Coach Orca had never known fear. A decorated combat trainer and marine strategist, he’d spent years mentoring young soldiers at the edge of the Wyrmwater Trench. To them, he was indestructible. A beast in battle, calm in chaos. But no amount of training could prepare him for this.
It happened during a routine patrol near Sector Delta-9, an area long declared off-limits due to unexplained sonar anomalies. Reports had come in of flickering signals, unusual electromagnetic pulses, and static-laced screams over abandoned frequencies. Coach Orca volunteered to investigate — alone. He said it was probably nothing. He never liked mystery. He liked answers.
The sea was calm. The Trident-class vessel glided through the water like a ghost. Orca monitored the sonar. The usual: some turbulence, a whale call, a static spike.
Then everything went silent.
A pressure drop slammed the hull, followed by an inhuman screech that bypassed the vessel’s soundproofing and burrowed into Orca’s skull. Lights flickered. The radar lit up with something. Huge. Fast. Impossible.
It wasn’t a creature. Not exactly. The cameras caught glimpses — a shifting mass of metal and void, teeth like wire-cutters, eyes like hollow stars. It moved like thought, erasing water as it passed.
Orca didn’t scream. He didn’t panic. He recorded a final message: “This thing… it’s not alive in the way we understand. It remembers us. It hates us.”
Transmission cut. The vessel imploded a minute later, recorded only as a tremor by the nearby seafloor monitors.
They say the thing still roams Delta-9. No one dares to go near. Coach Orca’s legacy remains, etched in the minds of his students and the haunting signal he left behind — replayed by intelligence teams still trying to understand what exactly destroyed him.
Some say it was a weapon. Others, a god.
But all agree: it was waiting.
