Chapter 2

The crushing dark of the Boneyard offered little in the way of comfort. Jace’s submersible, the *Sea Serpent*, coughed and sputtered, its ancient hydraulics groaning with every adjustment of the manipulator arm. The pressure outside was a physical weight, pressing against the reinforced viewport, a constant reminder of the immense power of the abyss. He scraped another jagged piece of hull plating, the claw grinding with a metallic shriek that vibrated through the deck. Another day, another haul of scrap metal destined for the recycling vats of Hy’dra. His father’s legacy: a rusted-out sub and a mountain of debt.

He squinted at the sonar feed, the green lines a familiar, disheartening pattern. Mostly inert debris, the ghosts of a thousand forgotten voyages. He’d been chasing whispers of treasure for years, ever since Nami—or whatever it was—had flickered to life inside him, a symphony of impossible colors and a chorus of alien thought. But treasure didn’t pay the docking fees. Treasure didn’t keep the oxygen scrubbers humming. Scrap did. Barely.

“Come on, you rusted relic,” he muttered, coaxing the arm to snag a particularly stubborn piece of bulkhead. His fingers, raw and calloused from endless repairs, flexed on the joystick. The constant chill of the sub seeped into his bones, a damp, perpetual dampness that clung to everything. He’d long since stopped trying to shake it.

Then, something flickered on the periphery of the sonar. Not the solid, predictable signature of bulk metal, but a wavering, almost hesitant blip. It was small, deep, and pulsed with an energy Jace hadn’t encountered before. His breath hitched. His father, a man consumed by oceanic secrets, had drilled into him the importance of anomalies. “The ocean doesn’t lie, Jace,” he’d often said, his voice echoing with the same wonder Jace now felt. “It just speaks in a language you haven’t learned yet.”

He adjusted the gain, the blip sharpening. It was emitting a low-frequency hum, a resonant vibration that seemed to tickle the edges of his awareness, not just through the audio sensors, but deep within his skull. A faint, ghost-like kaleidoscope of sapphire and gold bloomed behind his eyes, the familiar prelude to one of Nami’s… outbursts. He’d learned to live with them, to ride the synaptic waves, but they always left him disoriented, a little raw.

“What are you?” he murmured, leaning closer to the screen. The signal was persistent, unlike the transient echoes of passing currents. It was a beacon, a hidden signal in the vast, silent graveyard of the sea. His financial desperation warred with the insatiable curiosity that was as much his inheritance as the *Sea Serpent*. Opportunity, his father had called it. A chance to pull something more than just twisted metal from the depths.

He nudged the *Sea Serpent* forward, its thrusters whirring softly. The blip grew, resolving into a more defined shape. Not a wreckage, not exactly. It was sleek, compact, and utterly out of place amongst the jagged shards of forgotten freighters and the skeletal remains of ancient vessels. A surge of adrenaline, sharp and clean, cut through the grime and weariness. This was it. This was the whisper of something more.