Beneath the Silt

The Gateway Arch looks different underwater. Eighty years post-flood, it's become a monument to decay, its surface now a tapestry of rust and crawling barnacles. Half-buried in sediment, it's still the tallest structure in what used to be downtown St. Louis—a steel dinosaur, frozen in its death throes.

I checked my depth gauge: 147 feet. My lungs automatically tried to expand against the pressure of my reinforced dive suit. A nervous habit from someone who spends too much time in places humans weren't meant to go.

"Maddox, you copy?" Eliza's voice crackled through my helmet comms.

"Copy." I adjusted my dive lights, watching how they cut through the murk for maybe fifteen feet before surrendering to the gloom.

"Cut the sightseeing. Reyes and Weiss have already reached the target zone. Battery consumption?"

I glanced at my wrist display. "Seventy-eight percent."

"Keep it above sixty. Remember Jacksonville."

I winced. We don't talk about Jacksonville. Three divers lost when their power cells died during extraction. I still wake up some nights, imagining what it feels like when your lights go out at two hundred feet and your thrusters fail with the surface impossibly far above you.

The salvage business is simple economics. The flooding took two-thirds of America's coastal cities in less than a decade. Trillions in technology, infrastructure, and military hardware—all suddenly underwater. For those of us willing to risk the depths, there's money to be made retrieving what civilization left behind.

I kicked my thrusters higher, gliding between the skeletal remains of skyscrapers. My radar pinged, marking the location where Reyes and Weiss waited. The coordinates matched the tip we'd received from a government survey vessel—information that had cost Eliza three crates of antibiotics and our last portable generator.

As I approached, I understood why. The submarine graveyard sprawled across what used to be an industrial dock complex. Not civilian vessels—these were military. Naval submarines, most no larger than buses, arranged in neat rows like cars in a forgotten parking lot.

"Holy shit," I whispered.

"There he is!" Reyes's voice came through, his accent thickening with excitement. "Took you long enough, Mad Dog."

I spotted his lights about fifty yards ahead, his bulky salvage suit moving between two of the submarines. Weiss was further in, already working on what looked like an access hatch.

"How many?" I asked, descending toward them.

"Twenty-seven that we can count," Weiss replied, her voice clinically precise. "Most appear almost intact. Pre-flood military hardware."

I landed softly beside the nearest vessel, careful not to kick up too much sediment. The underwater visibility in old St. Louis was bad enough without adding to it.

"What's the interior looking like?" I asked, running my gloved hand along the smooth hull. Unlike the Arch, these submarines showed minimal corrosion.

"Sealed tight, but penetrable," Weiss said. "I've nearly got this hatch mechanism figured out. Should be—"

A deep, vibrating pulse cut through the water. Not a sound exactly—more like a pressure wave that moved through my body, rattling my teeth and making my ears pop painfully inside my helmet.

"The hell was that?" Reyes's voice had lost its cheerful edge.

"Seismic activity?" Weiss suggested, her hands still working the hatch.

"Eliza, you getting any readings up there?" I called to our surface support.

Static answered me. Then, "—interference—can't—what did—"

Another pulse, stronger this time. The silt around my feet rippled, little clouds of sediment rising and falling as if the earth beneath was breathing.

"I don't like this," I said. "Weiss, how much longer on that hatch?"

"Almost... there." A metallic click followed her words, and the submarine hatch swung open with surprising ease. "Pressure equalized. Interesting."

I moved closer, peering into the dark maw of the submarine. The beam illuminated a narrow passage, just wide enough for one diver at a time. Instrument panels lined the walls, their surfaces dark but intact.

"I'm going in," I announced, positioning myself over the hatch.

"Careful," Reyes warned. "Tight spaces and sharp edges. Easy way to tear a suit."

I descended slowly into the submarine. The interior was cramped but efficient. What caught my eye was a series of strange markings etched into a panel near the command console. Not English, not any language I recognized. Symbols that looked both methodical and organic—almost like patterns I'd seen in deep-sea creatures' bioluminescence.

