The journey across the Pacific Ocean takes twelve days. In that time, everybody settles in and grows accustomed to life on the Narwhal and life with each other. The crew operates like a well-oiled machine. With Lewis in charge, their efficiency and capability is unmatched and with each of them being experienced sailors, a strong camaraderie grows between them. Some researchers aboard have a bit more trouble adjusting, but the close proximity of their living space forces them to, at the very least, tolerate each other.

“Alright, Bill,” Lewis says, “Antarctica lies just ahead. We’ve made it this far, but how exactly do you plan on finding this hidden sea of yours?”

Lewis, Bill, and Charlie stand in the control room. The Narwhal is running on the surface of the water, her periscope raised. Through it, they can see on the horizon the stark white cliffs that mark their destination. There’s no obvious ravine on the side of the continent beckoning to them, no indication whatsoever that it’ll be easy to get to the sea inside.

“It was actually Charlie who found our way in when we did preliminary surveys,” Bill says. “I’ll let her explain.”

Charlie nods to Bill and clears her throat. “So, when I looked at the salinity data collected by one of the boats we had down here, I found an anomaly, spots in the ocean where there was freshwater pouring out from the continent.”

“Melting ice,” Lewis says.

“Yep. But concentrated, like where a river dumps into the ocean. I think that there are places, perhaps where the ice was less dense, that have melted to create tunnels through the ice. And I think this is why we actually started hearing Julia in the first place. The hydrophone array has been in place for decades, but we first recorded Julia only in ‘97. I don’t think these tunnels existed until very recently. And that’s when it clicked for me; it’s the poles warming up, the ice caps melting. Ice doesn’t melt evenly across its surface, there are a million variables that could alter it. I think uneven melting has revealed Julia to us, and at the same time opened a path for us to find her.”

Bill sighs. “Ironic that such a fantastic and wonderful discovery is coming from one of our greatest ongoing blunders, but I won’t deny the chance we’ve been given.”

“Well that makes things mighty simple,” Lewis says. “If you’ve got coordinates, we can check out the tunnels with sonar, find one right for us, and slip right on in.”

“I can only hope it’s that easy,” Bill replies.

Lewis guffaws. “Don’t you worry about that. Leave it to me and I’ll get you to your monster.”

“Julia’s not a monster, Lewis. She’s just an animal.”

“Eh, we’ll see ‘bout that.” He pauses for a moment. “You can’t tell me the thought ain’t crossed your minds. Charlie, what do you think?”

“Depends on what you think a sea monster is. I think Julia is likely a very large undiscovered species of whale. If you’d call that a sea monster, then sure.”

Lewis nods. “Just a whale, huh? Maybe. Maybe not.”

“What makes you think so?”

“I’m a sailor. When you spend damn near more time on the water than on land, superstition finds you whether you like it or not. Don’t know why, something about the oceans draws it out of you.”

“Have you ever seen one?”

Lewis shakes his head. “My grandfather did though. This was before my father moved stateside, might’ve even been before he was born. But my granddad was a fisherman and when I was a little boy he told me a story of a serpent that rose from the water, tall as an honest-to-god mountain. Said it just looked down at him and he just about shat his pants, but the creature didn’t attack him, just sat there for a bit then left. He told me it was there to remind him why we needed to respect the sea, and he threw back some of the fish he caught that day before he went on home.”

“So it was a lesson?”

“Yeah, sure, but my grandfather wasn’t the type for tall tales. He told it to me, passing on the lesson he learned, but he learned it from that monster all the same.”

“You worried we’re being disrespectful?” Bill asks.

“Nope, that ain’t the lesson you need. The lesson you need, Bill, is to stop looking at the world through a pinhole. If you let your work become your whole life, you stagnate. Ain’t good for nobody, least of all a scientist like yourself. Don’t let what’s already known cloud your view of what is, as-of-yet, unknown.”

Bill gives Lewis a slow nod and bites the inside of his cheek.

“Anyway, if you wanna check in with our navigator, we can plot a proper course,” Lewis says.

***

An icy wall lies between the Narwhal and the discovery promised to her. At the Antarctic coast, in the Ross Sea, the submarine moves along at a crawl, loosing sonar pulses into the frigid water in hopes of picking up a tunnel in the ice that will lead her into unexplored territory.

