Chapter Text
"Do you think we're gonna see Levi out here?"
Wifies turned his face away from the window to look at Hummer on the other side of the cramped space. He studied his friend’s face, as if he could somehow decipher his expression despite the visor covering most of the upper part of his face. A static, sterile screen stared back at him, something Wifies had gotten used to by now. Even though, he still remembered how unsettling it had been at first — to look at someone and find so little of a face staring back.
"Being your... last attempt and all, before finishing the video," Hummer continued from where he stood beside the control panels. His voice dropped to a softer tone at the end, wavering slightly. Wifies noticed the way his hands drummed nervously on the straps of his overall.
"I don't need to see it necessarily," Wifies clarified —and, honestly, he really wasn't expecting to. His gaze dropped to the camera resting on his lap. He idly fiddled with its button, pressing them one after another without any real purpose. An almost absentminded smile lingered on his lips. "I just need some kind of proof that can't be dismissed by any theory. No camera glitches or tricks of the light, no mobs vanishing out of nowhere."
"So, if some undeniable proof happened right before your eyes... something you simply cannot explain..." Hummer insisted, his posture hesitant, "would you believe he's real?"
"I mean... yeah."
Wifies had always been a skeptic. The goal of his channel had always been to debunk legends and creatures rather than prove they existed, but that didn't mean he didn't want to believe. The problem was that nothing had ever proven to be real. To him, it was easier to expect proof of nonexistence than to carry the frustration of being unable to prove otherwise.
He didn't blame Hummer for having faith, but Hummer couldn't expect Wifies to believe without evidence just because he did, not when Wifies had nothing tangible to hold onto.
Hummer shifted his weight from one leg to the other, something Wifies noticed he did whenever he was anxious. The faint light from his visor caught the tense curve of his shoulders as he looked away.
"You wouldn't try making up an excuse to justify what you saw?" he asked in a whisper. He had barely finished the sentence when regret seeped into his voice, as if he wanted to snatch the words back the moment they left his mouth. "I-I mean, like, realistically, you'd see him and still think, I don't know, that you're hallucinating rather than actually seeing him."
"If the proof is truly undeniable, I wouldn't be able to come up with excuse," Wifies answered, simple and straightforward. "I'd just have to accept it is real."
He had grown used to reading Hummer's silences well enough by now — knowing when he was merely thinking something through, when he disagreed but would rather keep it to himself, and when something had genuinely upset him. This time, Wifies could tell he wanted to push the matter further, but had decided against it.
"What are we talking about specifically?" Wifies pressed, wanting to give his friend space to speak. He shifted sideways in his seat, turning fully toward Hummer as he rested his left arm along the backrest.
"If it's just a blurry of something I'm not sure what it is, or... I don't know, the noise of two creatures overlapping that sounds like a strange growl, then obviously I'm gonna be skeptical. But if an ancient eldritch creature appear right in front of me..." He let out a short laugh at the thought, "...there's no denying it, right?"
Hummer shrugged and turned back to the control panel, needlessly pressing a few buttons as if pretending to be busy might make the conversation easier to avoid. "I guess."
Wifies kept his eyes fixed on him during the seconds of silence that followed. He knew Hummer wanted to say something else — the evident tension in his posture gave it away. But after mulling it over for a moment, he seemed satisfied with the answer as his shoulders visibly relaxed.
"That's... That's fair," Hummer concluded. Wifies didn’t turn away immediately. He remained still for a few more seconds, his attention still fixed on him in an unspoken invitation to continue if he wanted to, giving him room to add anything else he wanted to say. Only when he noticed the tension in Hummer’s shoulders had finally eased, did he turn forward again, allowing the silence to settle between them once more — softer and much more comfortable this time.
The journey continued in in a peaceful silence, broken only once in a while by friendly conversation between the two.
The submarine was medium-sized — spacious enough for them to walk from one end to the other without bumping into each other, but narrow enough to leave little room for extra chests of supplies. Not that they intended to spend that much time out anyway.
Outside, the dark vastness of the ocean was pierced by towering columns of kelp reaching up as far as the eye could see. Every now and then, a nautilus drifted past the window, or the faint trail of some mob flickered briefly through the darkness before fading into the aquatic horizon, vanishing too quickly for Wifies to make out which one it was.
Down there, the concept of time seemed to simply evaporated. He couldn't tell how much time had passed since they first got in the submarine. They had left during the day, and Wifies could only hope to be back by early the following afternoon.
Gradually, Wifies lost himself in the landscape slowly slipping past them. His gaze lingered somewhere beyond the glass, unfocused as his mind drifting far away. There was a strange peace in the stillness — a peculiar comfort to it, despite the vastness outside feeling both claustrophobic and utterly lonely.
