Speaker 1: As a former Navy EOD diver and demolition specialist, when
there's a specific job for ordnance disposal and one of
a handful of people called on. Fourteen years in the service,
mostly underwater clearance and ordnance disposal in the Gulf and
the Horn of Africa, I got out after a bad
dive that took two of my teammates and left me
with nightmares that still wake me tasting salt water and diesel.
These days, I take private clearance contracts, ugly isolated jobs
that most people won't touch, the kind where they send
one man because it's cheaper than sending a team. I've
been doing it for three years now, telling myself it's temporary.
The contract came from a European preservation foundation working with
the Estonian government. An abandoned eighteenth century monastery on the
Baltic coast of the Soviets turned into a coastal defense
bunker during the Cold War. Half the structure is flooded,
now slowly sinking back into the sea. My job was
straightforward on paper. Complete the final inventory of all remaining
equipment and hazardous materials, conduct a structural assessment of the
flooded levels, and carry out controlled demolition of the critical
unstable sections so the site can be declared condemned. Ten
days alone on a remote half submerged rock, with nothing
but stone, sea water and my own head for company.
After this, I was done one more job, and I'd
retire unhappily to figure out how to live the rest
of my days. The supply boat's engine cut out with
a catural cough, leaving only the slap of cold Baltic
water against the concrete dock. I stepped off onto the
slick surface, boots, skidding slightly on a film of salt
and algae. The sky hung low and bruised, and the
winds slie straight through my jacket like it had been
waiting for me. I hauled the heavy gear bags onto
the landing one by one, the straps cutting into my shoulders.
Ahead of me rose the half submerged monastery bunker complex,
rotting Gothic arches fused brutally with Soviet era blast doors,
freighted frescoes of saints peeling away under thick crusts of barnacles.
Seawater lid lazily at the lower steps, Patient, almost affectionate.
This was it, my last clearance, contract catalog, every flooded level, seal,
the critical breeches, demolition. No more of this hell, waking
up in strange places, with my heart trying to punch
its way out of my ribs. My hands shook slightly
as I signed the handover papers. The boat captain trust
at me. Out beyond the dark. The waves kept rolling in,
and for a second they sounded exactly like rotor blades
churning through the gulf night. I clenched my jaw until
the memory retreated. The weight of my chest settled in
like an old friend. I never asked a visit. It
felt exactly like every other job I'd pushed through. I
dragged the last crate into the upper cloister, muscles burning.
The portable generator coughed once twice, then rattled to life
with a steady, mechanical hum. I moved methodically through the
dryer upper floor, checklists clipped to my forearm, flashlight cutting
sharp white tunnels through the gloom. The air was thick
with the smell of mildew and something fainter underneath, old incense, maybe,
or just the ghost of centuries of prayer soaked into
the stone. My boots echoed too loud, no matter how
softly I tried to step. I noticed structural cracks running
like lightning through the vaulted ceilings. I logged the rusted
remains of Soviet equipment, still bolted to the walls, whole
junction boxes, stripped wiring, a faded red star half peeled away,
all of it going to the demolition team's inventory standard procedure.
My own breathing sounded obscenely loud in the empty corridors,
each in hal scraping against the silence. In one particularly
flooded stairwell, the water sat perfectly still, black as obsidian glass.
Even though the tide outside should have been pushing and pulling.
There were no ripples or movement, just that flat reflective
surface staring back at me. I wrote it down anyway,
sheltered micro event, no visible current. Pens scratched loudly against
the waterproof paper. I kept walking, but the stillness followed me,
like a held breath patient, unblinking, pressing gently against my spine.
I set up camp in the old Monk's quarters above
the waterline, the same way I had done a hundred
times before in worse places. Every external door got checked
and double checked out of pure habit. The portable generator
rattled to life in the corner, its steady mechanical hum
filling the stone room like a heartbeat I could control.
I swallowed my meds with a swig of lukewarm water
from my canteen, the pills catching slightly in my throat.
