Ghosts in the Machine - Part 3

Sonia left the infirmary, her breaths slightly steadier now that she was out of sight of those predator-like eyes. Her hand, still trembling, clutched the doorknob as though it could anchor her to reality.

As she turned to leave, she collided with someone—a soldier, judging by the green uniform she caught in her peripheral vision.

"Sorry…" Sonia trailed off, her words faltering as recognition hit her. How could she not recognize him? After all, her handprint was still faintly visible on his face.

The soldier, his chestnut hair tied neatly in a short ponytail, turned to face her. His blue eyes were sharp yet curiously soft, and from up close, Sonia estimated him to be in his late twenties, perhaps brushing thirty. Her gaze lingered on his face a moment too long, long enough to feel self-conscious. She quickly turned away, but it seemed he wasn't focused on her at all. His eyes were fixed instead on the infirmary door she had just exited.

The soldier Sonia had slapped earlier had brown hair tied into a ponytail at the back. His eyes were a striking blue, and now that she got a closer look, he seemed to be in his late twenties, perhaps brushing thirty. Sonia stared at him for a moment too long before turning her face away in embarrassment. But it seemed he wasn't even looking at her—his piercing blue gaze was fixed firmly on the door to the infirmary she had just exited.

"Not feeling well?" he asked. His voice had an odd quality—youthful yet belonging to a face far older than its years.

"Just… losing my mind, I guess," Sonia replied without thinking, her words spilling out before she could stop herself. The absurdity of her answer hit her almost immediately, but she figured it didn't matter. It wasn't like he'd care.

Or so she thought.

The soldier's piercing blue gaze snapped to her, scrutinizing her in a way that made Sonia's discomfort escalate. They stood there in the empty corridor, closer than she would have liked, locked in an awkward silence. She briefly considered whether anyone else might be passing by, but no one appeared.

She was already brainstorming an excuse to extricate herself from the situation when he spoke again, his voice quiet yet weighty.

"Have you seen it yet?"

The question hit her like a sudden gust of cold wind, cutting through her thoughts and leaving her momentarily speechless. "Seen what?" she asked cautiously, her unease growing.

He stepped closer, the gap between them shrinking by another step. His voice dropped, barely more than a whisper. "If you've dreamt of it… then you'll start seeing it too."

The oppressive awkwardness between them melted into something sharper, darker. Fear began to creep into Sonia's chest. She instinctively stepped back, only to bump into the infirmary door. Her pulse quickened. Was he talking about her dreams? The hallucinations she thought she'd kept to herself?

"How do you—?" she began, but her question was abruptly cut short.

"Because I dream about it every night too," he said, his words quiet yet laced with something heavy, something unspoken.

For a moment, Sonia couldn't breathe. The corridor felt tighter, darker, as if the very walls were closing in on her.

Will's gaze drifted toward the far end of the corridor, his expression unreadable. Slowly, he raised his right hand, pointing toward the staircase at the far side. "And I saw it standing there. What about you?"

Sonia's trembling hand lifted involuntarily, her finger pointing toward the staircase beside them, the one she had been staring at moments ago.

"Did you tell Heisenberg about this?" Will asked, his voice heavy with caution. He sighed when Sonia gave a hesitant nod.

Lowering his voice to a near whisper, he continued, "Listen, you can't trust Heisenberg. I think he's hiding something. He asked about your dreams, didn't he? About the shadow?"

The mention of Heisenberg's probing questions brought a wave of unease over Sonia. She recalled the unsettling depth of his interrogation, how he had pressed her for details about the shadow until she had grown frustrated.

Will's focus shifted to the other staircase as the sound of boots descending metal steps echoed through the corridor. His jaw tightened as he glanced back at Sonia.

"You're late for your shift," he muttered. "That means you'll be working overtime tonight. They sent me to let you know."

With that, he brushed past her, heading down the corridor. He had taken only a couple of steps when Sonia called out, "Wait! Who are you?"

He stopped and turned. For the first time, Sonia noticed how exhausted he looked. The deep shadows under his eyes betrayed sleepless nights, and his hands trembled faintly, clenching into fists as if to steady himself. Despite this, his voice remained calm, steady, though tinged with weariness.

"I'm Will Warren. Infantry division," he replied. A flicker of realization crossed his face as he added, "And you?"

"Sonia Kasparov. Communications unit…" she answered softly.

Will nodded in acknowledgment, then turned back toward the staircase. He began to climb, each step heavy and deliberate, leaving Sonia standing alone in the dim corridor, her heart pounding with a mixture of fear and confusion.

The shadows seemed to press closer, the silence growing heavier in his absence.

