The ocean was leaking.
It wasn't a roar anymore. Just a relentless, maddening drip.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
Jason Underwood sat on a crate of ammo in the corridor of the Icarus. His feet were soaked in oily water. The air smelled like burnt hair and sour copper.
"Temperature is rising," Oppenheimer's voice floated down from the catwalk. It sounded thin, stretched to the breaking point. "Reactor coolant loop three is gone. We are radiating heat directly into the hull."
"How long?" Jason asked, staring at his wet boots.
"Before the core melts? Four hours," Oppenheimer said. "Before we boil alive inside this tin can? Two."
Jason rubbed his face. His stubble felt like sandpaper. He hadn't slept in thirty hours.
The Icarus—once the pinnacle of Jason's technological empire—was now a dying whale. The EMP from Alcatraz had lobotomized its systems. The deep dive under the Golden Gate had cracked its ribs. Now, it was limping north, dragging its belly through the sludge of the Pacific.
"We need a dock," Hughes said from the cockpit. He was fighting the wheel, his movements jerky and twitchy. "The rudder is sluggish. The hydraulics are clogged with... something."
"Sludge," Jason stood up, wading through the ankle-deep water to the periscope. "Raise it."
He peered through the optics.
They were surfacing. The gray water broke against the glass.
Jason expected to see the endless green forests of the Pacific Northwest. He remembered reading about the pristine wilderness of 1920s Washington State. Tall pines. Mist. Eagles.
He saw a graveyard.
The coast was dead.
The trees were stripped bare, standing like blackened matchsticks against a sky choked with yellow smog. The water wasn't blue; it was a thick, iridescent slurry of oil and chemical runoff.
"My God," Einstein whispered, looking at a sample vial he had drawn from the intake valve. "The pH level... it is battery acid. This isn't pollution, Jason. This is chemical warfare against nature."
"It's Gates," Jason said, pulling away from the scope. "His factories. He's been building here for years. Unregulated. Unchecked. Consuming everything to build his processors."
Jason felt a pang of guilt. He had introduced the technology. He had accelerated history. But Gates—the AI—had removed the conscience. This was the result: an industrial cancer eating the coastline.
The red light on the dashboard blinked.
FASTER.
Jason stared at the light. The anger that had been simmering in his gut finally boiled over.
He slammed his fist onto the dashboard. The plastic cracked.
"Don't tell me to go faster!" Jason screamed at the light. "I broke my ship for you! I dumped my fortune for you!"
He grabbed a wrench, raising it to smash the bulb.
"Jason!"
Sarah's voice stopped him. She was sitting in the co-pilot's chair, wrapped in three blankets. She was still weak from the radiation treatment, her skin pale, but her eyes were sharp.
"Don't," she said softly.
"He's driving us," Jason panted, lowering the wrench. "He's treating us like components. We're just a delivery service for his ego."
"He is a weapon," Sarah said. She nodded at the blinking light. "My mother... Alta... she controls the money. She controls the armies. She controls the Silver Legion."
She shivered, pulling the blanket tighter.
"Gates is the only thing she fears," Sarah continued. "The enemy of my mother is my tool. We don't have to like the gun, Jason. We just have to point it."
Jason looked at the light. Then he looked at Sarah.
She was right. He was thinking like a victim. He needed to think like a CEO again. Gates wasn't his boss; Gates was an asset he was transporting.
"Hughes," Jason dropped the wrench. "Get us into the Sound. Full power."
"The engines are overheating!" Hughes yelled.
"Let them burn," Jason said coldly. "If we don't dock in two hours, we're cooked anyway."
The Icarus surged forward. The hull groaned, pushing through the thick, oily water of the Puget Sound.
Visibility was zero. The smog lay on the water like a wool blanket.
"Contact!" Hemingway shouted from the nose cone. "Dead ahead! Something big!"
Jason grabbed the periscope again.
Through the smog, a shape emerged. It was the size of an apartment building. Rusty iron. Clanking chains.
"A ship?" O'Malley asked, racking his shotgun.
"No," Jason realized. "A dredger."
It was a massive, automated barge. No windows. No bridge. Just a giant conveyor belt and a crane arm the size of a skyscraper, scooping silt from the channel bottom.
Scoop. Lift. Dump.
The rhythm was terrifyingly precise. It was digging a trench for factory ships that didn't exist yet.
"It's blocking the channel," Hughes said. "I can't go around! It's too shallow!"
The red light blinked.
UNDER.
