Repairs--a patchwork of welded steel and clipped wiring--finish in the wee hours of the morning on the third day since the attack. Water’s been drained from all but the engine room and leaks are stopped. It’s quick, temporary work, done by dim lighting but it’s stabilized things on the ship for the time being.

  Lights are still out, Oman’s diagnosis holding true, and a collection of flashlights, the glow of computer screens, and the burners on the kitchen’s stove, represent the only light sources working on the Narwhal. The tooth has been removed only partially. Cut at the interior wall of the Narwhal, the rest of it was left in place and patched over. The segment that was removed, however, is nothing to laugh at.

  Woken from his restless sleep at a quarter past five in the morning, Bill finds Oman crouched by his bedside.

  “Apologies, sir,” he says, “but you did ask me to collect you as soon as the tooth was removed.”

  Bill nods, rubbing eyes that are highlighted by dark circles. His heart is beating a mile a minute, and he takes slow, deep breaths to calm himself from some unknown nightmare before getting out of bed.

  He stands and turns to Charlie in the bunk above his. Touching her arm, she awakens with a start.

  “Sorry,” Bill says, “we’ve got the tooth.”

  Charlie yawns but climbs down the bed without hesitation. She’s eager to finally hold it in her hands.

  And she’s not the only one. Though everyone else in the bunks appears to be fast asleep, there is one who evidently was either woken by her stirring companions or else has been awake for some time.

  Piper steps up behind Oman and joins the group on their way out the door.

  “We’ve set it down on a table in the mess,” Oman says.

  Entering the mess hall, Oman shines his flashlight toward the object in question, and Bill, Charlie, and Piper huddle around it. Each one takes out their own flashlights and focuses the beams on the tooth. It’s the length of a forearm, even in its cut-down form.

  “It’s triple the size of any sperm whale tooth I’ve seen,” Piper says.

  “And I wonder how much of it is left on the outside of the ship,” Charlie says.

  “We can always take a look, we brought camera drones,” Bill adds.

  Piper nods. “We need to see what we’re dealing with here.”

  “Let’s get ready then, the crew’s finished up fixing the boat, so I guess it’s our turn to get to work,” Bill says.

  “It’s early,” Charlie says, “let’s let everyone sleep a bit more first. Have breakfast with me in the meantime.”

  Piper and Bill nod in unison. Everyone will probably be a bit run down after the hectic couple of days so a few extra hours of sleep may be needed.

  “What should we do with this in the meantime?” Charlie asks, running a finger along the tooth.

  Bill scratches his head. “Hmm. You got room in a bag or something? Just something to keep it safe in so it doesn’t get banged around.”

  “I can stick it in my backpack,” Charlie says, “keep it at the foot of the bunk. That way we can keep an eye on it.”

  “Yeah, that’ll work.”

  Charlie grabs the tooth, carefully cradling it in one arm while holding her flashlight in the other. She heads back to the bunk room.

  Inside, she rummages through her things--flashlight held in her mouth--until she finds her backpack. She had brought it along for toiletries and such but dumps those contents in with her clothes. Slipping the tooth inside, she zips the bag shut.

  “That’ll have to do,” she says.

  “Whatcha got there?” James’s voice whispers from behind her.

  “Morning, check it out.”

  Charlie opens the bag and holds it up to James. His eyes widen as he takes a step closer.

  “Wow, looks even scarier like this. This thing’s gotta be huge, just wish we could get a pair of eyes on it.”

  “Actually, we’re gonna launch one of the camera’s today.”

  “Really?”

  “I think everyone’s looking for something to take out minds away from all this--” she gestures vaguely around herself, “--whole thing.”

  “You got that right,” James says. “Hey, uh, weird question, but, have you been having bad dreams, since, well, since the crash? I know it’s probably normal, or whatever, given the circumstances. I just feel like I’ve noticed everyone else--”

  “Yeah,” Charlie interrupts. “No, you’re right. You’re definitely not alone.”

  Even as the two speak, the sounds of restless sleep fill the room. Shifting bodies and gibberish groans come from the beds around them.