…

Sonia's fingers tapped rhythmically on the keyboard, encoding the day's situation report for transmission to Houston. The process was tedious and strangely draining. She had no issue with typing up encrypted messages, but the archaic method weighed on her. It was an unavoidable relic of their current predicament: the submarine was passing through a signal dead zone. That meant no radio reception, no direct transmission. Instead, her encoded message would be carried by signal buoys—hopping from one to the next—until, hopefully, it reached the D.C. port. She also knew all too well how likely it was for one of those buoys to be damaged or destroyed by sea creatures along the way.

She sighed as she turned the lever on the typewriter, reaching for the paper that emerged from the slot. The text, now encrypted, was printed in neat rows. Sonia scanned the document once more before rolling it into a cylindrical shape. She pressed the confirmation button on the keyboard to load the message into a signal capsule.

She waited for the green light on the capsule to flash before retrieving it from the docking station. Twisting her chair to the right, she faced the three message tubes aligned beside the radio console. Opening the middle tube with a twist of the lever, she inserted the capsule and pushed the lever back into place. The pressure difference from the seawater outside forced the capsule down the tube and into the airlock chamber, where it would eventually be released into the ocean. All she could do now was hope that the buoys would catch the capsule's signal and send her message home.

Home…

The word lingered in her mind like an ache. Sonia hadn't realized just how much she missed home until this moment. She'd trade anything to hear her mother's voice calling her up from the basement, urging her to leave the radio equipment behind for dinner. Or her father's stories of youthful exploits, the ones she always dismissed as exaggerated but secretly loved.

Leaning back in her chair, Sonia closed her eyes, letting the memories wash over her. In her mind's eye, she stood on an open expanse, the ground beneath her glowing with an ethereal blue light that stretched endlessly to the horizon. She gazed toward something she'd never seen in her life: the horizon itself—a perfect line where the dark void of the cave's roof met the blue expanse of the earth below. Her father's voice echoed in her memory, "It's the only place where you can see the line between the earth and the darkness above, a remnant of the old world. Try to imagine it, my dear."

Tears streaked down her cheeks before she even realized they'd fallen. She'd always wanted to see the Siberian plains, ever since her father described them in vivid detail to lull her to sleep as a child. A landscape of the old world that couldn't be found anywhere else.

But now? Now she just wanted to go home. She longed for the familiar, for the mundane sights she'd taken for granted. The small, ordinary conversations that felt insignificant until they were gone. She wanted to sit in the family radio room again, straining to pick up distant signals.

They say you never know the value of something until it's gone. Sonia understood the truth of those words now, with a clarity that felt like a knife's edge.

Sonia opened her eyes, returning to the present, and noticed the dimmed lights of the radio room. It was the submarine's signal for nightfall. She should have been off-duty by now, but the overtime penalty kept her stationed here until midnight.

She squinted into the dim red glow of the floor lights. Shadows danced across the walls, cast by the silhouettes of the radio equipment and control panels. Those dark shapes seemed to stretch and twist unnaturally, making her uneasy.

It wasn't her first night shift, but everything felt different now. This was the first shift since the hallucinations had begun. Since she'd met Will Warren earlier that day.

"If you've dreamed about it… then you'll start to see it too."

Will's words echoed in her mind, chilling her to the bone. The memory of the shadow on the stairs resurfaced—the slow, deliberate movements of the figure climbing upward, its head turning toward her. Sonia had never believed in the supernatural. Even during her eavesdropping sessions on maritime radio frequencies, when she'd picked up countless tales of sea monsters and inexplicable phenomena from sailors, she'd always sought logical explanations. Solving those mysteries and debunking the stories, gave her a sense of control, like being the protagonist in a detective novel.

Maybe that was why she liked Esther—they shared the same curiosity, the same desire to unravel the world's enigmas.

But what logical explanation could she find for her dreams and the hallucinations she'd started to see?

The easiest answer was stress. A culmination of near-death experiences over the past month of this voyage. Sonia had entertained that theory for a while. That was, until she met Will and heard his story. Until he told her that he, too, had seen the shadow from his dreams in the waking world.

It wasn't a coincidence. It wasn't just a chemical imbalance in her brain. Sonia didn't want to call it supernatural, but she couldn't rationalize it either. And then there was something else Will had told her:

"Don't trust Heisenberg."

The submarine doctor unsettled her in ways she couldn't fully articulate. It wasn't just his deep, emotionless voice or the predator's gaze he seemed to fix on her. It was his questions. Why had he been so interested in the music from her dreams or the face of the shadowy figure? Sonia shook her head at herself. Maybe it was nothing—a doctor gathering information about his patient.