He caught himself thinking about the Leviathan and why he had avoided making a video about it for so long. The idea felt... absurd. Smaller legends could be traced back to their origins, and even the most convincing sightings usually had some reasonable explanation behind them. The Leviathan was different. Chasing it felt less like investigating an urban legend and more like going after some higher entity. Whether to debunk it or prove it, the scale was absurdly disproportionate.
A subtle movement in the cabin pulled him back to the present.
At first, he assumed they had turned after hours of traveling in a straight line, but then the continuous mechanical hum simply died. The silence that settled in was instant, absolute, and heavy. Wifies blinked, staring through the window as he slowly realized that nothing outside was moving.. The redstone mechanisms, the rhythmic clicks, and the pistons echoing from deep within the hull had stopped completely.
"What the..." Hummer let out, his voice coming from somewhere behind him.
Wifies turned and saw him with his hands frozen over the panel. His fingers hovered in the air, hesitant, as if afraid to even touch the metal, until he finally worked up the courage to press one of the buttons.
"What happened?" Wifies asked, already getting to his feet. The camera vanished into his inventory the exact second the soles of his sneakers touched the metal floor. "Why'd we stop?"
"I don't know." The antenna on Hummer's head gave a quick, slight twitch, and the rigid line of his mouth twitched — something Wifies could only assume was an indication that he was frowning. He tried pressing other buttons and pulling levers, but each gesture came out more hesitant than the last. "The engine... just died."
Before Wifies could process the answer, the interior of the submarine was brutally swallowed by darkness as all the lights went out in absolute sync.
For a terrifying second, the only light source was the soft glow coming from Hummer's visor. The screen projected a beam of colors onto the metal floor at Wifies's feet, creating a pale rainbow marking the path between them. Carefully, Wifies took a few steps forward to get closer to him by the control panel.
Faint red emergency lights began flashing on the ceiling at short intervals. The room oscillated grotesquely between the cold glow of Hummer's visor and bursts of bloody red. When the crimson lights reflected off the dark water beyond the windows, they bathed the interior in a n eerie, wavering glow, making the entire submarine look like it were drenched in blood.
"What's going on?" Wifies asked. He forced a calm tone, but his shoulders were stiff as his eyes swept over the room.
A sharp, mechanical snap echoed off the hull walls, and a side lamp lit up in a burst of blinding white light. In rapid succession, other backup lights began popping up from right to left beneath the windows in a noisy domino effect. The external emergency lighting flooded the cabin with violent clarity, overriding the flashing red on the ceiling. Wifies raised a hand to his face, his purple eyes squinting against the sudden brightness. Outside, the kelp columns almost seemed to glow, but the brutal contrast in lighting made the oceanic horizon look like an even darker abyss.
"Maybe one of the observers skipped a tick," Hummer reasoned, giving up on the buttons completely. He took a step back and looked towards the rear machinery compartment. "Or maybe they registered more than one signal at the same time and the system got confused."
Hummer stood still for a few seconds, his back turned to Wifies. He seemed trapped in his own thoughts, reviewing the possibilities one by one — or trying to convince himself that one of them made sense.
Finally, as if reaching a conclusion, he straightened up and headed towards the back of the vessel.
"Would that make the whole submarine stop?" Wifies asked, perhaps a little too loudly. The tips of his pale fingers sought out the hem of his dark-gray hoodie almost unconsciously, twisting the fabric tightly between them in an anxious habit he had picked up without realizing it.
Hummer froze in his tracks. Wifies noticed the exact moment his friend's shoulders shuddered. He drew in a deep breath, as though he needed a moment to gather himself before he could even begin to answer.
"Let's hope so," he replied over his shoulder. His voice came out low, heavy with an apprehension he couldn’t quite hide. Then he resumed walking toward the tangle of redstone.
Wifies was left alone. The flashing lights on the ceiling were beginning to drive him crazy.Without the engine’s constant hum, the silence pressed in around him, almost deafening in its emptiness.
There wasn't much to do; he understood almost nothing about the machinery beyond the basics Hummer had explained, and he certainly had no idea how to fix it. If Hummer was worried, Wifies knew there were reasons for him to be too.
Unable to stay still, Wifies let go of his hoodie hem and began pacing. Ten steps was all the tiny cabin allowed him before he had to turn around and retrace them, over and over, trying to give the restless surge of adrenaline somewhere to go.
A sharp crack tore through the air.
Wifies’ whole body froze. He stopped mid-step at the front window of the submarine, every muscle tensing before his mind could even process what had happened. Slowly, as though afraid the slightest sudden movement might trigger a disaster, he turned his head over his shoulder toward the sound.
His eyes landed on the window beside his seat.
There was a crack in the glass. A bit larger than the palm of his hand, but it was spreading slowly across the reinforced surface, branching into increasingly fine branches. The edges crept outward in every direction, forming a web across the glass as new, ominous snaps punctuated its expansion.
Then came the first drops.
First, a single lonely drop.
