The Sea Wraith reached the target coordinates just after sunrise. The sky was a pale, washed-out gold, streaked with high, thin clouds that looked like the brush strokes of an impatient painter. The wind had softened to a lazy breeze, and the sea — for the open ocean — was unnervingly calm.
Captain Rourke throttled down the engines until we were barely idling. The sudden quiet was almost shocking. Without the rumble of the motors, I could hear the faint slap of water against the hull, the occasional creak of wood, and my own breathing.
We had arrived at a patch of ocean that, to the eye, was indistinguishable from any other. No visible landmarks, no floating debris, nothing to suggest that this place had been the source of a signal that traveled across space. Yet the coordinates matched perfectly.
I switched on the receiver. The signal came through instantly, strong and steady: five-long, three-short, five-long. The sound filled my headphones with a peculiar certainty, as if the source were directly beneath us.
"Here we are," I said quietly.
Rourke leaned over the rail, peering down into the dark water. "Doesn't look like much," he muttered. "You sure your instruments aren't chasing ghosts?"
"Quite sure," I replied, though in truth the absolute normalcy of the scene made my own conviction feel fragile.
---
Deploying the Hydrophone
I unpacked the hydrophone and lowered it over the side, letting the cable unreel slowly until the depth gauge read 200 meters. The moment it reached that point, the headphones in my ears came alive with a low, resonant hum beneath the signal.
It wasn't mechanical. It had an organic quality, like the deep, rolling call of a whale — but slower, heavier, and vibrating in a way that seemed to stir the very air around me.
I turned the dial to isolate it.
Rourke, watching me work, raised an eyebrow. "What do you hear?"
I hesitated. "Something answering."
His lips pressed into a thin line. "Answering what?"
"The signal. Ours. Or… whoever's."
---
The Disturbance
At 09:46 hours, the calm sea surface changed.
A patch of water about thirty meters off the port bow began to churn — not violently, but in a slow, deliberate spiral, as though a vast hand beneath the waves were stirring it. The circle widened steadily, the deep blue darkening to near black at the center.
Rourke swore under his breath and reached for the throttle, but I held up a hand. "Wait."
He shot me a look that could have cut rope, but he didn't start the engines.
The receiver's signal grew louder, sharper, until the sound was no longer just in my ears — I could feel it in my chest. The hum from below grew in sync with it, resonating like two voices singing in harmony.
Then, as suddenly as it began, the spiral ceased. The surface went still again, the only evidence of disturbance being a faint ring of foam that drifted outward and faded.
---
A Decision
Rourke broke the silence. "Maxwell, I've been on the water forty years. I've seen squalls appear out of nowhere, waves big enough to swallow ships, and once a glowing jellyfish the size of my dinghy. But I've never seen water behave like that. And I'll tell you plain — I don't like it."
"Neither do I," I admitted. "But I have to know what's down there."
"You planning to dive?"
I nodded. "Only a short descent. I'll take the hydrophone with me for live readings. If it's nothing, we turn back."
He grunted, which I took as reluctant approval, though his hands stayed firmly on the wheel.
---
The Descent
By 10:30, I was suited up in my old Mark V diving rig — heavy copper helmet, lead-weighted boots, air hose secured to the pump on deck. It was archaic compared to modern scuba gear, but in deep, unknown waters, the rugged reliability of that suit had its appeal.
As I stepped onto the ladder, I felt the first flutter of real apprehension. The ocean stretched out in all directions, a vast emptiness into which I was about to lower myself like bait on a line.
"Keep the cable taut," I told Rourke. "If I tug twice, pull me up. If I tug three times…" I paused. "Pull faster."
With that, I descended into the water.
---
The first twenty meters were a blur of bubbles and refracted sunlight. Below that, the light dimmed rapidly, the blue giving way to a shadowed green. The sound of my own breathing echoed inside the helmet.
At around 60 meters, the hum from the hydrophone grew stronger. I glanced down. The darkness below was absolute, a vast wall of nothing. Yet the pressure of presence — for lack of a better word — was palpable.
At 120 meters, I saw movement.
Not clearly — more a shifting of shadow against shadow, as though something vast had just turned slowly in the water. The scale was impossible to judge, but instinct told me it was enormous.
---
Contact
The hum ceased. In its place came a new sound through the hydrophone — a single, drawn-out tone that seemed to vibrate not just in my ears but in my very teeth.
I froze. The tone rose in pitch, then fell again, like the slow breathing of a leviathan.
Something stirred in the darkness below. A faint light appeared, greenish and diffuse, like bioluminescence from the deep. It pulsed once, twice, in the exact rhythm of the signal.
I felt it in my bones — whatever was down there was not just reacting to the signal. It was sending it.
I gave two sharp tugs on the rope.
The ascent was faster, though still agonizingly slow by my panicked measure. The green light faded below me, but the single long tone followed, rising through the water until it became a low tremor in my chest.
---
Back on Deck
When Rourke helped me out of the suit, my hands were trembling. I said nothing for several minutes, simply staring out over the water, listening to the receiver's steady playback.
Finally, I spoke. "It's alive."
Rourke didn't laugh. He didn't ask what I meant. He simply said, "Then we're leaving."
I didn't argue.
But as the Sea Wraith turned for shore, I made one final note in my journal:
The signal is not a message to the stars. It is a call to something that lives in the deep.