The ocean had gone mad. Toward the end of their third week of aimless drifting, the sky—moments ago painted in sunset crimson—turned black all at once, as if a giant hand had slammed shut a curtain of light. The wind, once a light breeze, had transformed into a crazed beast, howling through the gaps in the superstructure, tearing off the last awnings, hurling them into the churning water, sweeping from the deck everything that had survived the previous storm.
But the true horror was the waves. Mountains of water, as tall as a three-story building, rose from the abyss and crashed down upon the defenseless Orion with a dull roar like an artillery barrage. The liner, once majestic, now groaned, creaked, and cracked at every steel joint, like a living, tormented creature. The deck's tilt grew increasingly dangerous, turning the cabin into a hellish merry-go-round: dishes, decanters, books, and then even the heavy radio, torn from the wall, went crashing downward, shattering against the bulkheads with the ring of glass and crack of wood.
"This is the end!" Drake screamed, clinging to the iron leg of the bunk so hard his knuckles went white. His faithful bowler hat had rolled hopelessly under the cabinet, and his revolver had slipped from his unbuttoned jacket, disappearing into the growing chaos. "Damn this storm! It's going to tear us to pieces!"
Laura, her face white as chalk but with unexpected composure in her eyes, helped Ethan brace the door with a mattress and a crate, trying to create some barrier against the water already seeping through the cracks.
"Ethan!" Her voice broke, cutting through the howl of wind and screech of metal. "Are we going to survive?"
He, throwing his full weight against their barricade, turned for a second. His eyes held neither comfort nor panic—only cold focus.
"I don't know," he answered honestly, and this directness cut sharper than any scream. "The bulkheads are holding for now, but if the list increases another few degrees... we'll fold in half. There are no lifeboats, and in a meat grinder like this, they'd be useless anyway. The superstructure could go any second! Right now, our only chance is the hold. That's where the hull is strongest, where there's at least some hope."
"The hold?!" Drake rolled his eyes in a fit of hysteria. "That's a steel coffin! I'm not going into that black hole, Carter!"
"Then stay here and meet Neptune in person. Laura, with me! Now!" Ethan snapped.
He dashed into the corridor, pulling the girl along. They raced down endless flights of stairs, into the very depths of the Orion. Drake, cursing and praying in the same breath, ran after them, stumbling on every step.
From the darkness of the hold, a heavy, stagnant stench hit them sharply: musty fuel oil mixed with the acrid smell of ocean salt. The air here was thick and sticky, as if the ship's very innards reluctantly admitted them into its iron labyrinths.
The hold was packed to the ceiling with crates of provisions, bundles, and barrels. In the corner, several tanks of diesel fuel for the backup generators were chained to the deck. The air was thick and heavy, but here, in the very heart of the ship, the deafening roar of the storm had diminished to a muffled, powerful hum, as if they sat inside a giant drum. Ethan found a battery-powered emergency lantern—a hefty "Duracell" model, popular in those years—and its trembling beam picked out heaps of crates and stress-shivering bulkheads from the darkness.
"We sit quiet and wait," his voice sounded unnaturally loud in the relative silence that had fallen. "If the ship holds, we live. But if not..." He didn't finish.
Laura, wrapped in a coarse woolen blanket she'd found, just nodded, pressing her back against the cold metal of a crate. Her wide eyes, reflecting the lantern light, betrayed animal terror. Drake, clutching his own flashlight in trembling hands, muttered incoherent phrases about ten thousand dollars now "sinking to the bottom along with his own corpse."
And then the Orion was hit.
But it was no ordinary blow. Ethan, whose body had grown accustomed to the storm's rhythm, suddenly felt the ship's behavior change. The Orion stopped fighting the waves. It began to sink, as if an abyss had opened beneath its keel.
"Whirlpool!" he shouted over the roar. "We're being pulled into the deep! Hold on!"
And then the whole world seemed to flip. They were thrown sideways; crates of canned goods flew like matchboxes, heavy fuel barrels tore from their fastenings. The three, clinging to each other, became a single mass of bodies tossed about in the steel box that some unknown force began to spin and shake like a snowflake in a blizzard.