Then two. Three. Four. Small and glistening, they gathered where the fissures met. For a moment, they clung to the surface, suspended there before trickling down the window in thin, wavering streams.
Wifies didn't move.
"Hummer?" Wifies called out, not daring to move from his spot.
He turned his face toward the dark hallway where his friend had disappeared, but his eyes remained glued to the glass. It was irrational, he knew. Still, he couldn’t look away, as if the sheer weight of his attention were the only thing holding the entire pane in place — as if the moment he looked away, the glass would shatter completely.
A louder snap reverberated through the submarine.
The glass gave way with another sharp crack, and a thin but continuous stream of water began streaming through the fissure, splatteringthe fabric seat.
There was water inside the submarine.
The thought pierced his mind with nauseous clarity.
Wifies immediately backed away, step after unsteady step, until his spine met the opposite wall. The impact made him flinch, but he barely registered it. His gaze remained fixed on the window, following every new drop that trickled down the cracked glass.
Another crack.
New branches spread across the surface, and three jets of water burst through the fissures, slicing through the air before hitting the inside of the submarine. Water began accumulating on the metal floor, first as a thin film that quickly grew into a growing puddle.
The steady dripping from the window continued to build up, the water creeping farther across the floor until it finally reached Wifies’s sneakers.
"Hummer!" he called again, his voice rising in pitch, strained with urgency.
"What, what, what? What is it?" Hummer's voice built rapidly as he ran back. He nearly collided with Wifies as he burst into the cabin, his boots skidding across the wet metal before he managed to stop. Then his gaze landed on the window. "Holy—"
"We need to get out of here," Wifies said, forcing his voice to remain steady despite the panic tightening his throat.
"And go where?!" Hummer almost squeaked, Hummer nearly squeaked, his voice rising into a hysterical pitch as he stared at him, as though the suggestion itself were absurd.
"Surface." The water breathing potion had already materialized in Wifies's right hand. He threw it hard against the floor at their feet, the glass bottle shattering on impact. The instant the mint-green liquid touched the ground, it dissolved into a cloud of glowing particles. They spiraled upward in luminous greenish spirals, enveloping both of them almost at once, forming a dense mist that clung to their clothes and skin before slowly dissipating.
Another violent crack echoed through the submarine.
The main fissure gave way completely, causing the small cracks to converge into a single opening. The thin streams merged into a thick, continuous flow of seawater, invading the cabin at a terrifying speed.
The puddle turned into a sheet of rushing water, spreading across the floor and reaching ankle-height on both of them within seconds.
If the submarine flooded completely, it would sink like a stone.
Hummer lunged towards the floor hatch before the rising water could cover it completely—a manual mechanism that bypassed redstone circuits and relied solely on a simple lever.
He crouched, sweeping his hand across the soaked floor and feeling blindly at the general direction where the lever should be. His fingers thrashed through the water in frantic movements, stirring it up as he searched blindly, until he finally found it and pulled.
The metal groaned under the strain, a harsh, screeching sound far louder than it should have been under normal circumstances. For a moment, it seemed the mechanism wouldn't yield.
Then, the hatch popped open. Hummer tumbled through the trapdoor first. Wifies followed right behind.
Even with the blinding lights shining from the submarine's hull cutting through the darkness, Wifies could barely see a thing. There was too much kelp, they were far too deep from the surface, and they seemed almost as far from the ocean floor, which was nothing more than an endless black canvas where Wifies couldn't see the bottom. He felt as though he were dangling in absolute nothingness, and even kicking his legs, he wasn't sure if he was maintaining his depth or sinking.
Wifies saw Hummer's trail moving ahead of him, his legs kicking against the water's resistance as he swam upward. Wifies followedd, guiding himself almost exclusively by the light reflecting off his visor.
It was endless minutes of grueling, mechanical physical exertion in the cold before daylight finally began to dilute the darkness of the water. With the growing light, something dark and uneven slowly emerged above them— a vague, jagged mass suspended in the distance.
Wifies narrowed his eyes, following the outline taking shape as he drew closer. The shapeless blur gradually took form as he was approaching the surface, until it finally revealed itself as the unmistakable silhouette of an island.
Hummer surfaced first. Wifies broke through the surface a moment later, gasping desperately for air — a purely psychological reflex, his panic still convincing his body that it needed to breathe despite the potion making it unnecessary.
He started swimming towards the island at once, quickly passing Hummer, who was still floating where he had surfaced. Hummer turned towards him as he swam past him, momentarily confused as to where he could possibly be going. His eyes caught sight of the island, and he immediately began swimming after him.
Wifies was the first to reach the shore. He planted his elbows on the damp grass and heaved himself out of the water. Seawater streamed heavily from his clothes, pooling beneath him as soon as he dragged himself onto the island. Cold trickles ran down his torso, seeping beneath his hoodie and all the way to his sneakers.
