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Cave-dark water rushed Finn’s faceplate as he exhaled, sinking into the abyssal lake. The crushing cold pressed in, and he forced himself to wait, steadying his breath as his body adjusted to the pressure. His flashlight beam barely pierced the black, swallowed by a vortex of darkness and drifting organic matter. His outstretched hand was little more than a dim shadow. “Initializing HUD.”

“Copy that,” Rose’s calm voice broke through the isolation, a lifeline in the dark. “I’ve got all helmet cams online. Feed looks good.”

He nodded, though she couldn’t see it. The isolation receded slightly, her voice anchoring him. The OSC might have sent him down here, but this wasn’t about orders. This was about keeping Rose safe. That’s what mattered.

Finn gritted his teeth as he initiated the heads-up display. The murky expanse around him resolved into a grid of vivid green lines, outlining the Io habitat and cave system in sharp relief. Flickering green data streamed across his faceplate. Depth, vitals, comms link—all systems nominal .

Red dots flared to life, marking the estimated location of explosives. His fingers, clumsy in the thick gloves, tapped at the control pad strapped to his forearm. Two markers blazed brighter—his targets.

His depth gauge registered two hundred and twenty-six feet. At these depths, rushing was a death sentence. Add in near-zero visibility, freezing water, and armed explosives and there was no margin for error. One moment of hesitation or panic, and they wouldn’t be coming back.

The rasp of his respirator was thunderous in the silence. MARV’s faint glow guided him, mapping and confirming the explosive placements, feeding data back to his display. At the divergence point, he paused alongside Ethan and Liev. The three of them hovered in the endless black, their lights the only proof they weren’t alone in the void.

His dive watch read 28:00.

A solitary stream of bubbles rose from Ethan’s tank. “No heroics. In and out clean.”

“Copy,” Finn replied. “See you in twenty.”

“Moving.” Liev kicked away, fins flashing briefly before the darkness engulfed him whole.

“Rose. This is Finn. Approaching target one.”

“Visual confirmed,” Rose replied.

He spotted the camera above on the Io’s smooth hull. He stared at it for a fleeting moment, wishing he could see her face on the other end of the feed.

Coming back to you, Rose.

The Io was even more impressive than he remembered from their first descent. It dominated the cave floor, a curved monolith of sleek lines that defied the jagged rock walls confining it. But what should have been a vessel for groundbreaking scientific discovery had instead become another weapon in Triton Core’s arsenal.

He tilted his watch face.

25:00.

He swam along the hull, skimming his gloved fingers along the smooth glass. On the other side, interior lights glimmered as if in an alternate existence.

No sign of the explosive device yet, but his HUD’s proximity alert pinged with growing urgency, each burst sounding like a heartbeat gone haywire.

A shadow on the hull caught his attention.

Intake duct.

Finn slowed, grabbing the duct edge to anchor himself. The proximity alert was going berserk now, an unrelenting staccato rising in his ears.

Damn device was inside the duct.

He maneuvered to face the duct, staring into obsidian darkness. The duct was massive, its cylindrical intake carved into the Io’s sleek hull—its wide, flared opening easily large enough for a person to crawl through. He angled the flashlight clipped to his forearm, shining it into the maw. A fine mesh grille was recessed inside the entrance, designed to keep debris from being sucked into the filtration system. Apart from that? Fucking nothing. Just endless black water and smooth alloy walls tapering into more darkness.

His jaw tightened on his regulator. He’d have to go in. Drawing one of his knives, he slipped the blade under the mesh grille and wedged it upward. With a metallic pop, the cover came free, and he tossed it aside.

“This is Finn. I’ve located the first explosive. Thea’s hidden it in one of the primary water intakes. Comms will be down for a few minutes while I’m in the duct disarming the device.”

“Copy that,” Ethan’s voice crackled in his ear.

Finn locked his teeth together and kicked off, launching himself into the duct. His body snapped into a straight line, fins brushing the rim as he propelled himself forward. The passageway closed in immediately, the smooth walls bearing down on his awareness. His air tanks grazed the ceiling with a dull clang, making him flinch.

Fucking tight.

He forced his focus ahead, his arms stretched forward. The flashlight clipped to his forearm cut a narrow beam of yellow-white light.

There.

A small box glinted on the duct floor.

Gotcha .

He slowed, his gloved hands bracing against the walls to halt his momentum. The proximity alert in his HUD was now a relentless stutter. His wristwatch flashed on the edge of his vision as he silenced the alert.

20:00.

He retrieved his precision multi-tool from his dive belt, then secured his position against the narrow duct walls with one foot braced behind him, angling his body to keep the device in full view. With a twist, he loosened the screws on the outer housing and carefully slid the cover free, exposing the inner workings.

Simple design. But its purpose was clear. Devastation. The explosives packed into the casing weren’t just enough to take out the Io—they’d obliterate the cave system, too.

He adjusted the flashlight on his forearm, the beam catching a tangle of wires. Blue, yellow, red, black—standard color coding, but he knew better than to trust that. Thea wasn’t an amateur, and any of these wires could be hot. He activated his signal analyzer, clipping it to the device to scan for tripwires, fail-safes, or secondary triggers. A faint beep confirmed what he suspected: the red wire wasn’t just a decoy—it was rigged to detonate on removal.

