Charlie rolls over in bed, staring through the pitch black of the room around her. She holds her hands in front of her face and when she squints she thinks she can just barely make them out, but can’t tell if it’s actually just her imagination or not. She sticks her hand under her mattress and touches the cold handle of her flashlight. Flicking the switch, it cuts a beam of light through the darkness. She’s not the first to wake, a few of the other bunks are already empty as she steps down the ladder. She tries to do so silently--as to not awaken Bill below her--but finds that his bunk is one of those currently unoccupied.

  Slipping on her shoes, Charlie tiptoes out into the hall. The Narwhal creaks, groaning as it continues its valiant struggle to hold back the sea with its crippled hull. Over the groaning metal, she hears voices coming from the mess hall.

  In the kitchen, one of the sailors is already up, preparing a rationed breakfast for everyone. Bill and Piper sit beside each other, speaking in a hushed tone. They turn when they hear Charlie’s footsteps behind them.

  “Morning,” Bill says, motioning for him to take a seat.

  Charlie sits down across from them. “Morning,” she says, yawning. “Whatcha talking about?”

  “What else?” Piper says.

  “Yesterday was eventful, to say the least,” Bill adds.

  Charlie nods slowly, still waking up. “I think I dreamt about it, whatever it is.”

  Nobody truly understands exactly what it was that they saw the day before. James was the only person who noticed the movement beneath the membrane until they played it back later. Still, even after looking it over a dozen times, what moved in the pit remains a mystery as it appeared far too briefly for any sort of real shape to be made out in the images. All they really understood was that whatever it was, whatever Julia was, had been in the pit, and when it came out, it killed the whales and vanished into the sea.

  “Well, we know it’s a predator,” Bill says. “Didn’t expect that.”

  “Is it though? It killed the whales, but it didn’t stick around to eat afterwards,” Charlie replies.

  “I think we’d be better off looking to the whales for answers,” Piper says.

  “Julia could be a whale too,” Bill says, “we never saw it.”

  “I mean, if Julia is a predator, then I’m interested in what the whales were doing so near to it.”

  The whales had spent a considerable amount of time and effort in swimming circles above the crater, singing as they did so. All the energy and time that could have been spent running away, and yet, they made no effort to do so. On the contrary, the whales came and stuck around even after Julia’s call had blasted through the water.

  “Maybe they were fighting back in some way? Yeah?” Charlie asks.

  Piper nods. “I think so too. Plenty of prey do. That ritual, the circling, the song. It had to mean something. Maybe Julia is sensitive to certain frequencies or harmonies, the whales use it to beat back predators.”

  Bill shakes his head. “Maybe. But Julia didn’t exactly seem to be hunting them. It seemed more like they came to it.”

  Piper nods.

  “Maybe it’s the other way around?” Charlie suggests. “Maybe the whales were the predators and Julia was just defending herself.”

  “I’ve got a theory.”

  A new voice enters the conversation. James steps into the room and stands behind Bill and Piper before walking to the other side and sitting next to Charlie.

  “By all means.” Piper raises upturned palms toward him.

  “I don’t think that pit was Julia’s home, I think it was a prison.”

  Piper furrows her brow.

  “The whales had Julia trapped, and were trying to keep it that way.”

  “Why would they do that?” Piper asks.

  James shrugs. “Dunno. But don’t you think it’s a little odd how things played out down there? We show up, we tear a hole in that membrane. A moment later--obviously they were close by--the whales show up. Then whatever was down in that hole, whatever that thing is, it gets out, kills all four of the giant fucking whales in a second, and then it’s gone.”

  “It is strange that the whales were close enough to show up that quickly,” Charlie says. “But surely Julia could have broken that membrane without our help.”

  “Unless…” Piper begins.

  “Unless the membrane was a diaphragm.”

  Another new person enters. Elina steps into the room and takes the other seat next to Charlie.

  “Morning,” Charlie says.

  “Morning,” Elina replies. “The membrane wasn’t really a barrier, not in the way you’re thinking. It was more like an amplifier.”

