Depths We Decided

The last one messaged me on a Tuesday.

Her name was Mira. Twenty-six. Marine biology graduate from one of the orbital platforms. She wrote about wanting to see the drowned world with her own eyes, touch the water, document what survived. Her messages were long and careful. She used words like *restoration* and *symbiosis* and *understanding*. She believed the sirens could be communicated with. She believed they were misunderstood.

I believed she would taste fine.

The facility hums around me now. Generator low and steady. Bioluminescent algae pulsing through the flooded corridors. The tank room is warm and wet and smells like salt and growing things. Ishalom is watching me from the waterline. His head rests on folded arms, hair dark and slicked back, eyes tracking my movements the way they always do.

I told him about Mira last night.

He asked if she was coming.

I said yes.

He didn't ask anything else. He doesn't need to. He knows what happens when they come. He has seen it enough times.

The first one was an accident.

Year two. A salvage diver named Cole who found the facility by mistake, who saw Ishalom through the observation window and froze the way they all freeze, and who made the mistake of reaching for his radio before I reached for my gun. It was fast. He was dead before he hit the floor. I stood over him with the barrel still warm and realized I felt nothing. No guilt. No panic. Just the quiet satisfaction of a problem solved.

Ishalom ate well that week.

The second one was a surveyor. She came with an expedition that found the facility on satellite imagery. They sent her in alone because she was the smallest, the fastest, the most expendable. She made it through the breach in the east wing. She made it to the tank room. She saw Ishalom and her mouth opened and I shot her before the sound came out.

I fed her to him myself.

The third one was a journalist. The fourth was a scavenger. The fifth was a scientist from the orbital research council, sent to investigate why our expedition reports had stopped. I answered her questions politely. I showed her the falsified data. I walked her to the flooded section and told her there was something interesting in the lower corridor and she believed me because people always believe me.

I look trustworthy.

That's the thing.

I have the face of someone you'd ask for directions. I wear glasses and dress in practical clothes and speak in the measured tone of someone who has never made a rash decision in his life. I answer questions thoroughly. I maintain eye contact. I use the right technical vocabulary.

I have groomed seventeen people into trusting me enough to come here alone.

Seventeen.

The folders are filed under fake names. The real list is in my head. I look at it sometimes, the same way I look at the ocean, and I feel the same thing: this is vast. This is older than me. This is not something I started and this is not something I can stop.

Mira arrives on Thursday.

I have her route mapped. She will come through the old maintenance tunnel, the one I keep clear specifically for visitors. She will emerge in the lower greenhouse. I will be there with coffee and a warm towel and the right amount of relief in my voice.

*You made it. I was getting worried.*

She will drink the coffee. She will tell me about her research. She will ask to see the tank. I will say *of course* and lead her through the facility and she will see Ishalom and her face will do that thing they all do — the widening of the eyes, the softening of the mouth, the recognition of something beautiful that her brain hasn't yet classified as dangerous.

Then I will wait.

I always wait until they're close enough to touch the glass.

It's a ritual now. I give them that moment. The moment of wonder. The moment where they think they have found something sacred. I let them have it because it makes the rest easier and because I am not a monster.

I am something else.

Ishalom surfaces when I enter the tank room. The water parts around his shoulders. Bioluminescence clings to his skin, blue-green and shifting, the same color as the algae that grows in the flooded corridors. He looks at me and I feel the infrasound in my chest before the translator catches it.

*Hungry.*

The translator says *hungry.* What I feel is deeper. A pull in my sternum. A frequency that rearranges something in my ribcage.

*Soon,* I say.

I don't say it aloud. I don't need to. He reads me the way I read the water chemistry reports — patterns, trends, the things beneath the surface. He has known me for six years. He has perfect recall of everything I have ever said. He knows what I am going to do before I know it myself.

I sit on the edge of the tank. Feet in the water. The temperature is warm against my ankles. Ishalom drifts closer and rests his head on my knee the way he does, the way he has done a thousand times, the way he will do a thousand more.

I run my hand through his hair.

The hair is different now. Longer than it was when he first came here. Softer. He keeps it clean because I asked him to, because I told him I liked it, and because he catalogued that preference the way he catalogues everything and adjusted accordingly.

*Tell me about her,* he says.

The translator delivers it flat. The infrasound underneath is not flat. It is curious. It is the same tone he uses when I bring back something interesting from the outer corridors, a new artifact, a piece of the world that he hasn't seen yet.

I tell him about Mira. Her research. Her hope. The way she wrote about sirens like they were wounded animals that needed saving. The way she believes she can bridge the gap between species with kindness and good intentions.

Ishalom listens.

He is very still.

*She will be disappointed,* he says.

*Yes.*

*You will make sure of that.*

It is not a question.

I look down at him. The water reflects the bioluminescence onto his face, green and blue and shifting. His eyes are dark. They are the color of the deepest ocean, the places where light has never reached. They are the color of the pressure that crushes submarines and the cold that stops hearts.

I love him.

I loved him from the first moment I saw him, through the glass of the specimen tank, when he was supposed to be a research subject and I was supposed to be objective. I loved him when I realized what he was. I loved him when I realized what I was becoming. I loved him through the first body and the second and the third and the seventeenth.

I will love him through the eighteenth.

*I always make sure,* I say.

He closes his eyes. The infrasound shifts. Something warm and low and satisfied. The translator doesn't catch it. It doesn't need to.

I sit on the edge of the tank with my feet in the water and my hand in his hair and I think about Mira.

She is on her way.

She thinks she is coming to find the truth.

She is coming to find me.