Dive into the crushing depths where the only company is the echo of your own fear. This amazing horror short story plunges you into Station Aegis VII, a remote outpost miles beneath the waves. When routine checks give way to inexplicable anomalies, a lone technician must confront a terror that defies understanding. Prepare for an amazing horror short story driven by relentless action and escalating dread, where the darkness outside is matched only by the terror within. What begins as a system malfunction spirals into a desperate fight for survival against an entity that should not exist.
Chapter 1: The Silence
The hum was constant. Chester barely noticed it anymore. It was the sound of life support, the thrum of machinery keeping the ocean depths at bay. Station Aegis VII was his world. A small metal bubble tethered to the seabed, miles below the sunlit surface.
He was the sole occupant. Rotations lasted six months. Chester was four months in. Routine was his shield against the crushing isolation. Check gauges. Run diagnostics. Log data. Eat nutrient paste. Sleep. Repeat.
Today felt different. The silence wasn’t absolute, the hum was still there. But it felt… thinner. Like the station was holding its breath.
Chester ran a systems check. All green. Power core stable. Hull integrity nominal. Life support optimal. He tapped the console, scrolling through sensor logs from the exterior arrays. Nothing unusual. Pressure normal. Temperature stable. No unexpected sonar contacts.
He pushed back from the console. The control room was small, cramped. Metal walls covered in screens and readouts. A single heavy door led to the narrow corridor connecting the station’s few modules.
He decided to walk the length of the station. A physical inspection. Module A: Control and Habitation. Module B: Laboratory. Module C: Power Core Access. Module D: External Maintenance Airlock.
The corridor lights flickered. Just once. Chester paused. Power fluctuations were rare but not unheard of. He checked the nearest monitor. Power levels remained steady. Strange.
He continued towards Module B. The lab was dark. He rarely used it. The previous rotation’s science officer had left projects unfinished. Beakers and sample containers sat coated in dust. Chester flicked the light switch. Nothing.
He frowned. The main lights were out, but the emergency strips along the floor glowed faintly. He checked the circuit breaker panel near the door. The breaker for Module B’s main lighting was tripped. He reset it. The overhead lights flickered on, buzzed, and died again. The breaker tripped instantly.
A short circuit. Annoying, but manageable. He’d fix it later. He continued his patrol.
Module C was fine. The core pulsed with contained energy behind thick shielding. The familiar hum was strongest here. Reassuring.
Module D housed the airlock and maintenance suits. Everything seemed in order. Dust motes danced in the beam of his flashlight. He checked the outer door seals on the monitor. Secure.
He returned to the control room. The feeling of wrongness persisted. He sat down, staring at the main viewport. Outside was impenetrable darkness. Occasionally, a bioluminescent creature drifted past, a fleeting spark in the void.
He ran another diagnostic. Deeper this time. Internal sensors. Module B reported multiple anomalies. Temperature fluctuations. Minor atmospheric pressure variations. Electrical surges localized around the main lab bench.
Impossible. The module was sealed, inactive. He hadn’t been inside, besides flipping the faulty breaker.
He pulled up the internal security camera feed for Module B. The image was dark, relying on the emergency lighting. Empty. Dusty. Silent. He watched for several minutes. Nothing.
Then, something moved. A shadow detaching itself from the deeper shadows under the main bench. It wasn’t solid. More like… shifting oil. Or smoke. It coiled slowly, extending a tendril towards a forgotten sample container on the bench.
Chester leaned closer. The feed flickered, static obscuring the image for a second. When it cleared, the shadow was gone.
He rewound the footage. Played it again. The shadow was there, then static, then gone. It hadn’t retreated. It had simply vanished when the feed cut out.
His heart hammered against his ribs. What was that? Hallucination? A trick of the light?
He activated the main lights in Module B remotely from the console. The command failed. Circuit still tripped.
He tried the emergency lockdown for Module B. Heavy bulkhead doors slid shut at either end of the module, isolating it. The commands registered as successful. Relief washed over him, cold and thin. Whatever that was, it was trapped.
He spent the next hour running scans, checking logs, trying to find an explanation. Nothing. The station reported Module B was secure, sealed, and electrically unstable.
The silence felt heavy now. Threatening. The hum of the station no longer felt like a shield. It felt like the purr of a predator.
