The Relay Pod Where Memory Wouldn't Die

0:00Hey, it's Kelly Rowland. You may not know this, but I have Exema. So I get how it can steal your time. But why let Exema take over when you can talk to your doctor about Epglyce? Epglyce, lubricism app LBKZ, a 250-mg per 2-mg leador injection, is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children 12 years of age and older, who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40 kg with moderate to severe Exema. Also called a topic dermatitis that is not well controlled with prescription therapies used on the skin or topicals or who cannot use topical therapies. Epglyce can be used with or without topical corticosteroids. Don't use if you are allergic to Epglyce. A allergic reaction can occur that can be severe. Eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have newer, worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with Epglyce. Before starting Epglyce, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection. Paid partnership with Lili Respect your time. Ask your doctor about Epglyce and visit Epglyce.com or call 1-800-LiliRX or 1-800-545-5 9-7-9. Hi, I'm Gus.

1:00I'm a dog and an expert in speed. So when it comes to fast internet, I know what I'm talking about. That's why I recommend optimum fiber-powered internet. It has fast and reliable internet speeds, starting at only $30 a month with a 5-year price lock. So how can you fetch such an amazing deal by calling 8669 Optima or visiting optimum.com to switch? That's 8669 Optima. Speaking of fetch, that's my cue. Let's go to the next one. First moments always get to me the shutter of thick acrylic as pressure doubles, the sensation of depth dragging me down like a hand-fastening around my chest. There's no reason to be afraid, not for someone like me, someone who designs and maintains these machine-longs for a living. But even after 20 years at sea, the silence creeping over as a merciful after it launches still makes me feel like a teenager, waiting for the shelter crack. Tonight's well is technically morning, but there's no time down here any way I lead the team in silence, listening to the sub's hole growing as it sinks.

2:04My name is Mason Field, technical director for Orbisoshaniks Newfoundland Relay project, and I suppose, whether I wanted or not, I'm supposed to keep everyone calm. The descent always takes longer than it should. We sit crowned together, five bodies wrapped in the precious suits, breath fogging the dome glass, eyes blinking against the blue glow of redotes. Newf fidgets with her day-to-pad jaw set she hasn't said a word since we cleared the office. Cut slag jigs like he's trying to shake free ghosts. Of a small and pale even in the best light, stirs so intently at her tabloos she might burn a hole through the screen. Song the kid is already sweating through his collar he's got a nervous habit of twisting wires through his fingers under the guise of a perfect comms' run. I try to catch a new guy. She pointedly ignores me and I can't blame her. No one's here because they want to be. The really part appears first as a blip and so now, then through the glass, a stubby lad is wrinkled in strobe, sparring cold already, like the skeleton of some city left behind vital living sea. We glide closer, let falling away, gravity intents if you could still call this gravity. The radio starts hissing, not static, but a word sort of grown.

3:06The main docking AI is seacult because all this likes acute and demonic usually greets us in an annoying chip of ice. Now the speaker's pop, then clang, before crackling out the jagged alarm. Not synthesized or smooth at all, but rough edged. An author as personnel detected, memory integrity compromised. The light strobe crimson. It's not the usual protocol, not a test. A glance at Ava who looks as startled as I feel. Some murmurs something in Korean probably occurs. For a second, all five of us just look at each other, spend at beneath 3000m of black water caught by a machine was supposed to trust. I snag the radio. Seacult, this is Mason Field, senior technical officer, real-ed-esent, confirm identity, stand by for override. There's nothing but silence, then a flicker, identity field and complete, surface credentials required, do not proceed. Kurt slams the dash with his palm. Idiot move, the sub isn't that sturdy, and the gesture echoes. The pod lumes and the floodlights now, and I can't help picturing it not as a workstation, but a trap is so made for something to swim into a not swim out.

4:08We dock. The lock clangs home far too loud, and suddenly the only thing between us and the really pod is a thick metal iris, orping with the cold. I reach for my helmet, force my hands not to shake, and signal the others. Game faces on, we go by the book until we know what's wrong. The air and the pod taste like dust and brine. I step through first, and the hatch closes behind us with the finality of a guillotine. My boots stutter on the graded seal. The real-ed is usually lit up like a Christmas market, but now red and blue has its dried flicker across the main corridor, casting bars up the walls. Some things wrong with the lights, shadows get faster than anything living. The crew waits for my lead. She slides up beside me, her expression already calculating. She's a corporate biologist, one of the specialists with too many credentials to fit on a name badge, high to prove that the real-es green-proarty tuition health by acoustic survey, they call it isn't just PR. She's all nerves and edge though. Ambition glinting, even when there's nothing to see. Kurt's coast behind, shoulders hunched. He is older than I am, with a face like cobstone and a permanent dent in his nose, as

5:10if he's expected a punch every day of his life. He works up text back when we barely trusted digital clocks. He doesn't speak unless he's sure you're wrong. Chicob's song, The Combs Expert, has the energy of someone who's about to fail an exam. He moves quickly, hands starting along, seems, mumbling to himself. When he speaks up, his voice rises, hopeful then sinking again. He was a recommendation from back home, green, but sharp enough. Of a model stand, slightly apart, medical tech-almus by accident, cold up after a last minute change. She's young, dark-haired and a no-nonsense pun, eyes starting everywhere but with a focus. She's supposed to look after our bodies if the environment haywire is, but she's so quiet I wonder if she's hiding from her own presence. We move down the main passage, brushing shoulders. The real a pod isn't much, maybe 20 meters end to end all-narr. There's a galley, a medical bay, then a cluster of server banks humming like something alive. The walls are lined with screens, and each pulse of emergency light makes it difficult to tell where the machinery stops and the sea begins. The facility is new my work technically.

6:12Pants of planning, millions of dollars, and someone, somewhere thought it would be clever to install the pod in a dead zone, a place where coms barely work in the water itself absorbs all sound faster than you can scream it. We're here because the pod started dropping offline. First blackout, then sick environmental readings, then logs that didn't match any known failure codes. The neurosurface ship is 12 hours away. If this goes sideways, nobody will reach us in time. AI hangs in the atmosphere like a warning. I hit to the central console, the core of this little beast. My finger hesitates above the keyboard. Red light fills the room, strobing like a heartbeat. Ice quintet the log screen. Instead of an event history, there's a block of corrupted data that scrolls endlessly. Someone's tried to restore it to another engineer, maybe but failed spectacularly. The last normal entry was two weeks ago after that it's all over it, and there's audio. Afic, top recording, not just the buzz of static, but someone's voice splice unlayered, echoing over itself and fragments. I feel my mouth go dry.

7:12Other glances are from my shoulder, then winces. The voice is heros. I'm certain of it's all the model, clear as a bell. But I've only just arrived with us. The words aren't sentences, but bits. It don't touch the seal if you hear it, stop section 3 down, 3 then a jumble, then we were not never don't let it. If I didn't know others voice, I might believe it was a trick. But the inflections are too specific, and I'd swear each phrase sounds afraid. As impossible she's not even assigned here except on today's rotation. I signaled the team. Ava, can you join me? She hesitates. Why is something wrong? Just come here. In the corner, sung fills with a calm panel muttering about packet loss and supomonics. Cote purses his lips, staring at the long corridors of Freddy to throw a punch at a shadow. Nives eyes glint with something close to hunger. Ava stands beside me, peering at the display. She frowns, looked parting. That's not me, she whispers. I can see the denial building in her, she's almost trembling. But the voice repeats, and even Kurt moves in, looking more unsettled out.

