A clear sun rises on red sandstone looming over sandy beaches between Tiznit and Sidi Ifni. The weather is perfect for the Moroccan tourists as a cold front is pushing away seasonable rains for a mild and sunny day.
The cold air rushes down the African coast, through Western Sahara and Mauritania, searching for the Tropic of Cancer. The Canary Current warms the sea and the air as it travels south before splitting at the equator. In the Atlantic Ocean, warm air spins in an endless cycle, and the humid air is picked up by a Northern-traveling Gulf Stream.
Rushing for Europe and the Arctic Circle, the air screams up the eastern American Coast. A Polar Vortex sweeps down from Canada, mixing warm currents and frigid air. Chaos ensues.
Rising warm air lifting from temperate seas slams into a freezing ceiling in the atmosphere. Churning air rumbles and crashes in fury at the restriction. Storm clouds roll and grow, growing, growing into a maelstrom barreling down on a city preparing for Christmas. A wintry mix of rain, sleet, and hail scrapes over the city that refuses to grind to a halt.
Out at sea, a volatile prison closes huge steel hangar doors against the weather, preparing to sink below the waves for protection. A one-foot thick gasket lines the edges of this set of doors, intended to provide a tight seal against water intrusion while the apparatus is submerged.
Ginny Ellis sat at her usual table, flanked on one side by Miguel and on the other by a twitchy Lukas who insisted on sitting on the table itself, bouncing a nervous foot on a bolted-down bench.
"Phoenix is taken," Lukas ticked off names on his fingers.
"Blue Phoenix?" Miguel proposed.
"What the hell would that even mean?" Lukas countered, then snapped his fingers. "Human Torch!"
Miguel shook his head. "Also taken - where is your originality? Where is the beauty?"
Ginny sighed. "You could just call me by my name."
"Thank god, we're saved; here comes Ma Ellis!" Lukas gasped dramatically. "Nope, it just doesn't work for me."
The neoprene gasket material, designed for over a thousand pounds per square inch of strength and formulated to be especially resistant to oil intrusion and combustion, was ordered from the manufacturer as a part of hundreds of classified orders issued to hundreds of distributors. Redacted content would have clarified for those making the material that it was going to be used in a submerged environment and would need the additional additives to make it appropriately resistant to saltwater intrusion while submerged at pressurized depths.
The order, however, listed the request as being specified for a submarine hangar. An appropriate cover, it would ordinarily have provided an apt description of the conditions under which the Raft would require the gasket to operate, if not for the pressure.
Unlike a sea-wall submarine hangar, which operates at the breakwater line and contains both submerged and above water portions, the Raft is a submersible, plunging to pressurized depths to ensure prisoners do not escape.
As the order seemed to clearly lay out the desired properties of compressive, combustion, and petrochemical resistance, the manufacturer asked no further questions. The requested additives would already increase the cost of the order by some magnitude and no one wanted to risk a possible retraction by asking questions.
A young guard, his arms heavily laden with a plastic bin piled high with personal items, didn't see the water hazard on the floor. His standard-issue boots were designed to prevent loss of traction on the textured metal floor, but not for traction on wet surfaces. He slipped, the box was launched high into the air, and personal items were scattered everywhere.
Raucous laughter spilled from almost every witnessing inmate, save a steady and calculating few. A supervisor, watching like a hawk from the catwalk above, slammed his nightstick against the metal rail, howling "be quiet!". The nightstick's electric component crackled along the metal bar, adding additional authority to the command.
A few snickers of amusement still lingered as the young guard scrambled to return the items to the bin, packed a little less neatly than before.
"Hey! Eighty-six!" an inmate yelled, the owner of the items in question, "you better be careful with my shit, eighty-six! I want it all back in one piece when I get out of here!"
"Back up, 36-92!" The supervisor called down, enforcing authority where none was really necessary. "Unless you want some time in the Box?"
The inmate sneered in disdain but backed down. Time alone in the quiet dark is not an enviable place.
