It Wakes
by Daphne Garrido
This badass bitch.
Donna couldn’t handle how cool they were.
Poly was her escort — this seemed no big deal to her.
She’d just shrugged off a question about the safety of their diving craft; the ‘Neptune’.
“I have no idea.” She’d said so non-nonchalantly.
The Oceanic Observatory was a facility at the bottom of the Bering Sea.
They were heading down.
Poly had shown Donna the bunkroom, a tightly shared space, for all of the more-permanent residents of the observatory.
Cramped, it was not ideal in any sense.
After dropping her bags, they’d proceeded to what had been labeled and referred to as the ‘Comms Room’. Though, it had been clearly refitted into a makeshift operations center for this whole ordeal.
Donna was a social scientist with a degree in comparative world religion and mysticism. She had no idea what the fuck she was doing here.
She’d become a spiritual adviser to Hollywood elites.
It was a corruption of what she’d once wanted to do, but it got her paid.
There were other benefits too.
Her name got around. There were strange opportunities like this.
Well, never quite like this before.
She’d not really been given an option on this one — whisked away by helicopter, a detachment of soldiers.
They’d sent a Colonel too.
He didn’t seem like a man to be argued with.
He’d said they needed her.
Hours later, having picked though the data they’d accumulated in the comms room, Donna was shaken.
On multiple counts.
They’d been so careless in their investigations, the gathering of this data she’d poured over.
Goodness me. What had they done?
Poly was the only one left. Nobody else had the stamina to stick with her this late into the ‘night’.
Down here, who could tell what time it was anyway?
Donna went hard, always. It was her way, how she’d gotten where she was.
This data had set her off.
It was something she’d been searching for her whole life.
She felt the strangest sense that this is why she’d made every one of her most strange decisions through life. To get here.
“But why?”
Something was rumbling in the deep.
Donna woke up.
Her eyes open now, she looked about the cabin.
Nobody else was there.
She’d thrown on her clothes — a mismatch she’d packed in such a hurry before that Colonel.
Something was wrong.
She could feel it.
Where the fuck was everyone?
Hallway after next, deck after deck. Silence. Nobody.
Donna had run through the halls.
She’d called out.
“Someone!” She shouted.
“Anyone!”
Poly was in the mess hall.
She’d just been eating a meal like nothing was happening.
Donna ran into the room, a panic.
She’d shouted questions. Lobbing so much, all at once, she’d gleaned from that data the night before. Pelting them with a wall of information they surely could not process.
They just blinked at her, taking another bite of their oatmeal.
“Okay.” Poly had finally replied.
“What?”
Donna had then led Poly back to the comms room.
She’d shown her the data.
It was a lot.
This fissure they’d opened was emitting energy like she’d never seen. That much they’d known. That much they’d had proper scientists here before to study.
The implications, however, were otherworldy.
Every point of accumulated data was in line with tales told from tribal nations across the world in ancient times. They’d spoken of higher beings, come down, integrating themselves with whatever humanity was before, creating what we have become.
This fissure, or something just like it, had been spoken of. A creation of those higher beings.
It was to open at the precipice of a great time of change.
What it brought in its wake, was spoken of only in the broadest terms, a challenge for scholars like her to interpret.
They’d spoken of chaos, strife, a chance for each and every soul to make their own choice.
These many choices would determine the ultimate survival of humanity.
It was to be a time of light and dark coming into balance.
Poly was sticking with her this time, reluctantly. Donna had broken things down into chunks.
Whatever it was they had awoken down here.
It was waking up right now.
Donna was wrecked with questions running through her mind.
Who the fuck had known to bring her here?
What secret level of military was immersed in comparative mysticism, of all goddamn things?
What the actual fuck?
Where had everybody else gone?
Poly had needed time to process it all. They’d taken it in their security office alone.
Donna was left to her mind’s ebbs and flows. The building anxiety of it all.
There was something happening down here.
She knew it.
They needed to leave these depths immediately.
They needed to get out.
Donna had just been sitting in the docking bay.
Her suit was already on, ready to ascend.
She didn’t know how to work the craft though, and she wouldn’t leave without Poly anyway.
When she’d banged on the locked security office door, they wouldn’t answer.
So she’d just come to sit here, hoping.
Waiting.
That rumbling from the deep had gotten worse.
It was shaking the whole observatory now.
“Well, this is it.” Donna was thinking.
“This is a weird way to go.”
Bolts fired from the decking, straight up, clattering off the ceiling and running down a side-wall, some pressure building.
Had Poly even been here? Was Donna in a dream?
It was in these thoughts, hope dying inside, with the crushing weight of pressure slowly crushing the station. Where she’d heard their footsteps.
They were shouting. They were coming.
She hopped to her feet. She’d had a suit ready for them.
Poly got in as quick as she could.
They’d gotten in that ship so fast.
Poly had been ferocious, so determined.
They were going to make it.
Strangest screams of metallic destruction had reverberated the walls of their craft throughout the ascent.
It’s own walls holding the whole way.
Poly had explained to Donna then what would be the process.
To rise from these depths, as fast as they were. They’d both need to be in a decompression-tanks for some time.
Donna had cried then.
She needed the comfort of people around to heal from this traumatic episode.
To be alone in the wake of it was going to be really hard for her.
She’d told Poly this. Hoping they might hear the implication in her words. The silent ask of it all.
They hadn’t responded.
Donna was feeling better.
She’d been in the tank for almost a week now.
Somehow, it ended up being exactly what she needed.
There were rumblings outside of change. News coming in of strife and turmoil in the world.
Nothing was more needed than some separation from it all. Some protection. Some space to release the anxiety she’d been holding in from this whole endeavor.
Donna had been up early writing this morning. It having become her way of navigating such isolated times.
There was a knock on the door.
She’d gone over to see a crewman with breakfast, he’d fed it through.
Both plates.
She set one beside Poly as she slept in, taking the other to her desk.
They’d become great friends in this time, picking through all the craziness they’d just been through together.
Poly had been catching her up on this reality-dating show she hadn’t been able to watch for a long time.
She didn’t want it to end.