Chapter 2: The Breach
Sleep offered no escape. Chester jolted awake in his narrow bunk. He didn’t know why. No sound had disturbed him. Just a feeling. A prickling awareness.
He glanced at the chrono on the wall. 03:17 station time. He’d only been asleep for two hours.
He swung his legs over the side of the bunk, his bare feet hitting the cold metal floor. The habitation area was small. Bunk, small desk, nutrient dispenser, waste recycler. Home.
A faint scratching sound.
It came from the corridor outside his door. Soft. Persistent. Like metal on metal.
He held his breath, listening. Silence. Then, scratch… scrape… scratch…
It was coming from the direction of Module B. But Module B was sealed. Heavy bulkheads. Impossible to open without command codes from the control room.
Chester grabbed the heavy wrench he kept under his bunk. Standard safety precaution. He moved to the door, pressing his ear against the cool metal.
Scratch… scrape… pause… SCRAPE. Louder this time. Closer.
He backed away slowly. His door was locked, but it was standard internal door. Not designed to withstand a determined assault. The bulkheads sealing Module B were different. Heavy. Reinforced.
The scratching stopped. An unnerving silence descended again. Chester strained to hear anything. The station hum. His own breathing. Nothing else.
Then, a low groaning sound. Metal under stress. It came from the bulkhead door leading from Module B into the main corridor.
He scrambled back to his desk, activating the small terminal there. He pulled up the internal sensors for the Module B bulkhead. Pressure sensors registered extreme, localized force near the central seam. Strain gauges were climbing into the red.
Impossible. What could exert that kind of pressure?
A loud BANG echoed through the station. Chester flinched. The bulkhead integrity alarm shrieked from the terminal. Compromised. Failing.
He had to get to the control room. Seal the corridor. Maybe vent atmosphere from the compromised section. But that meant going out there. Past the failing bulkhead.
Another BANG, louder. Followed by the shriek of tearing metal.
He grabbed his flashlight, wrench held tight. He unlocked his door, peering into the dimly lit corridor. Emergency lights cast long shadows. The bulkhead door at the far end, near Module B, was visibly dented outwards. Sparks showered from the stressed frame.
He took a step out. The station groaned again.
He had to move fast. The control room was the other way. Towards Module A.
He sprinted. Feet pounding on the metal deck plates. Past the dark entrance to Module C. Past the sealed entrance to the lab module. The damaged bulkhead was behind him.
A final, earsplitting CRUNCH echoed from behind. He didn’t look back.
He slammed into the control room, hitting the door lock button. He scrambled to the main console, hands flying across the controls.
“Seal Corridor Section Beta!” he yelled, though voice commands weren’t enabled. His fingers found the sequence. Execute.
Heavy doors slid shut further down the corridor, isolating the section containing the breached Module B bulkhead and the lab entrance. The monitor showed the seal was successful.
He slumped into the chair, breathing heavily. Safe. For now.
He pulled up the camera feed for Corridor Section Beta. The bulkhead door from Module B hung partially ripped from its frame, bent outwards like foil. Darkness pulsed within the exposed lab module.
And then, it flowed out.
The shadow. Larger now. Less like smoke, more like thick, black oil. It pooled on the corridor floor, glistening under the emergency lights. It had no discernible features. No eyes, no mouth. Just a shifting, amorphous mass.
It flowed towards the newly sealed door that blocked its path to the rest of the station. It touched the metal. Probed it.
Chester watched, mesmerized and horrified. The thing flattened itself against the door, spreading like spilled ink. And then… it began to seep through. Not breaking it. Phasing through the microscopic gaps in the metal structure. Flowing like liquid mercury through solid steel.
Panic seized him. Sealing the corridor wasn’t enough. It could get through anything.
He jumped back to the console. Options raced through his mind. Vent the atmosphere? Useless if it didn’t need to breathe. Electrical surge? Module B was already shorting out; it seemed unaffected. Fire suppression? Halon gas might disrupt its form… maybe?
He activated the halon system in Corridor Section Beta. Nozzles hissed. Chemical mist filled the sealed section.
The feed flickered. The shadow recoiled from the gas, pulling back from the door. It writhed within the mist, its form distorting. But it didn’t dissipate. It pulsed, consolidating into a smaller, denser shape.
Then, it flowed back towards the ruined entrance of Module B, disappearing inside.
The halon had deterred it. But not harmed it. And it was still inside the station. Trapped in Module B and the adjacent corridor section. For now.