  Piper nods. “The diaphragm of a speaker. Of course. If Julia’s sensitive to sound, then the membrane wasn’t there to trap her physically, but acoustically.”

  “That’s my theory, at least,” Elina says.

  “Very clever,” Piper says. “I must say, I was skeptical about Bill’s choice in scientists for this. Elina, Charlie, you’re both very young, but I’ll admit it was my own bias driving that skepticism, you both belong here.”

  “Not sure if that counts as a compliment considering the situation.” Charlie laughs.

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

  Piper chuckles. “Quite right. None of us really belong here.”

  Charlie’s laughter fades to a frown. But she’s not thinking about the awful circumstances they’re trapped in at the moment, but a more naturalist interpretation of the phrase, “none of us belong here.”

  “We got those whales killed. We broke the membrane, and we upset something very delicate.”

  Bill sighs. “No research can ever be done without some impact on the subjects, but I’ll admit this was a pretty major screw up on our part. Who knows how delicate the ecosystem down here is, how fragile the relationship between these animals was.”

  Piper nods. “So what do we do today, then?”

  “I think we should try to find Julia,” Elina says, “we set her free, we should at least find out where she went.”

  “I didn’t hear her at all last night,” Charlie says.

  “No,” Bill says, “guess she was quiet. But we don’t need her to be shouting for us to hear her out there. We’ve got hydrophones onboard, maybe if we throw some ears out there we can track her down.”

  “If we're gonna release a giant whale killing monster from the prison they made for it, we might as well get a good look at the thing, huh?” Charlie asks.

  Elina chuckles. “I don’t know if I wanna know what a giant, whale killing monster looks like.”

  Charlie laughs in return, but the jest is only half a joke. Eyes turn down as a feeling of unease washes over the breakfast table. They were already afraid of the whale that attacked them, already anxious in their perilous state, and now there was something else out there, something unknown and something dangerous. Their fears are amplified by one simple addition: if the whales had been aggressive and strong enough to sink the Narwhal, then what kind of danger did the monster that killed them present?

  The moment of silence doesn’t last, as a shriek from down the hall reaches their ears. This cry comes from within the sub and with all the familiarity of a human voice. Rising together, Charlie, Bill, Piper, James, and Elina make haste and return to the bunks.

  Their flashlights pass over the faces of all of those who were still asleep but were awoken by the screaming. The beams of light converge on Jessica and Ernie’s bunks where the siblings sit side-by-side, Ernie cradling his sister in his arms as she whimpers.

  Charlie steps over to them. “What happened?.”

  Ernie shakes his head. “Nightmare, or night terror really. The stress is definitely getting to her.”

  Charlie puts a gentle hand on Jessica’s head. “It’s okay,” she says, trying and failing to come with anything more substantial to comfort her.

  With everyone awake, the bunk room empties, leaving Ernie and Jessica with some privacy to recover. Back in the mess hall again, nobody seems to have much of an appetite for breakfast anymore.

  Bill pushes a plate of scrambled eggs around in a spiral, before blinking, shaking his head, and putting down his fork.

  “James I and talked about it before,” Charlie says, breaking the silence, “but just to check. Are we all having nightmares?”

  Everyone replies in the affirmative.

  “Well,” Bill says, “if the dreams we have are so terrible, maybe that makes our real situation seem a bit better by comparison.”

  Charlie squints at Bill and shakes her head. “That doesn’t really help.”

  “Uh, yeah, forget I said anything.”

  Max, who looks about ready to fall asleep face-down in his plate after the rude awakening, sighs. “You might be right, Bill, if I could fuckin’ remember anything from the dreams.”

  “You too, then?”

  Max nods.

  “And everybody else?”

  Bill looks around the table but gets no answer. Not a single person on board the Narwhal can remember so much as a glimpse of their nightmares.

  “We’re all scared,” Charlie says, “but for now we should try to relax a bit, otherwise we’ll never get any sleep.”

  “Easier said than done,” Max replies.

  “Yeah.”

  “Then let’s get working,” Piper says. “Bit of work’s always the best distraction for me.”

