Soft at first. Almost delicate. Like rain on glass.
Except there was no rain here. No sky. Only a skin of rusted steel between me and miles of crushing black ocean.
At first, I thought it was in my head. A trick of exhaustion. A byproduct of whatever cocktail of chemicals the Caretakers injected into us.
But it grew louder.
Faster.
And always... patterned.
Three taps. A pause. Two taps. Another pause. Four, quick, rapid-fire, like impatient fingers.
I sat up in my bunk, heart hammering in the dark. The room was still except for the heavy breathing of the others. Cass muttered something in her sleep; the boy was curled near the vent, his eyes open and glassy.
The taps came again.
From the wall beside me.
Then, a whisper.
Faint. Male? Female? It didn’t matter. It wasn’t supposed to be there.
"Hello."
I pressed my back against the cold metal, barely daring to breathe.
The voice was inside the walls.
The next morning, the world was still wrong.
The blue light strip on the floor flickered at irregular intervals. The food dispensers served trays already half-melted, as if they’d been dipped in acid. The Caretakers stood silently at the edges of the cafeteria, smiling their smiles that didn’t move.
No one else seemed to notice.
I caught Cass’s eye across the room. She looked pale, shadows under her eyes deeper than the water outside. She didn’t wave. She didn’t smile. She just watched me for a moment—then looked away.
The twins were missing now.
Only their empty trays remained at the table, their food untouched. A Caretaker cleared them away without comment.
No one asked.
No one ever asked.
Later, during mandatory Recreation Hour, I heard it again.
I was walking the perimeter of the observation ring, a narrow corridor that circled the main tank—the so-called "Sea Dome," though we never saw anything inside except endless, green murk.
The tapping.
This time, it echoed through the pipes overhead.
Followed by laughter.
Children’s laughter.
High-pitched. Too loud. Wrong.
It didn’t fit here, where joy had been choked out by recycled air and florescent death rattles.
I stopped walking.
The others kept moving around me in a slow, robotic drift, oblivious. Or pretending to be.
The laughter repeated.
This time, it was closer.
I turned a slow circle.
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There was no one.
Only the pipes, hissing with condensation, weeping slow streams of water that traced odd patterns on the floor.
I stared at one puddle.
The shape it made—unmistakable.
A spiral.
The same as the one Hal had drawn in blood.
It pulsed once, as if breathing.
I stumbled back—and the water simply... ran, normal again, innocent.
But my shoes stayed wet long after I left the puddle behind.
The tapping followed me to my bunk.
When I lay down that night, I pressed my ear to the pillow and tried not to listen.
The pipes whispered. Groaned. Clanged.
But behind the mechanical noise... something else.
Words.
Broken. Garbled.
Like a radio transmission warped by pressure and time.
"Come below."
"Shed."
"Be clean."
I squeezed my eyes shut. Dug my nails into the mattress. Tried to hum over it.
It didn’t help.
The mattress vibrated with it now, like a heartbeat I didn’t belong to.
At breakfast, the boy approached me again.
He had new cuts on his arms, thin and deliberate, tracing little spirals into his skin.
"Did you hear them?" he asked.
I stared at him, my mouth dry.
"Hear what?"
He smiled.
"The keepers. The real ones."
I swallowed hard.
He leaned in, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper.
"They're in the walls. Not the Caretakers. Them. The ones who built the first Aquarium."
I shook my head. "This place wasn’t built. It was—"
"Found," he finished for me. Nodding eagerly. His hair was dripping, though we hadn’t been near the hygiene units yet.
"Before the water came," he said. "Before humans even knew the ocean had rules."
He touched my hand briefly—his fingers were ice-cold and slick.
"They're waking up," he whispered.
"And they like you."
The leaks worsened.
Not just the occasional drip.
Whole corridors flooded ankle-deep, the pipes groaning like wounded beasts. The lights flickered and buzzed overhead. The green hue deepened, took on a sickly tinge, like algae blooming inside glass.
And the symbols grew clearer.
Every puddle.
Every misty condensation on the windows.
Spirals.
Sometimes in pairs. Sometimes chains of them. Sometimes spirals inside spirals, like eyes rotating in opposite directions.
And if I stared too long, I could swear they moved.
I found Cass again near the empty tanks.
She was sitting on the floor, back against the glass, knees pulled tight to her chest. Her jumpsuit clung to her like a wet rag.
"You're seeing them too," she said without looking at me.
I nodded.
"They're trying to talk to us," she said.
Her voice was cracked and hollow, like she hadn’t spoken in days.
"They’re not trying to hurt us. They're just... calling."
"Calling for what?" I asked.
She smiled a small, broken smile.
"Company."
Later, during Meditation Cycle (an enforced hour where we had to sit in the lounge and pretend to rest), I watched the leak patterns on the floor.
One of the puddles stretched along the tiles, tracing symbols that no longer felt random.
I reached out, running my finger through one, disrupting it.
The moment my skin touched the water, images exploded behind my eyes.
A city. Underwater. Coral skyscrapers. Jellyfish suns.
And beings.
Tall. Shifting. Moving like smoke caught in slow current.
And in the middle of it all—the Eye.
It blinked.
Directly at me.
The pressure behind my forehead pulsed so hard I gasped aloud.
No one else reacted.
The others sat still, breathing softly, eyes glazed over.
I was alone in my panic.
Alone except for the things now swimming behind my eyes.
I stumbled back to my bunk afterward.
Cass was there.
She didn’t speak.
Just handed me something.
A scrap of paper. Old. Faded.
It was a map.
Hand-drawn.
Of the Aquarium.
But this version showed tunnels we hadn’t been told about. Lower levels. Ones that didn’t exist on the official directories.
At the bottom, in shaky handwriting, a single word:
“Zero.”
And beneath it, a spiral.
Drawn in blood.
The tapping returned that night, louder than ever.
It hammered through the walls like a second heartbeat.
I sat up in bed, sweating.
The others didn’t move.
I stepped barefoot onto the cold floor, shivering, and followed the sound.
Down the hall. Past the darkened observation decks. Past the empty rec rooms and abandoned checkpoints.
To a door I didn’t recognize.
It had no handle.
Only a spiral etched deep into the metal.
I pressed my hand against it.
It was warm.
Alive.
The tapping stopped.
And a new sound rose.
A low hum.
Whale-song, but wrong. Twisted. Words buried in vibrations.
The door shivered.
"Come home."
I stumbled back, heart pounding.
The lights above me flickered once.
Twice.
Then went out.
Pitch-black.
For a full minute, there was only the sound of breathing.
Not mine.
Not human.
Wet, gurgling breathing.
So close I could feel its mist on my cheek.
Then the lights snapped back on.
The corridor was empty.
The door was gone.
Only a puddle remained.
A spiral.
Slowly unraveling.
Like a smile.
When I returned to Intake Hold 6-B, no one noticed I’d been gone.
Cass was humming to herself, tracing spirals in the air with her finger.
The boy was curled near the vent, whispering lullabies to something unseen.
The bunks creaked softly.
The pipes dripped.
The walls breathed.
And I lay awake, wide-eyed, listening to the Aquarium whisper all around me.
Telling me what I was becoming.