“It’s an old site. One of ours, watertight seals and phyto-systems are still active, so the gas cans won’t be necessary.” I patted a spare tank of oxygen perched on my seat. I never sit on the job–I think that if I do, I’ll never get back up. My feet never get a rest when I’m beneath the surface: I’m always running. That, or swimming.

You know, everyone *says* to join a corpo; the bigger, the better. The more money in their pockets, the more in yours. It makes sense from an outside perspective. Probably even more when you’ve been pushing pens and paper for some bureaucratic hellhole, sitting in a cubicle not even as big as your bed and surrounded by a million more just like it. I signed up for this life when I was seventeen. College was gonna be a bust for me, anyways. I didn’t really have the drive to see myself through it, and I figured that if I was gonna be tossing my scratch at anything, it’d probably be at getting an apartment of my own. Or a dog.

Well, I’m ten years older now, and I don’t own an apartment. I’m gone so much that having a dog (or any pet, really) just doesn’t make sense–the poor thing would probably just drop out of school and sign its life to the first company that hired it like its master did.

The submarine deck beneath my feet shook and cried louder than any other ever had before. It almost felt like a plea for the three members of our little team to turn back, tails tucked between our legs, and give up on our contracts. The brief flash of the alarms that followed afterwards solidified that in my head, but I’ve heard them so much, I can’t even begin to care.

         ...GOOD.

That rattle’s the hallmark for moving from the midnight zone to the abyss, where the only light down in the water is what you bring with you. It’s deep—about 2000 or so meters beneath the surface, but that doesn’t even scratch how far down I’ve gone. If you were to join us on a call and look out the depth glass of a site, you’d probably chuckle and say, ‘wow, that’s dark’. I’ll tell you now: it’s not. Somehow it gets worse, in the hadal and the abaddal and every zone beneath, the midnight veil compacting and becoming darker than black. Hadalite’s new and operational sites, which I rarely see, usually are peppered with a few candy-cane colored beacons, just to let maintenance teams know what they’re swimming around. No point in keeping stuff like that for us, though. “Check your gear, check your buddy’s gear,” I announced with a half-drone as I beat on the metal bulkhead I leaned against. “Then check them again…”

AND DON’T FORGET TO LISTEN TO THE VOICE IN YOUR EAR.

Fuck, I really hate being the most experienced on a call. It’s a kind of hell for me: they think I know shit, and I really don’t. I could recite to the greenhorns every safety precaution possible, I could tell them what each and every part of their diving gear does and fix those parts with office scraps, but half of what you need to make it in this life is gut instinct, and that can rarely be taught.

AND SOMETIMES, YOU FORGET IT.

Where was I? Oh, right.

:)

We’re called “ART”s–Abyssal Recovery Teams. Wilco has their TACSOL guys, Hadalite has their pointillism. When “team” changed from being groups of people to usually just one guy, I couldn’t tell you, but it’s a nice enough acronym that we’ve left it alone. The average Joe might think or say that it’s a crappy name: too childish, doesn’t really paint a picture, but if you ask anyone that’s been depth-diving for the company, they’ll tell you that’s for the best. There’s just something wrong with that water. You really only get picked on by dipshits, anyways. Desk jockeys, lowlives like I used to be, the ones who really don’t know a damn thing about the City they live in. Anyone worth their salt in *any* of the down-and-dirty jobs across the world knows to either give you the respect the title deserves or to just steer clear.

THEY KNOW WHAT IT MEANS TO DEAL WITH SOMETHING LIKE ME.

“Anything you see down there, if it doesn’t match your definition of ‘normal’, don’t fuck with it. We don’t have access to most of the site’s documentation, and chances are that new stuff’s cropped up since the abandonment.” This type of call is the worst—‘widowmakers’, we call them, and laugh as we realize that none of us have any spouse to leave behind. When Hadalite has to permanently pull out of a site in a real hurry, they hardly do anything to help the ARTs that’ll eventually wander through. Anything they do to help usually just screws us, anyways; they shut the lights off to keep the oxygen going and the pressure stable, and that’s just the perfect opportunity for demons to jump out and rip us apart: you can’t see shit, but they can.

CAN SEE YOU. CAN YOU HEAR ME?