Chapter 3: Assimilation
Chester stared at the feed. The halon mist slowly dispersed. Corridor Section Beta was empty again, save for the mangled bulkhead door.
He couldn’t stay in the control room forever. His supplies were in the habitation module. The power core access was in Module C. The escape pods… were attached to the habitation module. Everything vital was outside this room.
He needed information. What was this thing? Where did it come from?
He accessed the station’s deep archives. Logs from previous rotations. Research notes. Anything related to Module B.
Hours passed. He scanned through dry scientific reports, personnel logs, maintenance records. Nothing indicated anything unusual. Until he reached the logs from the scientist on the rotation before his. Dr. Aris Thorne.
Thorne’s final log entries were… odd. Vague references to “unexpected sample contamination.” Notes about “bio-electrical phenomena.” Then, a final, corrupted entry dated two days before the rotation ended and Chester arrived. Much of the data was garbled, but fragments remained.
“…structure unlike anything known… absorbs energy… interacts with synthetics… metallic resonance… seems to… learn?”
Chester felt a chill. Absorbs energy. Interacts with synthetics. That explained the electrical shorts in Module B. The thing was feeding on the station’s power grid. And maybe… more.
He pulled up the schematics for Module B. Power conduits. Data lines. Environmental controls. All networked. All potential food. Or… components.
A new alert flashed on the console. Power drain detected. Not from Module B this time. From Corridor Section Beta.
He switched to the camera feed. Empty. But the power logs showed a steady drain from the emergency lighting circuits and the door control systems in that sealed section.
The thing was still active. And it was drawing power remotely. Through the walls? Through the network?
He tried to cut power to the sealed section entirely. Command failed. Override access denied.
Chester swore. It was interacting with the station systems. Learning. Gaining control.
He had to assume it could access any networked system. Communications? Life support? Door controls?
He checked external communications. The deep-sea relay link was down. Signal lost. When? He checked the logs. It cut out exactly when the Module B bulkhead was breached. Coincidence? Or deliberate?
He was cut off. Alone.
A new thought struck him. The maintenance airlock. Module D. It was outside the sealed section. Could he get there? Use a maintenance suit to go outside? Reach an external comms panel? Or even detach the escape pod manually from the exterior?
Module D was down the corridor, past Module C. Risky. But staying here felt like waiting for the inevitable.
He checked the camera feed for the main corridor. Clear. He took the wrench again. Took a deep breath. Unlocked the control room door.
He moved quickly, silently. Past the humming entrance to Module C. The corridor stretched ahead, dimly lit. He reached the door to Module D. Locked. Standard procedure. He swiped his access card. The door hissed open.
He slipped inside, locking it behind him. Module D was colder than the rest of the station. Two bulky maintenance suits stood in their racks like metal sentinels. Tools lined the walls. The outer airlock door dominated one wall.
He hurried to the suit console. Powering up Suit 1. Diagnostics running. Oxygen levels good. Power cell charged. Ready.
Getting into the suit was clumsy. Heavy. Claustrophobic. But secure. Once sealed, the suit’s internal display lit up. He checked the external cameras mounted on the suit’s helmet. The view showed the interior of Module D.
He walked towards the airlock controls. He needed to cycle the inner door, enter the lock, cycle the outer door. Standard procedure.
He hit the button to open the inner airlock door. It slid open with a familiar hiss. He stepped into the small chamber.
Suddenly, the lights in Module D went out. Total darkness, except for the suit’s internal lights and headlamp.
“Power failure in Module D,” the station’s automated voice announced calmly in his helmet speaker.
No. Not a failure. Deliberate.
The inner airlock door slammed shut behind him. Faster than normal. He spun around, heart pounding. He was trapped in the airlock chamber.
The control panel next to the inner door sparked. Died. The panel for the outer door remained dark. Inoperable.
Then, he heard it. Through the suit’s audio pickups. A faint slithering sound. Coming from the vents inside Module D. The module he had just locked himself out of.
He looked through the small viewport in the inner door. Darkness. Then, a faint, oily shimmer appeared under the doorframe. Flowing into Module D from the corridor outside.
The thing had followed him. Or anticipated him. It had cut the power, locked him in the airlock.
It was learning fast.
Chapter 4: The Metal Tide
Panic threatened to overwhelm him. Trapped. Airlock offline. The creature flowing into the module just outside.