"Eliza, are you seeing this?" I adjusted my camera to capture the markings.

"Partial feed only," her voice came through, broken by static. "Something's... interference... unusual readings..."

"What kind of readings?"

"Biological... large mass... can't pinpoint..."

A third pulse shuddered through the water, strong enough that the submarine shifted beneath me. As it did, the symbols beneath my fingers seemed to... respond. Faint blue light traced along the etchings, pulsing in rhythm with the vibrations.

"What the hell?" I muttered, pulling my hand back.

"Maddox, get out of there," Reyes said, his voice tight with sudden urgency. "Something's happening with the silt."

I moved quickly back toward the hatch. As I pulled myself up and out, I emerged into a changed environment. The water around us had grown murky, visibility reduced to just a few feet.

"What happened?" I asked, firing my thrusters gently to rise above the murk.

"The ground is moving," Weiss said, her voice unnervingly calm. "Look down."

I directed my lights toward the seafloor. The silt wasn't just disturbed—it was rippling, as if something massive was shifting beneath it. The submarines nearest the disturbance had tilted, sliding into depressions that hadn't existed minutes before.

"Eliza," I called, "we need extraction. The site's unstable."

Her voice came back clearer as I gained altitude: "Negative. Whatever's happening down there is big. Really big. Get me visuals."

Another pulse rocked through the water, and this time I saw the epicenter—a spot about fifty yards beyond the submarine graveyard, where the silt was mounding upward like a hideous blister ready to burst.

"I think..." Weiss's voice trailed off as she moved toward the disturbance, her scientific curiosity overriding her sense of self-preservation.

"Weiss, stay back!" I shouted, but she had already crossed half the distance to the mound.

The silt eruption, when it came, was almost graceful. The seafloor rose up and then parted, like dark curtains pulling back to reveal a nightmare. First came appendages—long, segmented limbs that reminded me of crab legs but were each as thick as my torso. They pushed up through the silt, feeling blindly through the water.

"What the fuck is that?" Reyes's voice cracked with fear.

More limbs emerged, eight, ten, twelve of them, creating a forest of writhing appendages. Then came what must have been its head—a massive, bulbous shape that broke through the silt cloud, rising at least thirty feet above the seafloor.

My dive lights caught it directly, and I immediately wished they hadn't. The creature's head was a glistening dome of pale, translucent flesh. No eyes were visible, but covering its surface were hundreds of pulsing sacs that glowed with bioluminescent blue light—forming patterns eerily similar to the symbols I'd seen inside the submarine. Below them, a mouth opened—not a mouth with jaws, but a circular maw ringed with rows of backward-curving teeth that spiraled down into darkness.

"Oh god," I whispered. "Eliza, are you seeing this?"

"Partial feed only," she responded, her voice tight. "But our sonar shows it. That thing is enormous, Maddox. Get the hell out of there."

The creature rose higher, more of its body emerging from the silt. Its central mass was at least sixty feet in diameter, with those dozens of limbs extending much farther. As it rose, the submarines nearest to it were pulled free of the sediment, drawn toward it by some invisible force.

"Weiss!" I shouted, suddenly realizing she was too close to the thing. "Pull back now!"

She didn't respond. Her lights remained fixed on the creature, unmoving.

"She's in shock," Reyes said, already moving toward her. "I'll get her."

"No, wait—" I began, but it was too late.

The creature pulsed again, and this time it wasn't just pressure—the bioluminescent sacs on its body flashed in complex patterns, sending waves of blue light rippling across its surface. The patterns matched exactly the symbols I'd seen in the submarine.

Weiss's dive lights suddenly went dark. Then Reyes's flickered and died.

"Power surge!" he yelled. "My systems are crashing!"

My own lights dimmed but stayed on. My wrist display showed my power levels dropping rapidly: seventy percent, sixty-five, sixty...

"Emergency protocol!" I shouted. "Cut all non-essential systems!"

I slapped the manual override on my suit, shutting down everything except life support and my primary lights. The power drain slowed but didn't stop.

