Consciousness returned not as a gentle dawn, but as a violent rupture.

The first thing he felt was the cold. A deep, metallic chill that seeped through his clothes and gnawed at his skin. The second thing was the air—thick, stale, and tasting of recycled metal and his own panic. He tried to suck in a deep breath, but it hitched in his throat, a ragged, insufficient gasp.

Where…?

He was strapped into a reclined pilot’s chair. Darkness pressed in on all sides, absolute and suffocating. It was a physical weight on his eyes. He fumbled blindly at the harness release, his fingers clumsy and numb. The clasp gave way with a sharp click that echoed unnaturally in the enclosed space.

Pushing himself up, his head swam, a dizzying vortex of non-memories. He didn't know his name. He didn't know where he was. He didn't know why every nerve ending was screaming danger.

A single, red emergency light above the main console flickered erratically, casting the cramped cabin in stuttering, bloody pulses. In each flash, he caught glimpses of his prison: curved metal walls lined with screens, a bank of dead switches, a small, circular viewport showing only an abyssal black.

Thump. Thump-thump.
It wasn't his heart.The sound was external, a deep, resonant pressure groaning against the hull. It was the sound of a giant sleeping, and he was trapped inside its ribs.

Then, a voice. Synthetic, female, and terrifyingly calm, cutting through the silence from a hidden speaker.

“Oxygen levels critical. Twenty-three percent and declining.”

Oxygen. The word sent a fresh bolt of pure, animal fear through him. He wasn't just trapped; he was drowning in a tin can.

He staggered forward, his legs unsteady. His shoulder slammed into a protruding panel of sharp-edged metal. A line of fire seared across his bicep. He hissed, clutching the wound. His fingers came away wet and warm. The coppery scent of his own blood now mixed with the stale air.

The groaning from outside intensified, a constant, crushing reminder that this entire fragile world could be snuffed out in an instant. He was claustrophobic, trapped, and bleeding in the darkness without any clue.

---

Move. Think. Survive.

The mantra surfaced from the void in his mind, a lone life raft in a sea of amnesia. He had to get the power back. He used the flickering red light to orient himself, his hands skimming over the ice-cold console. His fingers, as if guided by a ghost of muscle memory, found a secondary panel beneath the main display. He pried it open.

Inside was a manual override switch, bright yellow, and a hand-crank generator. A last resort.

“Oxygen levels critical. Twenty-one percent.”

Gritting his teeth against the pain in his arm, he grabbed the crank and began to turn. It was stiff, fighting him every inch of the way. The only sounds were his ragged breathing, the grinding of the gears, and the relentless, hydraulic sigh of the deep ocean.

Come on. Come on!

With a final, straining push, something engaged. A low hum vibrated through the deck plates. The red light died, and for a heart-stopping second, there was only blackness. Then, a soft, cool blue light bloomed from the main console, spreading to illuminate the cabin.

He was in a submarine. A small, utilitarian vessel. The name was stenciled above the viewport: NAUTILUS-07.

The light revealed the extent of his tiny world. To his right, a small bunk was bolted to the wall. To his left, a storage locker. His eyes fell on a plastic card, clipped to the edge of the console. He snatched it up.

It was an ID badge. The photo showed a man with tired eyes and short-cropped black hair. He looked… familiar. The name below the photo read: KAIZOO – MAINTENANCE ENGINEER.

Kaizo. Kaizoo? The name felt foreign, yet it was his. A piece of an identity.

His gaze then dropped to a small, waterproof logbook tethered to the console by a polymer cord. He flipped it open. The pages were filled with technical notations and diagrams, but on the very last page, scrawled in a frantic, hurried script, was a message:

“If you are reading this, do not trust the radar.”

A chill, colder than the surrounding metal, trickled down his spine. Why? What was wrong with the radar?

Almost against his will, his hand moved to the console. He tapped the screen, bringing the long-range sonar array online. The screen glowed, painting a topographical map of the seabed around him. For a moment, it was empty. Then, two blips appeared.

One was close. Very close. A solid, pulsing dot just a few hundred meters away.

The other was far, a faint signal on the very edge of the scanner’s range.

---

Two signals. Two possible destinations. Two potential salvations. But the logbook’s warning echoed in his mind. Do not trust the radar.

He leaned closer, his heart hammering against his ribs. Taped to the screen itself, right beside the closer blip, was a tiny, folded slip of paper. He peeled it off with trembling fingers and unfolded it.

Three words in a foreign language but he understood them , but in the same desperate handwriting:

“Jangan berpatah balik.”
(Do not turn back.)

The message was a contradiction. The close signal was a siren's call, promising swift rescue from this metal tomb. But the note and the logbook screamed that it was a trap. A lure.

His eyes were drawn irresistibly to the small, thick viewport. The blue console lights cast a weak glow into the eternal darkness outside, illuminating the swirling sediment like dust motes in a forgotten room.

He saw nothing at first. Just the void.

Then, a movement.

Something shifted in the blackness, just at the very edge of the light's reach. It was a slow, deliberate motion. Not the random drift of marine snow. This was purposeful.

He pressed his face against the cold, unforgiving glass, straining to see.

A shape. Vague and indistinct, but undeniably there. Long, pale, and sinuous. It coiled slowly in the water, a phantom dancer in the abyssal theater.

Was it a creature? A trick of the light on his oxygen-deprived brain? Or something else entirely?

The thing in the dark shifted again, and for a single, horrifying moment, it seemed to turn, as if it had felt the weight of his gaze.

Kaizoo stumbled back from the viewport, his breath catching in his throat. He was not alone down here. And the choice he had to make was no longer just about survival.

It was about what he might be sailing towards.

(A note from the author):

Hey everyone, this is my first web novel! 😱 I'm so excited (and nervous!) to share this deep-sea nightmare with you. I live for atmospheric horror and mind-bending mysteries, and I hope I've managed to pull you into Kaizoo's cold, dark world.

If you enjoyed this first dive into the abyss and want to know what happens next, it would mean the world to me if you could vote, comment, or add it to your library! Your support is the oxygen that keeps this story alive. 💙

I'd love to know what you think!

· What's your theory? Is the thing outside the window a real creature, a hallucination, or something else?

· What would you do? Would you risk the close signal despite the warning, or gamble on the distant one?

Thank you for reading!

[Mr.MKI]