Then I lay down on a thin camp mattress, staring
at the cracked vaulted ceiling, forcing my mind away from
the gulf dive that still played on loop. When the
lights went out, the cold water rushing in two voices
that went quiet too fast. I clenched my jaw and
pushed the memory back into its box. Not tonight. Sleep
came in shallow fits. Around two AM. I jolted awake,
heart already racing before my eyes even opened. The generator
was still humming, but something else was in the room
with me, very low, deliberate, dripping. Two drops paws, another
two drops pause. I sat up, fast, sweeping the flashlight
beam across the walls and floor. There were no wet
patches on the stone, but the sound kept going anyway,
steady and patient. It felt like it was matching up
my heart beat, rising as I tried to focus on
hearing it falling. As I tried putting it out of
my mind. I lay rigid in the sleeping bag, breath shallow,
whispering under my breath like a prayer. I didn't believe in,
just the old pipe settling the building, breathing nothing more.
The quiet after each drop felt heavier than any combat
silence I'd ever known, like the entire monastery was listening
to see what I would do. Next morning came cold,
I geared up for the mid level bunkers anyway, checking
my flashlight and camera twice, telling myself this was still
just the job, just another checklist. I began the systematic
inventory of the mid level bunkers just after first light,
boots echoing down the long stone corridors. My camera clicked
steadily as I photographed rusted Soviet machinery and faded to
villag warning signs. Everything going into the report before demolition.
The barnacles were the first thing that I felt wrong. They
grew across the lower sections of the walls in unnervingly
perfect geometric patterns, tight spirals and interlocking angles that looked
more like deliberate architecture than anything the sea should have made.
I tried to ignore them and stay on the checklist,
but my eyes kept drifting back. While kneeling to measure
a hairline crack near the water line, something happened. A cold,
smooth sensation like heavy wet fabric rushed slowly across my
gloved fingers, just under the surface of the shallow pool.
It lingered for half a second, almost curious, Then withdrew,
I yanked my hand back so hard I nearly lost balance,
heart hammering against my ribs like it wanted out. The
flashlight beams shook across the water. There was nothing there,
just dark, still liquid reflecting my own distorted face, floating debris,
I said aloud, voice steadier than I felt. I logged
it anyway, the words scratchy and the waterproof paper possible
seaweed or fabric fragment. The touch lingered on my skin
long after I pulled away, Cold and far too intentional.
It stayed with me like a fingerprint I couldn't wipe off.
By day three, the mid levels were finished, so I
gave up with a heavier waterproof jacket and waded deeper
into the flooded lower crips. The water came up to
my thighs, almost immediately colder than the bolter, get any
right to be this time of year, cold enough to
bite straight through the neoprene layers and settle into my bones.
The headlamp cut a narrow white tunnel through the water
that was strangely clear, almost crystalline, revealing every crack in
the submerged stone steps. That was when I saw the strand. Pale, thin,
delicate things drifted lazily in the gentle current swaying like
impossibly long seaweed caught an invisible tide. They caught the
light with a faint, purlescent sheen. I took one careful
step forward, and the beam brushed across the nearest cluster
in perfect unison. The strands retracted, graceful, almost shy, pulling
back into the darker waters, as if they had never
been disturbed. I stayed still for a long time, water
lapping at my hips, unidentified organic matter, I muttered, voice
echoing off the vaulted ceiling, possible invasive species. I locked
it anyway, the words feeling small and ridiculous against the
silence that followed. I kept moving, boots scraping over a
silk covered stone, but the strands didn't stay behind. They
seemed to follow my path with quiet grace, drifting alongside me,
just at the edge of the light, never quite touching,
never quite retreating completely, like curious fingers trailing through the dark.
I finally reached the next chamber and started rigging the
portable pumps, refusing to let the job stall even for
a second. The hoses snaked across the wet stone like
pale veins. The machines coughed once twice, then wrought to
life with a mechanical growl that should have felt comforting.