The gaskets were delivered two weeks late and five thousand dollars over budget. In a project marred by bureaucracy, that wasn't too bad. They were installed by the lowest bidder that maintained a security clearance on the first day that delivered decent weather, and put into operation three weeks before the Raft accepted its first inmate.
The neoprene gasket performs perfectly under on-site testing, with multiple inspectors failing to find even the faintest trace of water intrusion. The inspectors confirm acceptance of the material to a grateful distributor.
The distributor supplies all records to the State Department upon successful installation, specifying composition, results of extensive testing, and maintenance requirements to ensure the material met or exceeded its three-to-five year serviceable life. These documents were filed with sixteen-thousand additional pages of records for the construction of the Raft, each page stamped with a red-inked 'TOP SECRET' stamp, and filed in a locked cabinet.
For the next six years the neoprene gasket is compressed and released repeatedly over a multitude of inspections, admissions, site visits, and shift changes as helicopters and quin jets come and go at ever-increasing volumes. With every wave-topped storm, the inner portion of the gasket is coated with a fine film of saltwater, which is then pressed between the two layers as the doors are closed. As the Raft sinks below the waves, those gaskets are subjected to increasing pressure, and the water begins to move.
The saltwater sits stagnant between the two neoprene gaskets and at a steadily-increasing rate the water begins to move through the thick material, carrying crippling electrolytes to massive stainless-steel plates. Due to the gasket's tight fit and thousand-pound pressure in place, no adhesive or sealant was designated at the polymer-metal interface junction. The manufacturer's recommendation would have held firm, if not for the sea. If not for the
"Inmates caught concealing personal items will be punished accordingly!" the Supervisor barked. "All personals are going into storage!" For all the power in his threat, the inmates waiting below seemed hardly bothered.
"Don't," Ginny warned Lukas, seeing the dirty joke just on the tip of his tongue. Today felt different; it wasn't a good time to be pushing boundaries. They could act cool and casual as you please, but even Miguel seemed to be lingering on edge.
Lukas pouted, but kept his dirty joke to himself. "I wonder what this is all for."
Ginny glanced at him, restraining a concerned question for his health. He seemed more pale than usual these days, but they all did after months without sunshine. So she played along with his attempt at normal gossip. "I heard Secretary Ross is making a visit and they want to pretty us up for him."
"I heard they're going to start putting us two to a bunk," Miguel added, notoriously bad at gossip for his desire to avoid petty conflict, he seemed to be trying to help Ginny calm down the increasingly edgy Lukas. "Need to make more room."
"Well I heard that they're just spiteful bastards," Lukas sighed. "Made me give up all my pin-ups. I don't give a shit if they get a little moldy around the edges, I still want to enjoy them while I can."
"What do you think, Mr. Volkov?" Ginny asked as the older man strode by.
He maintained the perfectly mild smile on his face, but the two gargoyles that followed him everywhere seemed far more sour than usual. "Mrs. Ellis," he greeted with a nod, "I will hold my speculations closely guarded until evidence proves me correct."
"How droll," Lukas sighed, "how boring. Crawl down into the muck and gossip with us, Ivan."
Ivan smiled at Lukas with identical warmth and banality that he had offered Ginny, but it seemed somehow menacing for a moment. "Mr. Russo," he sighed like a disappointed grandfather, "the pieces moving in this board make far more complicated moves than your addled brain could process."
The edgy twitching nearly exploded into violence as Lukas snarled with an animalistic rage. "Don't pretend like you're better than us, Ivan. We're all wearing the same boring shade of blue." Maybe it was the low threatening tilt of his head, but his eyes seemed darker than before.
"Pretense is for the unimaginative," Ivan replied, unconcerned.
Miguel clapped a heavy hand on Lukas's shoulder as he made a move to stand, probably to fight. "My friend," he said with false humor, "you are so good not to make a scene."
Ivan seemed unperturbed by either Lukas's threats or Miguel's suppression of it. "Mrs. Ellis," he said in a hushed voice, taking a half-step out of the orbit of his gargoyles in order to keep the comment private, "were I in your shoes, I would hide any photos of my children from this… crusade of acquisition."