8:16Ava grits her teeth. Where you are you messing with me? No I say quietly. And you only arrive when I did. Can you play the rest? She asks, forcing her voice steady. I run a file for her, but it's the same of his voice. Ambien fuzz, names none of us recognize, mentions of places that never appear on our assignment map. Ava glances back at the rest of the crew, cheeks pale. I don't remember ever saying this. I lower my tone. Any chance you've worked here, made off record, or been in proximity to her. I hobbled a question, it sounds crazy, even to me. But she shakes her head violently. No, I've never, this isn't my voice, not this way. I believe her. No one fakes a shake like that. We exchange glances with dadows. I can practically feel the question mark floating in the air above us all. I nod a Kurt. Alright, we check the station, start at basics. If this is a prank, it's elaborate. Some, see if the comms are safe to bring surface online, need, dig through environmental and AI logs, start with audio signatures. They move off, forces low.

9:16Ava lingers near me until the last second. Mason, you believe me, right? Yeah. She disappears down the corridor, shoulders hunch tight. I let my own pulse settle before I begin. The really feels smaller now, like the walls are gradually flexing in, alive and watching. Curret, as usual, takes sun along. No more damn shortcuts, cable corridors this way. Some hearth sinks deeper into his collar. I'll need three minutes to check feeds, please don't turn just let me. I lose track of their voices, absorbed by the hush. The atmosphere tastes different now, metallic and sour. I pull up another l- Hey, it's Kelly Rowland. You may not know this, but I have Exama. So I get how it can steal your time. So why let Exama take over when you can talk to your doctor about epglyce? Epglyce, lubricism ab lbkz, a 250-mg per 2-mg leader injection, is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children 12 years of age and older, who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40 kilograms, with moderate to severe axima. Also called a topic dermatitis that is not well controlled with prescription therapies

10:19used on the skin, or topicals, or who cannot use topical therapies, epglyce can be used with or without topical corticosteroids. Don't use if you are allergic to epglyce. A allergic reaction can occur that can be severe. Eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have newer, worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with epglyce. Before starting epglyce, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection. Paid partnership with Lily. Respect your time. Ask your doctor about epglyce and visit epglyce.com or call 1-800-LilyRX or 1-800-545-5979. At Verbo, we understand that even the best of plans sometimes need a little support. So we plan for the plot twists. Every booking is automatically backed by our Verbo care guarantee, giving you confidence from the very start. Whenever you need help, it's ready. Before you stay through the moments in between and after your trip. Because a great trip starts with peace of mind. And maybe a good playlist. But we've got the peace of mind part covered. Hey, it's Kelly Rowland.

11:21You may not know this, but I have eczema. So I get how it can steal your time. But why let eczema take over when you can talk to your doctor about epglyce? Epglyce, lubricism app LBKZ, a 250-milligram per 2-milliliter injection, is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children 12 years of age and older, who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40 kilograms, with moderate to severe eczema. Epglyce is also called a topic dermatitis that is not well controlled with prescription therapies used on the skin, or topicals, or who cannot use topical therapies. Epglyce can be used with or without topical corticosteroids. Don't use if you are allergic to epglyce. A allergic reactions can occur that can be severe. Eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have newer, worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with epglyce. Before starting epglyce, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection. Paid partnership with Lily. Respect your time. Ask your doctor about epglyce and visit epglyce.com or call 1-800-LilyRX or 1-800-545-5979.

12:39To switch, that's 8669 optimum. Speaking of fetch, that's my cue. Terms apply. See optimum.com for details. Meet the Red Bull Dragonberry Emergizer. It's one of the many new drinks out now. Who knew ice cold drinks could be so fire. Try them all only at McDonald's. Locke, but it's just more fragments, repetitions, mainly, but the cat and shift subtle each time. A word repeated, an inflection dropped. Knee of appears at my elbow. You got anything not obviously fake. A lot of corrupted injuries, some matching the week before, some that. She jerks with them toward the diagnostic monitor. Read out dip blow of unexpected environmental readings high carbon, electrical interference peaking. This isn't consistent with the official baseline. It's as if there's another source micro sensor array logging from outside. I frown. We only have four ports. Everything else is internal. Knee of nods. Except I'm picking up frequencies not possible from our array.

13:41Something's interfering down here, Mason. There shouldn't be echoes from this depth. I tap the display away from shows a stub of noise, oddly organic. It's not ocean noise, not so no, but has a kind of intentional structure. Like language, but not. She squints at the trace. It almost looks. She stops suddenly. Never mind. We'll check all feeds. The AI logs too, those got to be an error. She turns away sharply. I roam through narrow corridors, noting everything, hamper and dusty on a hatch, hairline scratches on the controls, even the faintest scuff of dried salt on the wall panel that you never have been exposed to of open water. Little things out of place. The relay isn't large, but tonight it feels like a labyrinth wrapped around a puzzle box. Cuts voice rattles through the calms. Found a blockage in sector 3 cable run looks like someone deliberately cross-wired, sung almost 8,000 faults. I close my eyes for a second. How functional sabotage? Courts reply as a muttered curse. Ask me when my damn hand stops shaking. Songs voice, then with anxiety, crackles over the calm.

14:43There's another interference patting my board, mason, not normal, not us. Signatures? I don't know, low than floor, below as almost as if something's still down there. I rub my face. Ice late in record. He cuts connection abruptly, which is unlike him. My own nerves are jangling too. He calls me back to the control room. She's dissecting environmental data, face-rigid. I'm picking up sounds I'll give physically can't record from this depth from the outside. Sometimes even shielded walls. It's not feedback. It's real sound from the deep, spliced through dead channels. They deliver it, like someone's mixing in new microphones, or someone wants us to hear them. Not a failure. Not an accident, then I deliberate eavesdropping. But from whom? The calm spike again. An authorised logins in corridor, check it. It doesn't sound like anyone on my crew. I had done the whole to medical, breathing heavily. As I passed the storage lock, something strange, an old jacket half milled to dump behind a cabinet. I pick it up. The patch reads a K, Leclerc, but there's no such staff ever assigned to this station.

15:45Scratched out ID tags, two, caked in grime, mixed into the jacket pocket. More than one. Oddly recent. My scalp prickles. Arbor stuttles me. She's standing stock still examining a sealed access panel. Her deep skull marks around its someone tried to weld it shut, but recently, not with the original build. She glances at me. Looks like it was done in a hurry. I nod. You see this before? No. She opens her mouth like she might say more, but just shakes her head and moves past quickly. I turn, and notice she's looking at the walls with them blinking intensity. I realise she's not really seeing me at all. Returning to the control room, I tossed the jacket in front of Kurt, who's returned with some. He'd find anything in the corridors. He grunts. You could run as he comes through some of those cables, but someone spliced the ground pills no accident. Song interrupts, still getting off-grid pings baseband, below us but nothing answers in a human pattern. Kurt's already moving, muttering, someone's running a side project out here, that's what's going on.

