The operative assigned to the submerged gate moved through the forgotten channels of a world that had stopped remembering its own corners.
He passed through maintenance shafts half-swallowed by rust, ducked beneath low ceilings held together by memory and wire, and climbed down ladders that creaked like bones left too long in the dark.
He didn't need light. He knew the way, or at least enough of it to get there. The path wasn't meant for visitors.
Eventually, he reached it.
The gate, but surprisingly, it didn't open when he arrived.
It didn't react; it just sat there, old and half-sunken into the seabed, its edges crusted with silt and pressure-slick grime. But there was no mistaking the feeling around it.
It was watching.
It was not like a sensor, not like a trap. It was just... watching. It was aware, in the way only the oldest things could be.
He didn't go closer. He didn't test it.
