The storm had been raging for three days when the 'Acheron' finally lost its battle with the sea. The research vessel—meant to study the unexplored trenches of the Mariana Trench—listed violently before the waves swallowed it whole. Only Dr. Elias Voss, the lead marine biologist, managed to claw his way into an emergency pod before the black water claimed him.
The pod's oxygen was dwindling. The distress beacon had failed. And outside, in the crushing dark, something was *tapping* on the hull.
— — —
Elias jolted awake as the pod shuddered. The storm had passed, but the ocean was unnaturally still, like a held breath. The depth gauge read 3,124 meters—far below where any human should be. Then he saw it.
A shape moved outside the porthole.
At first, he thought it was a deep-sea squid—a giant, perhaps, but natural. Then it pressed against the glass, and Elias's blood turned to ice.
It had hands.
Pale, elongated fingers, webbed and too many joints, pressed against the pod. A face—if it could be called that—hovered behind them: bulging black eyes, a lipless mouth lined with needle teeth, and skin that shimmered like oil on water. It *smiled*.
Elias scrambled back as more shapes emerged from the dark. Dozens of them, their bodies sinuous and wrong, circling the pod like sharks. Their mouths opened in unison, and a sound vibrated through the metal—a song, low and resonant, that made Elias's teeth ache.
— — —
The pod's systems were failing. Oxygen at 8%. The creatures outside had begun to drag it deeper, their claws screeching against the hull. Elias knew he was going to die—but not like this. Not taken by *things* that shouldn't exist.
With shaking hands, he triggered the manual release.
Water exploded into the pod. The pressure was agony—his ears popped, his lungs burned. The creatures swarmed him, their hands pulling, their song filling his skull. As his vision darkened, he saw it—the *source* of them.
A city.
Not ruins. Not some ancient wreck. A living city, glowing in the abyss, its spires twisting like bone. And at its center, something vast and terrible *stirred*.
Elias's last thought was a prayer—that whatever these things were, they would never reach the surface.
— — —
(Two weeks later), a fishing trawler off the coast of Mindanao hauled in an unusual catch—a mangled emergency pod, its interior coated in a strange, bioluminescent slime. And etched into the metal, a single word, clawed in desperation:
"DEEP"