Inside the ship, things are calm. Preparations have been made, equipment checked and double-checked, and now it’s just a matter of waiting. With bated breath, researchers and crew alike wait to hear good news from the sonar technician, but it would seem today is not the day. Using the sonar pings to map the ice, the tunnel is revealed to be too small for the Narwhal and Bill calls off the search. Right away, Lewis gets the ship moving to their next set of coordinates.

With some travel time to kill, Charlie retires to the mess hall. With a deep sigh, she sits down, a steaming cup of coffee in her hands.

“Stressed?” Elina follows close behind her.

“Surprising amount of tension up there, just waiting, hoping while the sonar pings away,” Charlie replies.

“Worried we won’t find a way in?”

Charlie shakes her head. “Plenty more coastline to check before that worry creeps in, it’s just…”

“...you can’t stand waiting, I know.”

Charlie nods.

Elina pats Charlie on the back. “Really, Lee, you should use this time to relax a bit. Stressing out about waiting? Save the stressing out for when we’ve actually got work to do. I don’t wanna see you burn yourself out before we even get there.”

Charlie takes a sip of her coffee then sets it down and stretches her arm over her head, releasing some of the tension in her shoulders, and taking a deep breath.

“You’re right, as always,” Charlie says. “And I was telling Bill the same thing. Not very good at taking my own advice.”

Elina closes her eyes and nods, with a proud smirk on her face, but her eyes open, confused as a quiet sound echoes through the metal walls of the Narwhal. Just as it grows loud enough to hear distinctly from the hum of the air filtration, she locks eyes with Charlie.

It swells to just over a whisper, but it’s unmistakable. Like wind howling through a tunnel, it rises in pitch, continuing for almost twenty seconds, then fades away.

A moment after it’s gone, Charlie stands up. “Holy shit,” she says, “that was her.”

She dashes out of the mess hall before Elina can even speak a word in response. Sprinting through the narrow halls of the submarine and climbing the ladder two rungs at a time, she bursts into the control room where things have already become frantic as the crew tries to pinpoint where the sound came from. Bill turns to Charlie as he hears her enter the room, a huge smile on his face.

“We got her,” he says.

The Narwhal dives deeper. So close to the source, the song has given them a path forward. Charlie bites on her nails as minutes tick by into hours. Sonar pings from the sub as they close in on the point of origin. It shows them a map of the ice before them, and it shows them the gateway they’re looking for. The Narwhal goes silent and comes to a stop before a massive hole in the ice.

“This is it,” Lewis says. “We’re here.”

Bill steps up behind the sonar operator. His screen shows a vague map that the Narwhal has created with its sonar pulses.

“It’s big enough?”

The sonar operator looks up at Bill and nods.

“Are we going then?” Lewis asks.

Bill feels a knot in his stomach, the stress from the hours of stalking around the ice sheet piles onto him as he looks at the crudely mapped maw in front of them. He feels like he’s standing on the edge of a bridge looking down into a dark river below, and something inside him tells him to jump. He doesn’t know how deep the water is, or what lies below the glassy surface, but adrenaline courses through his veins and eggs him on. Fear and anticipation mix like a cocktail and Bill nods.

The Narwhal’s screws spin up again. She stirs up not a single bubble as she creeps toward the cavernous hole in the ice. There isn’t a peep in the control room, not even a breath, and for just a moment, the submarine returns to a state of silence onboard not unlike her days in Naval service. If there was anybody out there listening, they’d never know she was there. But that silence doesn’t last. As the submarine enters the tunnel, the sonar operator switches back to active pings. In such confined space, they need it to keep themselves from crashing.

Guided by their instruments, the crew coaxes the Narwhal forward. It’s a delicate maneuver, and the strain is visible on their faces. Lewis sweats bullets knowing that all he can do now is trust in his chosen crew.

The vessel creeps through the tunnel and the unmistakable deep rumble of a whalesong returns. Bouncing through the tunnel the volume is even more extreme, it rattles the piping and those inside the Narwhal can feel its vibration in their chests. Their quarry bellows for a full minute before the song fades.

Charlie shivers and goosebumps rise on her arms. Tension rests thick over the control room. She’s excited but anxious and can see that volatile mix of emotion on the faces of each person around her. Standing inside a claustrophobic metal tube, beneath hundreds of meters of ice and ocean, venturing into a place nobody even knew existed until recently, Charlie reassures herself with the thought that anyone unafraid in this moment would be crazy.