I guess this shift could be worse. It’s just data extraction, so we don’t have to wrangle with anything that’s on the loose. Thank Brennen for that. If I was given the choice to do a thousand calls on this side of the job or one round of actual ‘asset recovery’, I’d pick the thousand. Or maybe shoot myself. The company’s method for operational security—as in, making sure their databases aren’t connected to an external network—is what usually keeps us employed; they’re always leaving behind computers and papers and thumbdrives, or whatever else.

OR PERHAPS THEY JUST FORGOT.

I looked at the two kitted-out bodies as they stood on the dock. “Are you good?” I questioned, hoping the use of ‘you’ would pull away from the fact that I’d already forgotten their names. How the hell did I manage that? I’d been talking with them for the past three hours as we descended through the Lake.

DO YOU REMEMBER WHAT YOU WERE TALKING ABOUT?

“Yeah, fine,” the one on the left said as they held their head. “Just been… thinking.”

I'M SURE.

“Yeah, me too,” the second one chimed in.

LET’S MOVE ON, SHALL WE, ARTIE? ARTHUR. ART THE ART. HOLD ONTO THIS. IT’LL BE THE LAST TIME SOMEONE SAYS YOUR NAME.

Now, I’d found myself walking through the copper-lined halls of the underwater lab. I hadn’t remembered the submarine docking, us unloading, or even me splitting off from the others. “Damn,” I whispered to myself, then silently chastised myself for getting distracted. Everything else was silent, too. Shit, when *did* I leave those two behind? It’s all a blur. “Stop fucking reminiscing,” I barked at myself.

DON’T. THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE TO.

I never actually told my mom what I do. I think she’d die of a heart attack right on the spot, if I did. I just told her that I work as a data analyst for Hadalite, and that the job’s too boring to really go into the details of. Sometimes, I sprinkle in fake stories with fake coworkers, usually centering on mundane, boring office shit that I saw in a flick or a show once. A water cooler is typically involved, or the single copier the facility has and we all fight over. ‘You should talk to Soren about that copier,’ she’ll always suggest. ‘He seems like such a nice man.’ Frankly, I’m unsure of when my mother got on a first-name basis with the company’s director, but she’s not really wrong about his demeanor. He’s nice—uniquely kind, even—but he’s a bit of a tool. You can definitely tell his wife ran the show before she ran off, or whatever the hell happened to her. Now, he just aimlessly wanders the company’s buildings, talking with whoever about whatever and getting along however he can. I guess I can relate to him, in that way: we’re both just clueless and

YOU FEEL CLUELESS MORE THAN EVER, DON’T YOU?

“Yeah, I guess I do…” I sighed as I brought my torch away from the glass siding of the hall, looking back to the center. My breath stopped for a moment as I turned around. I don’t know why it did, or why I did it.

YOU MAY NEVER FIND OUT.

I guess I was always kind of aimless in life, just wandering around without much of a goal. I think that’s especially true right now. I must be pretty deep in, by now. Why the hell did they think to send just one guy? Couldn’t they have given me a cart or something to carry all the shit I’m supposed to get?

CAN YOU FEEL ME, “A”? I’M STEALING YOUR BREATH. I’M STEALING YOUR THOUGHTS.

My legs gave out from under me, being the mangled knots of flesh and muscle that they were. Blood poured out of them, collecting into a dark pool of a color I can’t quite name. I must’ve set off some kind of defense system back there. I must have. I don’t remember when, but I must have. F. Breathing’s hard. it’s in. and out. And In. and OUt. BliNking, toooo,. i need too get back to tha sub.

DON’T CRAWL. IT’LL MAKE THINGS WORSE.

cravvl. How do I? No,,, thank yu. i like it here. it’s dark. Arr my eys open? Orclosed?

Thjis Job. Sucz. it’snotfairatall. uou could haf done it 4 yeers n yeers and ben on top of ur gaMe but you’ll die n e way. i want to fink of my mom. canithinkofmymomplease?

I DON’T THINK YOU KNOW WHO YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT.

i don’tkno. im sorr e

IT’S OKAY, LITTLE ONE.

i h8 this job. alot. it’ssso scary. so scary. why m i heer?
         whyda fuqk di i sine Up 4 tis?

DON’T YOU REMEMBER?

no

THE MONEY.