16:45I toss an ID barge on the table. You know anyone named LeClair? He shakes his head no, but the named drawers a pain look from Song, who says softly, I think there was a LeClair, before launch. I saw a photo fold at once, but it disappeared from the server. I figured it was a test account. It's a lie by a mission, or a half truth. I don't press him. Nothing about this place is what it's supposed to be, and the further we dig, the more it on spools. Suddenly, all of a stiffen, a shot, low distortion runs through the air, rising, then plummeting like radio feedback but more personal. I hear it, my own voice, speaking something I swear I've never said, reblaid and chopped. Then Kurt then sung their neve. Each of us cut together in a hellish chorus at going from the vents. The words sound like warnings. Stop, don't, down there, don't let them. No one wants to be first to break the tension. Environmental error probably, Kurt says. No one believes him. Neve grits her teeth. Avut, Ash and Harry's out. We work as a unit at first, but splinters form fast.

17:45Neve and Kurt argue in a control room, voices rising, cut shot by nerves. This is above our clearance. Neve says, gripping her day to pad. You have to get the company online now. And say what exactly? Kurt retorts pointing at the lock com. That the ghosts are leaking through the pipes, they'll pin it on us, and you know it. The logs are evidence. Neve hisses, I'm not losing years of data because you're afraid of getting glain. The spat crackles, and I realize with the jolt that their fight is already being recorded and replayed through the AI speakers layered, with their voices echoing back in a feedback loop a second head of their own words as if the system is trying to force the argument to happen. Kurt's voice blurs, mechanical. I'll cut main power now, get out of my way. He glances at Neve startled. She looks just as confused. Before the argument can escalate, Sun calls us from surveillance. Something's on cam 3 and out 2-8, that can't be us that showing all of us walking in corridor A, but none of us have left our stations. I look at the screen. Granny footage, time's some wrong. Five shapes moving, but the order is crumbled off of leads, but she's supposedly in medical.

18:48The AI interrupts with stuttering, personnel log, terminated cross-indexing. The move as a group to check the maintenance ring. The walls hum like a tuning fork, every time someone talks, there's a half second echo in their own voice. The maintenance section is colder than it should be, frost is slicked on the door, lights barely functional, sick blue leaking through hellline cracks. Suddenly power surges, a break of flips and sun's panel shorts. A smell, salt, rosnkelp. This silt hatches a jar, muddy silt is piled up against its inner side, as if the ocean itself had forced a handful of the seabed right into the pod. Overpresses a hand to the door, her lips move silently. She looks close to collapse. Neve whispered, how is this even possible? Song, rattled, makes a dash back to comms. I'm sending an SOS, he blurs. But as he does, the AI's static transforms into his own voice, speaking over him, revealing secrets none of us could have known, half-truths about his failed projects, pleading cold to a mother he said had died years ago. He angsts his hand back in horror and backs into a wall. It is right someone is playing us.

19:50Or something. I feel a flicker of nausea, not just fear but a six sense of anticipation, like the next move will decide our fate. We gather in galley to regroup. The power is faltering not off but flickering with blood-red warnings. None of us can agree on what to do. Neve is furious, turning on me. Hear the lead we wrote in explanation. I suppress my own dread. There's more here than a communications glitch that artifacts are coordinated, physical evidence, not just digital. He wants to answer, check the damn blueprints. If I remember right, the floor pan here is wrong, the volumes don't add up, every relay I've touched is a co-space, but this one's got what meters are dead air under our feet. It lands in my head with a six certainty ghost space. On every blueprint I've seen, a chunk of the underfloor is marked as utility, but the access hatches have all been erased from the manifest. Show me, I tell Kurt. He leads us to a hatch near the med bay. There's a storage unit bolted over which should be a floor panel. It's been forcibly welded, not even painted over someone wanted it shut fast.

20:50Ava unpronounced presses her ear to the metal. Then, without waiting for the rest of us, she works a mid-tool from her belt, slips through the lock seam, and begins to pry. Kurt glances at me. That's not going to. Ava jams a deeper. Metal howls. The panel gives with a sudden ugly snap. Inside, darkness, a half-barred ladder descending into pitch and rot. The snow that floats up is ancient, ocean and mold. The shine lights down and modes of disflow up. Neve says almost herself. This isn't on any of the logs. Kurt grunts. Suppose now's the time to find what's worth hiding. Enjoy big savings with Red Hot Deals, Advons and Albertsons. This week, Signature select drumsticks or thighs, bone-in value packs are 99 cents per pound with membership where applicable. And Alpharos, Artisano Bread, 20 ounces select varieties are 299 with digital coupon. Plus get a 3-pound bag of mandarin for 399 with digital coupon. Enjoy fresh and delicious savings every day of the week. Hurry in! These deals won't last.

21:50Visit vansheralbertons.com for more deals and ways to save. We lure ourselves one by one. That is cold, sticky where someone spat paint strip a long ago. The sub-level unfolds narrow, corroded corridors paying flaking in long pill sheets. Abandoned workstations slouch half collapse against the bulkhead. Ables pealed off and stuck in new over old designs. There are evidence lockers along one wall, doors forced open, seals broken years before. Topps cover broken tech some medical, some server grade. The smell down here is worth oil, brine, something sweet that coils in the nose. A step on a badge. It half melted but the name may chow it's visible. None of us knows who that is. Alva finds a fold of press to the wall, stuck with ruined tape. It holds printouts, dense and yellowed, phase zero deployment post incident report. Elissa fall crew manifests, dozens more names than ever officially attached to this station. Knee flipped through pages, catastrophic event, multiple casualty, facility sealed, all subsequent

22:50records perched. My pulse dropped behind my ear. What phase zero? Some whispers. No one answers. Screens flicker to life. The cameras haven't worked in years, but now somehow they show jacket, overlaid fees blurring our own faces, spitting distorted audio. Voices rubble out, overlapping, warnings please, names, confessions. The sound is impossibly layered, as if every team member passed and present shouts into the same speaker at once. Cut chivers. We were supposed to be the first crew. Sung presses his hands to his ears. I hear my father, he's dead, he's telling me to run. Alva stumbles from a bank of monitors blinking hard. I see my own handwriting, but I never wrote. He clutches the deployment folder, force flat and edge to an anger. They never meant to keep us informed, this is a black sight, always was. My fingers graze another locker. Inside, personal effects, each tagged with a number, but the names are all erased. This an old combat, Kate was salt, and a sealed canister marked return to surface if found.