He banged on the inner door viewport. “Override! Manual release!” Nothing. The controls were dead.
His suit lights pierced the gloom of the airlock. Bare metal walls. The inert outer door. The useless inner door.
He scanned the interior of Module D through the viewport. The oily blackness was spreading across the floor. It flowed towards the maintenance suit racks. Towards Suit 2.
It touched the leg of the empty suit. Climbed it. Covered it like viscous paint. The metal of the suit seemed to… ripple. Warp.
Chester watched in horror as the black substance merged with the suit. It wasn’t just coating it. It was integrating. Assimilating.
Tendrils of the blackness snaked into the suit’s joints, its power conduits. The empty helmet flickered with captured emergency light. Then, slowly, impossibly, the assimilated suit moved.
An arm lifted jerkily. A leg shifted. It detached itself from the rack with a screech of metal. It stood there, a grotesque parody of a suited figure, coated in shifting blackness, seams leaking oily fluid.
It turned its helmet towards the airlock. Towards Chester.
He backed away, pressing against the cold outer door. This was insane. It was using the station’s technology against him. Merging with it.
The assimilated suit took a step towards the airlock door. Heavy. Clumsy. But purposeful.
Chester frantically checked his suit’s interface. Any options? Weapons? The maintenance suits had cutting torches, manipulator arms. Not weapons.
He activated the external speakers. “Get away! Leave this station!” His voice sounded tinny, frightened.
The assimilated suit paused. Its head tilted. Did it understand? Or was it just reacting to the sound?
Then, it raised an arm. The manipulator claw opened and closed. It stepped closer to the inner door.
Chester looked around the airlock. Anything? An emergency oxygen tank was bolted to the wall. Heavy. Maybe he could rupture it? Create an explosion? Too risky. It could breach the hull.
The assimilated suit reached the inner door. It didn’t try the dead controls. It simply pressed its manipulator hand against the metal.
The black substance flowed from the suit’s hand onto the door. Spreading. Covering the viewport. Blocking Chester’s view.
He heard a sizzling sound. Like acid eating metal. Then, a groaning, tearing noise. It was dissolving the door.
He had seconds. He turned to the outer airlock door. The controls were dead. But there had to be a manual release. For emergencies.
His suit lights scanned the heavy wheel mechanism at the center. Yes. A manual override handle. Protected by a cover plate.
He ripped the cover off. Grabbed the handle. It was stiff. Designed for emergency use only. He threw all his weight into it. Grunting inside the suit.
Metal shrieked behind him. The inner door was buckling.
He pulled harder on the wheel handle. It moved. Slowly. Grinding. The outer door mechanism groaned in protest. It wasn’t meant to be operated manually against the external water pressure without the equalization cycle.
A section of the inner door behind him ripped open. A black, oily tendril snaked through the gap, whipping wildly in the small space.
Chester ignored it, focusing on the wheel. Turn! Open!
The outer door began to slide open a crack. Water pressure outside resisted. A torrent of icy water shouldn’t flood in – the pressure difference wasn’t that vast at this depth inside a pressurized suit, but the mechanism fought him.
The gap widened. Just enough.
He squeezed through, pushing himself out into the crushing blackness of the deep sea. The outer door mechanism, unbalanced, slammed shut behind him with a clang that resonated through the water.
He was outside. Floating in the dark. Tethered to the station only by his suit’s emergency line. His headlamp cut a lonely beam through the void.
He looked back at the airlock viewport on the station hull. Through the thick glass, he saw the assimilated suit standing inside the flooded airlock chamber. Its shadowy form pulsed.
It had breached the airlock. It was trying to follow him.
Chapter 5: The Void
The cold of the deep seeped into the suit. Not literally, but Chester felt it. The absolute isolation. The immense pressure of the water all around him.
His suit’s display showed oxygen levels, power remaining. Limited time.
He activated the suit’s thrusters. Small bursts of propulsion. He needed to get away from the airlock. Find another way in? No. Where? The escape pod.
He maneuvered clumsily along the station’s hull. His magnetic boots clanged against the metal skin. Aegis VII looked alien from the outside. A collection of cylinders and spheres bolted together, barnacles clinging to its older sections. Lights glowed dimly from a few viewports.
He spotted the escape pod. A smaller vessel clamped to the side of the habitation module. His only way out.
