Chapter 6: The Sunken World

Chapter 6: The Sunken World

The world narrowed to the frantic, slapping rhythm of their boots on wet sand. Harlock’s command, a raw-throated roar of pure terror, was the only thing that cut through the triumphant wailing from the darkness. Leo’s lungs were twin fires, his legs pumping on an instinct that had bypassed thought. He had a death-grip on Aris Thorne’s arm, half-dragging the catatonic scientist along. Aris stumbled beside him, his eyes vacant, his lips moving in a silent, continuous prayer to a god of logic that had long since abandoned this shore.

Behind them, the single lantern they had left behind was a rapidly shrinking pinpoint of sanity in a universe of predatory blackness. They crashed through the scrub and rocks at the far end of the cove, the place where they had first landed, a lifetime ago.

"Here! It's here!" Harlock gasped, tearing at a curtain of thick, broad leaves.

The Zodiac dinghy was just as they’d left it, a black rubber shape wedged between two moss-slicked boulders. It was their ark, their last, desperate hope. The three of them fell upon it, their movements clumsy with panic. Leo felt the cold shock of seawater swirl around his ankles as they shoved the heavy boat off the rocks and into the shallows. The memory of what had erupted from that same water to take Marcus was a jolt of pure electrocution, but the terror behind them was greater than the terror beneath.

As Harlock scrambled to the stern to wrestle with the outboard motor, Leo gave one last, powerful shove, sending them gliding into the deeper water of the cove before clambering clumsily over the side. He landed in a heap next to Aris, who had collapsed onto the rubber floor, curled into a fetal position.

Catching his breath, his chest heaving, Leo risked a glance back at the beach. The wailing had stopped. The hunters were not pursuing them. The beach was plunged back into a profound, watchful silence. But it wasn't empty. Standing just at the edge of the jungle, a lone, still figure was silhouetted against the night. It made no move to run, no move to raise a weapon. It simply stood, watching them go, a calm and patient observer.

A chilling realization washed over Leo, colder than the seawater soaking his pants. They weren't being chased. They were being released.

"Come on, you bastard! START!" Harlock bellowed, yanking violently on the motor's pull-cord. The engine gave a pathetic cough, then another. The sound was pitifully small in the vast quiet. The captain, a man who commanded a vessel of a hundred tons, was being defeated by a simple two-stroke engine. He grunted with effort, his face a mask of desperation. On the third pull, a strangled sputter. On the fourth, it caught.

The motor roared to life, a deafening, beautiful, profane explosion of internal combustion. The sound was salvation. It was the voice of their world, a mechanical scream that tore the island's ancient silence to shreds. Harlock jammed the throttle forward, and the dinghy lurched, its nose rising as it surged out of the cove and into the open sea.

The wind whipped at Leo’s face, cold and clean, tasting of salt and freedom. He looked back at Aethel's Rock, the island shrinking behind them into a featureless black mass, its horrors receding with every foot of churning water they put between them. The lone figure was gone. The beach was empty. They had done it. Against all odds, they had escaped. A hysterical laugh, half-sob, half-gasp, escaped Leo's lips. They were alive.

"The Odyssey!" Harlock shouted over the engine's roar, his eyes scanning the black horizon. "Her lights should be... they have to be... right there!" He pointed into the darkness, to the spot where their ship, their sanctuary, should have been waiting, a beacon of order and safety in the vast Pacific.

Leo followed his finger, squinting into the moonless night. There was nothing. No mast lights, no warm glow from the bridge, no deck illumination. Just an endless, empty expanse of black water meeting a blacker sky.

"Maybe they've blacked out for some reason?" Leo yelled, the desperate hope already sounding flimsy and foolish in his own ears. "Security protocol?"

"No," Harlock’s voice was a low, dead thing, all the hope and adrenaline suddenly gone from it. "No, there's... wait."

Leo saw it then, too. It wasn't a light, but an absence of stars. A shape on the horizon, a patch of solid blackness against the slightly less-black canvas of the night sky. A silhouette that was all wrong. It was too low, too wide. It was lopsided, canted at an impossible angle.

As their dinghy sped closer, the horrific truth resolved itself out of the darkness. It was the Odyssey. Or what was left of her. The ship was capsized, its hull turned toward the sky like the pale belly of a dead whale. The superstructure, the bridge, the mast—all of it was submerged, lost to the depths. High on the exposed hull, a jagged, gaping wound was torn into the steel plates, a blacker tear in the darkness, as if some colossal beast from the abyss had taken a bite out of it.

The scale of the attack, of the trap, hit Leo with the force of a physical blow. The islanders hadn't been confined to their shore. They had come for the ship. They had gutted it, sunk it, and left it as a tombstone on the empty sea. The entire mission, from the moment they’d arrived, had been a perfectly executed slaughter, and this... this was the final, grand stroke.

Harlock stared at his dead ship, his command, his life's work. The fire in his eyes went out, replaced by the hollow shock of a man who had lost everything. He was no longer a captain. He was just a survivor, adrift in a dinghy.

As if on cue, the Zodiac's motor gave a final, wheezing cough, sputtered, and died.

The sudden, absolute silence was a judgment. They were adrift. The gentle lapping of waves against the rubber hull was the only sound in the world. They were a tiny, insignificant speck of despair between the island of the hunters and the grave of their ship.

Then, a new sound began, soft and rhythmic. The gentle dip of a paddle in the water.

Leo’s head snapped to the left. A shape was emerging from the darkness, a low-slung, crude raft made of lashed logs, with two figures standing on it, their forms silhouetted and inhuman. Another splash to the right. A second raft appeared. Then another in front of them. And another behind.

They came out of the night silently, purposefully, their paddles rising and falling in unison. They weren't rushing. They didn't need to. A perfect circle of rafts was materializing from the dark sea, closing in on the stalled dinghy at its center.

Leo looked at Harlock’s broken expression, at Aris whimpering on the floor, at the closing ring of silent, patient hunters. The escape from the beach hadn't been an escape at all. It was just the next phase of the hunt. They had been herded like frightened animals from the land into the waiting arms of the sea, driven from the pen into the killing ground.