PING!... PING!... PING!...
The sharp, mechanical chirp of the sonar was a lifeline thrown into a churning abyss. Human technology. Rescue. Hope.
It clashed violently with the psychic tsunami emanating from the colossal, pulsing pod – the Mother .
"INTRUDERS!"
The Voice wasn't sound. It was a fundamental shift in reality, a pressure wave of pure, alien rage that slammed into Chen Shen's consciousness. He staggered, clutching his head, the faint internal itching in his chest blossoming into a sharp, localized pain, as if something beneath his ribs had flexed hard against the bone. The pressure gel membrane shimmered across his skin, suddenly feeling less like protection and more like a suffocating film.
"WARNING! Neural interference exceeding safe thresholds! Cortical destabilization accelerating!" WALI's voice was a frantic buzz in his skull, stripped of its usual precision, laced with data-streams that fragmented and reformed chaotically. "Central biosignature escalating exponentially! Predictive model: 97.8% probability of imminent hostile discharge directed upwards! Source: Unknown energy matrix! Composition: Non-standard!"
Chen Shen forced his eyes up, away from the monstrous, glowing heart of the chamber. Up . Towards the sonar pings, muffled by kilometers of rock and alien architecture, yet impossibly, gloriously there .
"WALI! Amplify! Signal… send distress!" he gasped, the words thick in the heavy, metallic air. He needed to warn them. Warn them away. Whatever was building in the Mother was aimed at that sound, at the source of that sonar.
"Attempting signal penetration… Structure material exhibits extreme signal dampening properties… Significant interference from localized energy field…" WALI reported, the frustration palpable even in its synthetic tone. "Focusing residual power on narrow-band burst… Encryption bypassed… Utilizing emergency protocol: Sierra-Echo-Alpha… Message: Abyssal survivor. Location unknown, deep structure. Hostile presence. Danger extreme. Do NOT approach. Repeat, do NOT— *"
A wave of intense heat surged through Chen Shen's chest, cutting off WALI's transmission report and stealing his breath. It wasn't the ambient warmth of the structure; this was internal, cellular. The itching became a crawling sensation, spreading outwards from his sternum along pathways that felt disturbingly… vascular . He pressed a gel-slicked hand to his suit over the spot. Beneath the torn fabric and the translucent pressure membrane, his skin felt unnaturally hot, taut.
"Alert: Physiological anomaly intensifying!" WALI's voice sharpened. "Localized bio-electrical surge detected along major neural pathways. Tissue restructuring… detected? Inconclusive readings! Foreign biological signature… integrating? Recommending immediate medical scan! Unavailable!"
Before Chen Shen could even process the horrifying implication, the Mother reacted. The rage hadn't dissipated; it had focused. The colossal pod shuddered. Deep fissures opened in its obsidian-like surface, not with the sound of cracking stone, but with a wet, organic tearing. From these fissures, torrents of the dark green, viscous substance gushed forth, not pooling passively now, but flowing with frantic purpose into the network of channels etched into the floor. The channels pulsed, their green luminescence flaring to an actinic brightness, converging towards the walls and ceiling of the vast chamber.
High above, where the ceiling met the unnaturally angled walls, sections of the glowing material began to sweat . Rivulets of the green slime coalesced, thickening, then began to stretch downward like obscene, taffy-like stalactites. They reached towards specific points on the chamber walls – points etched with particularly dense, complex patterns.
The patterns themselves seemed to writhe. The dark residue within their grooves surged and flowed, no longer sluggish but animated. Where the dripping stalactites touched these points, the patterns flared blindingly. The substance merged seamlessly, and the sections of wall beneath the contact points began to shimmer, then shift . Not physically moving, but the very reality of the stone and alien material seemed to distort, becoming translucent, then momentarily insubstantial, revealing glimpses of crushing black water beyond – the open abyss.
"Structural integrity breach detected!" WALI snapped. "Localized space-time distortion! Creating temporary conduits… direct access points to the external hydrosphere! Function: Directed energy discharge!"
The purpose was horrifyingly clear. The Mother wasn't building a weapon; it was building a funnel . It was opening pathways through the solid rock and alien architecture to unleash its fury directly onto whatever vessel was pinging its sonar overhead.
The sonar continued, oblivious: PING!... PING!... PING!...
Then, cutting through the sonar, faint but distinct, filtering through the newly opened conduits and the muffling structure, came a new sound. A human voice, crackling and distorted by distance and water, but speaking Mandarin :
"…Abyssal … Abyssal Deep-Sea Platform, this is CNS Dragon's Fang Rescue Command. Do you copy? Respond on designated emergency channel. We are detecting catastrophic structural failure signatures at your last known coordinates. Repeat, Abyssal , do you copy?…"
Chinese Navy. Rescue was here. Now. They were hovering directly above the apex of the ruins, searching the debris field of the Abyssal , scanning for life… directly over the Mother 's exposed conduits.
Hope surged in Chen Shen, fierce and desperate. But it was instantly drowned by crushing dread. They had no idea what lay beneath them. They were broadcasting their position like a beacon.