The fabric felt twice as heavy. His hoodie and leg warmers were completely soaked, darkened by water and clinging to his body. Drops dripped endlessly from the tips of his brown hair, leaving several strands stuck stubbornly to his forehead.
Hummer emerged a second later, practically dragging himself out of the sea. As soon as he got his whole body onto dry land, he rolled onto his back and collapsed onto the grass, letting out a long, heavy sigh.
"Well..." Hummer caught his breath for a moment. "That was a bit terrifying, wasn't it?" He tried to force a lighthearted tone, but his trembling voice betrayed how badly the attempt failed.
"You're okay?" Wifies leaned down and offered him a hand.
"Yeah." Hummer took his hand and pulled himself to his feet. As soon as he was standing, he shook his arms in a futile attempt to wring the water from his ruffled sleeves. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah..."
Wifies stepped away and made his way to the edge of the island, looking down into the abyss below. For a moment, he thought he could still see the last trace of a beam of light far beneath them—a faint glow fading as the submarine sank deeper, swallowed by darkness with every passing second.
He remained silent for a few seconds, his eyes still fixed on the spot where the submarine had disappeared. Parameterization wasn't gonna be happy about this at all.
"...What just happened?" The question escaped in a whisper, almost directed at himself. His face contorted as he struggled to piece together an explanation that made sense.
Hummer joined him at the edge with a heavy sigh, coming to a stop beside him. Their shoulders brushed lightly as he leaned over to look down at the same spot Wifies was staring blankly at.
Then Hummer turned his visor toward Wifies, staring at him.
"What do we do now?" There was a raw note in his voice — something almost childlike in its hesitation, the vulnerability of a child seeking an answer when something happens that they don't understand.
Wifies felt a bitter taste in his mouth.
If Hummer— someone who had spent the last few years surrounded by boats, submarines, and redstone engines—was just as lost as he was, then the situation was far worse than Wifies wanted to acknowledge.
The submarine was lost, along with all its complex redstone components— now ruined by the water.
Wifies turned around, scanning the island with his eyes. It was... weird. Something in the back of his brain had already registered it as soon as he surfaced, but only now did he understand why: that island existing above sea level was physically impossible. Its base was purely sand, topped by a thin layer of grass. And Wifies distinctly remembered seeing it while swimming upward: there was no column of dirt connecting the structure to the ocean floor. The island was simply floating.
He tried to ignore the absurdity of the geography and focused on what actually mattered: resources.
His enthusiasm vanished instantly. There wasn't a single tree. Just sand, grass, and a few sticks scattered across the ground. No usable materials. No wood to craft a crafting table, nothing.
Amazing.
Wifies raised his left hand. A translucent panel projected over his palm, casting a soft glow that reflected in his purple eyes as he looked through his inventory slots. He still had seven porkchops — so food wasn't an immediate problem—, still had a pickaxe, some ladders, honey, slime, observers, pistons, sticky pistons...
His hand stopped, hovering over the panel, his eyes locked on the redstone components. An idea clicked in his mind.
"We can make a flying machine," he said.
As he closed the panel, a small translucent observer materialized over his right palm. Wifies knelt on the grass and quickly placed two of them down, his movements precise and automatic since the circuit layout was etched in his memory.
If he hadn’t been so focused on building, he might have noticed the way Hummer shifted his weight from one foot to the other, his right hand gripping his left wrist far too tightly. He opened his mouth twice before finally managing to speak.
"Can't we just... keep going forward?" he asked quietly.
Wifies stopped, his hands hovering over the piston. For a moment, he did nothing but stare at the components in front of him as if processing the words he had just heard. Then he turned his torso to look at Hummer. He could have sworn he saw his friend flinch beneath his gaze, his fingers tugging nervously at his shirt sleeve.
Wifies's shoulders slumped. He slowly stood up, abandoning the machine for a moment to face him fully.
"Hummer..." he said, his voice soft but firm — the tone of someone trying to hold back a tiresome argument that had already been settled a thousand times before.
"We're closer to the 20,000 mark than we are to the coast," Hummer blurted out, almost desperate as if the fact alone might convince him to change his mind.
"I don't think our situation is as simple as 'going forward or going back,'" Wifies tried to explain as gently as possible, careful not to sound dismissive or rude.
"A-And the flying machine is faster anyway, isn't it?" Hummer insisted. Wifies noticed the excessive force with which he squeezed his own wrist. If it weren't for the dark gloves, he could probably see his fingertips turned white from the pressure.
The sunk cost fallacy. They really were closer to the 20,000 on both axes than to the coast, and they had already spent six hours inside that submarine. With the flying machine, they would reach their objective and return in a little over three hours.
However, although the machine reached twice the submarine's speed, it was infinitely more unstable and dangerous. They'd ended up having to rebuild it over the open sea multiple times along the way, balancing precariously on the observers with every jolt of the pistons. Not to mention dozens of other risks.