Through the murk, I saw Weiss's suit lights come back on, much dimmer than before. She had finally moved, but not away from the creature—toward it, her arms outstretched as if in welcome.

"Weiss!" I shouted. "What are you doing?"

Her voice came through my comms, strangely distant and dreamlike: "It's... communicating. Can't you feel it? In your head?"

"There's nothing in my head," I said. "That thing is affecting your equipment. Maybe oxygen levels in your suit. You need to pull back."

"No... it's beautiful. It's telling me things. About... preservation. Protection."

The creature's limbs continued to pull submarines toward it. As each vessel reached the central mass, those backward-curving teeth extended, puncturing the metal hulls with horrible ease. The creature was... feeding.

"Reyes, grab her!" I yelled, firing my thrusters to full power and racing toward them.

Reyes had already reached Weiss and was struggling with her. "She's fighting me! Something's wrong with her!"

I reached them just as another pulse emanated from the creature. This one was different—more focused. I felt it hit me like a physical blow, and suddenly my head was filled with... images. Impressions. Sensations that weren't my own.

Darkness. Pressure. Hunger. Ancient, patient hunger.

But not hunger for flesh. For something else. Something inside those submarines.

"It's in my head," I gasped. "Oh god, it's in my head."

The images came faster: the creature, buried beneath the Mississippi mud for centuries, awakened by the changing conditions after the flood. I saw flashes of its past—prehistoric oceans, depths where light never reached, patience spanning geological ages.

And I understood, with sudden, horrifying clarity, what had drawn it here. Not the submarines themselves, but what they contained. The nuclear material in their reactors. The creature fed on radiation, drawn to it like a moth to flame.

"Eliza," I croaked, fighting against the intrusion in my mind, "it's not after us. It's after the reactor cores."

"What?" Her voice was distant, barely audible through the creature's mental static.

"The submarines—they're nuclear! This thing eats radiation!"

Understanding came too late. Weiss had broken free from Reyes and was swimming directly toward the creature's maw, her movements jerky and uncoordinated, like a puppet on strings.

"No!" Reyes lunged after her, catching her ankle.

I fired my thrusters again, racing to help. But as I neared them, one of the creature's massive limbs whipped through the water with impossible speed. It struck Reyes directly, sending him tumbling through the water. His helmet lamp spun crazily, then went dark.

"Reyes!" I screamed.

No response. His emergency beacon activated, a faint red pulse in the gloom, but he wasn't moving.

Weiss continued toward the creature, now just yards from its pulsing body. I pushed my thrusters beyond safety limits, feeling the dangerous heat building in my suit. I caught her just as she reached the creature's outer membrane, wrapping my arms around her waist and reversing thrust.

"Let me go!" she shrieked, her voice unrecognizable. "You don't understand! It's trying to help us!"

"That's not you talking," I grunted, struggling to hold her as she fought wildly against me.

"No, you're not listening!" she hissed. "It's a guardian. It's been here for millions of years. It consumes radiation to protect the ecosystem! The symbols—they're a warning system!"

Her words hit me like a physical blow. The symbols in the submarine. The patterns on the creature's skin. They were the same.

Another limb whipped toward us. I twisted, barely avoiding it, but the movement sent us spiraling toward the creature's central mass. We were close enough now that I could see into that circular maw, down into what looked like an endlessly spiraling tunnel of teeth.

Inside that tunnel, crushed and half-digested, were the remains of submarines. And something else—bones. Human bones, bleached white.

"Eliza!" I shouted. "Emergency extraction! Now!"

The creature pulsed again, and this time I heard something in the mental static—not words exactly, but concepts, emotions, needs. It was communicating, in its way, but the translation from its consciousness to my human brain was fragmentary, alien.

I understood enough. This thing was old. Impossibly old. It had slept beneath the earth while dinosaurs roamed above, awakening periodically to feed before returning to hibernation. The flooding had awakened it early, offering up a banquet of radiation sources.