***

  Minus Ernie and Jessica, everyone gathers in the control room later in the morning to try and find Julia again. Though there’s no screen with a live camera feed this time, the hydrophones, though less interesting to look at, cast a much larger net.

  They launch a device that proceeds to circle around the ship. As it spirals, it drops a series of small hydrophones at equal intervals. Floating in the water, tied off to small anchors with a short length of cable, the hydrophones are switched on and begin to listen.

  To minimize interference, all the hydrophones are pointed away from the Narwhal, but that only does so much, so while they listen, everyone keeps as quiet as they can. For Lewis and his crew, this is easy, they were trained for perfect silence when they were in the Navy. As for the research team, though there are a few lapses in discipline, tensions are high enough that everybody’s walking on pins and needles anyway.

  As someone who spent a great deal of time working with the larger scale pacific hydrophone array that discovered Julia, Bill takes up the task of listening in for her in this instance.

  Listening is a delicate art for Bill, that’s something he had learned in his time at the NOAA. When he had first started listening in for traces of Julia years back, he thought it would be easy, just stick on a pair of headphones and wait, but there was a skill to it. The ocean is not a quiet place, and picking out the right sounds from the cacophony of noise takes a trained ear. So Bill holds the headphones tight around his head, closes his eyes, and waits.

  Five, ten, fifteen minutes pass. Bill hears nothing but the sound of flowing water and creaking ice, occasionally punctuated with some groan or clunk from the Narwhal’s noise pollution.

  “I don’t get it.” Bill rips the headphones off and lays them in his lap. “Something that big can’t be this quiet. We should hear...something.”

  Charlie bites her thumbnail. “Think she left?”

  “Found a way out?” Bill asks. “Maybe.”

  He looks up, out across the cramped control room. Most eyes are off of him now, sailors shifting their focus back to their assigned duties. The one notable exception is the ship’s sonar operator, an older woman with jet black hair and large, red glasses.”

  “What’s your name?” Bill asks.

  “Reina, sir,” she replies.

  “Wanna have a go?” Bill asks. “Maybe your ears are better than mine.”

  She stands up and crosses the room. Bill hands her the headphones and stands up, letting her take his seat. In much the same way as Bill, she clamps them down tight over her ears, closes her eyes and listens, and in much the same way, she hears little but the movement of the water and the settling of the submarine.

  The two spend the better part of two hours trading the headphones back and forth. Researchers trickle out, anxious from all the waiting around, leaving them alone. They keep at it, hoping to catch even the slightest hint of Julia, but she eludes their ears and they give up for the day, promising to try again the next morning.

***

  Bill and Charlie sit in the mess hall, poking at their lunch.

  “I don’t get it,” Bill says.

  Charlie wraps an arm over his shoulder. “Maybe she’s resting,” she says, “after everything that happened, I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  “I don’t know.” Bill scratches at his beard. “This place can’t be that big, and again, she’s huge, even while resting, you’d think you could hear something, breathing, or any movement, but there’s nothing.”

  “Don’t kill yourself over it, nothing about her behavior makes sense. We’re trying to put together a puzzle that we can’t see the pieces to.”

  “I know.” Bill sighs. “I know with everything going on I shouldn’t stress about this of all things. Learning about Julia is secondary right now, but, I don’t know. I just feel like I’m lost, running in circles or something.”

  “You’re tired,” Charlie says, “we’re all tired. Try to get to bed earlier tonight, then give it another go tomorrow. We’ll track her down soon enough.”

  Bill smiles. “You know, it’s starting to sound more like I’m the apprentice and you’re the master.”

  “Just gotta keep your head on straight, old man. All of us do.”

  “Yep.”

  Bill replies but doesn’t feel much like he’s actually able to do so. In his mind, he turns possibilities over and over but finds himself stuck looping with no escape. When he tries to get himself onto a new track, he feels like he slides off of any other chain of thought, right back on the circular track that finds him no answers. It’s frustrating and discouraging, but Bill is stubborn, and though his mind struggles to find purchase while trying to puzzle out the mystery of Julia, his heart is ready to jump back into the control room and listen for as long as it takes.