Wifies sighed and took two steps forward, closing the distance between them. He wrapped his hand around Hummer’s, and at his touch, he felt his friend’s muscles yield slightly, the simple contact seeming to pull him out of whatever anxious spiral had taken hold. Gently, he pried Hummer’s fingers away from his own wrist, separating his hands before he could pierce the skin.
"Please, stop that," Wifies said, concern evident on his face. "You're gonna hurt yourself."
For a brief moment, neither of them moved. Their fingers remained loosely intertwined, suspended between them amidst the silence. Eventually, Wifies loosened his grip and let go, trusting Hummer wouldn’t go back to squeezing his wrist.
He didn't. His arms fell to his sides, and he lowered his head, overcome by an embarrassment that felt even more glaring in the silence that followed.
When he spoke again, his voice came out raspy and low.
"Isn't it worth it?" he insisted. "We came all this way... just to go back with nothing?"
"Hummer, it's not just that. The submarine isn't the only problem," Wifies said softly, lowering his voice to a velvety tone. "We'd be above water the whole time, and you know we'd have to go down to search... in cold water and with no water breathing potions."
Hummer remained silent. It was impossible to read his expression through the static of his visor, which reflected the last rays of sunset, casting vivid shades of orange, pink, and purple across the horizon behind Wifies.
Wifies felt the need to reassure him a little more.
"We'll have more chances at this, okay?" he said gently, his voice barely above a whisper. "It's fine."
He expected Hummer to push back — to offer a thousand reasons they should keep going, perhaps even accuse him of not being determined enough. Instead, the silence that followed grew so heavy that Wifies began to wonder if he had said the wrong thing.
The static on Hummer's visor glitched abruptly — vertical colored lines overlapped in a blink before the screen returned to normal — and he turned his face away. A wave of guilt hit Wifies so hard he opened his mouth to take it back.
"M'kay," Hummer cut in before Wifies could speak. "Ye— Yeah. No, you're right. Sorry. I don't know what I was thinking."
"It's okay," Wifies replied, relieved to have the conflict end there. "Let's just finish this so we can go home."
Wifies returned to the machine, walking around the unfinished observer structure to reach the left side, another piston already hovering above his palm.
"Wait." Hummer stopped him, catching Wifies by the shoulder before he could crouch down. Wifies let his arm fall, the item vanishing back into his inventory, and glanced over his shoulder at his friend. He could almost picture the frown behind the visor.
"Did you see that?" Hummer finally asked.
Wifies scanned the horizon, puzzled as to what could have caught the other's attention, until he realized Hummer was looking down.
"What?" Wifies asked, knitting his brows as he lowered his gaze to the incomplete machine.
Without answering, Hummer guided him two steps back by the hand still resting on his shoulder, pulling him away from the machine before stepping in front of him. He crouched down, resting his weight on his ankles, and stopped right beside of one of the observers.
"Look," he said, waving his open hand twice right in the face of the observer. "See?" He looked at Wifies, using a teaching tone, as if he had just demonstrated something obvious. Wifies felt even more lost.
"...Nothing happened," he said, feeling almost silly having to state the obvious.
"Exactly!" Hummer concluded, leaping to his feet. "You walked right in front of the observer's face and the piston behind it didn't activate."
Oh.
Wifies really had passed right in front of the observer's sensitive face, and the piston attached behind it simply hadn't extended. The realization hit him in such a wave of uncertainty that he took a step toward the observer himself and raised his left foot in front of it, balancing on one leg. The piston remained inert. He wasn’t even sure what he had expected; it wasn’t as though physics would suddenly start working for him if it didn’t work for Hummer.
"Huh..." he murmured, lowering his leg. "So... no redstone machine works here. For some reason."
"This has never happened before," Hummer added, his fist resting against his lips as he contemplated it. "I've been to this part of the ocean multiple times before."
"So... we're just stuck here?"
The words sounded far worse once spoken aloud. They sent a violent chill down Wifies’ spine—a cold he knew had nothing to do with the wind blowing against his wet clothes.
He needed to think. There had to be a way out. There had to be something they were missing. He just needed to reason it through. But the sun was disappearing rapidly beyond the horizon; the purple sky was already turning into a deep dark blue that would give way to night in twenty minutes — thirty at most.
Wifies had to fight the urge to start pacing in circles.
"Well... There's a fast way for us to get back without the machines," Hummer said. His voice carried a wavering tone, a subtle tremor of hesitation, as if afraid to even suggest it.
He didn't even bother to elaborate. Wifies looked in his direction, following the invisible line of his gaze behind the visor. There was nothing but miles and miles of dark ocean stretching ahead of them, but Hummer was looking specifically down. At the water.
The moment the pieces fell into place, every hair on the back of Wifies’s neck stood on end.
"You're kidding," Wifies whispered, taking an involuntary step back.