His pulse thudded in his ears as he pulled his snips from his belt. He eased the tool beneath the blue wire, keeping it clear of the adjacent connections. If Thea followed typical protocol, blue would disable the timer.

If she didn’t?

Here goes nothing.

He cut the wire.

Silence.

A shaky breath burst from him as the timer winked out, leaving only the soft yellow halo of his flashlight. Sweat slicked his forehead despite the cold as adrenaline surged and ebbed through his body.

Still fucking alive. Never gets old.

He disengaged the magnetic clamp and slid the disarmed device into the kit bag tethered to his side. With a controlled motion, he pushed himself backward, sculling out of the intake valve’s suffocating confines and back into the open water.

The sense of endless space was almost dizzying after the duct’s claustrophobia. He flexed his shoulders, freeing his rigid muscles. He glanced at his wrist display.

15:00.

“First device disarmed. Moving to the second,” he reported.

“Copy that,” Ethan replied. “MARV’s mapped all six locations. Keep moving.”

Finn swallowed hard, his gaze flicking to the faint red dot on his HUD. “I’m not stopping.”

“First device secure,” Liev said, his voice clinical. “Heading for the second with MARV. Let’s make sure there’s enough of us left for a round of drinks after. ”

“Copy that,” Ethan acknowledged. “Starting on my second device.”

Finn kicked forward, the kit bag trailing behind him like a shadow in the black water. His flashlight cut a pale cone through the water, where faint particles spun in the current like stardust in freezing space. A school of tiny golden fish darted through the beam, his light piercing their semi-translucent bodies, before they vanished into the dark.

The water felt heavier here, colder, as if the entire cave was holding its breath. The proximity alert in his HUD flashed in the corner of his vision—the second device was close. He pushed on, his senses sharpening with every kick, hyperaware of the emptiness hungry to crush him.

10:00

Come on. Show yourself.

He slowed, scanning the hull for the source of the signal. His HUD pinged insistently, drawing his attention to another vent, larger and positioned lower along the Io’s sleek body. This one wasn’t an intake—it had to be part of the thermal regulation system used to discharge heated water or waste gases. The size of the vent was imposing, surrounded by a protective shroud but when he swam closer and directed his flashlight inside, the vent promised another confined space to navigate.

Of course. Another narrow fucking vent.

He swore under his breath. “Entering vent to disarm second device.”

He swung inside, flicking his fins to scud forward.

The passage was a little roomier than the first, but its metal walls were furred with organic growth. Silt and decaying matter eddied as he propelled forward, searching with his fingertips and turning the beam of his light into a diffused glow.

He forced his breathing to slow, trying to minimize the damage from his air bubbles. The murk was absolute, forcing him to navigate by touch alone. His gloved fingers traced the vent walls, probing through the soft rot for hard edges.

His fingers brushed a compact box. The second device.

8:00

He swept debris from the box with agonizing care, positioning his tool against the first screw. Twice it slipped before catching. Sweat blurred his vision, but there was no time to clear it.

At last, the cover lifted free.

5:30

The wire configuration swam into focus—identical to the last one. Don’t rush. Don’t fuck this up.

One wire left. His hands trembled, a mix of cold and adrenaline making his movements jerky. The cutters hovered over the wire as he steadied himself.

Get this wrong and the Io wouldn’t be the only thing that died down here.

Rose’s face flashed into his mind. The softness of her in his hands as he’d kissed her in the moon pool.

He hadn’t planned on falling for her, but there it was—a truth that refused to be ignored. If he made it out, he’d tell her. Not some awkward half-admission, but everything. She made him feel alive again, and he was hungry for more. More time to make her smile, to learn the contours of her world, to make promises he’d damn well keep.

He exhaled slowly, forcing the thoughts back. Focus .

First the wire, then Rose.

02:36

He held his breath. The final wire parted with a clean snip .

Nothing.

An exhalation wracked him.

Five seconds. He allowed himself exactly that before moving. He bagged the device and tools, palms pressing the vent floor to retreat?—

Silt erupted around him, revealing a nightmare in white.

Cave remipede. Or millipedes in swimsuits as Luca called them. A mutated fucker. Almost a foot long, its venomous claws curved like scythes against the clouds of debris. Before he could react, it struck—fangs sinking into the webbing between his thumb and forefinger.

For one heartbeat, he felt nothing. His gloves had held. He yanked back, the creature thrashing in his grip. His knife found its mark, the blade punching through its milky, segmented body. Finn’s lip curled in disgust as he moved to push it away?—

Liquid fire detonated in his hand, venom racing up his arm like napalm.

Fuckfuckfuck.

His breath came in rapid bursts, panic flooding his system as fast as the poison.

Sweat instantly soaked him as cramps wrenched his gut.

These things were lethal at their usual size. This mutated monster?—

“This is Finn. My left hand. Been bit by a?—”

A tidal wave of nausea silenced him as his body convulsed.

“Ethan…” His tongue was heavy, unresponsive. “Liev?”

Static roared in his ears.

Another spasm hit, slamming his helmet onto the vent floor and cracking his tailbone against the ceiling .

His arm went numb, his vision strobed, and his lungs flattened.

As darkness closed in, a single thought embraced him.

Rose is safe.