Location: Sector Zero. Depth: 12,000 meters.
"Ms. Vance! You are committing an act of terror! I will have the entire Aethelgard Navy hunt you down!"
Arthur Sterling's voice cracked through the speakers, shrill and pathetic. On the holographic screen, the billionaire was red-faced, screaming at the air, surrounded by fleeing guests and decomposing fish projections.
Elara didn't even blink.
"L.O.R.E," she said calmly, her eyes fixed on the sonar radar. "Mute him."
[Affirmative.]
The screaming stopped instantly. Arthur Sterling continued to wave his arms like a silent mime trapped in a glass box. It was almost comical.
"He is irrelevant," Elara murmured. The real threat was the single red dot moving across her radar screen at impossible speed.
It wasn't a military submarine. It was smaller, darker, and designed for one thing: Hunting.
[Target Identification Failed,] L.O.R.E's synthetic voice sounded annoyed. [The vessel is using a polymorphic shield. It's... ghosting through my sensors.]
"A ghost," Elara tightened her grip on the controls. "Let's see if it bleeds."
She deployed a secondary wave of Nano-Drones. Five hundred silver specks shot through the water, forming a constricting net around the intruder.
The black submersible didn't panic. It danced.
With a maneuver that defied physics, the vessel spun vertically, slipping through a gap in her drone net no wider than a doorway. It drifted closer, silent as a grave, until it hovered just fifty meters from Elara's cockpit.
It was pitch black, shaped like a blade of obsidian. On its hull, a faded emblem was barely visible: A Compass wrapped in Thorns.
Elara's breath hitched. The Magellan Crest.
[Incoming Transmission,] L.O.R.E warned. [Source: Unknown. Encryption Level: Archaic. I cannot block it.]
Static filled the cockpit. Then, a voice.
"You're loud, Elara."
The sound of her name, spoken in that deep, gravelly baritone, hit her harder than a torpedo.
Elara froze. The command deck seemed to vanish. Suddenly, she wasn't in a submarine. She was standing on a marble balcony a thousand years ago, feeling the cold steel of a dagger and the warm embrace of a lover.
The Prince.
The man who had kissed her at dawn and ordered her execution at dusk.
"Caspian," she hissed, the name tasting like poison. "You're alive."
"And you're reckless," Caspian's voice crackled through the comms. There was no mockery in it, only a tired, dangerous exhaustion. "You just declared war on the Syndicate in a bright neon dress. Did you think Sterling was the only shark in the water?"
"I am the shark," Elara retorted, her fingers hovering over the [FIRE] button. "And you are trespassing in my grave."
"I'm not here to fight you," Caspian said. "Check your six. Sterling didn't just panic. He pushed the button."
[Warning! High-Energy Launch Detected!] L.O.R.E screamed.
Elara glanced at the tactical map. From the base of the Crystal Lotus hotel, three distinct heat signatures were rocketing downwards.
Nuclear Depth Charges.
But they weren't aiming for her. Her stealth tech was too advanced. They were locking onto the only solid signal in the area: Caspian.
"He's sacrificing the hotel to kill you," Elara realized. Sterling was willing to risk his own guests to silence the witness.
"Go dark, Elara," Caspian's voice remained calm, almost resigned. "They want me. Let them have me."
The black submersible stopped moving. He was surrendering to the blast radius. He was going to let himself be destroyed.
Let him die, a voice in Elara's head screamed. This is justice. This is karma.
She watched the torpedoes closing in. 10 seconds to impact.
Elara's finger hovered over the weapon controls. Her heart pounded against her ribs, a drum of ancient rage.
But then she remembered his eyes from the past. The tears. The apology she never understood.
"Damn it," she cursed.
"L.O.R.E! Redirect the Drone Swarm! Formation: Aegis!"
[Dr. Vance, that is ill-advised! We will lose 40% of our fleet!]
"Do it!"
Elara slammed the throttle forward. Her drones abandoned their attack formation and swarmed in front of Caspian's vessel, weaving together to form a shimmering wall of electromagnetic energy.
BOOM.
The depth charges detonated.
The ocean floor shook. A massive shockwave of silt and boiling water engulfed them. The "Aegis" shield flickered and shattered, thousands of her drones turning into scrap metal in a millisecond.
But the black submersible remained untouched.
Silence returned to the abyss.
Inside her cockpit, Elara panted, sweat trickling down her forehead. She had just saved the man she swore to kill.
[Transmission Resumed.]
For a long moment, there was only the sound of breathing on the other end.
"Why?" Caspian asked softly.
Elara leaned back, her eyes cold again. "Because your life belongs to me, Caspian Thorne. When you die, it will be by my hand, not by some cheap trash from Sterling."
A low, dry chuckle echoed through the speaker. It sounded painful, yet strangely intimate.
"Fair enough, Your Majesty."
A set of coordinates appeared on Elara's screen.
"Midnight," Caspian said. "The Graveyard of Ships. Come alone. Don't bring the noisy AI."
"I make the rules," Elara snapped, but the connection was already dead.
The black submersible engaged its engines and vanished into the murky depths, leaving Elara alone in the dark—furious, confused, and dangerously alive.