"I-I'm sorry, I can't think of anything else," Hummer raised his hands defensively, taking two steps away from the water and returning to Wifies's side.
"No, it's not your fault," Wifies reassured him, and he meant it. Hummer couldn't have predicted they'd get trapped here. There was no way to prepare for that.
Still, Wifies winced at the thought. "It's just that... respawning isn't the best experience."
"Are you scared?" Hummer asked. The genuine concern in his voice made something in Wifies’s chest loosen. The idea was still awful, but somehow, it felt just a bit more bearable.
"No, not really," Wifies said, a mischievous smile creeping onto his lips. "I've drowned before, so..."
Hummer visibly winced at the comment. "Sorry..." he said in such a tiny voice that Wifies couldn’t help but let out a muffled laugh.
"You're fine," he continued in the same playful tone to calm his friend. "I'm just trying to easy the tension."
Wifies dragged his feet to the edge of the island, taking one last look at where the submarine had sunk. None of the bright lights were visible in the dark depths anymore.
The tip of his sneaker crossed the edge of the grass, hanging over the thin layer of sand that supported the floating island. There was no slope, no shoreline where they could enter the water gradually—feel it rise from their ankles to their knees, then their waist, before finally leaving them without ground beneath their feet. They would have to jump straight into deep water.
"Sorry for making you waste your time. I didn't....— That was not suppsupposed to happen," Hummer said behind him, standing near the abandoned flying machine. Wifies began to regret the joke.
"It was days of travel, hours of work for you to get nothing. That's not..." Hummer faltered, as if struggling to find the right words. "I wanted you to see Levi."
Oh, right. The plan had always been to make this last expedition and, regardless of the outcome—whether Hummer was right or wrong—wrap up the project and edit the video with all the footage they had managed to gather.
And now the submarine was sitting at the bottom of the ocean. The research was over. The video, most likely, was too.
"I wouldn't say 'nothing,'" he said, a small smile appearing on his lips. "I really enjoyed working with you."
He turned to face Hummer. The tips of his friend's hair, wet and much darker than his own, reflected the last rays of sunlight, taking on golden and bluish hues. Several strands were clung to his forehead and to the static of his visor. With night beginning to fall, the screen seemed even brighter, casting its glow onto the black jabot fluttering around his neck and the patch of grass before him, illuminated by the light as Hummer kept his head lowered.
Wifies hated seeing him look so small.
"And we can do it again later," he added.
Hummer’s head snapped up, his attention instantly caught by the promise.
"Really?" he asked, with almost childlike enthusiasm, his voice rising so high in pitch it nearly cracked.
"Yeah," Wifies shrugged, smiling. "I mean, I still don't have an ending for the video." He paused briefly before adding, "And I still haven't read all your documents, so... I'd like to spend a bit more time on this research. If you don't mind."
"You mean it?" Hummer asked, his voice strained with pure hope.
Wifies let out a breathless laugh. "Of course I do."
Hummer took a quick step to Wifies's side, leaving them both dangerously close to the edge. He looked infinitely more confident than Wifies could ever hope to feel when faced with the idea of voluntarily drowning. He even managed a smile as he turned his face slightly toward him.
"You ready?" he asked. The nervousness had vanished; all that remained was the absolute contentment of knowing the search wouldn't end there. The energy was so contagious that Wifies found himself smiling back.
"Let's do it."
He drew one last breath into his lungs, gathering what courage he could for what he knew was coming next.
"See you on the other side," Hummer said.
And they both jumped at the same time.
The water swallowed Wifies's body instantly. The brutal temperature change made his muscles almost lose all sensation; the freezing liquid felt like thousands of needles piercing through his soaked clothes and into his skin.
He spun in the liquid void, completely disoriented by the absence of ground. Even with his eyes open, he couldn't tell up from down, except for the fading glow of the surface drifting further away as he sank.
Wifies thrashed his arms in desperate arcs, trying to find some sense of direction. For a second, he didn’t even know whether he was swimming upward or sideways.
Finally, not far away from him, he spotted Hummer. His friend was sinking perfectly calm and upright, arms relaxed at his sides, letting himself be carried by the deep currents as if he had done that a hundred times before.
Both were still holding their breath—more out of an uncontrollable reflex than anythinh. Opening his mouth and willingly letting the water in was a barrier his brain refused to cross. And fighting the instinct to swim up became torture as his lungs began to burn.
At first, the sensation was only a manageable discomfort, something he could keep at bay with the constant thought of: I can't open my mouth.
Then it intensified. The pressure tightened, turning into an agonizing pain spreading across his chest when his lungs begged for oxygen. Wifies dug his nails into his own chest so hard he felt the sharp pain of his skin tearing beneath his hoodie.
He shook his head in panic.
No.
He couldn't.
He fought the reflex to breathe with every ounce of willpower he had, forcing his body to stay still while every fiber of his being screamed at him to go up.