“Tunnel seems to open up ahead, sir.” The sonar operator breaks the silence.

“Steady course,” Lewis says, “let’s see what we’ve got.”

The Narwhal pokes her nose out of the tunnel and comes to a stop. The sonar pings again, mapping what’s ahead. The tight passageway opens to a vast chamber. The ice below them drops away to a floor some distance below them. The ice above them is close--just a handful of meters above the tunnel--and to the left and right extends a curved wall that extends beyond the range of their sonar.

“Welp, told ya I’d wrangle up the best crew for the job, didn’t I?” Lewis says, slamming Bill on the back with an open hand. “Not a scratch on her.”

Despite the bravado in Lewis’s voice, he swallows hard and wipes the sweat from his brow. Sighing, stress falls away with his breath, but in his gut he can feel some of it remains, sticking to the bottom of his stomach and weighing him down like he’s filled with concrete. His joints feel like they’re made of old driftwood and his mouth is drier than overcooked chicken. He thinks back to his years in this very sub, hunting Soviet ships, and being hunted in return. There were moments in those days, where he’d know there was a Russian submarine nearby, and they knew he was there too, but neither of the two knew where the other was. Out alone in the middle of the ocean, it was two of the deadliest hunters in the sea caught in a silent dance, waiting. Waiting for nothing of course. It was all a show, Cold War theatrics. But it was dangerous, and stressful, and maddening. And Lewis feels that same agitation in him now but he opts to ignore it. Unfamiliar and strange as this mission is, he puts on a strong facade to help his crew and the civilians onboard cope with their own unease.

Bill allows some of the tension to drop from his face as he nods at Lewis. “Now the hard part.”

Charlie shakes her head. “Can’t help but feel like every time we get to a milestone, it’s always followed up by ‘the hard part.’”

Lewis calls out to his crew. “Pull us out into the open just a bit, then give me another ping. Let’s take this slow.”

The Narwhal creeps out of the tunnel then lets out another blast from her sonar. A few moments pass and the sonar operator turns to Lewis.

“Uh, Captain.”

“Damn fine job getting us through that passage. Whatcha got for us?”

“Yes, um, thank you, sir. There’s actually, uh, something. I’m picking something up, dead ahead.”

Lewis raises his eyebrows and looks at Bill. “Think your luck is that good?”

“Let’s not count our chickens before they hatch, what is it?”

Lewis leans in over the shoulder of the sonar operator and squints. There is something there on the far edge of the screen, just inside their sonar range, but too distant to give a clear response.

“Keep pinging, let’s see if we can’t paint a better picture.”

Another blip pulses into the sea, fading into the black water before returning an image to them. The response is still fuzzy, but--

“It’s clearer this time,” Bill says, looking over the operator’s other shoulder.

“Closer is more like it,” Lewis replies.

From beyond the walls of the submarine, another sound returns to the ship. A high pitched wail. It lasts for just a few seconds, then dissipates.

Charlie bites the inside of her cheek and tries to squeeze in next to Bill. Faces now crowded in, Lewis pats his sonar operator’s back.

“Keep the actives running, let’s see where she goes.” He looks across to Bill. “Spent so damn long working toward this, looks like she might be just as eager to meet you as you are to meet her.”

Ping.

The Narwhal lets out another pulse of sound and on the return, the vague shape on their screen grows clearer and closer still.

“I’ll be damned,” Lewis says.

“What?” Charlie asks.

“Well, I’d ask if there was something wrong with the equipment but considering it just got us through that tunnel, that’d be a dumbass question.”

The sonar operator looks up at Charlie. “It’s over 60 meters long.”

“What?” A new voice pops in from behind.

Piper steps into the control room and Lewis stands back to let her look at the sonar screen.

“That’s more than double the length of a blue,” she says.

“Could be a mistake,” Lewis says, “water’s not too quiet down here with all the ice melting, but if she keeps her current course, should clear up soon.”

Ping.

Everybody leans in and waits as the new image comes in.

“Make that 70 meters,” the sonar operator corrects. “Three klicks, right off the bow.”

Ping.

The submarine pings again, and again, they get a response from their target.

Awoo.

The creature sings as it draws nearer.

