From Beneath, It Devours

On a calm and warm sunny day, Zach Hollis was sitting at a control board and watching readings from a submersible as it ventured toward the deepest part of the Mariana Trench system. From aboard the two-billion-dollar research station, Zach’s job was to check on the crew at five-minute intervals and monitor the gauges. The Mythic Explorer Station was as isolated from the world as any place he could imagine, so staying safely aboard and running operational analysis suited him fine. As he watched the timer, Zach finished a cup of coffee he’d been nursing for a while.

“Kari,” he asked, turning to another technician. “I’m going to get a refill. Can you yell at me if you hear anything on the box?”

Kari slid into his chair as he walked off toward the adjacent kitchen. She kicked his flip-flops out from the front of his chair and moved toward the control panel. Kari was an intern spending the summer aboard the station. She hoped to score a job with the Harper Institute when she graduated.

Kari made herself comfortable, putting her feet up on the edge of the control center, idly watching the monitors and listening for radio transmissions. When Zach returned a few minutes later, she slid out of the way as she looked at his empty hand.

“What?”

“You could have brought me a cup back with you,” she told him.

The alarm on the timer went off, telling Zach it was time to make contact. Zach sat down and keyed the microphone.

“Dive one, this is Mythic Explorer,” he announced.

Zach started going over the readings from their end. One by one, Zach had to verify the pressure sensors, oxygen levels, and depth with the crew. Each crew member had to verify something, and he was required to hear from them all.

“All present and accounted for, Zach. I’m surprised you haven’t gotten the intern to do this part of the job for you,” laughed Captain Cranz.

“No,” Lieutenant Susan Shawler said, cutting into their conversation. “He’s more professional than that.”

Kari was standing behind Zach, anxiously tapping her fingers on his shoulder. She felt ready to step in and do more, but the rig boss put her under Zach’s supervision.

“Maybe next time,” he told the dive captain.

As the radio went dead, Captain David Cranz turned to the rest of his team and held out his hand.

“Alright,” sighed Susan, pulling a twenty out and begrudgingly handing it over.

As the rest of the team followed suit, the Captain continued to pilot the craft. They’d all bet that today was the day young Kari would get to step up and show she was more than a pretty face. Both Susan and Heather were rooting for the girl. Other than a handful of techs, Kari, Susan, and Heather were the only female members of the team.

The four-person crew was to survey a sector of the trench experiencing elevated seismic activity. David Cranz was on his third expedition. The rest of the team was on their second.

Captain Cranz looked at the depth readings. They rapidly approached eleven thousand meters. As they sunk to the depths, the unnerving sound of metal creaking left them all white-knuckling. David Cranz spent most of his life beneath the sea, so it wasn’t a big deal to him. For the others, the experience was unsettling.

“Just like turbulence when you fly,” he commented, adjusting the downward angle.

“I’m not overly fond of that either,” admitted the engineer as he checked the structural readings. “But, we’re within specifications. The new design is holding better than anything we’ve seen in years.”

David switched on the exterior lights and digital view. He couldn’t get enough of seeing the bottom. The entire system was akin to being on another planet. After millions of years, only recently had humankind leaped forward enough to travel to the depths they were seeing. Sixteen people were all that had been to the bottom of the sea. With this dive, David now held the record for the most times going to the bottom.

“I know I haven’t done this as much as you, Captain. But try not to get us eaten,” suggested Heather, the team’s scientist.

David pointed to the screen, asking if that’s what scared her. The occasional sighting of a giant squid didn’t surprise him. For years, the Navy picked up sonar readings in the trench that warned them of massive biologicals in the deep. The ecosystem at the bottom was unlike anything they’d dreamed of and filled with mysterious lifeforms, as they all noticed while passing by fifty-foot-tall tube worms.

“I’ll never get used to that,” admitted Heather.

From the surface, Zach Hollis pressed a button and made an announcement. It was check-in time again.

“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. According to our readings, everything is in the green, and oxygen levels are at eighty-seven percent. Captain, can you confirm?”

Captain Cranz confirmed the readings, and the crew confirmed they were “good to go.”

When Zach signed off, Captain Cranz steered them toward section 1191. The translucence from the thermal vents and the lava tubes near the bottom helped maintain visibility. Susan alerted the Captain to a sonar anomaly as they ventured forward.

“What is that?” asked the Captain.

Susan continued to take readings from her seat, a perplexed look on her face. She got nervous as they got closer. Susan radioed the rig, asking if they were detecting what she was.

“Negative dive one. We’re not seeing anything on telemetry. There appears to be some interference,” Zach told them as their communications went dead.

They were entering a dead zone. The Captain brought the submersible to a stop. As they hovered in place, twenty feet from the bottom, he asked for his crew’s opinion. They’d never been to this sector and now, they were cut off from the surface.

“Dead zones aren’t that unusual,” commented Alex, “so I say we go.”

“I want to see what’s in this sector,” admitted Heather. “I’m good to go.”

Susan Shawler was still trying to make sense of the sonar readings. There was a void, but the readings indicated massive amounts of magnetic interference coming from the inside. The other two members voted to continue the mission. Susan nodded her head, cautiously wanting to find out what was causing the magnetic interference.

