It’s early morning when Ernie’s eyes bolt open. He doesn’t sit up, he tries to control his gasping breaths. Lying in bed, staring at the ceiling above him, he waits. Pushing his nightmares aside, giving his heart a minute to stop racing. He convinces his adrenaline-filled body that he’s not in any danger, and only then does he sit up and leave his bed.
He yawns, scratching the beard that’s started to grow in during the time trapped under the Antarctic. He’s still tired, something he’s become used to, but there’s something else there too now, something new, a dull fatigue, an ache in his joints. What’s more, his stomach is churning. It was an unfamiliar feeling to him. Ernie rarely felt nausea, he didn’t get motion sick, his hangovers were always very mild, and he can’t remember the last time he caught a mean stomach bug. But he’s queasy now. Not so much that he feels like he’s gonna hurl, but enough to be uncomfortable.
He fumbles his way down to the floor from his bunk and across the pitch-black room. Finding the door frame, he bends over, sliding an open palm across the cold, metal floor until it hits the flashlight. He grips it, flicking it on and it comes to life in a weak, short-lived glow, before dimming to nothing. The batteries are dead, and Ernie mumbles an expletive under his breath knowing that this means he and everyone else will have to navigate to and from the bunks and bathrooms by touch alone.
Ernie hates the dark. As a kid, he’d lay awake in bed at night, covers draped over his head, cuddled against the wall his bed was placed against, back to the dark room around him. Anything to get away from the things he imagined under his bed, in his closet, out in the hall, outside the window. He’d grown out of the debilitating terror of the dark, but could never shake his uneasiness within it, especially in unfamiliar places. The darkness of his bedroom was fine, manageable now, but here, in the Narwhal, things were different.
The Narwhal scares Ernie, or perhaps being in the Narwhal scares him. He feels his childhood fears reemerging. The darkness here is worse, there’s no light filtering into his bedroom from elsewhere in the house, or outside. The darkness here is true, total. It’s so dark it almost seems solid, like he’s trapped in stone. Much unlike his childhood, Ernie’s not afraid of a monster or a ghost or a clown hiding in the dark. He’s afraid of the dark itself. He’s not even sure why, or how. Fear of the dark isn’t supposed to be fear of lack of light. It doesn’t make sense, darkness isn’t a thing in the same way outer space isn’t a thing. Darkness is absence. But this darkness is different somehow, or maybe he’s different somehow, but either way, it scares him, and losing the flashlight sends a flash of terror down his spine.
Just knowing it was there while he slept, just knowing that a few steps away was easy access to light made it easier. But now it’s gone. From now until they’re rescued, he has to go without. Ernie shivers. Perhaps--he thinks for a moment--perhaps he can sleep in the mess hall. There, with the stove burning, there is some light; there is some refuge from the hostile darkness that petrifies him now. But at night the stove’s turned off to preserve gas, and he very much doubts he could make a case to leave it on.
Ernie stands up. Hand against the wall, he starts the slow walk to the mess. He could at least find the safety of the light there now, in the early morning. Breakfast would already be cooking, and he could sit in the dim light and free himself of the torment of the night.
He sits in the mess hall for a while, alone. Everyone will be getting up soon, but it’s still very early and for now, it’s just him and some of the crew. He’s not hungry, and with his stomach feeling flippant he’s hesitant to try to eat anything, but he decides to try anyway. The small size of the daily rations makes it important to eat when food is available just to maintain strength.
His sister joins a little while later. They haven’t spoken since the day before, since she and James delved into what he can only see as delusions. He starts thinking about James’s words again, and a little bit of him falls in line with what he was saying, gives in to what must be fantasy, what couldn’t be anything but delusion. He cuts his thoughts short, not allowing himself to dive any deeper into that paranoia.
Jessica is just as pensive as her brother. Just like him, she barely picks at her food, and she speaks not a word. She’s different to Ernie’s eyes, divergent from the sister he knew for his entire life. She wasn’t the type to keep quiet. When there was a void in conversation, she would be the one to fill it, thwarting awkward silences before they could even arise. She certainly wasn’t the type to only nibble at a meal, though neither was he. More than either of these two things though, she was persistent. Sitting across from him, she appears in a deep despondence, like she’s stopped caring. But while to most, she may seem depressed, Ernie believes he knows better. He looks at his sister and sees someone who’s done a lot of thinking, and arrived...somewhere. And that’s why, when Jessica--without a word, and without finishing her meal--stands up and leaves with the purposeful step of a person with a destination beyond the restroom, he decides to trail behind.
Ernie follows Jessica’s footsteps through the dark, doing his best to mask the sound of his own. She does not--as most would--turn right after leaving mess hall and head in the direction of the bathrooms and bunks. Instead, she turns left, soon reaching the ladder that goes between the three decks of the ship. She doesn’t go up to the control room, but climbs down the ladder.
None of the research team had spent much, if any, time on the lower deck of the Narwhal, and Ernie had never been down there at all. It was unfamiliar territory. He knows that the bottom deck holds the torpedo room where they launched their probes from, but other than that he knows nothing. He feels his fear of darkness creeping back, even stronger here as the lower deck is so unknown to him.