  “Have you...remembered anything from them?” James asks.

  Charlie shakes her head. “No, not a thing. Have you?”

  “No, but something feels, I don’t know, off.”

  “You are right about it being normal, though. Really, in this situation, I’d be concerned if you weren’t having nightmares. I mean, we’re all scared shitless right? Just trying to keep it together.”

  “Right. Yeah. Of course.”

  For a moment, there’s a silence between the two. Though on the surface--now that everyone’s had a couple of days to cool off--they’ve been able to function normally, they both know that inside they still hold a whirlwind of emotion. Panic hasn’t even fully left them yet, and fear probably never would, not until they knew they were safe at least. But the chance to launch a camera, get some actual eyes on their surroundings, and put their minds to work, would hopefully be a much-needed distraction. Not only would it give them something to do, but it would also shed light on what lies outside the sub, make the world they’ve fallen into a bit more known, and that was comforting in its own way.

  After a quick breakfast, Charlie, Bill, Piper, and James go to the control room to begin their preparations while they wait for the rest of their people to wake up.

  James, in his years working on more media-focused deep-sea projects, actually has the most experience with what they’re planning for the day. He’s piloted small submersibles down to the depths of the oceans and even driven small camera drones much like the one on the Narwhal. His experience at the controls of similar vehicles and expertise with using drone-mounted cameras make him an invaluable member for this first exploratory mission. His setup in the control room of the Narwhal is familiar to him, and he gets to work making the needed preparations. Being able to start working seems to ease his mind a little, and the tension on his face, the anxiety leftover from his nightmares, eases as he focuses on getting the images they need to assess the extent of the damage from outside the submarine.

***

  Soon, the researchers are all awake and gathered in the control room. All the activity clues everyone in to what’s going on, but just to ensure everyone’s on the same page, Bill speaks to them anyway.

  “We’re planning just to launch the camera drone today,” Bill says. “Really it’s just something to get a look outside the sub, inspect the damage, and get a look at the rest of that tooth. After that, maybe we can have a look around. Baby steps.”

  “Why don’t we launch everything?” Ernie asks, hand raised in the air. “I mean, we’ve got all this equipment, might as well use it.”

  “No need to be hasty,” Bill replies. “Let’s take it slow until we know where we stand.”

  “A lot of activity might bring that thing back,” Jessica says. “You think about that, Ernie?”

  Her voice is shaky, nervous, but it has a bite to it, a drop of venom directed at her brother’s headstrong recommendation. The thought that launching even a single drone might attract unwanted attention fills her with dread.

  Piper rests a hand on Jessica’s shoulder. “We’re going to be careful,” she says. “We haven’t heard a peep from the whale since she hit us and I think we’ll feel a bit better once we get a pair of eyes out there, hm?”

  James, sitting at his controls, spins around to face everyone. “I’ll be delicate, take it nice and slow. We don’t know this environment or this animal, and like with any animal we just need to be careful and respectful.”

  Jessica makes a slow nod, but she still seems uncertain.

  “Speaking of what we do and do not know about this animal,” Piper begins, looking at Bill.

  “Right,” Bill says, “Dr. Piper and I had a discussion this morning, something we both thought of during the attack.”

  “We could be wrong, but I won’t beat around the bush about it. We don’t believe that the creature that attacked us was Julia.”

  A murmur of confusion arises in the room, rising and falling as Piper continues.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  “What we encountered was without a doubt a new species. At 70 meters long, there’s nothing else like it yet known to science, and after looking over the tooth I’m confident it’s a whale of some sort. But we all heard the calls it made: a short howl, and a series of clicks. It’s really not all that different from existing cetaceans. And therein lies the problem, Julia was never that ordinary. We’ve all heard what Julia sounds like, the two don’t match up at all. They exist on opposite ends of the spectrum; the whale was short and high frequency, Julia was much longer and lower.”

  “But they could be the same creature,” Max retorts, “we know almost nothing about the thing, maybe it’s just got some serious range.”

