The oversized canvas suit and heavy helmet where fashioned upon me, leaving me with nothing but three small peepholes to look out of.

Price spoke different instructions to me one last time, but I could barely hear a faint murmur beyond the airtight suit, especially with my heavy breaths of anxiety.

They began to crank the air pump as I forced myself to walk towards the edge of the boat. Too late to back out. I thought to myself. This is what must happen.

Closing my eyes, I winced and shifted my weight backwards. In a mere moment, I felt a crash and heard water rumble as I began to sink. Opening my eyes once more, I could see the brackish water invade my surroundings. Although I was falling quite quickly with the weighted boots, it felt like forever that I drifted downward.

If not for the hum of the tube behind my head, I would question if they were even pumping air into my suit. My breath fogged the front vizor, and it left me feeling trapped, choked, and claustrophobic.

My chest constricted in fear. Out of all the terrifying things I had seen, not many compared to the surreal horror of having your head wrapped in a fishbowl at the bottom of the great River Thames. Nothing but an inch of glass between me and an endless supply of water.

Finally, my feet hit the river floor. All around me was murky nothingness, save for the foggy outline of giant piece of metal in front of me. It was crumpled under the weight of itself, but luckily a single hatch to a long and winding corridor was still intact. It was open from when Bradley had entered, meaning all I had to do was cautiously continue.

If I felt claustrophobic in the water, then I felt crippled in the hallway. It was narrow, winding, and all too difficult to turn backwards in my cumbersome suit. There was no turning back, anyways. Failure was not an option.

What little moonlight shone through the brown waters was all but secluded from the depths of the corridor. It seemed endless in the sprawling dark. I shut my eyes and gave a few forcibly deep breaths, hoping to calm down. After enough time had been spent trying to adjust my vision to the dark, I opened. Yet… It was just as black.

“No matter…” I said to myself, trying to talk my way out of anxiety. “I simply have to walk to the end and turn right…”

And that I began to do. Groping blindly about the corridor, I moved forwards. Every now and then, a different door would be open, and I would instead simply have to hope that I made it to where the walls reappeared.

I felt like I was walking forever. Each step was heavier than the last.

My breathing became heavier as hot breath filled the helmet and fogged the glass. My eyes strained, trying to make out any sort of form in the darkness, but I found nothing. The further I went, the farther any light behind me became.

“Surely the boat can’t be too much longer…” I said to myself, taking another blind step forwards.

Soon I came upon another open doorway, which meant I had to move without guidance once more. Carefully removing my hands from the walls, I slid slightly forward. While the previous times I had at least enough light to have a subconscious sense of direction, the weightlessness of water and the absolute black left me merely hoping I continued in the right direction.

Another step forward.

Another step.

Then, as I lifted my leg, something large and swimming rammed into me. I plummeted to the metal floor with a thud, feeling nothing but the now furious water current.

After regaining my composure, I realized the predicament I had been put in…

I was laying on my side with no sense of direction… In the middle of four different entryways…

My breathing fluttered and I spun around aimlessly, trying to regain my sense of north. Yet no matter how hard I tried; I only became more lost.

“What hit me?” I pondered, still looking wildly about. It felt… Strong. It had to at least be the size of a man.

Something was in the water, and not a little thing, either. It could not feasibly been a man. No. It swam far too quickly. It was fresh water, so it could not have been a shark, or an octopus, or any manner of violent creature... The only option was something... Unnatural.

In an attempt to calm myself down, I replied to my earlier question. “I-It was surely just a fish that had gotten too fat on the sunken food… It's fine. Get a hold of yourself…”

I closed my eyes once more and focused on my breathing, feeling the water around me finally begin to calm.

Once I had my wits about me, I produced a solution. Reaching back, I grabbed the air hose connected to my helmet. Very carefully, I followed it until I was back in the correct corridor. Relief washed over me as I felt the walls once more. I was far too panicked. The water around me felt like it was squeezing me, and the anxiety kept me from thinking clearly.

“One more time… That is all.” I said to myself, now more assured that I would not lose my way. With haste, I continued past the intersection and found myself on the other side of the hall.

Continuing farther into the darkness, I noticed a small light in the distance. Murky brown water was visible once more as it looked as though a window was placed on the end of the hallway.

With light finally visible, I had something to run to, and that I did. Faster and faster, I made my way towards the end of the corridor. Eventually I reached my destination with no setbacks like mere moments ago.