Jessica seems to share his lack of familiarity because despite coming down with a clear purpose, her pace slows to a crawl once on the lower deck. She has never been down here before and it shows, as moving around in complete darkness is one thing, but doing so in a place where the length of the halls and distances to the rooms are unknown is another. Whatever she’s doing, Ernie figures it would be downright impossible if she didn’t have a clue where she was going.
But, as if responding to his doubt, Jessica stops, reaches into her pocket, and pulls out a small lighter. The fact that his sister wasn’t a smoker and had no reason to have brought something like that onboard makes Ernie think it’s not hers. The squat, steel lighter in her hand was without a doubt somebody else’s, but was it given to her, or did she steal it?
With the light to guide her way, Jessica’s footsteps resume. Ernie waits back in the gloom in an effort to remain unseen. He follows further behind now that she has a source of light, and treads lightly, ready to jump and hide if she happens to turn around.
At the end of the hall, the bow of the ship, Jessica peaks into a doorway and steps inside. Guessing that she’s found what she was looking for, Ernie darts forward and peers inside. In the faint orange glow of the lighter, Ernie sees the dark shadow of his sister’s figure scanning the room. At one side, he can see a few unlaunched drones and he knows this is the torpedo room. He waits a while longer, but Jessica’s determined trek down here seems to have become uncertain as she looks unsure, like she’s found herself out of her depth.
After standing around waiting for his sister to do something, Ernie decides he’d rather stop sneaking and just confront her. He steps into the doorway, and Jessica jumps as she catches sight of him entering the room, evidently on edge as she shoves the lighter forward to get a better view of whoever’s discovered her.
“Oh,” she says, seeing her brother, “Ernie.” Her shoulders relax, and she lowers the lighter as he comes closer.
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“What are doing down here?”
Jessica shakes her head. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“Jess, you’re my sister. We may not always agree, but I will always listen.”
Jessica turns and continues her uncertain search. “They told me we didn’t have any real torpedoes onboard. I wanted to look for myself...but I don’t really know what to look for. Still, I don’t trust them.”
“Don’t trust the sailors? Why not? I don’t know why they’d lie about that. I don’t know why we’d bring a torpedo on anyway. And why would you look for one? You can’t honestly be thinking--”
“That we could kill Julia?” Jessica looks up at Ernie, eyes cross.
“Is that what you’re doing? I mean, sis, that’s crazy.”
“Maybe it is. Maybe she’s too big, or too weird. Would a torpedo hurt her at all? Would a damned atomic bomb hurt her? I thought, maybe, at first. But James said something to me last night that got me thinking. And now I’m not so sure, I don’t think there’s such an easy way out of this.”
Ernie shakes his head. “Then why look for a torpedo? And even if you did find one, then what?”
“Maybe we could use it to blow a hole in the ice,” she replies. “Or, we could just…” She chooses not to finish her sentence.
“Just what?” Ernie presses.
“If rescue doesn’t come soon, what happens, Ernie? What happens to us? Starving is the best-case scenario right now. Because that thing outside, I don’t know what she wants, or what she even is, but she is toying with us, and I don’t know about you, but I’d rather go out on my own terms than let some monster make us its plaything until it gets bored of us and ends it.”
Ernie takes a step back, blinking, shocked by the resolve in his sister’s face, resolve to do the unthinkable.
“I’ve heard just about enough.”
Ernie, taking a step back, bumps into a wall. But it’s not a wall, it’s Lewis stepping into the room behind him. Flanking him are Rat and Carter.
“There ain’t no torpedos on board,” Lewis says, “and if there were, we sure as hell wouldn’t be using ‘em to blow ourselves up. Not on my watch.”
“Of course not.” Jessica scoffs. “I thought old sailors were supposed to be wise, but I guess not all of us can see the writing on the wall yet.”
“I ain’t got a damned clue what you’re on about sister, but if you honestly believe me or any of my crew would agree to killing ourselves then you clearly ain’t got the first idea what being a sailor’s like and you got no right to be makin’ those assumptions. Monster or no monster, we ain’t inclined to givin’ up.”
Jessica shakes her head, clenching her fists. “You don’t get it, I understand. But you will soon. The more I think about it, the more I know that Julia isn’t going to just kill us. She’s going to make our lives more and more hellish until we all lose our fucking minds. It’s already happening.”
“Ok, yeah. I don’t understand,” Lewis says. “None of what you’re saying makes a lick of sense to me. You act like you’ve got it all figured out--”
“Oh, but I don’t,” Jessica whispers. “There’s so much I don’t know. And that’s what scares me. Whatever she is, why she was in that pit, why she’s torturing us like this, and whatever else she can do to us, I don’t know. But it’s only going to get worse, and at least I know when it’s time to give up. You wouldn’t fight God, would you? You wouldn’t fight the Devil.”
She slumps to her knees and Ernie steps over to her. The fire in her eyes is gone, extinguished, not even an ember of her drive remains as a tear falls down her cheek. He wraps his arms around her.