23:52No one knows the locker codes, but the seals are already broken anyway. We cluster back at the center, tense with raw knees. In the silence, the AI bothers us, then it's voice blurs from unseen speakers broken, cracked. You cannot leave until the record is complete. The words echo down the metal holes, overlapping with each of our own voices, flipped and reversed, the horror amplify. Somewhere unseen, in immense, something scrapes the real-as-floor beneath us. The sound goes on for 6-7, 8 seconds, metal on a bus. And we realize the memory of this place is alive, and now, so are we trapped inside its record, waiting for who knows what to finish the story. Saving shifts in the air, as if that gutter-roll scrape has loosened more than bolts, the dust, the silence, each of us. There's no plan now, just the animal out to run or fight or vanish. For a second, all five of us just stand breathing, no one asking who or what might be down there. My knuckles ache from gripping the flashlight. The only sounds of the drip of condensation and the skitter of grit under boots. Then songs start moving too fast for the cramped corridor, shoulder clipping a rust

24:52of shelf. We should seal this up now, we didn't see anything, we didn't hit. The rock catches him a big rough hand closing around songs on. Slow down. Kurt Hisses. The last thing we need is a panic sprint up that ladder, take a breath. There's something down here, something moving, he wants to stay and meet whatever left that sound. He's got a pointy-every-fiver in my body-flayers with that warning, the part of you that remembers teeth in the dock from a thousand generations back. Bad timing command. I steady my voice. We stick together, we found the under-level, that's evidence possibly criminal, we need to dig an eave, photograph everything in this corridor, all of our come here. She hesitates, chin trembling. I tried to make my tone reassuring. He found the panel, you saw the folder do you remember anything, anything from your medical into sharing names, assignment doubles, and official looks. All for shakes ahead. Her jaw works as if biting back tears, but she forces her words out. Now, I applied late, I was told my clearance was temporary, the only thing that felt wrong is that the psych of alpharmage she was not critical before I'd even arrived.

25:53These camera light-flayers. She bends over the deployment report, photographing each water-rung page, lips moving ceaseless calculation. I can see the outline, phase zero, containment protocols, casualty percentages, and a section of redacted summaries. She keeps flipping as if she can move the wep facts back into ink. Pictures only go so far, she mothers scrolling the digital images, checking for hidden layers. There might be embedded data images like these, sometimes there's metadata, even GPS traces. Cutts not skepticism but offers a backup torch. He thinks corporates books are dumb enough to leave breadcrumbs that obvious. Nive ignores him, jaw grimly set. I catch a hinder movement behind a top stack of broken electronics or reflection, maybe, just my own unsteady light. Or not. I don't check it. Not yet. Song edges toward the ladder, voice ragged. We need to get the suffers coms working from down here. No one will believe this unless we have live transmission. He's right, I say holding the group's restless gaze. But if what ever is down here can scramble the log's hail over right audio with one of

26:54our own voices they'll just say it was system drift or somebody hat the records. Of a glance is back at me. Before she can speak, the PA above us a black and chunk of plastic cacles was sudden static. It's the distorted AI, but badly degraded, syllable stretched and fractured. Bisonnellin complete surface, complete cycle. Then her own voice, not broadcast, but from within the wall soft too close, you have to finish. Her mouth falls open, stunned, her lips didn't move, but all of us heard it. Song recoils like from a blow. Cut moves in a half-curch as if expecting an attack. Knee's face contorts. She raises her voice toward the speaker sounding half like a challenge, half-pray. Who is speaking? Are you the prior crew? The answer is later one, three, five voices. Men, women, young, old overlapping and separating like an audio braid. We never left, never assigned, names lost record and complete. Her grip on the camera trembles. Kurt grinds his teeth, voice thick. Mason, whatever play this is, it ain't part of the regular deep seascript. We find the core, we rip the down logs out and make a copy of ourselves, no more AI mediator,

27:57no more company filter. I agree, essay. I looked a song, who nods barely holding back panic. Cut song, take these. I hand over two portable data pucks, pull every stand alone drive you can reach, really stack first, Overt, stick with me and Neve. Something strikes the hull above, a dull ringing subtle as thunder a thousand miles below. The relay itself shivers. We jump the light dances. We slip further down the under-level hallway, the corrosion thickening, the tile slick with whatever leaks from deep storage. The temperature plum is a breath forks in the beam of my torch, condensing before my face. My heart thunders. We passed always with frosted port hulls that glass crazed by years of pressure. One room off to the side, broken beds and different heaps of bedding as though an evacuation happened mid-sleep. Figures drawn into the condensation on a wall of child's hand and name in block capitals ran. Neve crutches camera pressed to about a terminal half pulled from its rack and left. The screen is blank but her pen light picks out a hands-gold note taped to the plastic. Remember cycle the logs, no repeats, they come back if you repeat.

28:59Other behind, murmur, cycle the logs was the AI repeating. I nod shivering. Every time we checked the corruption identical, likely preset and reset and reset but always the same voices. From somewhere faint to chorus, a tangle, all our voices together, seal the sub-level, keep the above record ends only in silence only when the record breaks. Courts' voice, distantly echoing back from the really cruel space, interrupts the loop. Raff and angry found a drive busted but wired hot into the wall, they never meant to recover this. Mason. I hurried to them in a tilt of lights. On the wall the liddits deal canister half-rusted, wires like seaweed snaking from its base. Curing threads is own calms band into the port he's sweating, hands shaking, muttering a mix of English and Korean to keep steady. Copping the last log, some whispers. It's encrypted but, with there's a code in the naming protocol, CX-7, not her run, not anyone's I've seen. Curt prize the edges of the canister, brow darkening. From inside comes a low, insistent mechanical hum, so regular it's almost human then a sudden

30:00spike as the canister's tiny speaker stutters and spits. Cycling complete, to not surface, cannot erase, cannot erase. It's our AI but degraded as if it's been repeating a single corrupted memory for years. Ove backs away, hands clamped to her ears. Stop it, it's making it worse, just stop. She looks near tears, caught between the horror of recognition and panic. I reach for her but flinch as my own name erupts distorted a metallic from the device Mason Field, guilty, not yet recorded, not yet would ever be. The machine coughs out static, then goes silent again. We exchange glances that comes a moment and every disaster when you realize the cause is deeper, stranger, than incompetence or malice. Something is using our identities, looping us into a trigger. I look at Curt, cruff, shaken but steady. Pull the canister, bring it topside. He works at the mount with an emergency crowbar from his suit. If this leaks pressure, I'll eat the company's liability contract, he mutts but the humor is dead weight. Song pulls him away just as Curt wrenches it loose. In the guts of the mount is an old circuit board, not quite current tech, labels hand-eached.

31:04Embedded in foam, there's something like a chip but too large, like a slice of lug glass, veins dark in the light. It looks more organic than not. New steps in, holding her torch up over her head to eliminate it better. That spinal tissue, she says. Spinal? I eduate not fear, just the wild thought that something could be alive, down here still. O'Grown to simulate it, Curt and newly eyes use biological substrates to map complex signals emotion, trauma, memory cycles, legal now, but they used it for cold start experiments black budget stuff never public. Curt shakes his head, disgusted. If the whole station's memory is tied to cops's backbone plugged into power grid, who's at the other end remembering? No announces. Song, almost himself, barely audible. I shouldn't have joined shouldn't have come down. Then another vibration rolling, low note, like a shiphole creaking from below that even this world of pot can't dampen. Other grads my sleeve. It's not just memory loops, something, moving under us. No drilling ongoing, Curt says. All regops are scrubbed. Maybe an old bot, automated worker.