Unless, of course, it had everything to do with that drawing of the monster—the very same beast she'd seen beneath the island.

For Sonia, the near-drowning incident was little more than a hazy fragment in her memory. Esther had explained that this was due to oxygen deprivation, a state she had called hypoxia. Esther had rambled about how humans needed oxygen for metabolic processes, releasing something Sonia only remembered as ending in "oxide." That's why her memory of what happened might just be a hallucination—a product of her brain starved for air.

Until today.

Until she truly understood what she had seen.

On the sheet of paper was a sketch of a creature, shaded with intricate precision, its contours detailed to the point of realism. It was clear that this was a hobby of Heisenberg's—his artistic skill was undeniable.

The creature in the sketch had a face resembling that of a snake, but the most peculiar aspect was the rough, dome-like shell protruding from its back. The connections between the upper shell and the soft underbelly were punctuated with gaps where its head and limbs extended outward.

The snake-like head she had seen beneath the island emerged from a cave.

The dome-shaped mound at the island's center was no ordinary hill.

The secret of that island became unmistakably clear as Sonia stared at the sketch.

Heisenberg had called it a "turtle." Sonia had never seen such a creature before. In the drawing, it appeared harmless. Its mouth gently held some vegetation, marking it unmistakably as a herbivore.

"They say it can grow to colossal proportions…" Heisenberg's voice echoed in her mind, fitting the final piece into place.

The island wasn't just an island. It was a gigantic turtle.

The people there had built their city on a living creature that had suddenly appeared, using bait to manipulate and control it, guiding it to prey on the next unfortunate souls.

Dimitri had been right all along. It was a divine gift—a heavenly refuge for the hunted, an unstoppable weapon for the conquerors. While the turtle depicted in Heisenberg's sketch seemed gentle and harmless, Sonia couldn't help but imagine the catastrophic consequences of such a creature reaching its full, monstrous size. What if Dimitri had chosen to steer his island ashore?

Did Heisenberg know the island's true nature? Or had it been mere coincidence that he was sketching the creature when she visited him?

Sonia furrowed her brow. Knowing this truth—what difference did it make? Judging from the quality of the sketch, it was clear that Heisenberg regularly engaged in this kind of art. Perhaps it was just a pastime—drawing creatures of the Sunless World. His probing questions about her dreams could have been part of his medical process, or simply an effort to collect data on his patient.

Maybe it was all just a coincidence. A series of events aligning at precisely the right—or wrong—moment.

Sonia found herself unable to fully believe this explanation, just as she couldn't fully accept the idea that it was all supernatural.

There had to be a logical explanation, a definitive answer, a solution to the riddle.

Sonia was lost in her thoughts until she noticed a shadow stretching behind her.

"Still on shift?"

She jumped, startled, only to realize the voice belonged to Rain. Spinning her chair around, she faced the young boy. His expression remained as stoic as ever, but under the dim red emergency lights, that lifeless calm seemed eerily like the face of a corpse.

"I… I was late for my morning shift," Sonia stammered, struggling to find the words.

Rain leaned casually against the wall beside the radio console, his gaze fixed on the empty space on the floor in front of her.

"Are you okay?" he asked softly.

There was a faint trace of concern in his otherwise monotone voice. Sonia felt a sudden urge to tell him about her dreams, to confess her fears. He would probably keep that blank face of his and ask if she was losing her mind, she thought.

But before she could even bring it up, Rain spoke again.

"Are you… afraid of me?" he asked quietly, his eyes still focused on the floor.

The question hit uncomfortably close to home, leaving Sonia momentarily speechless.

"Why would you think that?" she managed to ask once she gathered herself.

"Because you saw me kill those people on the island," he replied, his tone as calm as ever.

"You did it to protect me and Esther, didn't you? I should feel grateful, not afraid," Sonia said, and she meant it. She truly was thankful for the boy standing before her. He had fought to protect her and Esther in what had been a hopeless situation—until Holland arrived with reinforcements.

She glanced at Rain's profile, half-shrouded in shadow. From what she'd seen, he was a highly skilled swordsman. His performance on the island—or rather, on the turtle—was proof of that. Rain had faced multiple attackers coming from all directions with barely a scratch. Thinking back to his slaughter, Sonia shivered.

His expression while taking lives was almost identical to the neutral face he wore now.

"Where did you learn to use a sword like that?" Sonia asked, steering the conversation in a different direction.

"I've just always used it. I never really trained," he replied, his words leaving Sonia dumbfounded.

That level of skill without training? Without a teacher?

"But you're so good with it. If you've never trained, when did you even start using a sword?"

Rain paused, his silence stretching just long enough to feel unsettling.

