The final files in the ZIP were dated September 2022—weeks after the station was supposed to be empty. They were GPS coordinates. Elias plugged them into a map. They didn't point to the ocean.
When Elias finally bypassed the encryption, he expected spreadsheets or legal depositions. Instead, he found a summer’s worth of sensory data from the Axen-4 Deep Sea Outpost—a station that had officially been "decommissioned due to budget cuts" in August of 2022. June: The Hum AXEN_2022_Jun_to_Sep_compressed.zip
They pointed to the server room where Elias was sitting right now. The final files in the ZIP were dated
In July, the file sizes spiked. Elias opened a folder labeled Visual_Reconstruction . The images were grainy, distorted by the immense pressure of the midnight zone. They showed the station’s corridors narrowing. The walls weren't buckling from the ocean; they were being pulled inward by an unseen force. They didn't point to the ocean