At first, the water level dropped exactly as it was
supposed to, inch by inch, revealing more of the barnacle,
crusted walls and the faint outlines of frescoes bleeding into rust.
Then it began rising again, not in chaotic surges, but
in a slow, regular rhythm, one measured swell pause, another
measured swell pause. The cadence hit me like a memory.
I couldn't outrun the exact sound and feel of water
flooding into a breached compartment, the way it had climbed
so steadily that night in the gulf. My chest tightened hard,
breath locking in my throat for a second that stretched
too long. My hands froze and the pump controls while
phantom pressure built behind my eyes, and the taste of
diesel and salt water flooded my mouth. Even though the
air here was only damp stone and mildew, The world
narrowed to the rising line of water and the pounding
in my ears. I forced my fingers to move again,
jaw clenched until it ached. I'm not leaving this hard done,
I muttered through gritted teeth, the words barely audible over
the pumps. I kept working, adjusting valves, checking connections, refusing
to step back, even as the water licked higher up
my legs with that same patient, inevitable rhythm. The pumps
weren't pushing anything away. If anything, they seemed to be
drawing something closer. Later that same day, while working through
a debris filled side chapel, I pried open a rusted
metal box, half buried under collapse shelving. Inside was stacked
leather bound eighteenth century monastery volumes, mixed together with faded
Soviet clipboards. The metal corners long seemed corrode it into
orange lace. Most of the old pages were in faded script.
I could barely decipher tight spidery handwriting that looked like
an mix of allD Estonian and Latin. The inchord bled
in places where sea water had crept in over the decades.
I flipped through them carefully, gloves leaving faint smears on
the brittle paper. Tugged between the old volumes, I found
a modern folder who was clearly left behind by researchers
or EU preservation students, a crisp plastic binder with scanned excerpts,
English translations and typed notes. One seventeen ninety two entry
had been carefully translated and highlighted. The monks had written
in frantic, repeated lines about desperately sealing the lower cistern
because of the quiet one in the deep. That quote
must not be disturbed. Below the translation was a photocopy
of the crude ink drawing simple folded arches disappearing beneath
wavy lines. They were of obviously meant to be water.
The student's note in the margin simply read local superstition
slash possible folklore reference. I stared at the translated page
for a long moment. A chill traced its way down
my spine, the same feeling I used to get right
before bad news crackled over the radio. I snapped photos
of both the original pages and the translated excerpts anyway,
close ups of the text and the drawing. It was
thorough documentation for the Foundation's records. Nothing more but the
name stuck in my head like an unwonted radio call sign,
repeating quietly every time the silence stretched too long. Later
that same afternoon, I slipped on my mask and dove
into a narrow, floody corridor to clear a blocked drain,
the beam of my headlamp cutting through the cold water
ahead of me. Under Water in the narrow corridor, the
world narrowed to the cone of my head lamp and
the slow swirl of silt around my fins. The passage
was tighter than I expected, stone walls pressing close on
both sides. As I worked my way toward the clogged drain,
my light swept ahead and caught something massive and pale,
moving far below the deeper cistern. It undulated slowly, gracefully,
like the trailing of hem of an enormous white robe,
or perhaps a wing made of smooth, heavy flesh. The
motion was in a hurried, almost regal, disappearing into the
black water. Before my mind could fully register the size
of it. I kicked hard for the surface, breaking through
with a gasp that burned in my lungs. Cold air
hit my face as I clung to the stone ledge,
chest heaving. I didn't want to think about it, but
it was almost like a large marine animal, possibly trapped
inside the structure. My hands shook badly as I logged
the sighting on the waterproof clipboard, the pens slipping against
the wet paper. I repeated the words twice, trying to
make them stick. The image refused to leave my retinas.
Even when I closed my eyes, I could still see
that slow, pale undulation drifting through the dark. Back at
camp that evening, I sat on the edge of the
bed roll with the tablet balanced on my knees. The
generator flickered in the corner, throwing unsteady yellow light across
the stone walls. I plugged in the helmet cam and
hit play, the small screen glowing coldly in the dim room.
