Chapter Text
Jackie didn’t know what had happened. Only that her plane had gone down. One moment she was strapped into her seat, the next she was in open water, treading desperately, gasping as she fought to cough the seawater from her lungs.
She was drowning.
Panic hit hard. She clawed for anything that would float.
Something dark bobbed nearby. She lunged for it, fingers closing around what felt like rubber.
But it didn’t feel right. Not slick and firm like wet debris, but her fingers sank into something slick and tacky. A slimy, tacky, and gooey film coated her hands.
She looked down, squinting through the darkness and the wavering light cast by the oil-fire glow on the water. What she saw made her breath hitch, and her stomach drop.
Burned fabric fused to pale skin. Angry red burns and blisters oozing blood and fluid. Hair, charred and shredded, drifting with the pull of the waves.
Oh God. It wasn’t debris. It was a person.
The moment she realized, she gasped and recoiled, thrashing through the water to put as much distance as possible between herself and the floating corpse.
Her limbs felt heavy as she struggled to keep herself above the surface, her strength draining fast.
She couldn’t tread much longer.
Something burst from the water beside her.
A suitcase shot up through the surface and splashed back down a few feet away, torn free from some submerged section of the plane.
Jackie didn’t hesitate. She swam for it and clung to the hard shell. Her chest burned as the item kept her afloat.
She looked around.
Fiery debris drifted past. Bodies bobbed in and out of view. Pockets of burning oil flickered across the surface, casting warped reflections over the waves.
Through the smoke and darkness, she caught sight of a distant light. She squinted.
A lighthouse?
It stood alone in the ocean. Two narrow staircases climbed from the ocean’s surface to its base, barely visible in the shifting glow of firelight.
Swimming for the stairs and dodging debris and bodies, she hauled herself out of the water as fast as her failing strength allowed.
She collapsed onto the stone, lungs burning, then crawled the rest of the way up the lighthouse steps before finally lying flat against the freezing ground.
When her breathing steadied, she listened.
No screams. No voices. Only the crackle of distant fire and the soft slap of water against stone. Her heart sank. She watched her breath become visible in tiny puffs.
Was she the only survivor?
Then, the quiet was broken—there was splashing.
Jackie pushed herself upright just in time to see a woman clawing desperately at the lower steps, struggling to pull herself from the water. She staggered to her feet and hurried back down.
“Here, take my hand,” she said, offering her arm.
The woman lifted her head. She was pale. Her lips had gone gray, her eyes dark and unfocused. With obvious effort, she raised one trembling arm toward her.
Once their hands locked, she braced herself and pulled, muscles screaming as the woman scraped at the stone railing with her free hand.
“I need you to help me!” Jackie groaned.
With a final heave, she dragged the woman onto the steps. She looked at her and barely muffled a gasp. The lower half of the woman’s left leg was gone.
Shredded and blown away just below the knee. Blood soaked through her cream knit sweater, the fabric darkening as red crept upward from her waist.
Jackie knelt beside her and reached for the woman’s shoulder.
“May I?” Jackie asked, her voice raspy and thin from oil fumes, swallowed saltwater, and the biting cold.
The woman nodded weakly, her chest heaving in uneven gasps as she struggled to pull in air. She carefully lifted the hem of the sweater, just enough to look.
Metal—a jagged piece protruded from the woman’s abdomen. Unmistakably part of an airline seat.
It had pierced straight through the fabric and into her flesh, leaving only a few inches visible. She lowered the sweater back into place and forced a small, reassuring smile.
She wasn’t a doctor, but she knew what this meant.
Stranded in the middle of the ocean with no supplies and no way to stop the bleeding. There was nothing she could do. Even without the injury, the signs were there—ashen skin, dilated pupils, violent shivering, shallow, labored breaths.
Some of it could be the cold, she knew, but blood loss didn’t forgive the circumstances.
Not like this. Not without rescue.
Trying to offer comfort, she asked softly, “What’s your name?”
“Jackie,” the woman croaked.
Jackie stared, then clasped her hand. “Mine too.”
The other Jackie didn’t respond.
Jackie thought she saw the faintest attempt at a smile. Maybe recognition, maybe coincidence, or maybe it was just the poor light.
The woman’s gaze drifted away, fixing on the sky above them. Tears slipped from the corners of her eyes and dotted the stone beneath her head. She laid down beside her, still holding her hand.
Beyond the low stone wall, the wreckage burned on the water’s surface, oil fires flickering and popping. Their legs stretched back toward the stairs, feet still trailing at the edge of the ocean.