But Weiss's words nagged at me. A guardian? Protecting the ecosystem? From what?

Then a different image filled my mind—the creature consuming radiation, neutralizing it, preventing it from spreading into the surrounding waters. Was it possible? Could this ancient nightmare actually be... beneficial?

"Maddox," Eliza's voice finally cut through, "I'm sending the emergency retrieval drone. It'll lock onto your beacon. You've got three minutes to get Weiss and Reyes secured."

I skirted the edge of the creature's reach, watching for patterns in its movements. The limbs weren't random—they systematically pulled anything metal toward the central mass. I waited for a gap, then fired my thrusters to maximum. The burst carried us through a forest of undulating limbs. I reached Reyes's still form and hooked my safety tether to his harness.

"Got him," I gasped. "Where's that drone?"

"Thirty seconds out," Eliza replied. "Get to minimum safe distance from that thing."

I fired my thrusters again, dragging both Weiss and Reyes away from the creature. My power levels were critical now—less than twenty percent.

The creature seemed to sense our retreat. Several limbs reoriented, reaching in our direction. One came especially close, the tip of it brushing against my helmet. Where it touched, I felt a terrible cold, followed by numbness.

Then something unexpected happened. Instead of trying to pull me in, the limb traced a pattern on my helmet—the same symbols I'd seen in the submarine, the same patterns on its skin. But this close, this direct, something connected in my mind.

Not hunger. Warning.

The creature wasn't simply feeding—it was containing. The submarines weren't food—they were threats. Threats that leaked radiation into the ecosystem, contaminating everything. The creature had evolved to detect and neutralize radiation sources, to protect the balance of life in its domain.

The translation between its consciousness and mine was imperfect, fragmentary—but I understood enough to realize what it was trying to tell us: You have awakened me with your poisons. I will follow them wherever they go.

Then the drone was there, a sleek torpedo-shaped vessel with mechanical arms that quickly secured Weiss and Reyes to its hull.

"You too, Maddox," Eliza ordered. "Lock on now."

I reached for the drone's final attachment point, but as I did, something wrapped around my ankle. I looked down to see one of the creature's smaller appendages coiled around my suit.

"I'm caught!" I yelled, trying to kick free.

The drone's thrusters fired, beginning its ascent. The sudden upward force pulled against the creature's grip. My suit integrity warnings blared as cold water began seeping in around my ankle.

"I'm hit," I reported, feeling the numbing cold crawling up my leg. "Suit breach."

"Emergency ascent protocols," Eliza responded. "We'll decompress you topside."

As the drone carried us upward, away from the nightmare below, I looked back one last time. The creature had fully emerged from the silt now, its massive body hovering over the ruined submarine graveyard. Its bioluminescent sacs pulsed in complex patterns—communication, I realized. It was still trying to speak to us, to warn us, to tell us something critical that we couldn't fully comprehend.

"It's following," I said, watching as the creature began to rise from the seafloor, limbs undulating through the water with horrible grace.

"Impossible," Eliza said. "Our depth charges will slow it down."

"No!" I shouted. "No explosives! Don't you understand? It feeds on energy. You'll just make it stronger."

I watched the creature rising below us, its ancient consciousness still brushing against my mind, trying to make me understand something that human language couldn't properly express. Two intelligences, separated by millions of years of evolution, trying to communicate through incompatible systems.

"I don't know what to do," I admitted. "There's... something lost in translation. It's trying to tell us something important, but I can't fully grasp it. It's not just a monster, Eliza. It's more complicated than that."

The last thing I saw before we broke the surface was the creature's bioluminescent pattern changing, forming what looked almost like words in the depths—a message I could almost understand, but not quite. Something ancient trying to communicate with something new, with neither side truly comprehending the other.

I didn't know if the creature was friend or foe, predator or protector. But I knew one thing with terrifying certainty: it was coming. Following the trail of man-made radiation through the drowned cities. And humanity's misunderstanding of its nature—this fatal error in translation—would have consequences none of us could predict.