The footage started normally, my gloved hands clearing the drain
the narrow corridor walls sliding past. Then the moment came.
The pale shape appeared far below, undulating with that same
slow grace. I watched it again, breath held, and realized
the movement matched my own breathing from the dive exactly.
Every rise and fall of that massive form sinked perfectly
with the audios inhale and exhal When I had breathed in,
it had swirled when I had exhaled, it had settled,
not approximately exact. I killed the video and sat there
in the flickering light, the tablet's screen going dark that night.
The dripping returned, each slow drop landing in perfect time
with my heart beat. Thump drip, thump, drip, echoing softly
somewhere in the stone around me. My back pressed against
the cold wall, knees drawn tight to my chest. Just
finish the seals and get extracted, I whispered into the dark, voice, rough,
I can still do this. I've pushed through worse. The
words sounded small, The walls felt like they were listening,
leaning in, absorbing every syllable with quiet, patient attention. I
powered up the satellite phone to send my daily report,
needing to hear another human voice, even if it was
just the automated confirmation tone. The satellite phone crackled a
life in my hand, the small screen showing a wheat
signal bar. I dialed the secure reporting line and waited
for the connection. Thumb tapping nervously against the casing. Static
answered first, wet sounding static that rolled like a distant surf.
Then underneath it came the tones, slow mournful sounds threaded
through the interface, almost like chanting made of water and
grinding stone. Not words, exactly, but something rhythmic and ancient,
rising and falling in long, liquid phrases. They carried a
strange dignity, like a funeral hymn sung in a language
the ocean had invented. I lowered the phone and stepped
to the top of the stairs leading down to the
flooded levels. When I shone my light downward, the water
appeared higher than it had been that morning, clearer, almost luminous,
the surface barely rippled it. Something large was obviously displacing
it from beneath, creating a subtle, constant pressure that made
the whole stair well feel alive. My heart started raising.
I slammed the phone off so hard the case and
creaked the mournful tones still lingered in my ears, as
if they had all the time in the world to
wait for me to understand. The next morning, while placing
explosive charges the seal one of the major breeches, my
gloved fingers slipped on the damp casing. One of the
charges slipped from my grip and disappeared into the dark
water below with a soft final PLoP. I didn't hesitate long.
The charge needed to be recovered, so I rigged my
mask with shaking hands, checked the regulator twice out of
pure habit, and slipped back into the cold water. Before
I could talk myself out of it, my headlamp cut
a jittery beam through the mark. As I descended hard,
already hammering harder than it should, I swept the light
across the submerged walls, desperate for the dull, metallic glint
of the dropped charge. Then the beam caught something else.
I thought my eyes were plain tricks and the low visibility,
but as I drifted closer, the shapes refused to resolve
into anything. Human minds were built to understand. Several enormous, jointed,
pale limbs were folded against the stone in angles that
made no sense. Ribs of the floody cathedral crossed with
the segmented legs of some ancient crustacean, all made of soft,
luminous flesh that glowed with its own faint, sickly moonlight.
The joints bent in ways geometry should never allow, folding
inward and outward at the same time, as if the
limbs existed in more than one direction simultaneously. They did
not reach for me, didn't twitch or threaten. They simply
existed there, with a kind of sorrowful patience, resting against
the walls, like forgotten pillars holding up the weight of
the entire Drone monastery for centuries. The sheer scale slammed
into me like a pressure wave. My chest locked up,
breath caught in the regulator. For one terrifying second, I
forgot how to exhale. Every survival instinct I'd honed over
fourteen years screamed at me to get the hell out surface, run,
swim for the boat, call for extraction, bury the whole
goddamn sight if I had to. My body wanted to bolt.
My mind was already halfway back to the dark, but
my training kicked in harder. It's static, not a threat.
Recover the charge, finish the job. You don't leave ordinance behind.