32:06Some offers too hopeful. Nive shakes her head. Nothing with that kind of mass should be down there, unless she trails off. I finish for her. Unless it was meant to be buried, like the rest. We creep forward, there's only one more corridor open before the facility's deepest lock. The walls grow narrower of the air thick and bitter. Past one final jam hatch, we emerge into a room that might once have been the true station core a makeshift command deck patched together, a dozen ancient monitors forming a halo of green light. On the bulkhead scrolls so many times in fading marker, a three words do not play. There plugged directly into a weather terminal is a single headset. It's slick, black, far newer than the rest of this mess. A cable winds up the wall to a sealed breaker above labeled phase-their control. CUT whistle. I'll be damned, who wants to take the first listen? No one volunteers. From the speakers overhead, the AI's voice warbles, switching through every tone it's ever borrowed, ovars, mine, songs, nives, currets, then a flurry of unfamiliar ones laughing, screaming

33:06tursly reciting numbers. You must complete the record, play the full cycle, or all memory will loop again. My stomach drops. Some kind of test if we finish it, what, it wipes or. Corey sets the trauma, nives as softly. Phase-their are meant to train disaster prediction AI on real pain, every unfinished incident, every lingering regret replays forever, the only way out is true. So we play at Kurt Grey's Jawset. Then get the hell out. Or we destroy it, all the whispers, and hope there is still way up top. But Sun takes the headtut. He's shaking, but there's a resolution, or maybe just resignation, in his face. My turn. He fits the headset over his ears. He's a little bit of a violence. The display flickers. Camera lights catch the sweat trucking down his cheek. He twitches violently, hands clutching the chair's arm. His voice comes out in a strangled gas. It's all of us. Everyone, every mistake, every order I gave every time. He tears off the headset, shoves it at me. Your turn. I hesitate.

34:06My own voice bubbling up in my head. Astros, every unfinished incident, every regret has to risk. I force the headset on. For a second, only static, then images flickers of memory, not just mine. Faces scare tired, hopeful, then snuffed at. Fos is a keising pleading. My name's spoken by unfamiliar lips. My own decisions, mistakes big and small times are signed for hard where upgrades over safety let time mind slip into danger because the board wanted reports. And echo repeats. He knew he let it happen. You won't leave, not until you finish what they started. I yank it free. All around me, the walls breath with the weight of history. The station wants us to remember together or not lead at all. Knee takes the headset. I like the rest of us, she doesn't tremble. She listens for nearly a minute, then sets it down deliberately. I heard my voice but not mine alone, and not all human, some thing, cut in, halfway between drowning and waking. If phase zero was meant to race itself, maybe it never could. That's it, Kurt says, gathering the date of parks in the canister, glancing hard at me.

35:07We have the locks, the evidence, whatever the hell is left of it, now's our chance. We get out before this thing tries to loop us, or before something comes through the floor and turns us inside out. The lights begin to dim, red fading to blue, then flickering back red again. The AI is always through the alcohol our voices, but also the phantom fifth sixth seventh beneath, always just beneath. Complete the record, cycle finish, you may proceed. I blink at the airlock. It's open now. The upward ladders slick with a palessant film some chemical, or something older, leaking up from below. Knee helps off onto the first wrong, then some. Kurt lingers, glaring suspiciously at every step, every cable. I go last, the canister jand, and in my arm, the headset shoved hastily in my satchel. We scramble up into the paused main ring, bursting out into the light, blinking, hot jackhammering. The upper level seems smaller, but more itself crisp, cold, alive with the were of forced air. For a moment, a sea-moverant on the main monitor, a blurred figure in the under-level, staring up at the camera, face unreadable. I shut down the main feed. Curtain's song are already at the cons rack, jamming the puck into a maintenance port,

36:10prepping to broadcast the evidence to the surface if it's not already too late. Alva slumps on a bench, face in her hands. Quietly, Knee veleens close, you okay. Alva shakes her head, but says nothing. The pod vibrates with another groan. For bov, above the curse of the sea, I think I hear voices are our own, reaching upward, looping one more time before release. We've made it out of the under-level for now. But the station's memory ours, and everyone else's is still alive, and as we restock consoles and prep to call for a Novak, I understand, this isn't over. Not by a long shot. We're still adding to the record with every word, every breath, every step through these halls. In the sound below is waiting. A tremor ripples through the relay pod before I can even stand upright. Alva still crumpled on the bench, knuckles white round her thermal blanket, eyes shut, breath fogging out fast. Knee even curts her shouting at each other, above the rising metallic grind as something's warping in the hull, and the noise is almost musical in its distortion, just on the age of language. The song, hunched at the coma rack with a puck clumped in one hand, has lost all color. A canister from the under-level thoughts against my ribs with every heartbeat and comfortably

37:13warm and damp, the operator's heads that still coiled round at like a perse. Status monitors have head ripple with broken lines, sense a shadow after sense a shadow flickering down endless columns. At every station there's a new warning in Crimson, each slightly out of sync. Alva lists her head just enough to meet my gaze. The lights freeze on her pinched face, and for a one-wip second, it's not over but her double from below hair or skew in the sick blue glow, voice caught in some recursive loop of terror. I tried to speak to her, but the words jam up in my mouth, my own fear threading tighter with each pulse of the station's failing systems. Knee v yanks the cable from the wall so hard the comms are reflexed through half a dozen dead channels at once, then spools out a chain of echoes, our overlapping voices distorted panicked furious. She thumps the rack. Surface went answer, everything reads live, but I get my own words back ten seconds late like we never left that pit. She looks at me, her pupils gigantic. They're going to cut us loose, Mason, whatever we just found, they're already racing at topside or below. Cut backs toward the door, heavy-boot shuffling.

38:13Main powers on battery fallback, internal pressures up, Eva pods green for now, but the AI keeps trying to cycle the outer locks. He's shutting over the claxon. We've got minutes at most before it locks us here or cycles air we can't breathe, what's your call? I steppedward off out crouching at her side. She shivers so violently I can see her teeth rattle. Eva I say loud and clear listen, are you still with us? We have to move. She says, did you hear it? Did you hear your own as she bites off the end gaze darting up. Someone else I mean my voice, but it wasn't just me, it knows what we did before and after, it's not it. Her mouth's naps shut. I put a steady hand on her arm and pull her upright. She weighs almost nothing, brittle and a mured. Song at the coroner terminal tries to patch static from the buck into the pods main data stack. It spits out another error this time in a ghostly blurred font. He gasps and spins from the rack. Someone's running a shadow program on main not just looking as redirecting to backup, he mutters, foies high and shaking. Every file, every second we spend in here.