"I don't remember…"

It was the same answer he had given her when she asked how long he had been a sailor.

Short-term memory? Sonia thought sarcastically.

But then, another question surfaced in her mind, unbidden and reckless, and she voiced it before she could stop herself.

"Do you remember the first time you killed someone?"

For the first time, Rain's expression changed. Sonia could see the sorrow etched across his face. "I do," he replied softly.

Sonia wanted to press for details, but the look on his face made her hold back. Instead, she sat silently, listening to the faint sound of water flowing from the ballast chambers behind her. Rain stood nearby, his shadow cast faintly against the dim red glow of the emergency lights.

"Do you dream?" Sonia asked suddenly, breaking the silence.

Rain turned his gaze toward her for the first time in the conversation.

"What is that?"

Sonia stared into his deep violet eyes, startled to notice their color for the first time. They weren't black, as she had initially assumed, but a rich, dark purple. She had never seen eyes like his before. Rain's gaze was locked onto hers, and his serious demeanor made it clear that he genuinely didn't know.

"How old are you, exactly?" she asked, almost without thinking.

"I don't remember."

"Figures," Sonia muttered. "A dream is… something you see while you're asleep," she explained, exhaustion creeping into her tone.

Rain tilted his head slightly, his interest piqued. "What do you see in your dreams?"

The question caught Sonia off guard. She hadn't expected him to ask, hadn't prepared to talk about it.

"I dream of—"

Before she could continue, the emergency lights flickered and went out, plunging the room into total darkness.

Sonia flinched as the sudden blackness swallowed her surroundings. "Rain!" she called out, her voice trembling.

There was no response.

"Rain, can you hear me!?" she shouted, louder this time.

Only silence greeted her—a heavy, oppressive silence that seemed to press against her chest.

The darkness was absolute. She couldn't even see the faint outlines of the equipment or walls. Panic began to claw its way into her thoughts.

Sonia heard the low, continuous hum of the submarine's engine, a reassuring sound that signaled the ship was still operational. That meant the emergency lights shouldn't have gone out. She strained her ears to pick up any other sounds in the room, but there was nothing—no footsteps, no movement, no sign of anyone else.

Just as she was about to call out for Rain again, she heard something. At first, it was faint, almost imperceptible, and she ignored it. But then, it came again, louder and clearer.

Clang!

The sharp sound of something striking metal echoed from the ladder at the far end of the room. Sonia instinctively turned toward the source, even though her eyes couldn't penetrate the thick veil of darkness.

Something—or someone—was climbing the ladder.

Her instincts screamed at her to run, to get as far away as possible, but her body refused to move. Sonia sat frozen, trembling uncontrollably, her eyes locked on the void where the sound had come from. The noise rang out again, louder this time.

Clang!

It was unmistakable now—the final step of the metal ladder had been reached. Whoever, or whatever it was, was now standing in front of her.

The silence that followed was deafening. No rustle of clothing, no creak of muscles, no sound of breathing.

But it was there. She was certain of it.

Sonia could only stare into the black void ahead, her wide, terrified eyes fixed on the space where she imagined the shadow stood. It was watching her, she was sure of it, as she sat shaking in her chair, unable to tear her gaze away. Sweat streamed into her eyes, stinging them, but she didn't dare blink. It was as though her unbroken stare was the only thing keeping the presence from moving closer.

And then, the emergency lights flickered back on.

Sonia found herself staring at the wall.

The communications room was empty.

She was alone.

Rain was gone.

Her heart pounded as she tried to process what had just happened. But before she could formulate an answer, her eyes drifted toward the ladder at the far end of the room.

The hatch at the base of the ladder was open.

Sonia distinctly remembered it being shut when her night shift had begun.

Sonia rose from her chair, her legs trembling slightly as she took careful steps toward the metal ladder that descended to the third deck. Her thoughts drifted back to the first time she'd seen the shadow—a dark figure climbing the very same kind of ladder, right outside the infirmary.

But that time, the shadow had been climbing up.

Now, it seemed to be leading her down.

Sonia stopped at the edge of the open hatch, peering cautiously downward. She could just make out the faint outlines of the maintenance room floor. It appeared empty.

Her pulse quickened. Whatever she had seen before wasn't a hallucination. She was sure of it now. The shadow had taken Rain—how, she couldn't fathom. But whatever it was, it wanted her to follow.

Her breath came in shaky gasps as she stood at the top of the ladder, willing herself to move. Finally, when her trembling subsided enough to grip the railing steadily, she placed her hands on the cold metal.

It felt icy to the touch, as though it had been submerged in freezing water, an unnatural chill that sent shivers crawling up her arms.