The old reflex clamped down like a vice. I forced
myself to harver there another few seconds, eyes wide behind
the mask, staring at those impossible joints, while every nerve
in my body I screamed that this was wrong, This
was so damn wrong. I kicked hard for the surface,
breaking through with a ragged, choking gasp that burned all
the way down my throat. My hand shook so violently
I could barely grip the stone ledge. For several long minutes,
I just knelt there on the wet floor, dripping reaching
water and bial that I'd inhaled from the panic, Unable
to form a single coherent thought. The image of those
luminous limbs kept burning behind my eyes, like an afterimage
from a hell Pardon me. Wanted to grab my gear
and run for the boat. Right then, another part, the stubborn,
broken part that always finished the mission, was already trying
to rationalize it. I tried to push forward with a checklist,
hands still trembling as I documented the next section of wool,
but the world shifted without warning. Even though I was
standing in air. I suddenly felt under water pressure against
my chest, cold liquid filling my mouth and nose, the
slow drag of the depth pulling at every limb. Memories
of the dead divers I had recovered years ago flooded
in without marcy, pale faces behind cracked visors, limbs floating
in that same weightless drift. The terrible quiet after the
bubble stopped. Those images mixed seamlessly with a new sensation,
something vast and ancient, cradling every sunken thin with careful,
unending care. Tears started running down my face without me
realizing why. They mixed with the damp already in my skin,
warm against the stone cold air. The sorrow I felt
wasn't mine alone. It almost felt parental, terrible in its tenderness,
as if whatever weah below had been holding every lost soul,
every forgotten wreckage, every ending for longer than humanity had existed.
I wiped my eyes roughly with the back of my
glove and kept writing. But the lines on the waterproof
page began to look wrong. The straight, checkless marks curved
and folded into the same impossible angles I had seen underwater,
as if my own handwriting was trying to imitate those
luminous limbs. I stared at the page until the pin
slipped from my fingers. It felt like all forms of
self autonomy faded. I was left with the resolve I'd
built up over years of surface autopilot taking over. I
doubled down hard. Every POMP I still had was dragged
into the lower levels, hoses snaking across the flooded floors
like pale intestines. I worked with mechanical fury, welding plates
over breeches, setting charges, cranking valves until my shoulders burned.
The generator outside screamed under the strain, but I kept pushing,
refusing to slow down for even a second. Every time
I activated another pomp, the presence grew more aware of me.
I could feel it in the way the water changed,
not chining, but listening. The stone walls themselves began to
breathe in a slow, majestic rhythm, expanding and contracting with
a depth that made the entire monastery feel like a
single living long but not hostile, just overwhelmingly sad, as
though the building itself mourned what I was trying to do.
My hands wouldn't stop shaking. The welding torch jitted in
my grip, throwing wild shadows across the dripping stone, but
I refused the stop. I growled into the darkness between
clenched teeth, voice roar and echoing off the vaults. My
words of affirmation sounded pathetic, even to me, small and
brittle against the vast, patient sadness pressing in from all sides.
I couldn't face the deep chamber again, not after what
I'd seen, so I told myself I'd finished the job
from the opposite side, a narrow side passage i'd mapped earlier,
one that stayed shallow and away from the main cistern,
safer and contained. I'd set the last charges there, sealed
the breech, and get the hell out. My hands were
still shaking from the dive, but I forced them steady.
This was still just one last job. I slipped back
into the water with my mask and fins headlamp, cutting
a wheat tunnel through the cold. The passage felt familiar
at first, tight stone walls silt during under my kicks,
I kept my eyes fixed on the crack I needed
to weld. Then the water changed one moment I was
swimming toward the ledge. The next there was no ledge
behind me. It simply opened, no surface above me, only endless,
liminal expanse of black water, stretching in every direction, perfectly still,
perfectly clear. My head lamp beam kept going and going
until it faded into nothing. There were no walls or
ceilings around me, no way back, just infinite depth and
the slow, heavy pressure of something ancient. Noticing me, I
spun in panic, kicking hard for where the entrance should
have been. Nothing. My breath roared loud in the regulator.