39:14He trails off panic nodding his head and staccato. I raise my voice above the racket. Knee of sung, Kurt, spit into two, cross check life support and ripped pod, I want every of ride in manual, nothing for seekable or anything still sinking with the underground AI. Sometimes with me, we lock down what we can and secure the canister then we make for the escape shuttle. Knee of Joflex doesn't argue for the first time since we sighted. Song just nods, eyes big enough to block out the combs glare. Kurt shoulders as we out into the corridor, teeth set he won't stop muttering curses until this pod is burning in the surface sun. A half guide, half push over down the stobbered passage. The AI's heartbeat clucks and thuds off the metal panels and sick rhythm under canister and in my arm hums louder as if a never memory matrix inside has started to stare. As we stagger toward the engineer in lock, every step is a fight through echo and static. Our own for its steps loop back a half second late through the crack overhead, always just on the edge of marching, but never quite our own. I slam my boot into the hatch release the cycle sluggish and grind before unlocking. Cool, brini air pulls out tainted by their mistakeable whiff of decay like ugly left

40:16too long and hard sunlight. Inside the emergency isolation panel flashes of warning, a strip schematic of the pod overlaid with a blinking alert, integrity test felt, core memory compromised, do not proceed with that supervision. Alpha-stud is herself against the bulkhead. Do you trust any of this, she asks her voice raw? Not even myself, I say, half ingest, half ingrime resignation. We patch into the local power main, we're routing what's left of the juice to the shuttles mag locks, putting every firewall we know how to build between us and the AI's mother core. I clamp the canister into the emergency transit cradle, lashing it down with a rigged spreader from my own kit. Alpha works in numb silence, fingers trembling, breathing a little easier with every not shit highs. The AI blasts another warning than modulates. Crew integrity insufficient, please complete final cycle, please acknowledge air, memory will persist. Alpha glairs at the ceiling. You don't get to keep us, she whispers, but even she doesn't sound convinced. We hustle back toward the central ring, ducking through flicker shadows as Kurt and song repair coats mirrored with grease, sun-winsing and holding his left hand, two fingers blackened

41:18at the tips. Manu only? I ask knowing the answer. Kurt spits on the deck. Main board's all befried, batteries holding, either puddle cycle in ten, but there's a hitch. He draws a shaky breath. Backup locker re-as locked again, something's pulling data from us even on dead circuit. Some shoulders. We should go now. New skids in behind them, wild with frustration. Someone something just scrubbed two backup feeds. She holds a prepared shaking. I had the old deployment logs, and now there's nothing but corrupted loops, like they never existed. I glance at my watch, then at the emergency escape readout. We've got ten minutes of oxygen, and whatever that thing is below once us in replay, we go now, take only what we can carry, no more dives, no more cycles. Kurt shoulders his pack, sung snatches up the puck in a portable drive. Other clings to the canister, cradling it like a small animal. Neve stands back, fingers flickering through invisible calculations, her whole frame radiates a last flicker of defiance. Let's move, I say, leading them past the roaring, failing data raised through the last flicker

42:20of lights, and the long corridor toward the pod. In the distance, the scraping from below grows louder, almost joyful in its ruin. We're not even close, but something has changed. The station wants us gone, or wats us finish, one way or the other. I can feel it in every foothold every echo, every looping phrase. The pod waits ahead, scape cycling up with a growl, it's light strobing like a heartbeat. Sung hesitates, looking back over his shoulder, for his flits second, I see him double, a second song reflected against the dark glass mouth opening, then closing, as if about to warn us all of something we won't believe until it's too late. For there's no more time for warnings. The claxon dies with a snap. The only thing left is the deep, uninterrupted silencer light, waiting, precise memory. And we run. The silence lasted for three strides, maybe four before the station started screaming. Not in alarms, there are none left but in something deeper, older, more personal, the voice of the really calling with our own memories, a terrible line blurring between past and present. Each step done the tunnel toward the pod sends up not just the slap of boots, but murmurings,

43:21fragments, and finished please. I can't tell anymore which are mine and which are someone else's, spliced and replayed. Others write on my heels, herpanic mutter breaths almost synchronized with knees then curts. Sung hangs back, casting wide, desperate looks. We stop at the outer hatch, and not of bodies wrestling with the last access lock. The canister rattles in obvious grip, and through its mesh filter I catch something too regular pulsing, almost like a metronome built from heartbeats. On the skin of my gloves, vibration, entire underlevel shivering in time with whatever it is bracing itself under the floor. Kurt jams the pry butt into the locks access port, straining tendons in his neck. Manual isn't responding, he grunts, AI's got its mitts on a precious sequence. Knees steps up, scans her paddicoce lock plate, making something in the software glitch and ripple. I'm in at least half way. She swears in Spanish words, I don't catch, but I read the frustration in the set of her jaw. I've agrabbed my shoulder so hard my vision flashes white. Mason, she hisses. Can you hear that? I strained to parse the sound.

44:22It's lower than the suds below, whalmost subsamika from the feels inside my skull rather than outside my ears. Overlaid on top, whispering, a fragment of her own argument. He never couldn't have stopped, should have said. Knees pad beeps aloud, breaking the spell. The lock cycles with a groan. I've got ten seconds, she says. We have to go now. We parved through, one after another, the pod's vestibule barely wide enough for two. Avagos first, canister hugged close. Kurt had sung tumble pass, every breath of wheeze. Knee presses against the stuttering control panel, hands flying, her body radiating the will to break through every last barrier. I bring up the rear, watching the main relay Kurt or royal with flickers of blutin' shed her no longer echoing light, but something active living, crowding the periphery. Sung slams to inner pod hatch, spin seals. We're locked, ev sequences on, just have to push off. Kurt drops into the pilot's couch, I sat. Then let's do it before the whole rear later sides to finish us for good. Pod rumbles under us, then judders.

45:23Speakers come alive no more clocksons, just voice, cycle and complete, preserving memory, do not depart. The get-ins flickers switching between our voices, them falling into a tonne none of us recognize. As the seals close, the last thing through the speakers soft-tolves mothers low by, snip from some ancient home video impossible here. She flinches, a gasp escaping. Don't, she says, and I don't ask what she means. The pod ejects with a violent lurch. We're free for the moment, but the sense of being watched tag, lipped none of it lifts. The silence inside the eve of pod is different. No metallic resonance, no feedback. As the hush of driven air, shallow breathing, the soft clack of new snails on her tablet screen. For a moment, we structure a plan surface, make for the back of vessel, dump the evidence straight to any official line that's open, raise hell before anyone can edit the record again. Kurt's hands work defiantly at the controls, guiding our batter transit up along the maglev rails that wind to the surface. Song has his head pressed to the combs, scanning for open bands. Somebody's shadowing our channel, he says, but I'm not picking up a real surface contact.

46:25The glances quickly hit me. Do you trust anything else we have left? I hesitate. We keep the redundancy, triple script every log, hand off the canister and the drive to separate officials as soon as we break sunlight, we don't let ourselves split up. Then the com touch flickers with an audio brust barely more than a whisper. Others voice, not live, but did a mind almost gentle, but it's not done, he left too soon, it will follow. Kurt shakes his head violently. Shut it off, son. Shut it off for good. But song's hands freeze. His face goes slack, his gaze of focus as if he's hearing something only for him. Knee moves to intervene, but the pod shakes something outside, skittering along the hull, sending up a vibration brief as a pulse, gum before we can frame it. I brace myself hand pressed to the escape lever. We enter the next pressure corridor at the pod's edge, judy flickering with depth readings, rising, but erratic. There's a drop 70 meters, then too fast to set, then a stalling read up. This island is complete, the sort that makes you feel you're not in water at all, but sealed and risen, memories suspended between air bubbles.

