Surface Noise (Ocean's Song, Chapter 4)
Parker wakes in a coastal hospital, burned but alive—haunted by Rachel's disappearance and the unanswered question of who pulled him from the vent.
The first thing Parker registered was the smell. Not antiseptic, not hospital sterility, but iodine and sulfur, brine clinging to the edges of his awareness like sediment.
A rhythmic pulse of pain throbbed at the base of his skull, echoing the insistent itch and sting beneath the burn bandages – a flexible, transparent “second skin” membrane that felt impossibly thin, yet horribly present.
He was alive, too alive, his body a map of aggressive medical intervention, healing faster than expected, but still a landscape of raw discomfort. He picked at the edges of the film on his forearm, a futile, restless gesture.
This was all a mistake. He tried to sit up, a bolt of fire racing down his spine, his breath hitching. Where was Rachel? A nurse, a blur of scrubs, gently pushed him back. “Easy, Dr. Carbis. Aggressive burns, but you're stable. You need to rest.” He ignored her, insisting, “My wife, Rachel. Was she... did your team find her?”
The nurse’s face softened, a practiced, almost pitying look. “You were brought in by an ORI team, Dr. Carbis. From a vessel called Coral Spear. They transferred you to our care immediately. That's all the information I have.”
An ORI team? From the Coral Spear? Parker's mind, still struggling with the persistent hum of trauma and the disorienting tang of sulfur, attempted to categorize this novel anomaly. His own deep-sea lab, the very expedition that had plunged him into this chaos, was, after all, jointly sponsored by MIT and PelagiaCorp. It was PelagiaCorp, with their unfathomable funding and formidable fleet – vessels like the Aegis – that scoured these critical vent zones, relentlessly pursuing mineral signatures and pushing the very boundaries of risk.
Why then, would the Ocean Resilience Initiative, a UN-mandated humanitarian group – underfunded do-gooders patching together legacy equipment and prototype drones for ecosystem restoration – suddenly materialize in this highly proprietary, scientifically volatile territory?
Was the nurse, perhaps, misinformed? Had the Coral Spear merely been a tertiary subcontractor for PelagiaCorp, cloaked in environmental altruism? A wave of dizzying relief washed over him, an illogical current cutting through the mental static. ORI. Despite their amateurish optics and resource limitations, they were, undeniably, the “good ones.” If they, with their second-rate resources, managed to reach him through that geological maelstrom, then surely, impossibly, wondrously, they must know what happened to Rachel.
Parker slipped into a troubled sleep and when he woke, Captain Morrison sat by the foot of the cot, his dark uniform jacket spattered with salt stains, looking utterly drained.
“Rachel?” Parker rasped.
“We didn't send a rescue dive, Doc,” Morrison said, his voice flat, his eyes rimmed with fatigue. “Too unstable down there. No human crew going in there would have come back.” He shifted his cap in his hands.
“Your strobe was picked up topside. That's how Miguel's team found you.”
Parker stared, uncomprehending. “Then who pulled me out?” he croaked. Morrison just looked at him, his silence holding a beat too long. “I wish I knew, Parker. Just be grateful. Most men don't get a second chance.”
Parker felt a cold dread begin to coil in his gut. They pulled me out but left her? The first tendrils of guilt, icy and sharp, began to wrap around his chest.
Dismissing the nurses’ repeated calls for rest and further observation, Parker pulled on the borrowed jacket over his hospital scrubs. Every movement sent a fresh throb through his burns, a constant reminder of the chaos and loss. But pain was secondary to the burning need for answers. If ORI had brought him in, they were his only lead. He had to find them, and he had to know about Rachel. He would walk to the ends of the earth if he had to.
The ORI field station was functional, but lacked the corporate sheen of PelagiaCorp. There was no security lockdown, no hushed secrecy, just the hum of hydrophones and the smell of over-worked electronics.
Parker, still wearing hospital-issue scrubs under a borrowed jacket, his burns a persistent throb beneath the “second skin” bandages, limped past a startled technician.
“I'm the guy you pulled out of the water,” he rasped, his throat raw. “Just wanted to thank whoever it was.”
The technician shrugged, pointing vaguely towards a back lab. “Miguel. He was part of the recovery. Back there.”