Piccard stands up straight and locks eyes with Bill. They share a puzzled expression.

Ping.

“Two klicks out,” the sonar operator says.

“She’s hauling ass,” Lewis replies.

“Coming right at us,” Bill says.

Ping.

“One kilometer.”

Awoo.

The howl is shorter, sharper this time, and loud enough to ring the hull of the Narwhal like a bell.

Charlie looks down at the floor and bites her thumbnail, her eyes searching the blank, patternless metal.

Lewis furrows his brow. “She ain’t slowing down a bit.”

“Sir?” The sonar operator looks up.

Ping.

Awoo. Click, click, click.

Like a porpoise, the creature lets out a few quick clicks after its howl.

“She’s right on us, sir!”

Charlie’s eyes light up and she opens her mouth to speak but before she can, Lewis interrupts.

“She’s gonna ram us,” he says quietly. “Fucking shit.” His voice booms. “Full speed astern! Collision alarm!”

With the flip of a switch, a blaring siren erupts in the Narwhal and the crew leaps into action. A bell rings in the control room as the helmsman signals the engine room to put the ship in full reverse.

A moment later and the Narwhal’s screws churn in the water, throwing out a thick cloud of bubbles as they struggle to pull the ship back into the tunnel she came from.

Ping.

Click. Click. Click.

For just a moment, Lewis glances at the sonar screen. “Brace!” He shouts only a moment before the creature slams into the submarine.

Most who are standing are thrown to the floor and the hull of the ship groans under the force of the impact.

Ping.

Awoooooo. Click, click.

Another blow strikes the Narwhal and she careens into the side of the icy tunnel, the sound of cracking ice filling the water around them.

Charlie, dazed from the impact, picks herself up. “It’s the sonar!” She shouts. “Turn it off!”

Lewis pulls himself from the floor. “You heard her,” he bellows.

The sonar operator quickly shuts down the active sonar and the pings stop, but a moment later another blow shakes the sub, this time from behind. It’s followed by a pulsing metallic screech like a saw cutting through metal as the Narwhal’s screws, still running on full reverse slam into the ice behind them.

“Shit!” Lewis shouts. “Full stop, dammit!”

The bell rings again as the helmsman sends the new order back to the engine room.

Click, click, click, click.

The creature, not done with its assault, and not giving them a moment to rest hits them again. The sound of the impact is soon followed by a loud crack and deep rumble from just outside the Narwhal.

Lewis looks around. “Ice is breaking apart, tunnel’s gonna collapse, get us the hell out of here! Flank speed!”

Again the Narwhal roars to life, but her belly is glued to the tunnel’s floor. Leaks have sprung up all over the ship and she’s taking on water, making her too heavy to pull herself free in time. An enormous chunk of sea ice breaks from the wall of the tunnel and as it floats upward, it strikes the ship. Its collapse sends a chain reaction through the tunnel as the ground beneath the submarine starts to break up. As the ice supporting it floats away, the Narwhal tips forward and starts to slide out of the tunnel, into open water.

“We’re dropping like a rock!” The officer leading Lewis’s crew, the Chief of the Boat, shouts. “Taking on water in the engine room!”

“Fuck,” Lewis says. “Emergency blow!”

“But the ice above us, sir!”

“Better it than the ice below us! Blow it, now!”

The Narwhal hisses as air is pumped into the ballast, but it’s not enough. For a moment she seems to slow her descent, but that moment passes and she continues to fall to the depths below.

Lewis growls and the ship begins to lean forward as it falls. Everyone braces against what they can as they struggle to keep balanced as the floor angles away beneath their feet.

“It’s forward ballast, sir!” The Chief of the Boat shouts. “It won’t drain! We’re sinking!”

“Hang on!” Lewis yells. “This is gonna hurt!”

The minute anxieties of entering the tunnel are long gone as the crippling terror of being trapped on a sinking submarine tightens the throats of researchers and crew alike. They tighten their grip on whatever they can as the Narwhal strikes the icy seafloor with a deafening crash. The lights flicker, then go entirely, plunging the ship into an eerie darkness lit only by the computer screens around the control room. A shrill scratching emanates through the submarine as her nose drags along the ice. A few moments later, she levels off, her aft end striking the ground with a thud. Then, silence. Everything grinds to a halt, the Narwhal stills and their attacker is nowhere to be heard.