The Shard Below

The cold seeps into my bones quicker these days. Not just the ocean cold, though God knows there's plenty of that down at six hundred feet. No, this cold is older, colder. It's in the marrow, a reminder of what I saw, what I did, what I *didn't* do. I'm too old for this, my hands shaking even before I clip the lines, but I keep coming back. Gotta keep coming back.

They call it the Glass City now, those young hotshots with their fancy submersibles and their documentaries. They talk about its impossible architecture, the way the light fractures through the shattered domes and corridors, painting the abyss in colours no man's ever meant to see. Pretty words. They don't know the real story. They just see the pretty broken pieces.

I was there, see. Not for its sinking, not directly. I was part of the salvage crew, though salvage ain't the right word. We were cleanup. Sent in after the "accident," after the deep-sea research station, all state-of-the-art glass and steel, went down. Project Cerulean, they called it. A goddamn joke. More like Project Burial.

The first time I saw it, even then, still had a breath caught in my throat. It wasn't built like a city, more like a colossal, delicate flower, petals of tempered glass blooming from a central stalk. Now, though. Now it's a jagged scar. A broken mirror reflecting only the black. Every shard, every fractured pane, it's a window into the past. My past.

We were told it was structural failure. Pressure, they said. The ocean just... won. Standard story. But it wasn't. Not exactly. There was a panic, see. A breach. Small at first, just a hiss, a spiderweb crack in one of the lower bio-domes. We were on the surface tender, waiting for a transport back. Heard the comms, saw the frantic light blips on the tracking screens. Red alerts everywhere.

My old dive partner, Jimmy, he was down there. One of the station techs. Good man, Jimmy. Always cracking jokes, even when the pressure in the hab was messing with his sinuses. He had a wife, kids. Little girl who drew him pictures of fish in space helmets. He showed 'em to me once, proud as hell. Said he taped 'em to his bunk wall.

When the big rupture happened, it was like a gut punch. Not a bang, just a colossal implosion, a whisper of air leaving a collapsing lung. The tracking screen went blank for a full minute, then a few scattered pings. Survivor beacons. Three of 'em. Jimmy's was one. My heart... it just about exploded through my ribs.

Orders came hard and fast. No rescue. Too dangerous. The entire structure was compromised, tearing itself apart. "Secure the perimeter. No unauthorized entries." That was Captain Thorne. Cold bastard. Always followed orders. And he expected us to, too. But three beacons. Three chances.

I looked at Mac, my other partner. His face was white. He had a wife too. "We gotta go," I said, the words rattling in my chest. "Jimmy. Others."

Mac just stared at the shifting ocean, the faint shimmer of something breaking deep below. "Orders," he choked out. "Thorne'll have our hides."

"Fuck Thorne!" I strapped my tank on, pulling the hood over my head. My hands were shaking so bad I could barely buckle the harness. The surface was a maelstrom of activity, men yelling, winches groaning, debris floating up like dark confetti.

I plunged in. Didn't wait. The water was colder than anything I'd ever felt. And dark. So damn dark. The beam of my headlamp cut through the murk, showing chunks of twisted metal, broken glass, things I couldn't even identify. The current was a beast, dragging me down, twisting me around. I fought it, fought every natural instinct that screamed *get out*.

Then I saw it. The station. Or what was left of it. A skeletal wreck, shards of glass glinting like diamonds in the beam. It was still sinking, slow and majestic, a dying god returning to the deep. And in the distance, a flicker. A strobe. Jimmy's beacon. It was faint, sporadic.

I kicked harder. My lungs burned. The pressure on my suit was immense. I knew, I *knew* I shouldn't be here. But Jimmy. My friend. I got closer, close enough to see the gaping maw where a whole section of the station had simply ripped away. And then I saw him. Or a part of him. Pinned under a huge, shattered sheet of what used to be a transparent wall. His arm, his hand, still clutched a photo, laminated, waterlogged but recognizable. Little girl, fish in space helmet.

He was gone. No question. The way his body was angled, crushed. My gut twisted. The air in my tank tasted like ash. My own beacon was pinging erratically now, and I knew Thorne was probably screaming into the comms. But I couldn't hear him, just the rasp of my own breathing, the thrum of my blood in my ears.

I could have tried. Maybe. Could have tried to free him, bring his body up. Give his wife something. But the glass... it was moving. Shifting. Groaning. Another section of the structure cracked, a sound that vibrated through the water, through my whole body. A sharp, terrifying shriek of stressed material. I saw new fissures bloom across the massive glass walls nearby. The whole thing was coming apart.

Fear. Raw, animal fear, took over. My hands unclenched. I spun around, kicked off, swam as fast as my battered body could take me. Away from the wreckage, away from Jimmy, away from the collapsing glass tomb. I didn't look back. I just swam, pushing through the cold, the darkness, the rising debris, until I saw the dim lights of the tender far above.

I made it back. Thorne yelled, of course, about insubordination, about risks. I just stared at him, my eyes burning, water streaming down my face. Said I didn't see anything. Said the current was too strong. Said it was a waste of time. I lied. Lied to everyone. Lied to Jimmy's wife, told her we never even found a trace. Told myself it was for the best. To keep my job. To keep *me* alive.

Now, I dive this goddamn place. Not for the cameras, not for the thrill. I come here with my own battered equipment, my own ghosts. I trace the contours of the shattered domes, the broken hallways, and I see him every time. His hand, clutching that photo. The fish in the space helmet, forever lost in a glass ocean. The light here, it plays tricks. Sometimes, I swear I see her, his little girl, in the reflections of the broken glass. Just a flicker. A reminder. And I hear a whisper, always, just beneath the hum of the rebreather. *Coward*.

My tank's running low. Time to surface. But tomorrow, I'll be back. I always am.