He thrusted towards it. The journey felt agonizingly slow. Every shadow seemed to writhe. Every creak of the station hull under pressure sounded like a threat.
He reached the pod’s docking clamp. There was an external release panel. He opened it, his bulky suit gloves fumbling with the latches.
Inside, a simple interface. Power on. Disengage clamps. Launch sequence.
He hit the power button. Nothing.
He tried again. Dead.
He checked the connection conduit running from the station to the pod. It looked intact. Power should be flowing. Unless…
Unless the entity had cut power to the pod system as well. From inside the station.
Despair washed over him. Trapped outside. No escape.
He looked back along the hull. No sign of the assimilated suit. Had it given up? Or was it finding another way?
Then he saw it. Not the suit. Something else.
A section of the station’s hull plating, near Module B, began to ripple. Like heat haze over asphalt. But this was cold, solid metal.
The rippling intensified. The metal seemed to flow, like liquid. It bulged outwards.
The black, oily substance seeped through the solid steel. Not finding gaps this time. Phase-shifting through the atomic structure. It poured out into the water, coalescing into a large, amorphous blob tethered to the station.
It was bigger now. Much bigger. It must have assimilated more systems, more power, inside the station.
The blob detached a portion of itself. A smaller shadow that flowed rapidly through the water. Straight towards Chester.
He backed away, firing his thrusters. The shadow-thing was fast. Unnaturally fast in the water. It didn’t seem hindered by the pressure or viscosity.
His suit had a low-power laser cutter. Meant for slicing seized bolts, not combat. He drew it, activating the beam. A thin red line sliced through the darkness.
He aimed at the approaching shadow. The beam hit it. The shadow seemed to… absorb the light. No effect.
It was almost upon him. A formless, featureless wave of blackness.
He dodged, firing thrusters erratically. The shadow flowed past where he’d been, swirling like smoke. It turned, sensing his heat signature or the suit’s electronic emissions.
He needed to break its connection to the main mass. To the station.
He flew back towards the station hull, the shadow pursuing him. He aimed the laser cutter not at the shadow, but at the main blob still emerging from the hull near Module B.
He fired the beam at the point where the blob extruded from the metal. Searing red light hit the shifting interface between entity and station.
There was a reaction. The entire mass convulsed. The smaller shadow pursuing him faltered, its form flickering.
He poured laser energy onto the connection point. Metal glowed red, then white-hot. The blob writhed, pulling back slightly from the superheated point.
The pursuing shadow dissolved, its form dispersing into the water like dissipating ink.
He had hurt it. Or at least, disrupted its connection.
But the main mass was still there. Recovering. Flowing more rapidly from the compromised hull section. It was adapting. Learning.
He looked at his suit’s power level. Critically low. Oxygen dwindling. Thruster fuel almost gone.
He couldn’t fight it. He couldn’t escape.
He looked at the dead escape pod. Then back at the monstrous entity merging with the station, turning it into something alien.
There was one last, desperate option. Module C. The power core.
If he could get back inside. Reach the core control room. Initiate a controlled overload. Destroy the station. Destroy the entity.
It was suicide. But it was the only way to ensure this thing never reached the surface.
He pushed off the escape pod, using the last of his thruster fuel to propel himself towards the nearest access hatch he could find. An emergency engineering crawlspace near Module C. It was worth a try.
The black mass on the hull pulsed, sensing his movement. A new section detached, larger this time, flowing towards him through the crushing darkness. The void itself seemed to be coming alive.
He raced towards the hatch, wrench ready in one hand, laser cutter in the other. Time was running out.
Chapter 6: Scuttle
The emergency hatch was manual. Chester cranked the wheel, muscles screaming inside the suit. Behind him, the detached mass of shadow surged closer, blotting out the dim station lights.
The hatch popped open inwards. He scrambled inside, into a tight, dark engineering tunnel. He slammed the hatch shut, spinning the wheel to dog it tight just as the shadow slammed against the exterior. The hull groaned around him.
He was back inside. But where? The tunnel was cramped, filled with pipes and conduits. Emergency lighting strips provided minimal illumination. His suit light cut a narrow beam ahead.
He checked the suit display. Power critical. Oxygen low. He had minutes.
He pulled up the station schematics on his suit’s wrist display. This tunnel ran parallel to the main corridor, connecting various service junctions. Yes – there was an access panel leading directly into the Power Core control vestibule.
