The pressure in the bay changed as Iris and Roselyn dueled. The shift in gravity was slight, but enough that cuts went wide. Elsewhere in the Leviathan, air tanks and water reservoirs rebalanced. The gargantuan machine began to sink back to the ocean floor. The pressure wrapped around the ship, and caused the entire structure to creak and groan.

Iris couldn’t think about it. Only in the brief moments when the two of them broke away from the engagement. Each were dripping fluid from their combat suits, and from their synthetic flesh. Chips were appearing on the edge of her micro-blade. Every time it struck back against Roselyn’s ax, part of her edge snapped off. It was becoming a blunt saw.

Roselyn laughed about it, and licked some of her fake blood off her arm as she panted. “You really are nothing like those training drones. You know that? The real deal. I can tell. I really can. Do you have any idea how many people are on this planet? And how many of them are legit?”

“There’s over ten billion people alive, fighting for their own lives.”

“Bullshit. That’s a giant crock of shit and you know it, Iris baby. Most people don’t have a single thought in their brains. They’re animals who do what they’re told so long as their needs are met. Not everyone reaches for more. That’s how you get the great people of history. If you don’t believe me, my boss’ll have to teach you.”

Iris narrowed her eyes. “Knowing how you people operate, I can only imagine what is going through your mind.”

“If you survive, you’ll see for yourself, soon enough. Ah, God, I’m sad I won’t get to see it. Either I kill you right now, or you’re going to kill me… oh well, may as well enjoy myself.” Roselyn threw herself back at Iris, throwing her whole body into the attack. Iris jumped back from the first, letting the ax bite into the steel floor. Iris’ riposte clashed against the haft of Roselyn’s ax. Then Roselyn slammed her shoulder into Iris.

Both of them went rolling across the ground. Their weapons spun away as their fight became a tangle of limbs. They twisted around one another, forming balls and knots as they grabbed at each other’s combat suits or ripped off patches of skin. Roselyn almost got the advantage. Iris hadn’t practiced grappling in years, hadn’t fought anyone strong enough for it to be necessary.

Then she had the woman in a headlock and squeezed.

“You think this is some fucking sports match or something?” Roselyn asked, not even using her mouth, but a built in speaker. Then she used the magnetic clamps in her feet to stand up and throw herself backwards. She slammed Iris into the grating hard enough to crack the steel. She didn’t let go. Roselyn did it again, and again.

“Surrender!” Iris screamed, and made her Gawain thrum as she put the acoustic cannon to Roselyn’s chin.

“Or what?” Roselyn asked, twisting her head around to try and look at her. “If you were going to, you would have already. Besides, I think you’d hurt yourself if we’re close enough to be kissing.”

“Want to find out?”

Roselyn laughed, but before the entire Leviathan lurched. The bottom banged against something, almost throwing them into the air as it landed on the seafloor. In the flash of surprise, Roselyn opened her mouth and snapped her jaws around Iris’ hand. The fangs stabbed through skin and even broken her armor plating. Iris screamed, but they were rolling again. Her headlock had been broken. Her back tumbled and slammed into the ground once more. Roselyn swung up overtop her, spitting out the synthetic blood.

Iris felt something hit her hand. She recognized the touch of rubber at once, and reflexes kicked in. Roselyn lifted up a fist, ready to pound down. She didn’t see what Iris had grabbed before it was too late. With a twist of her body, she slammed Roselyn’s own ax into her side. The vibration erupted between them, screaming in metal agony as it ripped through sub-dermals and everything inside.

The ax went all the way through, biting into the grating on the opposite side. Roselyn fell in two parts.

The avatar watching over them gave a slow clap of applause. “That’s the benefit of experience. Young people just don’t understand. They think they’re at the top and can’t imagine what other people have done to stay at the top.”

“What kind of psychopath are you? To let your own underling get killed to prove a point?” Iris asked, pushing herself upright. She tried to wipe the blood from her face, only to smear more of it from her dripping hand.

“Not mine,” the avatar answered. “I’m Verne’s boss. We’re collaborators, not the ones in charge. You’ve earned a peek behind the curtains, so let me tell you a few things. First, the man in the submarine is Doctor Errol White, a retrovirus expert. One of the best in the field for plant vaccinations. The world can’t survive another crop failure. Unfortunately, that’s just a matter of time and statistics. All we can do is tweak the probability, and prepare for the worst before it comes. There’s going to be food riots, Iris. It’s just a matter of time, and a question of who will grab the remaining food and survive.”