The submersible moved forward as the Captain took them further into the sector. They all sat, white-knuckling their seats, as they neared the area of the void. The closer they got, the more the trip got more violent. Captain Cranz told everybody to hold on.

“Um, guys,” he announced, “I’m losing pitch. We’re being pulled inward…”

Zach sat at his station, anxiously awaiting any word from Dive One. When they missed their sixth checkin he began to panic. Zach took off toward the foreman’s office. When he got there, he stopped to catch his breath.

Xander Steele was the rig foreman. His deep, baritone voice, echoed into the outer corridor when he yelled for Zach to enter.

“What is it?” the well-muscled, chocolate-skinned man asked.

“Sir, it’s Dive One, we’ve lost contact and they’ve missed their last six check-in times. We’ve got nothing on telemetry.”

Xander picked up the cigar resting in his ashtray and tucked it between his lips. As he followed Zach to the command center, he listened to Zach briefing him about the interference and the last transmission from the team. The old seaman questioned why they didn’t abort the run.

“We lost coms before I could pull the plug, sir,” explained Zach.

When Xander hit the command center he called everybody to attention. There were a handful of people pouring into the room as he started calling for information.

“Somebody, give me something,” demanded Xander.

Of all of them, it was Kari that had something to offer. She had tracked the movements of the submersible, unbeknownst to anybody else. As an engineer, she was running a program with the Sharks. The Sharks, the newest D.S.V.s in the fleet, provided her an opportunity to test out her prototype.

“Suckerfish?” asked Zach.

“Mini drones, feeding off the energy in the wake of the Sharks, like the tiny fish that trail great whites and feed off their scraps. My little Suckerfish sends out longer-range signals. From that, I can see exactly where the Shark they were using disappeared,” she explained.

Xander could see where they were. He wanted to know where they are now.

“How much time do they have if the Shark was intact?”

“If there wasn’t a crash or a systems failure, I’d give them no more than twelve hours,” she told the foreman.

Eleven thousand meters down, David Cranz opened his eyes to find himself locked in an eight-by-eight cell that was surprisingly made of steel and concrete. The last thing he remembered was the submersible being pulled into the side of the cliff, toward something emitting immense amounts of power. Looking around, he was alone. His first thought was of his team. His second was about where he was and how he could get free.

When he heard the door to his cell opening David was too exhausted to move. He then realized it wasn’t exhaustion. He was trying to move, but his body wasn’t cooperating.

A shadowy figure entered, grabbing him by his neck and picking him up. The thing that grabbed him had large hands with protruding claws. It walked like a biped but was unlike anything David ever encountered as it carried him from his cell to another chamber.

David was thrown onto a slab table, his arms and legs bound. He looked side to side in the darkness, trying to find a way to help himself. Anxiously, he knew he was at the mercy of whatever was holding him. When the room lit up, his stomach turned.

On another table, just feet from his, he saw one of the team uniforms on a body. It was their marine biologist, Heather Moore. She was pale as a ghost. Her flesh looked dried and decomposed as if she’d been buried years ago. Along her arm and one side of her neck, there appeared to be…

“God forgive me for my sins,” spoke David.

Whatever they discovered in the deep, the tables they were on weren’t tables. At eleven thousand meters beneath the surface, David knew one thing as three more of the mysterious creatures walked into the room, their features hidden beneath steel masks. He was placed on a serving platter.

Xander walked into his office aboard the rig. Sitting down, he reached into a drawer and pulled out a satellite phone. There were less than twelve hours before the crew of the Dive One would be out of air. He dialed and waited for an answer while he poured a glass of whiskey.

“It’s Xander,” he told the person on the other end. “We have a problem. An entire team and one of the Sharks went missing in sector 1190.”

Halfway around the world, Richard Soren sat in an office overlooking lower Manhattan. Soren owned the expedition and the Mythic Explorer. The Mythic Explorer was a large part of his life’s work and he’d worked tirelessly to maintain its top-secret status as the world’s foremost research station in the South Pacific.

He hung up his phone and packed up his briefcase. Richard reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a .45 caliber Colt. As he tucked it into his waist, his receptionist entered the office.

“What is it Sharon?”

“Sir, Director Young’s waiting to speak to you,” she announced.

Fine, thought Richard as he dismissed Sharon. When the door closed, he pressed a key on his computer and a screen opened.

“Brent, what can I do for you?”

Brent Young was the director of an O.G.A. operation out of Washington. The forty-year-old was power-hungry, ambitious, and ruthless. He helped Richard get the permits for the explorer and secure the region so there would be no interference. In exchange, Richard was expected to deliver on his plans and provide undersea access to the rig.

“Are you headed somewhere?”

“I was going to call you from the helicopter. There’s been a problem,” he admitted. “I know you’ve got assets in the region. I could use someone rated to go deep and with the balls to make the trip.”

“Fine,” the agency director sighed. “I know someone that I trust.”

“Is it someone that’s got experience with…” hesitated Richard.

“I’ll have him meet you aboard the explorer,” promised the director.

Richard looked at his watch, “there’s not a lot of time.”