  Piper nods. “You’re right. It’s just a theory, and we could be wrong. But the differences are quite stark, and from my point of view, there being two different animals down here would explain why.”

  “And in an isolated environment like this, we expected to find more than one new species,” Bill says. “Maybe we didn’t expect two creatures of this scale, but that’s only because the thought of such a massive species was, in-and-of-itself, hard to imagine.”

  “It’s something to keep in mind is all,” Piper says.

  Max shrugs. “Probably doesn’t matter anyway. None of this matters if we all die down here.”

  “Max,” Bill says.

  “Nobody’s dying down here,” Lewis interjects, “not on my watch.”

  “Oh, you’ve done a great job on that front so far, captain,” Max spits back.

  Lewis sighs.

  “Let’s just focus on getting this drone out there,” Charlie says, trying to cut off the moment of tension before it can take hold.

  Max huffs and turns around, walking out of the room and heading back downstairs.

  “Well,” Lewis says, “let’s just get this fish in the water, hm?”

  “Ready over here,” James responds.

  Bill nods and Lewis turns to his crew. “Fire when ready, chief.”

  Harley pulls the radio receiver to his mouth. “Torpedo room, fire tube one when ready.”

  Like a well-oiled machine, the crew in the torpedo room respond after only a brief moment. “Tube one away, aye sir.”

  The sound of metal sliding against metal echoes up through the ship, followed quickly by that of rushing water as the Narwhal’s torpedo tube opens and the probe slips out into the sea. Resting on the seabed, the drone has just barely enough clearance to make it out unscathed, but with mere inches to spare it slips out. Once it's cleared the sub, James takes control. He gives himself a minute to get used to how the drone controls, performing a few basic maneuvers, and once he’s feeling confident, he turns it back toward the submarine.

  A light on the probe’s front blinks on, illuminating the surroundings in a beam of white light. As the camera pans, the circle of light reveals their surroundings. There is, rather expectedly, little to be seen around the Narwhal. The ground below them is solid ice. There’s no dirt or sand, or algae or seaweed, just the mottled grey and jagged seabed.

  James pulls the drone up to give the submarine a once-over. It’s beaten up. At best the hull is dotted with dings and dents and worst deep scratches and gouged holes. In spots where the ship was split open, the patches made from inside can be seen as the light filters in. The wounds are a gentle but ominous reminder that the repairs made are only a temporary solution.

  The drone swims over to midship. The port side is where their main curiosity lies; the giant tooth. Skewering the side of the Narwhal like a harpoon, almost a foot and a half of it juts out from the ship’s skin and at its base, it’s just as wide. Small flecks of flesh still cling to the root, swaying the current.

  “Wow,” Elina says, “we really did only get half of it, huh? You think it’s nearby?”

  “Doubt it,” Lewis says, “we’ve been listening pretty close for the past couple days. There’s something out there, but it ain’t come back near us at all.”

  “So,” James turns to the room, “explore the area a bit?”

  “Might as well,” Bill says. “Uh, Lewis, you said you guys were hearing something out there, maybe we should avoid that area?”

  “Wish I could tell you where it was coming from, but they’re real subtle and something about the shape of the ice is bouncing sound all over the goddamn place.”

  Bill nods. “Let’s just take it nice and slow then, carefully. Turn back if there’s any sign the whale is close. We don’t wanna risk anything.”

  Jessica swallows. “If you ask me, we’d be better off not doing any exploring.”

  “Aw, come on,” James says, “this thing’s tiny, and it’s certainly not pinging loud sonar around. It’ll be fine.”

  “I agree,” Piper says, “we came down here to explore this hidden sea, and so long as we’re stuck here, we might as well shoot our shot.”

  Ernie pats his sister on the shoulder. “It’ll be fine,” he says.

  James brings the drone around, pointing it away from the ship it slips off into the expanse of dark water. Keeping it slow, cautious, and most importantly, quiet, he keeps the drone close to the seafloor.