Iris’ body felt like it was falling apart. As soon as she let her cranked reflexes settle down, everything felt sore and stiff, sluggish. It wasn’t just the electrical damage. She had taken a beating, had lost most of her combat suit, and was running out of internal energy. She tried to remember how long the fight had been, when she had last taken the edge off. It might have been all the way back on the plane, where Silvy still rode helplessly. She got to her feet regardless. “Shut the hell up.”

The avatar frowned and shook his head. “You’re struggling to believe me, aren’t you?”

“I’m not going to believe anything you people say. This is the exact same logic that caused the nuclear wars. You declare it an inevitability, and then you make it a reality the instant you think you have the advantage. You people are just mass murderers as far as I’m concerned.”

The avatar stared down at her, then leaned in so close to the virtual camera that all she could see was his enormous, unblinking eye looking down at her. “I’ve been a mass murderer since before you were even alive, girl. Maybe you are more machine than not, because it’s human nature to kill before you let yourself die.”

Vent gates opened around the bay. Sea water began pouring in. Alerts belatedly announced the flooding of the bay, the pressurization. Iris swore and grabbed Roselyn’s upper half by the hair, the micro-blade ax too, and took off running for the submersible. The avatar pulled back and laughed at her struggle through the rising flood.

“Just who am I to talk about human nature? Old Leviticus would say I’m not even alive. At least you have some blood to speak of… deep, deep inside you.”

Iris smashed Roselyn’s face against the retinal scanner for the sub, and it overrode the locks. She threw herself inside and laid eyes on the biologist. “Get us to the surface, now,” she ordered.

Dr. Errol White looked like he nearly pissed himself, but nodded. He nodded and said, “But the gate is closed.” He didn’t have an imposing figure. In fact, he looked like he was already living through a famine, if not for the tailored suit and gold-rimmed glasses.

“The moment it’s pressurized, they’ll open the gate.”

“Why would they do that?”

“Because they’re either letting us go, or they’re going to kill us. If it’s the latter, they will want to do it outside, where they won’t trash their pretty little mega-ship.” The ship lurched under her feet, the water knocking the sub off the parking supports. The sub bobbed up, buoyancy completely wrong. It nearly rolled as it began rising with the water. “Tell the machine to get us out, now!”

Dr Errol spun and jabbed his fingers like a chicken pecking at grass, jumping from one screen to the next until the machine at last declared, “Beginning ascent.”

Something hammered the sub, not from one spot but all at once. The pressure wave from opening the gate. Iris looked up, seeing the vague impression of movement through infra-red, but it was about as clear as staring at the night sky to see the Milky Way. Propellers began to spin, making the whole sub vibrate and lift up through the darkness of the bottom of the ocean.

Iris picked a seat and sat down, splaying out limp as the biologist finally seemed to relax. His eyes wouldn’t budge from the ax. “Calm down doctor, I’m arresting you, not killing you,” Iris said, switching the vibration off in the ax.

“Right, because that’s so much better for me.”

“Might be better than you deserve, for all I know,” she mused, not bothering to look at him.

“Ship detected,” the sub announced. The control screen switched to an ultra-sonic camera view pointed below them. None of the external lights were on from the sub, only the blue glow of Leviathan-3 illuminated the darkness. It cut a shadow with the strange, spherical thing that drifted towards them. No animal characteristics to speak of, and yet it swam more gracefully than any fish as it followed them away.

“Can we go any faster?” Iris asked.

“If you’re planning to kill me with pressure sickness.”

“I can take you to a hospital after.”

“As if it would even help us right now!”

The object in the camera began to shrink. They were getting away from it without speeding up. The drone must have stopped. They were letting them leave, but something felt wrong. Iris frowned and furrowed her brow, and asked, “Is the UDS-Blue Key still above us?”

Dr White turned back to the screen and stared at it until he found the button to cycle camera feeds. He clicked through until one of them pointed up. There was a ship above them, but it wasn’t the UDS-Blue Key. Too short, too narrow.

A gunship from the UAAF naval forces had parked above them.