“I can’t have somebody going around my sub spreading nihilistic and frankly cultish nonsense to every ear around,” Lewis says, his own eyes cold and hard. “So keep your despairing thoughts to yourself from now on. Torpedo or no, you ain’t takin’ this ship down with you, and I’m done playing games.”
Lewis leaves the torpedo room behind, his boots slamming against the floor all the way to the ladder. The two crewmembers stand in silence while he storms off, unsure of whether they’d rather follow their fuming captain, or remain in the room with the woman who just admitted to thinking about killing everybody. In the end, their decision is made for them and they remain in place as Ernie gently coaxes his sister to her feet and leads her out and back to the deck above. He gives them a slight, apologetic nod as he leaves the room.
When they’re finally alone at their post, Rat and Carter just about let themselves exhale and release the tension of the moment, but before they can relax, there’s a series of three thumps against the outside of the Narwhal. Julia returns at just the right moment to remind them that their current reality is one where there are no moments of calm.
On the deck above, the knocking wakes anyone who was still trying to sleep. Charlie sits up and listens and no one says a word. There’s nothing to say. Stepping down, Charlie steps to the next bunk over. Carefully navigating by touch, Charlie finds and places the back of her hand on Elina’s forehead.
“I feel better today actually,” Elina says in the dark. Though she can’t see her, she knows it’s Charlie checking up on her.
“You feel a little warm, though,” Charlie says, “that’s new.”
“Less nauseous though.” Elina sits up and stretches. “A bit dizzy, but, yeah, better.”
Charlie shrugs. “Maybe it’s just my imagination.”
They stand up and make to the door together, but discover, just as Ernie did earlier, that the flashlight is dead.
With this information passed around the room, there is, again, little reaction. Desensitized to misfortune, some sigh, but that’s the extent of their verbal disappointment in the next on a long list of issues they face together.
Slowly, here and there, as people work up the motivation to get out of bed, they file into the mess hall. Ernie and Jessica walk in after some time, they sit on their own and refuse to look anyone in the eye, not even each other.
Their sullen disposition is shared among the group. Though few know the desperate measures Jessica had tried to take on the Narwhal’s lower deck, most seem to have fallen in a similar state of despair. They may not be wishing to take the morbid action that she had in mind, but the new day seems to have coated their fear in a deep depression.
The air is like a mire, thick and heavy, hard to breathe and harder to move through. The lack of sleep has drained any energy they once retained. Minds slowed, and darkness all around, it pits the mind against itself in a fight just to stay conscious.
And it is this haze that allows over an hour to pass before anybody notices that not everyone has come from the bunks to the mess for breakfast. Bill looks up, a brief clearing breaks through the fog, and he sees that Piper is absent. Weary but disquieted by her nonappearance, Bill returns to the bunk room to search for her.
Stepping inside, he knows that some sailors running different shifts are trying to sleep, so he tiptoes through the room to where he knows Piper sleeps. He whispers in the dark, calling out to check if she’s even there.
“Yes?” Piper’s voice responds, small and distant.
“Not hungry?” Bill asks. “Are you okay?”
“Feeling under the weather, I’m afraid. How’s Elina?”
“Seems better today, she’s up and about. You think you have what she got?”
“Same symptoms. Luckily, I managed to get to the bathroom on my own earlier.”
Bill shakes his head. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I’m quite alright on my own. In fact, I think I can--”
She sits up, but as she does she feels a wave of dizziness and nausea come over her and she puts her head back to her pillow.
“Perhaps not,” she says.
“Rest,” Bill says, “if Elina’s any indication, it’ll pass. Until then, just stay in bed. Want me to bring you anything? Water?”
“I would appreciate it.”
Bill stands to fetch a glass of water, but before he can leave, Piper grabs the sleeve of his shirt. He crouches back down as she pulls his ear close to her mouth.
“This isn’t food poisoning, is it?” she whispers.
Bill swallows. “I think you might be too smart for your own good.”
“Oh don’t treat me like a child.” Piper snaps. “Is the submarine leaking radiation or not?”
“Possibly. But we have no way to know for sure.”
Piper releases Bill’s sleeve and turns over. He stays for a moment, but when he sees that there’s nothing more she wants to say, he leaves to get her the water.
She’s right of course, he knows. He and Lewis could try to treat them like children and keep secrets, but they were fully grown adults. Most of the people aboard were submarine veterans and the rest were scientists. Once more people started getting sick there’d be no way to hide the truth, they’d figure it out on their own. But would it change anything? Their situation was so dire, so heavy and almost unreal, could adding to that burden possibly make things worse? Piper’s reaction could barely be classified as such. The horror of it all was draining, it was clear in the faces of those sitting in the mess hall, not for lack of caring, but an inability to cope. Lewis’s way is that of a captain under normal circumstances, these are anything but. He wondered if the truth would even matter if added to the stew of maladies and misfortunes that already blunted their minds and emotions. Would things continue to simmer until rescue came? Or was Lewis right? Was there a point where they would boil over? More importantly, would keeping the potential reactor leak a secret really prevent that from happening?