He found Miguel in a signal lab, the air thick with the faint tang of stale coffee and the hum of playback gear. Miguel, lean and dark, sat hunched over a console, sipping from a chipped mug. His demeanor was friendly, but skeptical, a little guarded, as Parker approached.
“Miguel?” Parker rasped, his throat raw.
Miguel looked up, his brow furrowed in mild surprise. “Yeah?”
“I'm... the guy you pulled out of the water. Just wanted to thank you,” he replied, feeling awkward.
“Ah. Glad to see you upright. We found you floating. You were lucky.”
“Floating? You didn't dive to rescue us?”
“We don't dive that deep," Miguel gestured vaguely at a monitor showing scrambled telemetry. “I was checking our search grid when the crew spotted your beacon.”
“The vent collapsed. Rachel was pinned. I was running out of oxygen. I saw something.” Parker went dead serious. “No lights. No tanks. I assumed they were from your team.”
“The microplastic eddy was thick, the comms were a mess. Could've been mermaids.” Miguel's lips quirked, a half-joke in his eyes.
Miguel's gaze sharpened, a flicker of something unreadable in his eyes. He turned back to his console, running data.
Parker leaned closer, feeling the persistent hum in his own bones. His attention sharpened. There, among the scrolling waveforms, was a distinct harmonic form, a rising spiral he recognized. “That triplet waveform,” Parker said, his voice taut with a sudden, electrifying recognition. “You isolated that?”
Miguel's gaze sharpened, a flicker of something unreadable in his eyes. He turned back to his console, running data. Parker leaned closer, feeling the persistent hum in his own bones. His attention sharpened. There, among the scrolling waveforms, was a distinct harmonic form, a rising spiral he recognized.
“That triplet waveform—you isolated that?” Parker said, his voice taut with a sudden, electrifying recognition.
Miguel's expression tightened, the amiable mask slipping slightly. “It just appeared this morning, radiating from the Ridge, not long before your incident. It appears to be a repeating loop. I'm calling it X-17 because it has been repeating every 17 minutes.”
Parker blinked, absorbing the new timing. “This morning? We saw that same pattern right before the Rachel went down.”
Miguel nodded, his eyes fixed on Parker. “Who are you, exactly? And what were you doing in a restricted zone with PelagiaCorp gear?”
Parker felt a familiar frustration rise, mixed with a chilling new possibility. His “hallucination” theory about his rescue began to wobble—if Miguel heard it too... He pulled himself straighter. “Parker Carbis. From MIT. And PelagiaCorp funds my deep-sea archaeology expedition.” He paused, then added, “I'm looking for Atlantis.”
Miguel let out a short, incredulous laugh, a puff of air escaping his lips. “Atlantis? Seriously? You dove into a collapsing vent looking for an imaginary lost city?” He shook his head, a mix of amusement and professional disdain in his eyes.
“Well, I dove into a collapsing vent to save my wife.” Parker retorted, a sharp edge entering his voice, “And you think mermaids rescued me. Frankly, I'm finding the 'lost civilization' hypothesis marginally more… rigorous.”
The tension thickened, unspoken suspicion filling the quiet lab. Each suspected the other might know more, might be hiding something.
“Was that signal part of your sonar array?” Parker pressed, trying to keep his voice neutral. “Did it come from your systems?”
Miguel shook his head. “Hell no. I've been trying to isolate its origin since it first appeared. It's not ours. It's off-mission, even for my own team. I was hoping you had more answers. PelagiaCorp's got more gear down there than anyone.”
Parker deflected, suddenly unsettled by how little he could trust his own memory, how much he might inadvertently reveal. “Just... chaos. Sediment storm. Couldn't see anything clearly.” The tension thickened, unspoken suspicion filling the quiet lab.
Parker stepped out of the ORI lab, the salty air cool against his bandaged skin. He pulled up the data Miguel had let him glimpse, the image of “X-17” burning in his mind. He knew now.
The signal predated the collapse. Miguel's team, ORI, hadn't saved him. Rachel hadn't surfaced with him.
He looked out at the vast, indifferent ocean, the waves hissing against the distant shore. The signal was real. The rescue was a mystery. Rachel was still missing.
“So why am I the one who made it out?” he whispered, the question swallowed by the endless surface noise.