Until he couldn't anymore.
His chest felt like it were about collapsed in the absence of air, as if something were tearing it apart from the inside, and his mouth opened against his will when he tried to scream. A storm of bubbles exploded before his eyes at the exact moment a brutal gulp of water rushed down his throat.
Both hands flew instinctively to his face, clamping over his mouth and nose in a desperate motion. His throat burned violently as the sensation tore up his larynx, triggering a nearly uncontrollable coughing reflex. He wanted to cough, to vomit, to tear out his own lungs just to get rid of that feeling.
His feet began to thrash as the pressure in his lungs reached a point he could no longer endure. His hands clamped desperately over his mouth, in one last stubborn effort to keep himself from swallowing more water.
He closed his eyes. Tears gathered at the corners of them, indistinguishable from the water surrounding him.
He couldn't do this anymore. He needed air. He needed to breathe.
His entire body convulsed in violent, involuntary spasms. Pain had consumed everything—his throat, his chest, his lungs, every muscle in his body.
It hurt so much.
Two hands closed around his forearm — just a gentle touch, making no attempt to restrain his arms by force.
Wifies opened his eyes and saw Hummer right in front of him. The light from his visor seemed to illuminate everything around them, carving his face out of the darkness and drawing Wifies’s gaze to him as if, suddenly, there were nothing else in the entire ocean worth looking at.
Wifies tried to calm down. Tried to let himself be anchored by the familiar touch, leaning ever so slightly into Hummer's hands and focusing all his attention on that presence.
It worked, but only for a second.
Then, against his will, he inhaled.
Water went up his nose, burning all the way down to his throat like sharp blades and tearing an involuntary gasp from him. His mouth flew open by reflex, allowing more liquid to invade his throat.
Wifies felt the agonizing rush of water forcing its way down his windpipe, flooding into his chest where there was no air left. An excruciating pain spread through his lungs, squeezing his chest until it felt as though something inside was about to snap.
He tried to scream, to cough — anything. But there was no air left to produce a sound. Only the last remaining bubbles escaped his mouth, drifting slowly toward the surface and carrying with them the last traces of oxygen he had left.
He began to thrash. Not really trying to swim; his brain was no longer capable of organizing such a simple thought. He thrashed merely because it hurt too much.
His feet kicked against nothing, his body contorting in uncoordinated spasms that only made him sink faster, while his arms flailed aimlessly in a purely instinctive attempt to escape.
Hummer tried to anchor him, keep him close, offer some comfort — but the touch no longer reached Wifies. It was just another sensation lost amid the chaos overwhelming his body.
His vision went dark. His body, once rigid with panic, grew heavy and numb. The spasms stopped, his resistance dissolved bit by bit, until there was no strength left to fight against numbness settling over him.
And Wifies simply sank.
.
.
.
.
.
"Do you think we're gonna see Levi out here?"
Wifies gasped for air and sat up with a start, swallowing oxygen in a dry, desperate noise. He choked on the sudden transition — from absolute suffocation to the brutal rush of air into his lungs. He coughed, swaying to the side, and only stayed upright on his wobbly legs because he pressed his right hand against the wall.
His throat burned. He swore he could still feel the invasive flow of liquid rushing down it against his will. He coughed repeatedly, not because he was choking, but in a futile attempt to expel water that was no longer in his mouth, yet remained etched into his senses, as though it were still flooding his airways and suffocating him.
His whole body trembled. He wrapped his arms around himself, fingers digging into the skin of his upper arms through the hoodie in an attempt to dull the icy sensation coursing through his veins. He felt an impossible cold, as if he were still submerged, every inch of his skin prickling with freezing needles.
When he opened his eyes, the world spun so violently he felt a wave of nausea. Blurs of dark green, bright orange, and gray blurred into one another until the colors became almost unbearable to look at. He had to squeeze his eyes shut before he threw up.
"You're okay?" he heard Hummer ask, his voice raspy and sharp with concern. Wifies hadn’t realized how close he was until he felt a gloved hand settle gently on his shoulder. "You're shaking..."
"I—I'm fine," he replied. It was a matter of seconds after respawning for all the phantom sensations to fade as if they had never existed, left behind along with another one of his deaths.
His friend shifted, moving around to stand in front of Wifies. Both of his hands came to rest on his upper arms, just above where Wifies's trembling hands rested. He could feel the warm fabric of Hummer’s gloves brushing against his thumb and index finger where their hands overlapped. He focused on the sensation, using it to steady his nerves.
"The view of the ocean is making you nauseous?" Hummer asked, his tone slightly softer now, comforting.
Wifies took a deep breath and let it out in a shaky exhale before opening his eyes. Everything looked slightly blurry, tinged with an out-of-place blue hue — as if he were still looking through water, his vision rippling. He blinked a few times, using the glow of Hummer's visor to try and anchor himself in the present. He knew everything around him was still swaying and that he would end up throwing up if he turned his head, so he kept his eyes locked on Hummer's face, almost hypnotized by the clarity of his friend's figure against the blurred background.