He moved as fast as the bulky suit allowed, half-crawling, half-stooping through the tunnel. Behind him, he heard scraping sounds against the outer hull. It knew where he was.
He reached the access panel. Pry bar needed. He used the wrench, jamming it into the seam. Heaving. The panel popped open.
He squeezed through into a small antechamber. Thick shielded glass looked into the core room itself, where the station’s fusion heart pulsed with contained energy. The main control console stood against the far wall.
But the door from the antechamber into the core room was sealed. And the console beside it was dark. Power cut here too.
He looked through the shielded glass. Inside the core room, something moved.
The assimilated maintenance suit. It stood before the core control console, tendrils of blackness snaking from its body into the console’s interface panels. It was trying to gain control of the core itself.
Chester hammered on the shielded glass. The suit-thing turned its helmet towards him, blackness swirling within.
It had beaten him here. If it gained control of the core… what could it do? Weaponize it? Use its energy to grow exponentially?
He couldn’t let that happen.
He looked around the antechamber. Manual controls? No. Just the dead electronic lock.
Wait. A fire suppression override. A big red button under a safety cover. Standard procedure mandated halon ports even in the core chamber.
He flipped the cover. Slammed the button.
Inside the core room, nozzles hissed. Halon gas flooded the chamber.
The assimilated suit recoiled, stumbling back from the console. The black tendrils retracted from the interface. It writhed in the chemical mist, its movements becoming jerky, uncontrolled.
But the halon wouldn’t destroy it. Just disable it temporarily. Chester needed to get in there. Initiate the scuttle sequence.
He still had the laser cutter. He aimed it at the electronic lock mechanism on the door. Fired.
Sparks flew. Metal glowed. He carved a molten slash around the lock assembly. Then he kicked the door hard.
It burst inwards with a screech. He stumbled into the halon-filled core room, coughing as the gas interacted strangely with his suit’s external sensors.
The assimilated suit was slumped against the far wall, twitching feebly. Black ooze leaked from its joints.
Chester ignored it, staggering to the main console. It was offline. He needed the emergency manual override. A recessed panel below the main screen.
He ripped the panel open. Inside, a series of covered switches. Core containment override. Emergency shutdown. And… Scuttle Sequence Initiation.
He flipped the safety cover off the scuttle switch. His hand hovered over it. This was it. No turning back.
Behind him, a scraping sound. He glanced back. The assimilated suit was stirring. Pushing itself up the wall. The halon’s effect was wearing off.
He slammed his hand down on the scuttle switch. Flipped it up.
Alarms blared throughout the station. Red lights flashed.
“WARNING. SCUTTLE SEQUENCE INITIATED. CORE OVERLOAD IN T-MINUS 60 SECONDS.” The automated voice was calm, emotionless.
The assimilated suit rose to its full height. It lunged towards him, manipulator arm raised.
Chester ducked. The claw scraped sparks off the console beside his head. He scrambled back, laser cutter ready.
He didn’t need to fight it. Just survive for less than a minute.
He fired the laser at the suit’s leg joint. It buckled, stumbling. Black ooze sprayed from the wound.
“T-MINUS 45 SECONDS.”
The suit recovered, charging again. Chester dodged behind a stanchion. The core behind the shielded glass pulsed faster now, light intensifying.
The suit smashed the stanchion aside. Chester was exposed.
“T-MINUS 30 SECONDS.”
He fired the laser directly at the suit’s helmet visor. The beam hit the swirling blackness within. The entity shrieked – a high-frequency sound that pierced Chester’s helmet audio.
The suit staggered back, clawing at its own head.
“T-MINUS 15 SECONDS. EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY.”
Evacuate. Ironic.
The core was glowing brilliantly now. Heat radiated through the shielded glass.
The assimilated suit collapsed, its form seeming to dissolve, the blackness boiling away from the metal frame. The laser, or perhaps the proximity to the overloading core, was destroying it from within.
“T-MINUS 5… 4… 3…”
Chester closed his eyes. He thought of the sunlit surface, miles above. A world he would never see again.
“…2… 1…”
White light filled the viewport. Consumed the room. Consumed everything.
Silence.
Then, miles above, on the surface, monitoring stations registered a deep-sea energy surge. Unprecedented. Followed by the abrupt loss of all telemetry from Aegis VII.
The station was gone. Vanished from the deep. Taking its impossible horror with it.
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