It was a round glass window, riddled with cracks from the weight put down on it. Now that I had vision once more, I could notice how the ship had started to cave in on itself where I was. The ceiling was much lower, and the walls were warped into a crooked bow.

No matter. I was almost there.

Turning to my right, I saw the entryway that Bradley had described. The doorframe had been crushed nearly closed, even tighter than he had shown. It was questionable if I could even fit, but there was no other option than to try.

I spent a long while simply staring at the door, procrastinating what had to come next. There was an opening at the top just barely big enough for the helmet. My weighted boots would not allow me to attempt to swim entirely through that hole, so I simply had to squeeze my body through the lower opening.

I stood on the tips of my toes and began to slowly adjust the angle of my head to fit within the crevice. Once a satisfactory amount of both aiming took place, I began to push forward. First my head, then the rest.

The small cages around the glass windows in my helmet became caught on the metal, but the weak upper portion of the entryway was able to be bent just enough to let them pass. My head was through. “Now the rest…” I told myself.

I lifted one leg as high as possible and it passed through, along with one of my arms. All that was left was my chest.

Once I applied more pressure, I noticed how forcibly my back was pressed against the broken metal. It caused the canvas suit to dig deep, but I had to simply ignore the discomfort. I was so close.

I continued to push, and the metal continued to dig deeper. No progress was made by applying constant pressure. I had to give a single push with all the strength I could conjure.

“One.” I said to myself.

“Two…”

“THREE!”

I pushed with all the strength I had, immediately falling to the other side and collapsing to my hands and knees. Although I had made it, I felt a sharp, fiery, pain in my rightmost shoulder blade. Along with that, a freezing cold began to wash over the right side of my body.

Oh no.

My hand jumped backward to the spot in which the pain was inflicted… The tear was enormous, along with the cut across my back.

In less than a second, the suit began to fill. The air hose fought off the water just long enough for me to take one deep breath before my entire body was submerged in the murky brown liquid.

I had to think quickly… Very quickly!

The gash in the suit was too large to be fixed. First, I had to take it off.

I was weak, but the amount of adrenaline coursing through my veins was enough to let me take the helmet by the metal cages on the side and violently twist it off the suit. I struggled to rip the tear in the suit further, just barely letting me shimmy out of the canvas. Then, it was just me and the water. I was fast, but it was still precious seconds wasted on simply escaping my own suit.

My chest already felt like it was caving in on itself, hurting for more air.

The hose! Perhaps I could undo the hose from the helmet and use it to breath! I thought to myself.

Putting my fingers on the back of the helmet, I tried to pry the hose from its socket. Unlike the helmet though, there was nothing to grasp, and the airtight seal was too tight to budge with my regular grip strength. My heart beat like a drum through the water.

It was too far to try to swim to the surface, and I could not undo the air hose… Fuck.

Going back was suffocating. Staying there was suffocating. My throat was already clamping shut like a vice. My only hope was to swim deeper into the blackness and hope there was some shorter way to the surface… No…

Who was I kidding?

My abdomen already began to convulse. My eyelids felt heavy and my head dizzy. I had little time left to even think.

I felt like I was being crushed. Like I wanted to scream but I could not. Splotches of blue began to appear in what little vision I had in the dark room.

Then, a brighter splotch of blue appeared… No. Not my vision fading. It was real.

Luminescent turquoise shone brighter as what it was connected to started to appear. A tendril like an angler fish’s rode to the top of a creature’s head. It had large, black eyes. Pale, sickly green, flesh. And its mouth was covered in countless smaller tendrils, all starting to glow blue on the tips as well. Its back was covered in humps and barnacles. Its belly was slick and scaled.

It tilted its head, watching me spasm and choke. It simply observed for a second, sensing my desperation. Deep inside me, I felt as though it was asking a question… A question that had only one answer.

It slowly lifted a tentacled hand towards me…

Fighting against my seizing muscles, I pushed my own hand forth and grasped its… I started to lose sight of the creature as the splotches of blue became bigger and bigger. I could feel the tentacles grow longer and longer, grasping not only my hand, but the entirety of my arm.

It pulled me into the darkness fiercely, causing my convulsing chest to finally leave me sputtering air out of my lungs. Once I started, I could not stop until there was no more air left to keep. The darkness and blue fully mixed as my vision was taken away from me. The sensation of water streaming around my body faded… Everything faded…

The world went black.