  The light from the drone glints off of something in the distance and James brings it to a hover. Sitting on the ice is something that may be less impressive than the whale that sunk them, but it stands as the first creature of the hidden Antarctic sea that they’ve actually laid eyes on. A tiny crab walks along before them. In the complete darkness, its carapace is pure white, and in its claw, it holds a shard of shiny metal, which sparkles in the spotlight, likely a little piece of the Narwhal that drifted off after the crash.

  Charlie smiles. “Cute little dude.”

  “I bet it’s a new species, too,” Elina says.

  “You could probably assume that’s the case for everything that lives down here,” Bill adds.

  “Honestly, I got so caught up in the excitement of finding something big, I almost forgot there would be a whole undiscovered ecosystem down here,” Elina says.

  After watching the crab scurry about on the ice for a few minutes, James departs. The further they go, the more they see. The little crab isn’t alone down in this icy environment. Although the lack of sunlight prevents any plants from growing, as with all deep-sea ecosystems, life finds a way all the same.

  Twenty minutes pass, and after a few important stops to check out new animals, their numbers seem to drop off again, until--just as near the Narwhal--there are scant traces of life.

  “Strange,” Bill says.

  “You think they all congregate near the center?” Charlie asks.

  “We can’t have reached the other side of the sea yet, that’d be way too small for anything as big as that whale.”

  “Then where’d everything go?”

  James leans in toward the screen, trying to get a closer look off into the darkness in front of his drone. “There’s a drop-off here.”

  Coming into the range of the headlights, they see it. James stops the drone at the edge, looking out. The rim curves away from them in a semicircle, and off into the darkness, beyond the reach of the light. In front of them is a sharp drop-off, the ice at the edges jagged.

  “The ice here almost looks broken,” James says.

  “A sinkhole-?” Bill asks.

  “That possible?” Lewis asks.

  James shrugs. “In a sense, I guess. If a piece of the seabed gave way and floated up to the...uhh...ceiling.”

  “That can happen?” Elina asks. “Like under us? Right now?”

  “Best not to think about it,” Charlie says.

  James brings the drone out over the chasm in the ice. “Let’s get a closer look,” he says.

  For over a minute he drops the probe into the pit, letting it fall deeper and deeper, yet the light never touches bottom. But then the screen jolts and the drone comes to a sudden halt.

  “You hit the floor?” Piper asks.

  “Can’t be, it’s still dark below us.”

  He tries to bring the drone back up a bit, but instead of moving, it rocks gently then falls back into place.

  “Hold up.”

  James again leans in close to the screen. He rocks the drone again and sees particles in the water move with his motion. But it’s not bits of dirt and ice floating in the water as he first thought. All around the drone is a spotty, somewhat transparent substance, and looking out around the area, this substance continues in all directions, covering the hole. Below it is indeed more darkness, as the crater plunges deeper, but, caught in the strange membrane, they can go no further.

  “Shit,” James says.

  “What is that stuff?” Charlie asks.

  “No idea, but it’s jammed me all up, whatever it is. It’s like a spiderweb. Any ideas?”

  “Floor it?” Lewis suggests.

  James shrugs. Using what little maneuverability he has, he points the drone as far up as the sticky membrane allows. Staring into the murky water above, James brings the drone up to full throttle all at once. It’s propellers spin up quickly, shredding the webbing behind it and loosening their binds. The drone lurches forward.

  “Just a bit more,” James says, “come on.”

  The little drone keeps pulling, it inches upward, the membrane stretching and tearing, then all at once it gives way. The drone shoots upward, tumbling in the water. James steadies it, pulling back the throttle.

  “Sometimes brute force is the best option,” Lewis says.

  “Can’t argue with the results,” James replies. “Would’ve sucked if we got really jammed down there.”

  Bringing the drone back to a hover, James points the camera back down the hole. The membrane now has a tattered hole fluttering in the current where it had gotten stuck. It’s a light gossamer, hanging in the darkness, suspended across the entirety of the pit. The edges of the hole that the drone made bleed a pale blue glow into the water around it, not enough to illuminate the water, just enough to be visible on the screen.

