Offshore Waters - 2:14 AM
The explosion turned night into day.
Fire blood from the Daedalus’s engine room in a pillar that climbed toward the sky, orange and white and so bright it hurt to look at, and the sound ca half a second later as a physical force that slapped across the water and made ears ring.
Yoo hit the ocean before the shockwave reached them, his body plunging through cold water that felt like hitting concrete after the heat of the explosion, and his lungs tried to gasp but water rushed in instead of air.
Up, which way is up.
Bubbles, follow the bubbles.
He kicked with legs that barely responded and his broken fingers were useless for swimming but his other hand clawed at water until his head broke surface and he sucked in air that tasted like smoke and diesel fuel.
The boat was ten ters away with Ji-yeon pulling bodies from the water, her shadows reaching out like tentacles to grab whoever was closest, and Chen Wei surfaced beside Yoo coughing black water.
"Swim," she gasped.
They swam.
Behind them the Daedalus listed to starboard as fire spread through interior corridors and secondary explosions popped like firecrackers, crew mbers abandoning ship in lifeboats or just jumping into the ocean, and sowhere in that destruction Director Kwan would be trying to salvage the situation but the ritual components were burning and the recipients were gone.
Yoo reached the boat and hands grabbed him, hauled him over the side where he collapsed on deck coughing water and blood, his leg wound bleeding freely now and his shoulder had torn open completely so he could see muscle through the gash.
"Where’s Min-seo?" Ji-yeon asked.
Yoo looked back.
The water around the Daedalus was full of debris and people, crew mbers swimming away from the burning vessel, and among them he spotted Min-seo with her head above water but struggling because she was dragging sothing.
Soone.
She’d gone back for the fourth recipient.
"There," Yoo pointed.
Ji-yeon sent shadows racing across the water and they wrapped around Min-seo like ropes, pulling her toward the boat faster than she could swim, and when she reached them she pushed the unconscious man up first before climbing aboard herself.
"All four," she gasped. "Got all four."
"You’re insane," Chen Wei said but she was smiling as she started the engine.
The boat roared to life and turned away from the Daedalus as the ship began listing more severely, thirty degrees now and increasing as water flooded through the ruptured hull, and tiny figures on deck scrambled for lifeboats while flas reached toward the sky.
"Hold on," Ji-yeon said quietly.
They watched.
The ship rolled.
Slowly at first, then faster as physics took over and gravity pulled tons of steel sideways, and the ’Daedalus’ capsized completely with a groan of tortured tal that carried across the water, and then it was sliding under with fire still burning on the exposed hull.
Two minutes later, nothing remained but debris and people in the water.
"Director Kwan?" Yoo asked.
"I saw him get into a lifeboat," Chen Wei said. "He’s alive."
"The ritual?"
"Can’t complete with four recipients missing and all the components destroyed," she leaned back against the hull. "We won."
"We survived," Yoo corrected. "Winning ans understanding what we actually stopped."
The boat turned toward Seoul and the four rescued recipients lay unconscious on deck, still sedated with IVs trailing from their arms where Min-seo had torn them free, and Yoo checked their vitals thodically.
Subject 12, Male, Diamond 52, breathing steady.
Subject 19, Female, Platinum 46, pulse weak but present.
Subject 28, Male, Gold 39, brain activity minimal but alive.
Subject 45... wait.
Chen Wei was Subject 45.
Yoo looked at the fourth person Min-seo had rescued and recognition hit him like cold water, not from Damascus files but from sowhere deeper, from mories that weren’t his but belonged to soone who’d lived 823 years ago in a different tiline.
An old man with silver hair and Gold 38 power signature.
Zhao Feng.
The independent contractor who’d given Yoo the Serpent’s Venom and told him to fake his death, who’d said he was tired of watching kids die for research data, who’d claid he wanted nothing in return for helping.
"Why was he on the ship?" Yoo asked quietly.
"What?" Chen Wei looked.
"This man, I t him at Crucible before I escaped, he helped , gave tools to survive, and now he’s here unconscious with the other ritual subjects."
Min-seo checked Zhao’s pockets and pulled out a data chip that was waterproof and still functional, and she handed it to Chen Wei who inserted it into her tablet.
Text appeared.
ZHAO FENG - SUBJECT 07 (HISTORICAL)
PRIMORDIAL SEED RECIPIENT - RECORDED 47 YEARS AGO
SEED ORIGIN: UNKNOWN LINEAGE
CURRENT STATUS: SEED DORMANT, INTEGRATED BUT INACTIVE
SPECIAL NOTE: SUBJECT REFUSED CRUCIBLE OBSERVATION FOR 40 YEARS, FINALLY AGREED TO PARTICIPATE IN RITUAL VOLUNTARILY IN EXCHANGE FOR INFORMATION REGARDING "THE WITNESS"
"He was a seed recipientl," Chen Wei read aloud. "From forty-seven years ago, one of the oldest living ones, and he volunteered for the ritual."
"Why would he do that?" Ji-yeon asked.
Yoo thought about their conversation in the Crucible facility, about how Zhao had seed tired and sad, about how he’d said maybe I just want to save one kid before I die, about the way he’d spoken like a man who’d already decided his fate.
"He made a deal," Yoo said slowly. "Volunteered to be ritual subject in exchange for information about sothing called The Witness."
"Who’s The Witness?" Min-seo asked.
"I don’t know, but Zhao thought it was worth dying for," Yoo looked at the unconscious old man. "And he must have known Crucible would lie, must have known they’d kill him regardless, so why agree?"
The tablet in Chen Wei’s hands buzzed with an incoming ssage that shouldn’t have been possible because they were using stolen equipnt with no registered ID, but the ssage ca through anyway.
FROM: UNKNOWN
TO: SUBJECT 45
You stopped the ritual, well done, but you only delayed the inevitable. The Serpent has been here for 1,847 years, it does not need rituals to wake, it only needs ti, and ti is sothing it has in abundance.
Zhao Feng knew this. That’s why he volunteered. Not to die in the ritual, but to get close to the ritual site. To see what you cannot see, to learn what cannot be learned from outside.
Check his right palm. The mark is still there.
The ssage ended.
Chen Wei looked at Yoo, then at Zhao’s unconscious form, and she carefully took his right hand and turned it over.
The palm was marked.
Not a tattoo, not a scar, but sothing else, sothing that looked burned into the skin at a level deeper than flesh, a symbol that twisted in ways that made the eye hurt to follow.
Seven circles arranged around a central point, and in each circle a na written in a language Yoo didn’t recognize but Akasha Archive analyzed automatically.
"Ancient Feysac root language, predates modern linguistic structures by estimated 2,000 years, translating..."
THE SERPENT WHO COILS THROUGH SEVEN DEPTHS
FIRST DEPTH: THE DREAMING DARK
SECOND DEPTH: THE WHISPERING VOID
THIRD DEPTH: THE BLEEDING THRESHOLD
FOURTH DEPTH: THE CONSUMING SILENCE
FIFTH DEPTH: THE NALESS PRISON
SIXTH DEPTH: THE WAKING GRAVE
SEVENTH DEPTH: THE SURFACE WORLD
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