"Uh," Ginny was taken aback, "thank you, but isn't everything just going into storage to prevent water damage?"
"Is it?" Ivan replied. "Have a good day, Mrs. Ellis."
"You too," Ginny mumbled.
Over the course of six years, the slowly-moving saltwater carries corrosive electrolytes to that smooth, unprotected junction. A tight crevice along the northernmost section of the hangar doors takes damage first. Decomposition begins at the molecular level, but that is the only foothold that water needs.
Had the water pushed through the tight seal only six inches further down the line, it would have fallen onto the hangar bay floor and been discovered immediately.
The water drips first onto a vent.
This material is not sealed at any junction, so the water quickly corrodes a path through and into the never ending maze of ductwork.
As the Raft tilts at fractions of degrees port and starboard, the surface tension of the puddle releases and it forms a small stream. The stream meanders down a series of branching ducts, tilting port and starboard, forward and aft, lazily choosing the path of least resistance. The water eventually comes to a dead-end and begins to pool. Corrosion sets in with increasing speed, and this water begins to grind a hole at the most vulnerable point - a corner.
As the Raft sinks beneath the waves to protect itself from a Moroccan storm, the ocean pressure increases outside, pushing more water through the corroded gasket junction. The water stream increases down through to the duct panel, into the never ending maze, and down to the most vulnerable corner in a compressed wave. The corroded corner cracks in a fissure, finally yielding to the water, and begins to drip onto the floor below.
Ginny tapped her fingernails on the metal table. "Why do you think he said that?" She had of course hidden her photo as soon as he'd mentioned it. None of the guards seemed to enjoy the prospect of feeling up an older-and-wiser-mother-of-two so her bra had seemed a safe enough hiding place.
"Who, Ivan?" Lukas sighed dramatically. "Old man just wants to be important and so mysterious."
"Geneva," Miguel's tone alone implied the rest of his warning. Do not invite trouble where none is present, he would say.
"What was the number on your bin?" Ginny asked Miguel in lieu of responding to his warning. "Your storage number?"
"Seventy-nine," he replied.
"Yours?" she asked Lukas.
He flicked some dirt off the table. "Forty-two." He seemed to have calmed down from his moment of rage earlier.
"Mine's sixty-two." Ginny tapped her fingernails on the table again. Tap-tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap-tap.
"Something is bothering you." Miguel stated it as a fact, not a question.
"Yeah, Ginny confirmed. "Can't put my finger on it."
Water dripped from the ceiling onto the metal floor. Tap-tap. Tap-tap.
Once the water has penetrated the vent and drips out into the floors it is far too late to stop the slow onslaught of the sea. It is beyond tracking back to the source, as each new spot on the floor seems to appear in the strangest of places.
The water drips down through steel layers of prison and confine and sorrow, traveling down, down, down; searching for the sea from whence it came.
The water drips down onto huge incinerators, filling the room slowly with a thick steam. These machines are running hotter than usual, filled with more kindling than usual. A steady stream of hands throws a steady stream of papers and small objects into roaring fires. A hand-carved chess set. A photo. Half a page of a magazine, folded two times. The belly of the Raft gurgles with steam, and as the hot steam comes into contact with cold metal walls it condenses.
Little streams of water run down the walls, finding new avenues through holes in the grated flooring and running further down, in search of the sea.
What belongs to the sea will always return.
Ginny tapped her fingernails on the table. Tap-tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap-tap.
Water dripped from the ceiling onto the metal floor. Tap-tap.
Tap-tap-tap-tap.
Tap-tap.
Tap-tap-tap-tap.
Tap-tap.
Ginny stopped tapping her fingers on the table. She tilted her head slowly to one side. "Why not use our inmate numbers?"
"For what?"
"For the storage. We have four-digit inmate numbers, but two-digit storage?"
As the shifts changed mid-day and the guards rotated through their ranks, some of the newer guards came on shift. One in particular caught Ginny's eye and she leaned slightly forward in her seat as if closing a few more inches of distance would make a difference.