Somehow, the smoke didn’t obscure the stars.
The wind must have carried it away.
Jackie was freezing. Violent shivers wracked her body as her soaked clothes clung to her skin in the chill North Atlantic air. The lighthouse shielded her from some of the wind, but not the temperature.
Add that to the trauma, the water, the shock, and it wouldn’t take long. She wasn’t there yet, but she knew it would be a matter of when if she stayed exposed.
She turned her head to the right. The other Jackie was still staring skyward, but she was gone. The faint glow from the lighthouse lamps reflected dully in eyes that no longer saw.
Jackie realized she was still holding her hand.
Tears slid down her temples and into her hair. She knew there was nothing she could have done. The guilt crushed her anyway. Grief, anger, fear, all of it pressed down until she felt fused to the cold stone beneath her.
She didn’t know how long she laid there.
The sky remained dark. The plane was gone beneath the waves, but the oil fires still burned.
With a sharp cry of pain, she forced herself upright. The reality of her injuries was beginning to surface.
Still holding the woman’s hand, she lifted it to her lips and pressed a gentle kiss to her knuckles, whispering apologies under her breath. She placed her hand back against the woman’s stomach, then reached up and carefully closed her eyes.
Standing on shaky legs, she quickly checked herself for wounds. Her hands were smeared with blood. The other Jackie’s blood. She stared at them, expecting to feel disgust. Instead, she wiped them on her slacks. Seeing nothing obviously broken or bleeding, she turned toward the lighthouse.
The doors were massive, gold, and lavishly Art Deco, with two figures meeting at the center, a man holding a sphere between them. One door stood slightly ajar.
Jackie’s heart stuttered. Perhaps someone else survived?
Placing a hand against one of the doors, she pushed. It resisted. Heavy and solid before finally giving way to reveal a dark interior.
She slipped inside and let the door swing shut behind her, the weighty thud echoing through the space. She took a cautious step forward, feeling blindly for a switch—click.
The lights snapped on all at once with a sharp, mechanical crack. Like they had been waiting for her.
A large brass bust loomed directly in front of her, its cold metal gaze fixed downward. Jackie startled, her breath catching as she jumped back a half step. Beneath the bust, a banner hung in the harsh light.
NO GODS OR KINGS. ONLY MAN.
She frowned, “Interesting.”
She felt numb. No pain. No pleasure. Like standing in the center of a dream she knew wasn’t real, yet still unable to tell where hallucination ended, and reality began.
Music drifted in, tinny and distorted as it bounced off the stone walls. It was an instrumental version of ‘Beyond the Sea’. She recognized it immediately, and the familiarity only deepened her unease.
What was this place?
She followed the curved walkway down a split staircase into a vast rotunda. At its center, the ocean opened through a circular aperture, black water lapping quietly against stone.
As she descended, lights flickered on in sequence, tracking her movement. The unsettling tone of the music followed.
Resting in the water below was a small, sub-like vessel. It resembled the bathyspheres she had seen in old photographs. The hatch stood open, waiting.
Jackie scanned the room. There was nothing else. No signs of life. No supplies. Just the open sub and the dark sea beyond.
Her choices were painfully simple: stay and hope someone came looking, or trust this strange machine to take her somewhere people still existed.
She chose the latter.
She climbed inside and pulled the hatch shut. The interior was cramped. She moved to the telemotor and tilted her head, reading the labels aloud as if grounding herself would make this feel real.
“Stop. Ahead. Astern.” She glanced at the additional markings. “Full, half, slow, and standby must be the modes of travel, maybe?”
She followed the controls downward until a name caught her eye—Fontaine Futuristics.
“Alright, Fontaine Futuristics,” she murmured, gripping the lever. “Let’s hope I don’t mess this up.”
She pulled the lever.
The bathysphere shuddered to life, a low mechanical hum vibrating through the frame as it slipped beneath the surface. Jackie took a seat on the narrow bench, her pulse hammering in her ears.
Above the hatch, a plaque read: Bathysphere Proudly Built by Austen Bathysphere Co.
So it really was a bathysphere?
The hum deepened. A screen unfurled in front of the door, and a projector clicked on. An emblem appeared. Looking eerily similar to the lighthouse she’d just left behind. Then the image shifted to a portrait of a man smoking a pipe.
Text overlaid the screen: From the desk of Andrew Ryan.
The speakers crackled to life.
“I am Andrew Ryan,” the voice declared, smooth and assured, “and I’m here to ask you a question…”