The pressure in my head was immense, a physical weight that made me want to rip my helmet off. I fought against it, focusing on David. I had to get him out. I hooked my arm under his, trying to pull him to his feet. He resisted. With a slow, deliberate strength that didn't feel human, he stayed rooted to the spot. Then, his head turned, away from the obelisk and towards me. His eyes, once sharp and familiar, were now twin voids reflecting the sickly green glyphs on the stone.
A small, serene smile touched his lips.
He raised a hand, not to fight me, but to gently touch the side of my helmet.And then his voice, clear as day inside my mind, joined the cacophony.
Don't fight it, he pleaded, though his mouth never moved. It's so quiet here. No more noise. No more fear. It promises... peace.
The whisper of the obelisk coiled around his words. We promise. My resolve wavered. For a split second, the offer was intoxicating. An end to the guilt, the nightmares, the crushing weight of what I had done. But then I saw Maya's terrified face in my mind's eye, heard the captain's haunted silence over the phone.
Peace wasn't what this thing offered.
It was oblivion.
"No," I grunted, the word a burst of bubbles.
I drew the dive knife from its sheath on my leg. The polished steel gleamed in the obelisk's light.
I didn't know what I would do with it, but it was something real, something from my world.David's smile vanished. His eyes hardened. The gentle pressure on my helmet became a crushing grip.
You will not take him, the chorus in my head roared. He belongs to the deep now. And soon, so will you.The water in the cave began to swirl, the current pulling me towards the humming, glowing stone.
David, my friend, was holding me in place, his grip like iron, his eyes showing nothing but the cold, alien intelligence that now commanded him.
I was trapped between my friend, who had become a monster's puppet, and the ancient, waiting darkness he now served.
suddenly an idea popped up, David who is not david opened and plungged his mouth towards my neck, as David was going for my neck, i went straight ahead and grabbed his hair, rotating it to my view, covering my mouth with David's mouth thrusting my tounge inside and against his. "David!!" i shouted internaly ...he is no longer with here the voice said.
The logic was insane, a last, desperate flare from a dying mind, but it was all I had.
If this thing in the deep communicated through thought, if it had stolen David's mind, then maybe, just maybe, a direct, primal, human connection could be a shock to its system. Not a thought, but an act, to save both me and David.
The instant our mouths met was a violation of every law of nature. His lips were colder than the surrounding water, with the unyielding texture of marble. There was no breath, no life, only the dead pressure of a statue. Inside, it was a void.
Then the connection wasn't just a whisper in my skull; it was a fire hose of consciousness blasting directly into my brain.
My own memories were stripped away, replaced by an avalanche of alien experience.
I saw nebulae of screaming gas coalesce into stars. I felt the slow, patient grind of continents shifting over millennia. I witnessed silver ships, sleek and silent, fall from a poisoned sky into a methane sea, their pilots' final thoughts a symphony of echoed despair that this thing, this obelisk, had listened to and recorded. It was a library of endings, a museum of extinction. It didn't cause the ends; it merely found them, savored them, and offered a final, quiet resting place for the echoes left behind.
And I felt David.
I felt his terror when they first found this cave. I felt his desperate obsession, the call that pulled him back here alone.
I felt his final moments of humanity as he knelt, the water pressure crushing his lungs, the agony unbearable… and then the release.
The sweet, seductive promise of the obelisk. It didn't heal him.
It simply switched off the pain, archived his fear, and hollowed him out to make room for its own ancient awareness.
He was a vessel, a new pair of eyes for a being that had been alone in the dark for eons.
The torrent of information was a physical force. My vision dissolved into a kaleidoscope of glowing green glyphs. The hum of the obelisk was the only sound in the universe.
you offer yourself? The thought was no longer a simple whisper. It was a chorus of a billion dying voices, all speaking as one. You offer this bond. This… connection. We have not felt this since the makers left. It is… inefficient. Messy. But compelling.
A new sensation trickled back from the entity, through David, and into me. Curiosity. A cold, analytical curiosity, like a scientist dissecting a new species of insect. It sifted through my guilt, my fear, every sensation. It tasted them, categorized them.
The guilt is strong. A good vintage, the chorus mused. You will be a fine addition to the collection.
The thought jolted me with a terror so pure it cut through the psychic storm. This wasn't a rescue. It was an audition.
I tore myself away, shoving with all my might. The psychic connection snapped, and the sudden silence in my head was as deafening as the prior noise. I scrambled backward, my fins churning, my heart hammering against my ribs.
David, or the thing wearing his face, didn't pursue. He remained kneeling, but his head was tilted. The serene, empty smile was gone. In its place was a look of profound, ancient contemplation. He slowly raised his hand and touched his own lips, as if trying to understand the memory of the contact.
His eyes, still reflecting the green glyphs, locked onto mine. The cold voids were gone. Now, they held a terrifying, focused intelligence. It knew me now. Not just my fears, but my hopes, my history. Everything.
His mouth opened, and for the first time, a sound came out. Not in my head, but a real, physical sound, a distorted, water-logged voice that was a hideous parody of my friend's.
"More," it gurgled, the single word bubbling through the water, carrying the weight of ages. "We want... more."
"WE?! There's no WE" i thought as i looked at David in terror.