On the screen, white towers rise from the dark.
I stop chewing my sandwich. For three days our unmanned camera vessel has shown us mud, scattered stones, and one pale tail. Now there is a city.
“More light,” I tell Ceri.
She looks at Yara first. That annoys me. I’m paying for the filming time. Yara is here to study whatever we find, and Ceri is here to keep our expensive little vessel, Drop, from becoming a stone itself.
“Wait,” Yara says.
Ceri waits.
The ship rolls. One tower appears to lean. Another narrows, then widens.
“Are they moving?” I ask.
“The shadows are,” Yara says. “We don’t know what we’re looking at yet.”
“Which is why we need light.”
She gives me the look she uses when I say something partly right. I have seen it several times today.
Drop sends a line beneath the picture: REPEATED MOVEMENT DETECTED.
Its AI can sort shapes, watch for obstacles, and follow the route Ceri gives it. It cannot tell us that a tower is a building or that a moving speck is a new animal. We are responsible for those claims.
Drop also has a distance sensor that works without the lamp. It can warn Ceri that something is close, even when the camera sees only black.
I know this. In my head I have already written the title: City Beneath the Sea.
“A brief sweep,” Yara says. “Dim. Stay back.”
Ceri moves the light across the scene. The towers are pale columns with folds along their sides. Tiny dots cling to them. Shadows slide through gaps between the columns, then vanish from the beam.
My sandwich lands on the console. I don’t remember putting it down.
“Closer,” I say.
“Niko,” Yara says, “we’ve just watched them move away from light.”
“We can stay above the columns.”
Ceri shows me the route on a second screen. The safe path ends at a blue line. Beyond it we have no map. Drop’s battery gauge gives us time for a short approach, then the trip back to the ship. Ceri has already kept a return reserve aside. I cannot spend it on pictures.
“To the line,” I say.
That is within the filming route we agreed on. Ceri sends the command. Drop moves. Its ordinary lamp stays on this time, holding the scene bright while the camera draws closer.
A pale shape rises from behind a column. Another follows. They turn toward the lamp.
“Stop,” Yara says.
Drop has already slowed. Shapes fill its view. Its obstacle warning lights up.
Ceri stops it completely.
For a second I have the picture I wanted: a white body, folded fins, a dark mark like an eye. Then twenty more bodies cover the lens. The screen becomes a blur.
“They’re coming toward it now,” I say.
“Yes,” Yara says. “They moved away from a brief beam. They crowd around a steady bright one. We need to learn the difference before we go anywhere.”
“Could we push through?”
Ceri takes her hand off the movement control.
“No.”
She doesn’t raise her voice. It makes me hear the word more clearly.
My phone buzzes. The sponsor wants an update before we lose our last afternoon on the hired ship. I send the frame with the single pale body.
His reply arrives almost at once: THAT’S IT. GET THE WHOLE GROUP, CLOSE AND CLEAR.
The close shot carries a bonus. The bonus pays my editor and keeps my company open another month. Yara is not wrong about the animals. That does not make the bonus stop mattering.
She calls me to her screen.
She has set two frames beside each other: the dim sweep and the bright approach. In the first, the spaces between columns are nearly empty. In the second, the animals are rising through them.
“Look at the dots,” she says.
I enlarge one frame. The dots on the columns have fine threads stretched between them.
“Eggs?”
“Perhaps. Attached young, perhaps. Something growing. We can’t claim more yet.”
“Drop isn’t touching them.”
“Not while Ceri holds it still.”
On the main screen, a pale fin presses across the lens. Drop’s motor warning changes color. An animal is close enough to block its next move.
“Turn off the light,” Yara says.
I think of how long it took to get here. I think of posting the blurred picture and having someone ask why I didn’t move a meter closer.
“One good pass,” I say. “Then we leave.”
“Can we put those dots back if we knock them off?”
I have no answer. She doesn’t supply one for me.
I call the sponsor. He wants to speak to the scientist. Yara takes the phone and says we do not yet know what the columns or the animals are. She says we cannot safely make the approach he wants.
He tells her that isn’t the film he bought.
She gives the phone back.
“He’s right,” I say to her.
“About the contract. Yes.”
We stand there while Ceri keeps Drop still. Nobody asks me to enjoy my choice.
“Lamp off,” I tell Ceri. “Back along our known route.”
She turns it off. The screen goes black. We wait. Drop still detects shapes, but fewer of them now. After a while its obstacle warning clears, and Ceri begins the slow retreat.
We have time to mark the outer edge of the columns from a distance. Drop uses the route measurements it has already taken. Yara saves the dim images. They may support a request for further study and temporary protection. They do not prove what we have found, and no official is waiting aboard to declare a new reserve.
The sponsor sends one more message. No close sequence, no bonus. I tell my editor before she can spend it.
Drop comes up at dusk. Ceri leans over the rail to help lift it aboard. Its lens is unbroken. She rubs a cloth over it, checks the joints, and smiles for the first time in hours.
That evening I cut a rough trailer. I remove City Beneath the Sea. I don’t replace it with a claim that we have saved something. We don’t know that either.
Yara brings two cups of tea and watches the screen without speaking.
The last usable shot comes from Drop’s retreat. We thought it was blank until Ceri found a faint pulse far behind it, beyond the blue line.
I leave the dark stretch long enough for the pulse to appear. One glint, then three, then nothing we can see. Yara leans forward. So do I.
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