I was fluing, voting in a place that had never
been part of the monastery, a place the monastery had
only pretended to contain. I looked back. The entity was
already there. It filled the void like a drowned cathedral,
given flesh, pale, impossible limbs unfolded in slow, majestic arcs,
ribs and arches, and jointed columns of luminous soft tissue
that should not bend the way it did. They cradled
the darkness itself, and at the center, something like a
throne or a cradle, or a weeping mother waited, vast
and sorrowful and patient. It knew In that moment I
understood with terrible clarity that this was what the old
monks had secretly worshiped in their hidden rights, not saints
or God. This the quiet one in the deep, and
it knew exactly why I was here. The charges, the pomps,
the seals, This was its last chance to save itself.
The great limbs opened. They simply parted, like curtains of
living moonlight, and my mind was pulled inside. The visions
came in a flood, hallucinogenic, cosmic, biblical. I saw the
monastery as it had been in seventeen ninety two, candlelight
flickering across the same stone, monks and their knees before
this presence, singing hymns of drowning and rebirth while the
sea rose around them. I saw the Soviets arrive in
nineteen forty five, the machines and their fear, and still
the entity waited, unmoved, holding every secret they tried to bury.
I saw my own life, the gulf dive, the two
men whose names I still whispered in my sleep, their
bodies drifting in the dark, just as gently as these
limbs now held me. I felt a motherly love on
a scale that made my chest ache. It was at
the level of human tenderness, but on a scale that
filled me to overflow. The love of an ocean for
every wreck it had ever claimed, every soul it had
ever cradled, every ending it had ever witnessed without judgment.
It showed me futures. When the monastery was demolished and
it was sealed forever beneath concrete and rubble, dying slowly alone,
It showed me the alternative acceptance, release, the peace of
simply being allowed to remain. The visions appealed to the
deepest wound in me, the part that had spent fourteen
years trying to seal every loss, every failure, every memory,
behind steel and procedure. Here was something older than grief
that offered to hold these things instead, to cradle them,
the way it had cradled oceans and civilizations and the
quiet deaths of divers. No one ever recovered, cosmic and
biblical and intimate, all at once, the flood that never ended,
the ark that was the sea itself, the God that
did not demand worship but only asked to be seen.
Tears streamed inside my mask. I was screaming without sound.
My training still screamed at me to finish the seals.
My mind screamed louder that something should never be witnessed,
and yet here I was witnessing. In return, I hung
there in the infinite water, tears and sea water, in
this distinguishable the great pale limbs closing gently around the
edges of my vision like a cradle. I came out
of the visions, gasping, suddenly, back in the physical chamber,
with water already surging up to my chest. Pure survival
instincts slammed into me like a break a wave. I
thrashed toward where the exit should have been, mask fogging badly,
regulators screaming in my ear with every desperate breath. For
the first time, I yelled it out loud, my voice
roar and cracking even underwater. Get the hell out of
my head. I'm not your damn priest. This is my
last job. I'm supposed to seal this place and walk away.
My hands shook so violently I could barely grip the
last charges. I fumbled with the detonator, cursing myself between
panicked breaths for ever taking this goddamn contract, for always
having to finish things, for never being able to let
anything stay open or unresolved. The entity didn't fight me,
didn't lash out. It simply let the visions flicker at
the edges of my mind, like gentle, insistent after images,
the two men I lost in the gulf, drifting peacefully
instead of sinking alone in the dark the years I
spent sealing grief and failure behind steel doors and rigid besidure.
Every time I tried to press the detonator button, those
images pressed back, soft, patient, motherly, on a scale that
made my chest ache with something far worse than fear.