Through the tiny porthole, Laura caught a glimpse of water outside spinning in a frenzied vortex, plunging downward into blackness. And then the Orion was yanked into that whirlpool with such force that everything inside them turned over. Pressure pushed them into the floor, their lungs compressed, darkness closed in.
"Hold on!" Ethan shouted over the chaos. With one arm he pressed Laura to him, with the other he gripped Drake in a death hold. His voice immediately drowned in the deafening, almost inhuman screech of tearing metal.
They were falling.
Five seconds. Ten. Twenty... Ethan counted frantically to himself, clinging to his fading consciousness with the last of his strength. The darkness around became dense, tangible. How deep had they plunged into that abyss? A hundred meters? A thousand?
The steel hull around them groaned and shuddered under the monstrous pressure of the water, like a giant beast in its death throes. The free fall into the unknown seemed endless, only the frantic heartbeat telling them they were still alive.
Pressure! flashed through his mind. We'll be crushed any second!
But instead of expected death, came impact. Sharp, dry, deafening—so powerful that pain instantly flared in their ears. The Orion struck something and stopped with a soul-rending screech. The ship's steel belly plowed across something solid, metal howling and groaning under the monstrous load, but against all laws of physics, the hull held and didn't split at the seams.
And then silence fell. Deep, absolute, almost tangible. After the recent hell, this emptiness was more frightening than any thunder. It pressed on their eardrums, robbing them of all spatial orientation.
"We're... we're alive?" Laura whispered, struggling to unclench her fingers, still gripping Ethan's sleeve. She coughed, spitting out salt water and blood from her split lip.
Ethan, freeing himself, raised the lantern. The trembling beam crawled across the hold. Everything was turned upside down, but the ship's framework had survived. From a pile of shattered crates came a groan—Drake, digging himself out, held his bleeding head.
"Where are we?" he moaned, his eyes full of madness. "Is this... the underworld?"
He fell silent, listening to the echoing silence, then shifted his gaze to Ethan.
"Of course," Drake groaned, dropping his head weakly onto the debris. "If this is hell, why am I in the same pit with you, Carter?"
Ethan, without answering, crawled to the nearest porthole, smeared with mud and algae. He roughly wiped the glass with his sleeve, clearing the slime. And froze. Beyond the thick glass, there was no foaming water, no abyss. Only darkness, shot through with a weak, ghostly, greenish glow emanating from somewhere above.
"We're on a solid surface," he said quietly, and in his usually impenetrably calm voice, shock sounded for the first time. "And there's... air here. What the hell is going on?"
He stared through the porthole, trying to reconcile the facts with what he knew of physics. By all laws of nature, they should have either crashed, drowned, or been crushed by monstrous pressure at depth. And here they sat in the hold, breathing—stale, heavy, but air—and staring at glowing walls.
"Ethan," Laura's voice trembled. "What is this place?"
He turned to her. In the lantern light, her face was white as chalk, but fire burned in her eyes—panic had passed, and questions remained.
"I don't know," he admitted for the first time in a long while.
He raised the lantern higher, illuminating the overturned hold, the shattered crates, the trembling bulkheads.
"We need to get up top. See where we've landed."
"Up top?" Drake laughed hysterically. "Carter, do you hear that hum? We're underwater! Underwater, damn it! Where do you propose we go?"
"To where the light is," Ethan cut him off, ignoring another dose of Drake's venom. He pointed insistently at the porthole, beyond whose thick glass pulsed a strange, deathly-greenish glow. "If there's light, there's something. And if there's something, maybe there's a way out."
Laura looked at him, and in her eyes, despite the terror, something like trust flickered.
"I'm with you," she said quietly but firmly.
Drake looked at them both—this strange pair, the criminal and the billionaire's daughter—and, cursing, got up, rubbing his injured head.
"Damn you, Carter! Fine, let's go. But if there are monsters out there—I'm running back first."
"Deal," Ethan smirked. "You run first. We'll have a look."
They moved toward the ladder leading up, into the unknown waiting beyond the Orion's doors.