He stood in the corner, staring at the bin in confusion. He spoke to another guard but Ginny couldn't hear what he said. He turned slowly, tucking the bin under one arm awkwardly, the body armor's thick shoulder pads making the act of lifting his arm enough a difficult one.
"You know who has two-digit numbers?" she murmured, almost to herself.
In crisp white, the embroidered identification patch on the guard's uniform seemed to almost glow in the light. He was new, and his uniform had yet to pick up the fine film of grime that came from working in the humid conditions and never seemed to fully wash out. Even the prisoner uniforms had lost some of the industrial blue hue that wasn't supposed to come out. Everything had taken on the tinge of solemn depression.
"The guards," Miguel supplied.
Sixty-two, the young guard's patch read. The same number as Ginny's supposed storage locker for her precious few belongings. For the books Steve Rogers had brought her from the public library in New York. For the cellophane-wrapped cookie she had been saving for herself as an early Christmas treat.
The answer is suddenly obvious. She doesn't want to say it out loud; letting it out is impossible but also necessary because it would remove the last bit of hope that she and her friends would be treated as human.
"What a cruel lie." She could barely whisper it. "The bins are from their lockers."
"What?" Lukas asked. He shot to his feet though it meant he was standing on the table. "What?!"
"Lukas, shh-" Ginny tried to calm him, raising her hands placatingly.
Miguel took a stronger stance, seizing Lukas around the wrist as if to drag him down by force, but he didn't move swiftly enough.
"Seven-three-nine!" the supervisor barked from above, "sit your ass down!"
And that was the last straw.
Lukas turned a seething glare to the man stationed above - watching on the catwalk like some kind of malevolent god that dished out cruelty and hate - and the suppressor band around his wrist began to screech a violent warning.
The pitch increased at an alarming speed; faster than Ginny had ever heard it rise as the mysterious technology suppressed the abilities of every prisoner in the Raft. The supervisor was barking some kind of order to the guards around them but they seemed unwilling to approach as the pitch rose almost out of the audible range.
With a pop of circuits run past their limit, something broke in Lukas's band. The noise stopped. Lukas stared down at his wrist and slowly flexed his fingers. The band stayed silent. A slow malicious smile spread across his face and he lifted dark eyes to the catwalk above. "Got you now."
Someone began to scream in alarm tinged with terror. "Breach! Breach!"
Deep, deep in the Raft, where fresh air must be pumped by some force, lies the Box.
It is quiet there.
It is dark.
There is no conversation in the Box. No fury or outrage or explosions of power. Few prisoners sit in the Box as they wait for the days to lumber through them, and banks of power suppressors line the walls to ensure that silence is maintained. In the box, the little suppressor wristbands are not necessary. The walls themselves ensure the silence.
It is dark, but with the slow descent of water it is no longer silent.
Tap-tap.
Water drips down from above, in search of the sea.
Tap-tap.
Deep, deep below the tunnels and walkways and hidden places of the Raft, huge tanks of pressurized air provide a perfect ballast for the steel behemoth's rising and settling in the sea. An uncaring ocean falls onto sealed steel cases of explosive charges adhered to the sides of the ballast tanks, those violent ends sitting in patient wait for a call to fall to the ocean floor.
Tap-tap.
Water drips down from above, in search of the sea.
Tap-tap.
A/N: Me, having trouble getting this chapter started: "hmmm, let me back this up a bit… what's the weather in Morocco in December?" So, shit has officially hit the fan, and I'm sure you have ALL OF THE QUESTIONS.
For as incredibly important to the plot this chapter is, I absolutely hated writing it.
So, shorter chapter here as I just don't have the patience to make it longer. But! Very important stuff here. How many different plot points/foreshadowing references can you find?
I love reviews! Thanks to: errorwarning, cameron1812, firstofhername, CrackHeadBlonde, x EarthAlchemist x, AndTheSaintsAreAllMadeOfGold, Alice Ann Wonderland, and LucyBlue!
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