47:25Overs knees knock the pod's floor, mouth moving in a silent plea. Knee vages over, rust a hand on her shoulder. They seem almost a fuse grief and fear leaking between them. Kurt cusses again and again, until it tips over into a mumble with no words at all. I press against my seat, replaying the last hour in my mind, but its blood now voices misaligned, faces overlap, chain mixing with adrenaline into an implacable churning dread. Each time I try to fix on something concrete a panel a face, a memory a secondary echo intrudes into distinct insistent, not quite my own. We burst for another thermal gradient. Depth fades, the surface is close, but not close enough. Then without warning, every system in the ephapod powers down. Light screens calms everything. The only source of illumination now is the faint, sickly green from outside, some chemical reaction or the reflection of an unseen light in the deep. Some breakers out, Kurt says, for panic for the first time. This isn't just cold shut down, someone's breaking our modules from the outside. Some leans hard into his harness, breath coming fast. The cantaloupe modules say I've rewrote at Corcoa's looping.

48:29The outside world buzzes a lot with noise a low, rolling tone, something like a song, something so deep my eardrums itch. And layered under it, the A.I's voice, all our voices, everywhere we've spoken in the last three days, cycling in a smear of confession, accusation, apology. Other cradling the canister in a death grip, rocks forward, keening in her throat. It's making us replay, it wants more. I try to move to wrench the emergency transfer override, but my hand freezes as if the pod itself has turned on me every surface slick, tight, almost magnetic with a charge. Kurt yells in a cracked bellow. Shot it out, cut it out, damn you. Silence. Then, softly the A.I speaks from the pod to calm. Memories incomplete, trauma unacknowledged, restart cycle, present record, almost be told. The pod's inner light stutter. Nive pales the deckplating, leans heavy over her knees trembling. It's not letting go, if we want out, we have to finish it, I racked here, now, give it the truth, or it'll keep looping until we dead and still talking. Kurt rages. No, we are not a damn research project.

49:30Other clowns both hands over her ears, squeezing her eyes shut like she can press out to sound. Nive fixes me without hungry, angry look. Hear the officer, Mason, if you don't start, it won't stop. Make the last lock right now. I'm nervous my body rebels my arms lock, my mouth dries. But she's right. I take a breath, force it out, and speak, low and deliver it as if it could matter. We descended to the really pod on emergency detail, we discovered evidence of an author's human experiments, psychological trauma, data replication, failed containment purd calls, we found signatures of missing personnel, we found memory systems rooted in it. I thung the canister, heart stuttering. Organic, illegal substrates, our presence here is a residue, a repetition we want out. No response. Nive jaw set piles on. The company cut corners, I signed off on phase one before vetting the first collapse report, I told myself it was a starter problem, I told myself I was smarter, I'd fix it from the inside. All I did was bury the bodies old crew, new crew, all the records feeding into lip of pain. Kurt hammers the pod shell voice horse. I sabotaged otter logs, they paid me to flag every escape triggerer, fail safe if they

50:33are locked up again, but I didn't know, didn't know what the bodies meant, were got loaded in. I'm pressed into the shadows, shutters as if burning up. I faked my application, I lied to get clear of what happened and busing they said it would be clean, my past wouldn't follow, but everything did, my father warned me and I never listened. Alva breath still shaky, looks up. I had a patient before all of this, I changed my own record, so no one would know, my mother covered for me she said the sea would forgive the loop knew though, that always knew. The part hums with something new attention running up through the deck, the sensation of jaws and clenching after days of clench. The AI's voice just my own and no ones and all of us drifts across the circuit. Record received cycle terminating data persists. A wall panel glows for a brief moment how faces one by one, blowed in fragments. Then darkness again. Kurt pushes from the controls, staggering his pressure equalizes. For a moment nothing moves. No more echoes just to faint his severe recirculators fighting to keep us alive. Sun looks up. Did it work? He answers with a fractured smile, more bearing of teeth.

51:36If it didn't it's the only ending we'll ever get. We stare at each other and call it brittle silence then, without warning, the pods let strobe into full light. Exactly one escaped protocol chirps in the overhead, surface assent online, ready for immediate execution. I hit the release before anyone has a chance to second guess. The pod joltz. We should upward, pressure slamming into our guts, every molecule demanding we shriek or sleep or collapse. In the last second before acceleration blows us out, a seaflickers in the relay pods viewport movements that don't belong, faces layered and repeating the memory of every crurs and there's before and to over in the electronic fabric of the station. Then blackness then light as the pod bears up through the cold green into the grey wash of the upper Atlantic. For an instant it seems like the pod will crack from the pressure difference but it holds. Water trickles down the hull in a thousand fine lines as if the ocean were meticulously licking us clean. The first surface breath is agony then clarity my chest aches my limbs burn. Sky is a pale angry band above storm clouds boiling in the far east. We drift to stun to move battered by exhaustion and the simple animal relief of surviving.

52:39Ovocals up against the pod's wall tears dry on her cheeks. Cart and you've set shoulder to shoulder united in misery more than camaraderie. Sun god, song shivers in his harness as wide open but not seeing. A crackle of calms, pure and cold, or a surface command to evid asent part, do copy. I lift the battered handset. Copy that croak. Starting emergency of act, critical evidence on board, memory systems restored to request it. But my voice goes thin, cracked too hollow to carry. The operator is voice on the far end is unfamiliar oddly cheerful and resolutely unimpressed by trauma. Stand by, retrieve a craft inbound, prepare for physical transport, all debriefings will acquire an isolation, please have all external memory devices and biological samples packaged for pickup. Kurt glares, but says nothing. Newf closes her eyes, the first thing like sleet cheese louder herself. Long rocks in his seat, fingers flicking through fandom screens. Overseas upward through the port at the cold dawn. We made it, she says. Didn't we? No one answers, not really.

53:40The retrieval vessel appears right against the laden's guy. Roops drop, stale suits swarm the pod. This apparatus by instinct, plucking devices from numhands, sealing evidence and biohazard bags. There is no urgency, no celebration, only efficiency the smooth, forgetful machinery of bureaucracy compressing everything we carry into a handful of sealed untouchable cases. Others whisked away, flanked by two medtex already reading her chart. Kurt has led up the ramp with song, both given cursory nods and identical, unreadable instructions. Newflingers at my side as though gravity itself has turned against her. I hand over the canister, watching it vanish into a case marked not with our incident number, but a code that doesn't match anything from our orders. It feels like dropping the last piece of myself overboard. Inside the vessel, we sequestered to separate glass cells wide enough to life-lap, nowhere near enough to pace. The floor hums with a familiar, buried resonance in echo, but have pitch cleaner. Perhaps it's my nerves. Perhaps not. An official comes by, face drawn tight as a wound, named badge blacked out.