  Everyone crowds in, huddling their faces around James, trying to get a better look. No matter how close they get to the screen though, nobody’s quite sure what to make of the strange webbings before them. It’s unlike anything they’ve seen before.

  The quiet wondering of the researchers is soon interrupted, by the all-too-familiar whale call they heard just a few days ago. The call is not near the Narwhal though, and it’s much more muted than it was when the animal attacked. Still, even at such a distance, the noise sends a shiver down their spines as fear creeps back onto their faces.

  “Oh god,” Jessica says.

  “It’s not coming for us,” James whispers, “it’s here.”

  He points at the computer screen as he pitches the drone back up. Coming into view above them, they see the shadow of the enormous whale pass over. It doesn’t enter the crater, but instead circles above it. It calls out again, howling.

  Another call joins in, then another, and soon it becomes a choir of howls. More dark shadows join the first swimming over the pit. Though it’s dark and hard to see that far up in the limited range of the drone’s lights, there are four distinct shapes, four whales.

  The camera starts to vibrate. The intensity of the whale song picks up, and the water around the drone resonates, giving the image relayed back to the sub a strange, wavy look.

  Then another sound echoes in the water, but this call is not of the whales. This sound comes not from above the drone, but below it, and it reaches the ears of those on the submarine loud and clear. It starts slow, but builds, a long bellowing moan. It sends tremors through the Narwhal and those inside can feel the power of this noise in their chests. For the first time since they’ve arrived, Julia makes herself heard.

  The drone’s footage becomes entirely unintelligible as Julia’s volume overwhelms it. What they see on screen is only a garbled mess of dark and light as the vibrations rock the tiny drone.

  Twenty seconds of continuous noise pass before the harrowing call ends. The whale song, audible again, has become faster, frantic even, and as the drone settles and refocuses on the shapes above it, it sees that their swimming too, has sped up. They’ve formed up in a circle over the pit and spiral above it as quickly as their tails can push them.

  Then, the drone jerks forward, caught in some sort of current. James wrestles with the controls. It stabilizes for a moment, and, camera pointed down, it picks up something moving below the membrane, a shapeless, dark splotch shifting and undulating randomly. But before James can try to focus in and get a better view, the probe is caught in another current and this time it’s too strong for James to regain control. It’s thrown up, and out of the hole, hurled into a tight spin that makes the camera feed a distorted mess once again. The water tosses and churns like a pot stirred.

  The whale song stops. The water is silent, and soon it calms and the drone settles. It’s come to rest on the lip of the crater. The control room is dead silent as James pans the camera. Above the drone, the four whales are motionless. Motionless, but for a slow, downward drift. The shadowy beasts are falling through the water, dead. Blood is the first thing to fall into the cone of light in front of the drone. Faint at first, just thin tendrils reaching down toward the crater, but growing in quantity until the water gains a red hue.

  Everyone is so entranced, petrified, by the view on screen, that there’s little to no reaction as the falling corpses of the whales drift down toward them. Three fall straight into the hole and out of sight. The fourth strikes the ground directly in front of the drone, bits of ice, dirt, and blood swirl in the light but as it settles the animal is revealed.

  The creature has a smaller head than most modern whales, and teeth many times larger. Its skin is pale blue, almost white, and along its back some sort of algae or seaweed appears to grow like a garden. Blood leaks from deep lacerations across its body, but more than that the corpse is twisted. Broken bones pierce the skin, the beast has been crushed, disfigured as if it’s been wrung like an old sponge.

  Some turn their heads from the morbid scene on the monitor, covering their mouths in horror. But they don’t need to for long, the corpse shifts as its full weight floats down, most of its body comes down over the pit, and the beast soon slides over the edge to join the other three. James points the drone down to watch as the mangled remains of a whale large enough to leave a nuclear submarine wrecked on the bottom of the sea, drifts into the darkness below.

  Only scraps of the membrane remain; the rest has been torn away. Whatever was glimpsed moving below its surface is gone as well.