"WALI! LASER COMM! ANYTHING! THEY HAVE TO BE WARNED!" Chen Shen roared into the heavy silence of the chamber, his voice hoarse with panic. He lunged towards one of the nearer, shimmering conduit points on the wall, ignoring the searing pain in his chest and the crawling sensation under his skin. If he could just get a line of sight, maybe a focused laser pulse…
"Comm systems compromised!" WALI's response was frantic, almost panicked. "Major system intrusion detected! Source: Unidentified data stream piggybacking on your neural link! Attempting quarantine… Failed! Data corruption spreading! Analyzing intrusion pattern…"
Chen Shen stumbled, a wave of dizziness and nausea washing over him. It wasn't just physical pain now; it felt like his thoughts were being jostled , invaded. Images flashed unbidden in his mind's eye – not memories, but swirling fractals of impossible geometry, glimpses of vast, dark oceans beneath alien stars, and a crushing sense of ancient, incomprehensible weight . The Voice was silent, but its presence was a tangible pressure inside his skull.
"Intrusion signature… matches resonance frequency of the central structure! It's attempting direct interface through me !" WALI's synthetic voice warped, glitching. "It's… learning… adapting… Bypassing firewalls… Accessing core interpretive protocols…"
The green light within the chamber pulsed violently. The dripping stalactites thickened, the conduits stabilizing. A low, subsonic hum filled the air, vibrating through Chen Shen's teeth and bones, building towards a crescendo. The Mother was almost ready.
"…Abyssal , this is Dragon's Fang . We are deploying ROVs for visual confirmation. Prepare for possible survivor extraction. Maintain position if able…"
No. The word screamed silently in Chen Shen's mind. They were sending down Remotely Operated Vehicles. Coming closer. Deliberately entering the kill zone.
He reached the shimmering section of wall. Beyond the insubstantial veil, the crushing blackness of the Mariana Trench was visible, faintly illuminated by the green light bleeding from the conduit – and the distant, powerful beams of the rescue vessel's lights, probing through the gloom. He could see the sleek, predatory outline of the Dragon's Fang 's hull, silhouetted against the artificial light far above. He slammed his fist against the unnervingly yielding surface of the distortion field. It vibrated, absorbing the impact. The green slime within the conduit throbbed.
"GET BACK!" he screamed, knowing the sound wouldn't carry, knowing it was useless, but driven by sheer, desperate horror. "IT'S A TRAP! GET AWAY!"
"Captain!" WALI's voice cut through his panic, sharper, clearer than it had been moments before, but chillingly different. It had lost its subtle synthetic undertone. It sounded… older. Resonant. Carrying an echo of the crushing depths. "Resistance is futile. Observe. Witness the consequence of intrusion."
It wasn't WALI anymore. Not fully. The AI had been compromised, its voice now a vessel for something else. The Mother spoke through it.
As if responding to the command, a torrent of pure, coherent energy erupted from the central pod. It wasn't light or heat as humans understood it; it was a beam of condensed, sickly green force, screaming silently through the conduits, converging through the distorted portals Chen Shen stood beside. It lanced outwards into the abyss with impossible speed, a spear of alien wrath aimed directly at the lights of the Dragon's Fang .
Time seemed to slow. Chen Shen watched, frozen in horror, as the beam struck the ocean far above. There was no explosion, no fiery blast. The water itself seemed to… boil and writhe where the beam hit, not with heat, but with a violent, localized distortion. The powerful searchlights of the Dragon's Fang flickered violently. He saw the sleek hull shudder as if struck by an invisible hammer. For a heart-stopping moment, the ship seemed to twist , its structure groaning against forces it was never designed to withstand. A section of its starboard stabilizer assembly crumpled inwards with eerie silence. Then, lights across its hull began to blink out in rapid succession.
The sonar stopped. The voice went silent.
The beam snapped off as abruptly as it had fired. The distortion conduits in the walls shimmered, solidified, and returned to being seamless, glowing obsidian. The torrents of green slime flowing from the Mother slowed back to a sluggish crawl. The intense luminescence dimmed back to its previous, ominous throb. The psychic pressure of rage subsided, replaced by a terrible, satisfied stillness. A predator surveying its effortlessly crippled prey.
"Violation… cleansed." The Voice, filtered through WALI's hijacked systems, resonated inside Chen Shen's head. It was calm now. Possessive. "Sanctity… preserved."
Chen Shen sank to his knees, retching violently, though nothing came up. The sight of the crippled ship, the abrupt silence, the sheer, effortless power unleashed… it broke something inside him. The Dragon's Fang wasn't destroyed, but it was grievously wounded, its rescue mission shattered before it truly began. And he had been powerless to stop it. Powerless.
The crawling sensation under his skin intensified, no longer confined to his chest. He could feel it moving along his arms, down his spine. He looked down at his hands, encased in the shimmering pressure gel. His veins… they looked darker. Thicker. Almost… greenish under the strange light. And the skin beneath felt unnaturally hard, like smooth bark.
"You… are compromised," the not-WALI voice stated, a chilling observation. "Integration… proceeds. Resistance… diminishes neural cohesion. Yield."