54:41We'll need your statements for continuity of record keeping, he says, reciting words that feel more algorithm than language. We'd like you to confirm, do you recall any anomalous AI interactions we subjected to any traumatic audio content you can presently recall? I stare him down, considering resistance, but my voice betrays me flat low, almost mechanical. No, system performed to spec, logs stored, accesses purport call. He makes a note and vanishes, a shadow folding neatly against the door. The interior lights dim then surge. For one heartbeat, I swear I hear all our voices layered again sharp edge, then receding. I close my eyes. It could be anything by now decompression, dehydration, the memory of night macolors and sounds. They let us out one by one. Overt was already gone, vanished into the folds of Orbis custody, face a blank slate smooth by drugs or something sharper. Carrot and sun trudge away, haunted and cold, each carrying a blank envelope that might as well contain a death warrant or a vacation ticked impossible to tell. Nives stays until last, silent as the grave, fingers obsessively cycling through fountain

55:41screens. We exit the vessel to get there, up a jaw collatering metal stare onto the deck. The wind is knife cold, the Atlantic in congruci bright. Surface crew bark orders, no one meets our eyes. There are no hugs, no speeches, only a pair of blankets in an offer of thick, bitter coffee that tastes like crude oil and forgiveness. Nives sits with me, staring across the water. We don't talk about what happened below if the truth wouldn't make a difference even if it were how no one would care, not on this side of the hatch. I glance at her, but her gaze is fixed on the water, wide and endless. We sip the coffee. The sun clothes up slow as if reluctant to mow canoe warning. Someone somewhere is shredding records triple redundant. Someone else is already buying an extra placement crew implanting the next dive. That's how it is. That's how it always is. I excuse myself and wander toward the far port side rail, needing to move, needing air, needing and failing to find a sense of ending. A hydrophone, battered and salt bleach, dangles over the edge, still live, still trailing static. A niel, fingers brushing the tone cable listening.

56:43There, faint and tangled, is the sound from below the really signature ghosted in looping, laced with regret warning please. I listen until dawn is bright, until the voice is fade. It's not gone, not ever really gone. I breathe, stand and let the wind carry whatever remains. I breathe, stand and let the wind carry whatever remains. Across the ship's deck, sunlight forces its way through a lid of cold clouds. Crew in uniforms move about busy with hoses and clipboards, never letting their attention settle on me for more than a second. I walk the rails, the bitter tang of salt on my tongue, thinking maybe hoping distance will clear what's left inside me. But memory lingers, not as image or thought, but as the age of pressure deep in the school. Niveslips away from her coffee a few meters down. She keeps her hair pulled back, the last vestige of the professional she arrived as, but her eyes are dark hollows, the glow of screens cannot soften the look they've taken on. Mason, she says, foies pitch low. Did they ask you about the logs? I gave broke all. I don't mention the canisters label the file number that never matched our mission.

57:44My muscles equate the unfinished work of confession. Her eyes narroverationally, they won't let the surface, will they? I don't answer. What's left beneath us is deeper than bureaucracy, its silence polished by 30 atmospheres, and nothing escapes the pressure unchanged. Nives drags on the last half of her coffee as if hoping to chase the cold from her mirror. Minutes pass. The deck vibrates underfoot as the ship hives north away from the coordinates burned into the back of my mind. I lean on the rail and force myself to focus on the present on mechanical details and the deliberate emptiness of ocean reach. That almost works. Until a voice sharp and unexpected, cuts from the loudspeakers near the bridge. Attention, science detail debriefs have concluded prepared to disembark at station one, no data of personal effects are to be removed from secure custody. Someone lasts somewhere off in the bur. A short ragged sound, not joy, just a nervous release that sets my teeth on edge. We line up, guided by security officer. His face is scraped brawl by the wind. Nives behind me, looking straight ahead.

58:45Although as no where she's absent, not just from line but from possibility, erased as efficiently as a corrupted log block. Curt is there, jacket-sipped to the fruit. Song not with us. His name is listed nowhere, official logs will say he's surface, but the empty stair of the comms tech handling out white down hints that maybe Song never truly left, just stop being present in a way at anyone will admit. The process is root. Politboards. Signatures. The bagged pack with my old company badge returned, scribbed clean of data, the edges are new with a memory. There's no mention of the cast or the headset, no sign that anything survived but us, and even then barely that. The security chief clears his throat, focus pinch. You're free to go, those transport to the airstrip in 20 minutes will be in touch with future assignments, your record remains in complete pending review, and complete. The word echoes with the clatter in my chest. Nives' North Hardens, but she says nothing. Instead she matches my stride as we filed down the gangway. All around the grey water boils gently under a high wind. No goals, no ships only are heavy footsteps and the wine of distant engines, deffin to

59:49anything but themselves. In the vand shore, fake leather seats creep beneath us. There's no talk. Even Kurt, forever nursing grievance, is mute as concrete. The driver glances at us in the mirror and lets it be, playing static lace country music out of an old handheld. My mind slipped in and out of the tune, confusing its lyrics with a relays grew up to chant, have expecting to hear my own voice nested in the next chorus. At the makeshift terminal, padded with two new plastic, we spill out into one last pin of waiting. I fumble my badge, fingers numb. Serif is personnel process as a final time, blood pressure, oxygen, sex screen. Any interest of thoughts, affects the medic, not looking up. I lie quietly, efficiently, the weight only survivors do. Kurt heaths his gears if half expecting to be sent back, but no one does. He shoulders past, leaving without a word. Another van, an airstrip curling away in denimless fog. I don't see any board. She's not next to me on the bench, not visible through the frosted plexi. Maybe she's gone. Maybe she's just chased another layer of silence.

1:00:51When the rush of engines takes us airborne, I stare down through her private port hall. For one long exhale, I think I see the surface vessel receding, taking with it whatever record remains a trail of bubbles, faint and vanishing all the way down. But the pressure in my ears would even out, not at 70 meters, not at 7000 meters, not in the thin day light of Opus Guy. I close my eyes and let the memory spool out, not as confession or absolution, or even regret just evidence trailing and complete. There is followed. Debriefing's barely scratched the surface of what happened or what would be allowed to enter official memory. HQ responds in turn, pure agratic missus. Thank you for your service, investigation ongoing, please refrain from further comment. My inbox piles with notices, each colder and more generic than the last. The day after we're cut loose, my company's security credential is revoked. No explanation required. The following week, a lotin newswire reports a trance in signal effect off the Newfoundland coast. The story is buried in a stack of fisheries updates, gone by next afternoon. Avert isn't mentioned. A search, once for songs next of kin, there is no response at the address on his last

1:01:54file. Nyeef, at least, sends a single message written in code, the kind we use for patching through really downtime. Did you keep it? It reads? Or did it keep you? I don't dance, sir. I look instead at the battered hydrophonometry from the port I'd rarely use less for surface runs all but dead. On a whim, I ploughed it in late at night, with headphones tied enough to shut out the world. At first, nothing but hiss. Then, quietly, under the grain. A voice in the leaves, or my own, or songs, or that impossible layer of braid rises, were not gone, were only unfinished. I wrenched the headset off. For a while afterward, the cold in my bones is not fear but hollow, insistent cold pot accusation, pot plea. Sometimes in the shower, or half asleep, I catch myself muttering through imaginary logs, narrating what happened, what could have happened, as though the telling itself might set something free. When I walk by open water, the urge to listen comes back greater than the need to forget to stronger than any hope of clean silence. And in the background, understead in noise with a groan of old apartment pipes, I hear it now, the real is ruined harm, the oceans dark, persistent archive.

1:02:56The record is never really broken. You're waiting to complete itself in all our voices again and again. And that is the end. Thank you for listening, and I will see you in the next one.