The gray, slippery beast was bigger than any she had ever seen - larger than even some of the cantons. The two black beads stared up at her from down in the forest of kelp; their eyes tracing her as she moved, unsurprised as if they had been aware of her for some time. For all she knew, it might have been - they were the apex predators of the depths, capable of stalking prey for several kilometers only to strike when they’d least expect it.
Despite being surrounded by water, her mouth was painfully dry - an understandable adrenergic response from being surrounded by monstrosity. Behind her hung that horrific angel and down there, eyeing her with ravenous hunger, the beast was circling; preparing to lunge at her.
Her mind struggled to process what took place - it was all so fast. In the blink of an eye, her suit had compressed once more. But rather than sinking to the depths or floating to the skies, she had been flung backward - soaring over the dunes, where she collided into a column of kelp.
The shark zoomed past her; its scarred, gray skin passed in a flash of white as it swam past her ray of light - toward the angel.
As she came to a halt in the kelp, she scanned the darkness, only to find that the shark had circled back around; a blob of gray in an endless blanket of the black abyss. Their eyes locked; its entire body twitched with explosive force, sending it propelling forwards once more - again on a collision trajectory towards her. She screamed, held the small knife up, and readied herself for the shark’s massive teeth to tear her flesh apart. The maw opened, and its jaw shot forward like a well-oiled piston, ready to crush her face, only… it did not.
In what would have been her last moment, the beast’s terrifying mouth snapped shut and its left eye seemed to explode with enough force to change its approach vector, however slightly. But it was enough to save her life once again.
It blew past her, into the forest of kelp with the angel attached to its side.
The wings that had once clamored so beautifully and peacefully to the columns of green, now lay wrapped around the shark in tight, strangulating coils of red, twitching as the man… bit into its face.
The shark spun and turned, striking the sand to kick up dust; staining the pristinely clear waters with a dull, gray contagion - clouding her view of the battle that ensued.
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The silence of the abyss shattered with sounds of thrashing, thumping, and repeated clicks of thrown stones. She wanted to turn and swim - to veer off back home and cry into her father’s lap as she told this real-life story of horror; how a dark angel had battled the demon form of a prime shark right in front of her. But frightened as she was, she was locked in place… incapable of moving… dead in the water.
The gray cloud soon turned red as the thrashing continued, but still, she could not move a muscle. “Move you dumb bitch, please, Logos give me strength to just move…” She pleaded, and begged herself, but simply continuing to breathe took all her concentration. In fact, she was breathing far too fast and shallowly; ignoring her mother’s warnings at the back of her mind.
Without warning, the now-familiar, gray-white beast shot forth from the red cloud, darting off to the south; up and out of the kelp forest, passing narrowly by her to glare its empty eye socket and display its half-skeletal face in her direction. In the wide ray of her flashlight, she saw innumerable bites covering nearly its entire body - its left fin had been eaten down to the bone. But nothing was as torn and ragged as its face. The white of the light reflected off of the bared bones, nearly blinding her as if warning its would-be prey that whatever monster it had encountered in the cloud was the true apex of this biome.
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The first words Luna spoke as she spat out her rebreather were repetitions of “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”. The wild experience of the kelp field aside, she could not process what insanity had led her to drag the unconscious angel back to her home. He had saved her, yes, but he had nearly devoured a shark in doing so. But even as she hurriedly undressed her suit and kicked off her flippers, she could see him there as the clouding settled; hanging lifelessly in the still water, his glorious wings a mangled, bleeding mess. How the shark had not torn him apart as it bit into him was beyond her - surely, it should have. But a closer inspection had revealed that the deep bites to his arms, legs, and chest; had narrowly missed all his vital organs - at least if her books were to be trusted.
She turned around to look into the submersion pool, where his lifeless body floated against the surface, his wings… suddenly gone. She blinked several times over, questioning her sanity. Now, without those demonic tendrils, he seemed almost normal. But there was nothing regular about a man capable of surviving out there in the abyss for Logos knows how long; surrounded by beasts such as their aggressor, or rather, Angel’s prey.
She sprinted towards the System-panel by the door, hovering her hand over the display… who would she call? Her father? And tell of finding an angel out in the kelp forest? He would execute the man on the spot, no questions asked. One of the scav-teams? He would meet the same fate, perhaps a bit more brutally… No, there was one man who would listen to her, who might trust her gut feeling and know what to do. At least until they could wake the demonic bastard up and ask him some questions.
She slammed her hand on the panel and shouted at the yellowy-brown display: “Mars! Mars, I need help!”