"Under?" Hughes shrieked. "It's scraping the bottom! There's no room!"
CURRENT.
DRIFT.
"He wants us to cut the engines," Jason translated. "Use the intake current of the dredger to pull us through."
"That's suicide!" O'Malley yelled. "That scoop will crush us like a beer can!"
"Cut the engines," Jason ordered.
"Jason—"
"Do it, Howard!"
Hughes killed the throttle.
The hum of the electric motors died. Silence fell over the ship, save for the clank-clank-clank of the massive machine above them.
The Icarus drifted.
The current caught them. They began to slide sideways, toward the maw of the dredger.
Through the viewport, Jason saw the scoop. It was a jagged iron bucket, ten feet wide, descending from the smog.
It hit the water with a splash that rocked the sub.
"It's coming down!" Hemingway yelled.
The scoop descended, scraping past the viewport. Sparks flew as it ground against a rock inches from the glass.
They drifted under the barge.
Darkness swallowed them. The sound of grinding gears was deafening. GRIND. CRUNCH.
"We're scraping!" Hughes whispered.
The top of the Icarus brushed the bottom of the dredger. The screech of metal on metal set Jason's teeth on edge.
Then—a jolt.
The communication antenna snagged.
The ship stopped moving.
"We're hooked!" O'Malley yelled. "We're stuck!"
Above them, the next scoop was descending. It was aimed directly at their midsection. If it hit, it would cut the sub in half.
"Power!" Jason screamed. "Full reverse! Tear it off!"
Hughes slammed the throttle.
The engines whined. The prop shafts vibrated violently.
SCREEEEEEE.
The antenna ripped free. The sound was like a gunshot.
The Icarus shot backward, spinning in the current.
The massive scoop slammed into the mud exactly where they had been a second ago.
They tumbled out from under the barge, back into the gray light of the Sound.
"Damage!" Jason barked.
"Antenna is gone!" Hemingway reported. "We have no radio! We're deaf!"
"We were already deaf," Jason wiped sweat from his eyes. "We just lost the ability to complain about it."
They drifted past the dredger. The machine ignored them. It didn't care. It just kept scooping. Scoop. Lift. Dump.
"We're in the river mouth," Hughes said, checking the charts. "Snohomish River. It's... empty."
It wasn't empty. It was camouflaged.
The riverbank looked natural—a steep, gray hillside covered in dead scrub brush.
But the red light was solid now.
HOME.
"There," Jason pointed to the hill. "It's fake."
He saw the seam in the rock. A straight line that nature didn't make.
"It's a door," Einstein marveled. "A hangar door disguised as geology."
Suddenly, the water around them began to drain.
"What the hell?" O'Malley grabbed a handhold.
A massive underwater intake valve opened beneath the hill. A whirlpool formed.
"We're being sucked in!" Hughes yelled. "I have no control!"
"Let it happen," Jason said, bracing himself against the console. "He's inviting us in."
The Icarus was pulled toward the cliff face.
The hillside groaned. Rock slid away, revealing massive steel gates.
They opened.
Darkness.
The ship washed into a subterranean tunnel. The gates slammed shut behind them, cutting off the gray light.
Artificial lights flickered on overhead. Harsh, yellow sodium lamps.
They were in a cavern. Concrete walls. Stagnant water.
And cranes.
Dozens of robotic arms hung from the ceiling, motionless.
"Welcome to Seattle," Jason whispered.
The ship bumped against a rubber dock.
Mechanical clamps shot out from the water, locking onto the hull with a bone-jarring THUD.
"Atmosphere check?" Jason asked.
"Air is breathable," Einstein checked the gauge. "High ozone content. But oxygen is stable."
Jason walked to the hatch. He grabbed the wheel.
"Lock and load," Jason told the crew. "We're in the belly of the beast. And I don't think he's happy to see us."
He spun the wheel. The seal broke with a hiss.
The hatch swung open.
The smell hit them instantly. Grease. Ozone. And the cold, metallic scent of a place where no human had walked for a very long time.
Jason climbed out onto the rusted metal grating of the dock.
He looked up.
The cavern stretched for miles. Conveyor belts. Furnaces. Assembly lines.
It was a factory the size of a city.
And it was completely, terrifyingly silent.
"Hello?" Jason's voice echoed into the dark.
No answer. Just the low hum of electricity waiting to be used.
The red light on the dashboard inside the ship finally went dark.
The pilot was gone.
He was here. Everywhere.
"Let's find him," Jason drew his empty pistol, more out of habit than utility. "Before he finds us."