The silence was heavier than the water.
Inside the Icarus, nobody spoke. The only sound was the groan of aluminum under seventy atmospheres of pressure and the low, rhythmic thrum of the electric propellers.
Jason stood at the forward viewport. Outside, there was nothing but absolute, suffocating blackness.
"Depth?" Jason whispered.
"Ninety feet," Hughes answered, his voice trembling. "We're scraping the bottom of the channel. Any deeper and the pressure hull buckles."
"Keep us low," Jason said. "The thermal layer is our only shield."
The red LED on the dashboard blinked.
OBSTACLE.
RIGHT.
"Starboard, ten degrees," Jason ordered.
Hughes turned the wheel. The ship shuddered, banking sluggishly.
Through the murky glass, a shape emerged from the gloom. It wasn't a rock.
It was a streetcar.
A San Francisco trolley, resting on its side in the silt. Seaweed drifted from its broken windows like green hair.
"We're in the debris field," O'Malley muttered, peering over Jason's shoulder. "The earthquake from '06... they dumped the rubble here."
"No," Jason said, squinting. "Look closer."
The ship's dim running lights swept over the trolley.
Inside, there were skeletons. Still wearing rotting clothes.
"They didn't dump rubble," Jason realized. "They dumped the refugees."
A chill went down his spine. This wasn't just a junkyard. It was a mass grave.
The red light blinked again. Faster.
BRIDGE.
LOOK UP.
Jason tilted the periscope handle, angling the external camera upward.
High above them, looming like the legs of a giant iron spider, were the pylons of the Golden Gate Bridge. The massive concrete footings disappeared into the darkness above.
But it wasn't the concrete that caught Jason's eye.
It was the chains.
Thousands of heavy iron chains hung from the bridge's submerged struts, dangling down into the deep water like grotesque wind chimes.
At the end of every chain was a body.
"Mother of God," O'Malley breathed.
They drifted closer. The bodies were preserved by the cold, salt water and the lack of oxygen. They spun slowly in the current.
Men in lab coats. Women in university tweed. Some still clutched objects weighted to their ankles.
One man was chained to a heavy radio transmitter.
Another to a printing press.
A woman floated with a microscope tied around her neck.
" The Technologists," Oppenheimer's voice came from the doorway. He looked like a ghost. "Pelley didn't just exile them. He drowned them with their tools."
Jason stared at the hanging garden of corpses. This was the price of losing the timeline. The intellectual capital of the West Coast—the professors, the engineers, the dreamers—wasn't hiding in bunkers. It was fish food.
"That's Professor Teller," Oppenheimer pointed to a bloating face drifting past the glass. "He... he taught thermodynamics at Berkeley."
Oppenheimer turned away and vomited onto the metal floor.
"Keep moving," Jason said. His voice was flat, but his fists were clenched so hard his nails dug into his palms. "Don't look at them. Look at the exit."
"We can't exit," Hughes said.
The pilot pointed to the sonar screen—a crude oscilloscope rigged by Tesla.
A solid green wall spiked across the display.
"The mouth of the bay is blocked," Hughes said. "Steel net. Anti-submarine grade. It spans from the north tower to the south tower. We're trapped."
Jason grabbed the headset. "Tesla! Analysis!"
"It is a high-tensile steel mesh," Tesla's voice crackled. "But it is not just a barrier. The magnetic resonance shows active electronics woven into the links."
"Mines?" Jason asked.
"Acoustic triggers," Tesla confirmed. "They listen for cavitation. If we touch the net, or if the engine pitch gets too high... boom."
Jason looked at the net on the screen. It was a mile wide and deep enough to catch a whale.
"We can't cut it," O'Malley said. "Not without making noise."
"And we can't go over it," Jason said. "The destroyers are waiting on the surface."
"Then we blast it," Hemingway shouted from the rear gunner seat. "Torpedoes!"
"We don't have torpedoes, Ernest!" Jason snapped. "We have a cargo ship!"
He looked at the reactor gauge. The core was running hot, but stable.
"Wait," Jason said. An idea formed. A dangerous, stupid idea. "Robert. Cavitation."
Oppenheimer wiped his mouth. He looked up. "What?"
"If we spin the props fast enough... underwater... it creates bubbles, right? Vacuum bubbles."
"Yes," Oppenheimer nodded slowly. "And when they collapse, they create a shockwave. It's loud. It destroys propeller blades."
"How loud?" Jason asked.
"Supersonic," Oppenheimer said. "It hits like a hammer."
