DR SUVAJEET DUTTAGUPTA

The Leviathan’s Mercy

The Triton plunged even deeper into the Mariana Trench, a silver needle piercing the ocean’s black heart. I pressed a hand against the cold view-port, the fortified glass a fragile barrier between our hubris and a crushing demise. Our team had spent years on this project, meticulously planning, designing, and testing to withstand these unimaginable pressures. Still, I couldn’t shake the memory of those other fools from the SeaCrate incident — the sheer arrogance of men who had disregarded every safety measure and treated the deep as if it were a simple weekend adventure.

Outside, the pressure mounted, an invisible vise squeezing the hull, humming a low, desolate drone. Inside, Commander Alastair Ledger, a man whose fortune rivalled his ego, savouring lukewarm coffee.

“Another ninety meters, and we will secure our legacy in history, gentlemen,” he broadcast over the comms, his voice oozing self-satisfaction. “Mark that down, Jenkins. And ensure our competitors see the timestamp.”

A knot of unease tightened in my stomach. As the mission’s lead marine biologist, I was a scientist, not a glorified publicist, and Ledger’s theatrics were getting on my nerves. “Commander,” I said, my voice cutting through his self-congratulatory tone, “the sonar’s fluctuating wildly. Anomalies. Extreme pressure readings that don’t align with current depth.”

Ledger scoffed, waving a dismissive hand towards me. “Nonsense, Dr. Robert Beeston! It’s probably that simpering fool, Caldwell, trying to jam our systems from his surface vessel. Typical. Just boost the signal.”

The Triton lurched violently. Red alarms flashed, painting the control room in a frantic, pulsing glow. Ledger, usually composed, spilled his coffee. The smell of the bitter liquid suddenly filled the air. “What in blazes was that?”

“Rupture warning! Starboard pressure hull compromised!” Lieutenant Chen shouted, his fingers a blur on his console. “We’re losing integrity! Rapid descent!”

Panic began to bloom among the crew. A technician gasped, fumbling with his headset. But Ledger merely clenched his jaw, a muscle twitching in his temple. “Sabotage! Caldwell’s gone too far!” He lunged for the manual controls, wrestling the joystick. “I won’t let that snake win!”

But the submarine wasn’t responding. It was still plummeting, yet strangely, the rupture alarms began to subside. A soft, rhythmic thrum vibrated through the hull, a low, guttural pulse that felt less like machinery and more like… a titanic heartbeat. It seeped into my bones, a resonance from something immeasurably vast.

“Commander, look!” I pointed at the main view-port, which was now filled with an impossible light. Not the harsh beams of the Triton’s floodlights, but an ethereal, cerulean glow, pulsating from beyond the glass. Within it, a colossal shape began to resolve itself. Not smooth, metallic curves, but vast, undulating tendrils, thicker than the submarine itself, rippling with bioluminescent patterns that shifted like alien constellations. For a breath, even Ledger was silent, a flicker of primal awe, perhaps fear, crossing his face.

Then his eyes narrowed, the arrogance returning. “A creature? Good! We’ll capture it. The data alone will be worth billions. Beeston, prepare the tranquillisers!”

My blood ran cold. He saw a discovery; I saw a god. As Ledger barked orders, I moved without thinking, my hand flying to the power conduit for the tranquilliser launcher. I slammed the emergency override, a small, red button that immediately killed the power. “System failure, Commander! It’s offline!” I lied, praying he wouldn’t notice my trembling hands.

The blue light intensified, and the Triton was gently, but firmly, caught. The rhythmic thrum grew stronger, a lullaby sung by the abyss. The submarine, which moments ago had been plummeting toward its crushing demise, was now being cradled, almost affectionately, by the massive tendrils. It wasn’t being towed, not quite; it felt more like it was being… steered. Nudged away from an unseen, far greater danger, away from jagged spires that suddenly appeared in the shifting glow, only to vanish as quickly as the submarine was smoothly diverted.

I stared out at the cerulean light, a wave of inexplicable calm, almost too deep to be natural, washing over me, then receding and leaving only deeper dread. “It’s not attacking us, Commander. It’s… it’s saving us.”

Ledger barked a laugh, a sound devoid of humour. “Saving us? Don’t be absurd, Beeston! It’s clearly dragging us deeper, perhaps to some geothermal vent for its own purposes. Or Caldwell’s finally deployed his deep-sea drone, trying to make us think we’ve gone mad. Clever, but not clever enough!”

The pressure warnings continued to flash erratically, occasionally spiking, then immediately dropping as the silent, blue behemoth adjusted the submarine’s position with an almost casual precision. Each averted collision, each sudden, gentle redirection away from destruction, was met with Ledger’s confident assertions of Caldwell’s cunning. He saw every unnatural correction, every calculated shift that spared us, as evidence of an elaborate, simulated catastrophe designed to break his resolve.

The light outside began to fade, the colossal tendrils receding into the inky blackness. The Triton came to a soft halt, resting on a flat, barren plain thousands of metres deeper than we intended, yet miraculously intact. The monster was gone, leaving only the oppressive silence and the faint hum of the submarine’s revived systems.

“There! They’ve given up!” Ledger crowed, pumping his fist. “Caldwell must have realised he couldn’t break me. We’re safe. Plot a course back to the surface, Chen! And make sure you note down the precise coordinates of this deep-sea prank. They’ll pay dearly for this.”

I stared out at the unbroken darkness, a chill creeping down my spine that had nothing to do with the trench’s cold. I knew, with a horrifying certainty that twisted my gut, that we hadn’t been saved from a rival. The leviathan had not offered salvation, nor played a prank. It had merely been maintaining its territory, expelling an anomaly. And the horrifying truth was, in the vast, uncaring calculus of the deep, our entire existence was nothing more than a momentary disruption, casually corrected. We were not special; merely dealt with.

Dr. Suvajeet Duttagupta, a nanotechnology PhD from IIT Bombay, embarked on an unexpected journey into the world of art. While his academic pursuits were rigorous, his true calling emerged in creative fields like photography, videography, and directing. For years, writing was a private pursuit, a source of personal enjoyment, but he’s recently found the confidence to share his distinctive horror-adjacent stories, often unsettling them with an eldritch twist. One of his recent works was published by Tasavvur Magazine.