I almost did it. I almost set the charges and
swam for my life, But my fingers froze. The stubborn,
broken part to me that had always finished the mission,
the part that had kept me diving long after I
should have stopped, finally cracked wide open. I couldn't press
the button. The detonator slipped from my numb hands and
sank without a sound. The water was already at my neck. Now,
for the first time in my adult life, I chose
not to seal something away. The water climbed steadily to
my chin, then my mouth. I fumbled for the surface
with the last of my strength and held out as
long as I could. The pale limbs opened one final time,
not to trap me, but to cradle The chamber dissolved
again into that liminal, infinite expanse of black water. But
this time I didn't fight it. I let myself drift.
I felt the endity's sorrowful, cosmic tenderness surround me completely.
It was the same motherly love that had held entire oceans,
forgotten civilizations. Eons of compassion were instilled in me. All
at once. It knew exactly why I had come here,
the charges, the seals, the need to finish one last job.
It knew what I had done to myself for years,
how I tried to wall off every grief and failure
behind work. And in its quiet, majestic way, it offered
me the one mercy I'd never been able to give anyone,
including myself. Release from the need to contain everything. I
closed my eyes until the water closed over my head.
The last sound I made was my own, breathing, slow, deep,
and finally sinking forever with the quiet one in the deep.
I became the last monk, the new keeper willingly held.
I woke up on the rocky shore outside the monastery complex,
coughing up sea water onto cold, sharp pebbles. The sky
was flat, lifeless gray of early morning. Small waves lapped
gently a few meters away. My gear lay scattered around me,
one boot missing, flash like, cracked, but somehow still working.
No cuts or bruises or any marks of my skin
at all, just a heavy taste of salt in my mouth,
and a thick, dreamlike fog pressing behind my eyes. I
sat up slowly, every muscle aching, and stared at the
half submerged structure in the distance. It looked exactly as
it had when I first stepped off the boat, Rotting
Gothic arches fused with Soviet blast, doors, faded frescoes peeling
under barnacle rust, seawater still licking lazily at the lower steps.
Nothing were collapsed or even disturbed. There were no signs
of flooding beyond the normal tideline, no debris from charges
or scorch marks, no evidence that anything unnatural had happened
at all. Was any of it real? The visions, the
infinite black water, the pale, impossible limbs, that overwhelming motherly
cosmic sorrow, It all felt too vivid to be a hallucination,
yet too impossible to have actually occurred. My mind kept
trying to do what it had always done, File it away,
label it, contain it, stress, bad air, oxygen toxicity, just
another trauma to seal with the memory of that gentle
eternal cradle refused to be locked down. It lingered like
water water against cold skin. For what felt like hours,
I just sat on the rocks, watching the silent monastery.
I had a decision to make. I could call in
right now, report the job complete, tell them the inventory
was finished, the critical breaches sealed as best as one
man could manage, and recommend the demolition team proceed. No
one would question it. The reason I was hand picked
for the job was that I was highly trusted in
this line of work. I'd get paid, the contract would close,
and I could finally walk away, like I'd promised myself.
Or I could go back inside, check the lower levels,
see if the charges were still armed, see if the
quiet one was still waiting down there in the dark.
The thought made my stomach twist with raw fear. I
couldn't tell if it was the strange God's mind tricks
working or my steel resolve had finally broken. But in
the end I chose the easier path. I powered up
the satellite phone with wet, clumsy hands and made the call.
My voice came out steadier than I felt as I
told the coordinator the job was complete, sight prepped, final
report would be followed by end of day. You can
send freevach. I hung up before they could ask too
many questions. As I sat there, watching the waves froll in,
I kept thinking about what I might have left unchecked,
About what I might have just condemned to silence beneath
concrete and rubble, About whether I had appeased the only
thing that had ever offered to hold my own broken
pieces without asking me to seal them first, or if
I'd just doomed the future to its true motives. But
I was just one man, one tired, scarred man, who
had spent his whole life trying to contain things. They
were never meant to be contained. Some weights were simply
too heavy, Some endings were never mine to decide. I
stood up, slowly, gathered what gear I could carry, and
started walking toward the pickup point. Behind me, the half
submerged monastery waited in silence, beautiful, rotting and perhaps still
quietly breathing. I didn't look back.