the table without signing. “I’m in too. But I want full transparency from this moment on. No more surprises.”

“Agreed,” Élise said. She turned to Malik. “Can you trace the shell company?”

Malik cracked his knuckles. “Equinox Maritime Partners. Lyon registration. I can pull the corporate registry, follow the shareholdings through the offshore layers. It’s going to take time and a fair amount of crawling through Luxembourg and Cayman filings.” He paused. “But there’s a catch.”

“There’s always a catch,” Antoine muttered.

“Independent action against Ministry of Defense interests carries serious weight,” Malik said. “If I start pulling threads on a DGA-linked entity, and they notice, we’re not just looking at lost funding. We’re looking at criminal charges. Espionage-adjacent statutes. Jail time in a facility that doesn’t have good Yelp reviews.”

Élise met his gaze. “I’m aware of the risks.”

“Are you?” Malik’s voice was quiet. “Because I’ve seen colleagues go down for less. Financial records, communication intercepts—once you start pulling on those threads, the system reacts. And it doesn’t react gently.”

“I’m not asking you to penetrate government systems,” Élise said. “I’m asking you to follow public corporate records and see where they lead. Legal channels only.”

Malik let out a dry laugh. “Legal channels get us a name on a holding company. If you want to know who’s actually pulling strings, the public record stops at a nominee director in a Monaco law firm.”

“Then we start there,” Élise said. “And we see how deep the rabbit hole goes before it collapses.”

Antoine moved away from the bulkhead, stepping closer to the table. “What about the dive? The sealed chamber beneath the dock?”

“We go down tonight,” Élise said. “Unofficially. Weather window is clean until dawn. If the Navy is moving in by end of week, we have maybe two more nights before the site is locked down tighter than a drum.”

Petit frowned. “Two nights to break into a chamber that’s been sealed for decades, possibly designed to keep things in as much as out.”

“Then we make them count.”

The meeting dissolved into tasks. Malik retreated to his corner, pulling up corporate registries with the focused intensity of a man who’d decided to walk a high wire without a net. Petit began reviewing dive protocols, her voice tight but professional as she checked air mixtures and decompression tables against the depth charts. Antoine lingered by the table, waiting until the others were occupied.

“You’re not telling us everything,” he said quietly.

Élise met his eyes. “I’m telling you what I know. The rest is guesswork.”

“Girard. The source. Same person?”

She didn’t answer immediately. The warning text had been explicit—Girard isn’t who you think. But Girard was the one who’d first taught her to read underwater terrain, who’d pushed her toward the Mediterranean when other advisors urged Atlantic wrecks. She couldn’t reconcile the man she knew with the shadow the texter painted.

“He’s connected to the original program,” she said finally. “He was part of the 1988 survey. But I don’t know the full extent of his involvement.”

“And the other contact? The one who texted you?”

Élise felt the phone in her pocket, the lighthouse meeting etched into her memory. Sunset. Alone. Whoever they were, they claimed to know what Girard found in ’88—and they claimed Girard was playing a longer game than mentorship.

“I have a meeting to confirm,” she said. “If it goes well, we’ll have more to work with by morning.”

Antoine studied her for a long moment. “You’re going alone.”

“The situation calls for it.”

“It never does, Élise.” He sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. “But I know better than to argue when you’ve made up your mind.”

A small, tired smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. “You always did.”

He almost smiled back, then his eyes drifted to the equipment locker where the teardrop artifact rested in its padded case. “That thing down there. The countdown. Whatever’s waking up—you think Girard knows what it is?”

Élise followed his gaze. The object hummed faintly in her memory, its pre-Latin script burning against her mind’s eye. She thought of the faceless figure in the old French uniform, pointing at her from the corridor. Thought of the words ABYSSAL ACCORD — GARRISON 9 stitched into the darkness.

“I think,” she said slowly, “that Girard knows more than he’s ever told me. And I think whatever he found in 1988 is the reason this whole site has been watched for thirty-five years.”

“And the countdown?”

She looked out the porthole at the darkening sea. Somewhere beneath those waves, the city waited. Sealed chambers. Hidden docks. A countdown that she didn’t yet understand, ticking toward a moment she couldn’t predict.

“The countdown is the clock we’re racing against,” she said. “We just don’t know what happens when it hits zero. So we need to find out before it does.”

Outside, the sun dipped toward the horizon, painting the water in shades of copper and gold. Élise checked her watch. She had two hours before the lighthouse. Two hours to prepare for a conversation with someone who might hold the missing piece of the puzzle—or might be setting a trap.

Either way, she was going.

The sea had made her who she was. It had taken her father, taken colleagues, taken pieces of her heart she’d never fully recovered. But it had also given her something no one could take away: a refusal to look away from the truths hiding in the dark water.

Whatever was sealed beneath Aegis, whatever had been hidden since 1988, she would find it. Even if it cost her everything.

She grabbed her jacket and stepped out onto the deck, the salt wind pulling at her hair as the lighthouse light blinked on in the distance, steady and patient, waiting for her arrival.