The dozen brass pieces scattered across the deck grating, each vibrating against Renzo’s eardrums and thrumming a persistent chord behind his eyes. The Pelagic mechanism, typically a source of detached chimes, clattered in his skull with manic enthusiasm. Sabina Velez stood in the recovery bay, her gaze sweeping from the bulkheads to Renzo, then down to the metal disks. Her dark irises narrowed, flat and assessing.
Renzo, however, was focused on a more pressing concern: the trail of saltwater Sabina’s presence had created. “Seriously?” he muttered, pushing himself upright from his control console. “You couldn’t have wrung yourself out first? This isn’t a puddle, it’s a hazard.” He gestured vaguely at the wet sheen spreading across the polished deck. He glanced down at the stamped brass, then up at his retinal HUD. The scarlet alert still pulsed, but he had made an art of ignoring warnings until metal began to buckle.
“A hazard?” Sabina’s voice was low, edged with a dangerous calm. She took a step forward, the water squelching beneath her boot. “You drag my crew through a maelstrom, almost crack my barge in half, and you’re worried about a bit of ocean on your floor?” Her hand moved, almost imperceptibly, to the hilt of a short, curved blade tucked into her belt. The motion was a silent promise of swift, precise violence.
“Minor turbulence,” Renzo corrected, waving a dismissive hand. “The ark has excellent shock absorbers. And ‘dragged’ is such a strong word. I extended a courtesy. Look, I’ve got all this fresh scrip.” He gestured toward the discs, which continued their synchronized hum. “I’m thinking of getting an Automated Swabber. It’d make short work of this mess.” He tapped his temple, hoping to bring up the system’s upgrade menu. The HUD jittered, the scarlet warning momentarily shoved aside by a spinning brass cog. “Maybe one with adjustable bristle stiffness. And a sonar-guided mop head, for those hard-to-reach crevices.”
Sabina’s gaze lingered on the coins. “What are those, exactly? Syndicate scrip?”
“Something like that,” Renzo said, still focused on his HUD. “The Pelagic apparatus doles them out for… rescues. And now I have enough credit to buy proper deck automation. No more mop duty for Captain Corbal, thank the trench gods.” He grinned, a rare, genuine expression of glee. He blinked, attempting to select the 'Automated Sanitation' category from the fleeting menu. The system chimes in his head intensified, a rapid, almost frantic succession of tones. The display, instead of listing scrubbers, went blank for a fraction of a second, then flared with a new line of blood-colored text.
`[TRANSLATING PELAGIC ENGINE SONAR FREQUENCY: INITIATED]`
`[PULSE SEQUENCE ANALYZED: BAIT PROTOCOL ACTIVE]`
`[ERROR. WARNING. TOKENS EMIT ENHANCED SONAR SIGNATURES. OPTIMIZED FOR ABYSSAL PREDATOR ATTRACTION. HUMANS: PRIMARY TARGET]`
`[PREDATOR ATTRACTION LEVEL: CRITICAL. EVASIVE MANEUVERS: OVERDUE. COMMENCE EXPULSION PROTOCOL.]`
Renzo froze, his mouth falling open. His pupils shrank as he read the translation. *Bait Protocol? Abyssal Predator Attraction? Humans: Primary Target?* He stared from the hum of brass on the deck to Sabina, then down at his palms. He had been collecting dinner invitations, not currency. He had turned his impenetrable ark into a giant, floating dinner bell for things that lived in the lightless chasms.
“Oh, you’ve got to be krakken-kidding me,” he whispered, his voice hoarse. His pulse surged into his throat. The methodical hum of the coinage, so harmless moments ago, grated against his molars. Every rescue, every payout, every approving chime had been a baited line. And he, in his pathological avoidance of exertion, had walked straight into it, dragging Sabina and her crew with him.
Sabina watched his transformation, her hand still on her blade. “What is it, Renzo? You look like you just saw a deep-sea ghoul offering you a free meal ticket.” Her tone was mocking, but her eyes were sharp, scanning the bridge for any sign of a threat beyond Renzo’s sudden panic.
Renzo scrambled to the console, his movements jerky, uncharacteristic. He started hitting buttons, his fingers fumbling. “The tokens! They’re not currency! They’re sonar beacons! This hull is broadcasting an open invitation to every maw in the Caligo Trench!” He scooped up a handful of discs, the metal vibrating hot against his skin. He stared at them, then instinctively tried to hurl them away, but the ship’s gravity-nullifiers held them in a shimmering, invisible field, gently returning them to the console’s vicinity. He couldn’t even get rid of them. The system had them locked down.
“Bait?” Sabina scoffed, though her stance shifted backward half an inch. “That’s your excuse for this sudden fit of madness? Renzo Corbal, the man who’d sleep through a squall of flesh-eaters, is suddenly terrified of a few shiny coins?” She took another step, closing the distance between them. “What did that rusty screen of yours tell you?”
Renzo gave up on knocking the coins into a vent and spun toward her, sweat beading on his forehead. “It told me that every single person I’ve brought onto this ark has just made us a juicier target! It told me I’ve been ringing the dinner bell since the moment Donato stumbled aboard!” He jabbed a finger at the still-glowing tokens. “These things aren’t for upgrades, Sabina! They’re lures! The more scrip we hold, the louder the ping, the faster the leviathans hunt us down! It’s a paradox! Rescuing people is going to drown us all!”
He stumbled back to the main navigation screen, his fingers flying across the holographic interface. The bathymetric chart, customarily an empty green slate, lit up with dozens of blood-red contacts. Not small blips. Massive, overlapping heat signatures rising from the abyssal trenches, converging. They were moving fast. Too fast. Right for them. The Somnolent Leviathan, once his fortress of solitude, was now a shining, irresistible beacon in the crushing dark, and he had invited the entire ocean to dine.