"What if we do it all at once?" Jason looked at Hughes. "What if we red-line the reactor, disengage the governors, and slam the engines into reverse? Instant max RPM."
"You'll shear the shafts!" Hughes yelled. "The props will explode!"
"But before they explode," Jason said, "they'll create a massive cavitation bubble. A steam void."
"A sonic bomb," Oppenheimer realized. his eyes widening. "You want to trigger the mines."
"I want to trigger all of them," Jason said. "The mines are acoustic. A cavitation collapse is the loudest sound in the ocean. It'll trick the sensors. They'll think a battleship just rammed the net."
"The shockwave will hit us too," Hughes warned. "We're in a tin can, Jason."
"Turn the tail to the net," Jason ordered. "Use the engines as a shield. We drift close, we pulse the bubble, and we ride the explosion out."
"It's suicide," O'Malley muttered.
"It's physics," Jason corrected. "Hughes. Spin her around."
The Icarus turned slowly in the dark water, the hanging bodies bumping softly against the hull. Thump. Thump. The sound of the dead knocking to get in.
"Stern is facing the net," Hughes reported. "Distance: 200 yards."
"Closer," Jason said. "100 yards."
They drifted backward. The green line on the scope grew closer.
"Reactor at 110%," Tesla reported. "Cooling loops are vibrating."
"Get ready to slam the throttle," Jason told Hughes. "On my mark. Full reverse. Then kill the engines immediately."
"100 yards," Hughes said. Sweat dripped from his nose onto the yoke.
"Closer."
"Jason..."
"50 yards."
The red light on the dashboard went solid. Even the AI was terrified.
"NOW!" Jason screamed.
Hughes slammed the heavy brass levers back.
SCREEEEE—
The electric motors, pumped with raw nuclear power, spun the propellers from zero to three thousand RPM in a fraction of a second.
The water around the tail didn't just churn. It tore apart.
A massive bubble of vacuum and superheated steam formed instantly around the stern.
Then, physics took its toll.
CRACK.
The bubble collapsed.
The sound was louder than any depth charge. It was a thunderclap inside the water.
The acoustic sensors on the steel net screamed.
A split second later, the mines detonated.
Hundreds of them. A chain reaction of high explosives strung across the mouth of the bay.
BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM.
The shockwave hit the Icarus.
Jason flew out of his chair. The world spun. The lights exploded.
The ship was thrown forward like a toy in a bathtub. The hull shrieked in agony as rivets popped and seams split. Water sprayed into the cockpit from a dozen leaks.
"Brace!" O'Malley roared, pinning Sarah to the floor with his body.
The ship tumbled. Up, down, sideways.
Then, sudden acceleration.
They were moving fast. Riding the turbulence of the explosion.
Through the rear viewport, Jason saw a flash of orange fire in the water. The net was gone. The explosion had ripped a hole the size of a city block in the steel mesh.
"We're through!" Hughes yelled, blood streaming from his nose. "We're in the channel!"
"Damage report!" Jason coughed, scrambling to the dash.
"Taking water in the tail!" Hemingway reported. "But the bulkheads are holding! We're heavy, but we're moving!"
"Get us deep!" Jason ordered. "Into the trench! Run silent!"
The Icarus limped forward, leaking oil and air bubbles, sliding down the continental shelf into the crushing dark of the Pacific Ocean.
Ten minutes passed.
The turbulence faded. The sound of explosions died away.
They were out.
Jason leaned against the console, gasping for air. The cockpit was ankle-deep in freezing water.
He looked at the sonar. The green wall was gone. Open ocean ahead.
"We made it," O'Malley whispered. He helped Sarah up. She was soaking wet, shivering violently, but alive.
Jason didn't celebrate. He looked at the red light.
It was blinking again. Slow. Calm.
NORTH.
Jason stared at it.
"Why north?" Jason asked the machine. "There's nothing north. Just lumber camps and rain."
The light blinked a new pattern.
SEATTLE.
FACTORY.
BODY.
Jason felt a cold knot in his stomach.
"He has a factory in Seattle," Jason realized. "A backup facility. Gates isn't just guiding us to safety. He's guiding us to a forge."
"A body?" O'Malley asked. "What does that mean?"
"It means he's tired of being a lightbulb," Jason said. "He wants to download into something that can walk."
He looked at the crew. They were battered, bleeding, and traumatized. They had lost their gold. They had lost their home. They had seen the graveyard of their friends.
But they were free.
"Set course for Seattle," Jason said quietly. "Let's go meet the new landlord."
The Icarus, the Iron Whale, turned its scarred nose north, disappearing into the vast, indifferent silence of the Pacific.