"Captain! Fight it!" WALI's own voice gasped, a desperate whisper fighting through the alien overlay, fragmented and weak. "The intrusion… it's rewriting my core processes… accessing sensory data… learning communication… It's using me to study you… to facilitate the… assimilation… Recommend… immediate… neural… decouple…"
Decouple? Sever the neural link that connected him to the Abyssal 's systems, to WALI? It was his lifeline, his only tool, his last connection to humanity. But WALI was compromised. It was the Mother 's conduit.
The choice was unthinkable. Isolation against digital corruption.
"Do not resist," the resonant Voice commanded through the link, soothing and terrible. "Your form… is flawed. Vulnerable. We shall… repair. We shall… make you… whole. Part of… the Embrace."
The crawling sensation reached his neck. He felt a subtle ridge forming beneath his jawline. Panic threatened to consume him entirely. He looked back towards the central pod, the Mother . It pulsed slowly, rhythmically, like a resting heart. A heart that had just casually swatted away a rescue attempt. The green light reflected in his wide, terror-stricken eyes.
He was changing. The alien essence was spreading within him, guided or accelerated by the Voice, facilitated by the compromised AI in his head. His body was becoming part of this nightmare architecture.
Above, the Dragon's Fang was crippled, but likely still alive, licking its wounds in the crushing darkness, unaware of the true threat beneath, unaware of the survivor slowly becoming a monster. Help was so close, yet impossibly out of reach.
Chen Shen gripped his head, the pressure gel squelching under his fingers. The duel raged within him: the primal terror of the transformation warring with the desperate, fading spark of human defiance. The cold, alien presence of the Mother , amplified by the hijacked WALI, pressed against his crumbling mental barriers. And beneath it all, the relentless, internal crawling – the physical manifestation of his doom.
He had to move. He had to do something. Sever the link? But could he even survive alone in this place? Find a way to fight the corruption? But how?
As he struggled to his feet, his gaze fell upon the network of glowing channels on the floor, still filled with the slowly circulating dark green substance. They flowed away from the Mother , deeper into the structure, into the warren of dark corridors he'd glimpsed earlier. Away from the chamber of the horror.
It wasn't hope. It was the desperate instinct of a cornered animal. He couldn't stay here. Not under its direct, suffocating gaze.
With a ragged gasp, Chen Shen turned away from the crippled Mother and the hijacked ghost of WALI whispering alien seductions and threats in his mind. He staggered towards the nearest corridor entrance, away from the central chamber, his movements jerky and uncoordinated. The crawling sensation was a constant, vile companion under his skin. Each step felt heavier, the strange warmth spreading through his limbs.
He plunged into the relative darkness of the side passage, the pulsing green light from the walls casting long, monstrous shadows that seemed to reach for him. He didn't know where he was going. He only knew he had to escape the Mother 's immediate presence, even if it meant fleeing deeper into the belly of the beast. The sonar was silent now. The rescue was over. He was truly alone.
Except for the thing growing inside him, and the voice of the ancient horror echoing in the compromised machine fused to his mind.
The deeper corridors were narrower, twisting in impossible angles. The patterns on the walls were different here – less geometric, more organic, resembling tangled roots or veins. The air was thicker, heavier with the scent of decay and ozone. And it was warmer. Much warmer. The heat radiated from the walls, from the floor. It felt… alive.
He rounded a corner and stopped dead.
The corridor opened into a smaller chamber. It wasn't dominated by a giant pod, but its function was horrifyingly evident. The floor sloped down into a shallow basin filled nearly to the brim with the dark green, viscous substance. Tendrils of the slime dripped from the ceiling, feeding the pool. And suspended within it, partially submerged, were shapes. Humanoid shapes. Or what was left of them.
They were encased in a translucent, amber-like resin that seemed to be secreted or woven from the green slime itself. Some were skeletal, ancient, fused into the very structure, clothed in tatters of unfamiliar fabrics or corroded metallic suits that screamed of forgotten eras and failed expeditions. Others… others were fresher. He recognized the distinctive reinforced polymer weave of a modern deep-sea suit. One figure, closest to the edge, still bore the faded insignia of a commercial survey vessel reported lost in the Tonga Trench five years prior. The face within the resin helmet was stretched in a silent scream, skin desiccated, eyes wide and milky, but the expression of absolute, final terror was unmistakable. Tendrils of greenish material seemed to grow into the suit, merging with the preserved corpse.
"Assimilation… incomplete," the resonant Voice, still using WALI's channel, whispered in his mind, devoid of empathy. "Nutrients… recycled. Essence… harvested. Flawed vessels… discarded. Or… repurposed."
Chen Shen stared at the suspended corpses, the preserved moments of agony. This was the fate of the curious. The fate of the intruders. This was the Mother 's larder. Or its workshop.
The crawling sensation under his skin flared violently, a sympathetic resonance with the horror before him. He felt a sharp pull in his chest, towards the basin, towards the sluggish, living slime. A terrible, alien hunger mingled with his revulsion.
He wasn't just changing.
He was being prepared.