His purple eyes traced every colorful, static line across the screen, drifting down to Hummer’s lips twisted into a worried line before wandering back up to his dark hair, where the familiar strands always fell across his visor. His antennas twitched slightly, a detail Wifies took note of almost absentmindedly.
Hummer didn't seem disturbed after respawning; he was impossibly calm. Wifies wondered, in the back of his still-foggy mind, how many times his friend had drowned in his search for the Leviathan to seem so desensitized by it.
"No, I'm fine," Wifies finally said, once his head stopped feeling like it was stuffed with cotton candy. "Really."
He let his hands drop to his sides, and Hummer withdrew his a second later. His friend's shoulders seemed to relax a bit more, his posture less rigid.
"Come on, sit down for a bit," he said softly. A gentle touch on his shoulder guided Wifies to the seat behind him. He let his entire body weight slump against it, exhausted. He closed his eyes and rested his head against the backrest, feeling lightheaded and dizzy.
He could feel Hummer's gaze on him, but he didn't try to guess his expression. He just needed a minute to breathe, to feel air filling his lungs again after the agonizing minutes he'd been deprived of it.
He wasn't used to respawning. Before meeting Hummer, he had only experienced it once, and by accident.
"If you need me to stop for a bit, just say something, okay?" Hummer said, his voice gentle, the underlying note of concern still lingering beneath it.
"Yeah..." Wifies answered automatically, without even properly processing the question.
The heels of Hummer's boots clicked against the metal floor as he walked back to where he was before, somewhere behind Wifies, leaving him alone with his thoughts.
Wifies filled his lungs with air, holding it in his chest for a long second before letting it out noisily through his mouth. His muscles finally relaxed as the residual sensations and respawn panic subsided. The burning sensation and freezing cold were gone; he could barely describe them if asked. The physical memory felt distant, as if it had happened years ago — a fading recollection now, thanks to the voluntary respawn. He was genuinely grateful for that.
Calmer now, his mind began to process his surroundings. Automatically, his brain latched onto the words Hummer had just spoken, and he frowned.
The view of the ocean is making you nauseous?
If you need me to stop for a bit, just say something, okay?
...What was he talking about?
Slowly, Wifies opened his eyes. Through half-lidded eyes, he stared at glowing orange blurs scattered across the ceiling. He blinked once, his vision adjusting until he could clearly make out the froglights on the ceiling and the green metal interior of the submarine.
His breath caught in his throat at the sight.
For several seconds, he simply stared. As if somehow he could make sense of what was happening in between the lights on the ceiling.
Something was wrong.
Hesitantly, Wifies sat upright to face the massive glass wall in front of him. The columns of kelp stretched endlessly into the darkness outside, sliding past the window as the submarine moved forward.
His lips parted.
How...?
Wifies slowly rose to his feet. Almost without realizing it, he found himself moving toward the front of the submarine, his steps unsteady beneath him. He stopped before the massive glass panel stretching from floor to ceiling, revealing the gigantic expanse of ocean surrounding them. On the other side, the dark vastness of the ocean stretched out in all directions, enclosed by the wall of kelp they had just passed through.
Again.
"What...?" he whispered.
Maybe he was dreaming.
No, that wasn't possible. How... how were they there again?
He couldn't be here again. He had died— he should've spawned back at Hummer's house. That didn't...
Suddenly, all the lights went out. A sharp, mechanical click echoed through the cabin, and the submarine plunged into darkness.
Wifies's shoulders went rigid instantly, his spine locking as a spark of panic and disbelief shot through his chest. The entire interior was bathed in the dim, flickering red glow of the emergency lights, turning the dark landscape outside into a static, ominous painting.
He remembered this way too vividly — the engine stopping. The window cracking. The island. The freezing water.
His stomach twisted.
No.
He took a hesitant step back, his purple eyes wide at the impossibility of what he was witnessing.
Then, as if the submarine itself wanted to crush any remaining flicker of disbelief, a snap echoed from outside. The room was flooded by a blinding, overwhelming brightness; he remembered the external emergency lights a second before the entire row of them turned on, one after the other, illuminating the cabin once more.
Wifies stared, stunned. His eyes darted from one corner of the hull to the other, scanning every detail in a desperate search for some trace of logic, some explanation for how this could possibly be happening.
If everything was repeating itself in the exact same way, then...
The memory sent an chill down his spine. His neck almost refused to turn. Some part of him already knew what he would find, and desperately wanted to be wrong. He didn't want to look. Didn't want to confirm that his suspicion — absurd and impossible as it was — might actually be true.
He looked over his shoulder. His eyes fixed on the exact spot beside his seat, where the window had cracked before.
A sharp crack split across the glass.