CAPITOLO 20

The sound of Lilia’s breathing is the only thing I can make out with clarity. She sits across from me, her gaze fixed on some undefined point on the metal floor. Her shoulders are rigid, her jaw clenched. She tries to appear strong, but I see her. I see the weight she carries inside, the doubt gnawing at her, even if she’ll never admit it.

Calypso lies beside me, still unconscious. Her face is pale, her hair crusted with dried blood. She’s alive, and for now, she’ll stay that way.

«So…» Hermes’ voice slices through the air, smooth as silk and sharp as a dagger. He leans forward in his seat, the usual smug smile painted across his face. «The great hero has saved the girl. How touching.»

I don’t even bother looking up. «By the time you learn to keep your mouth shut, it’ll always be too late.»

«Oh, of course. Silence has always been your favorite refuge, hasn’t it? Easier to hide behind a new face than to confront what you really are.»

His words slide under my skin like poison. No one here knows what they’re really doing. Not even me. But Hermes… Hermes knows too much about me.

Lilia lifts her gaze slightly, puzzled. But she says nothing.

«Strange, isn’t it?» Hermes continues, in that distracted tone of his that masks a deadly precision. «You can change your face as many times as you like, but in the end, you’re always the same. Just a man running from himself.»

Slowly, I turn to face him, locking eyes with him. There’s something old in there, a buried resentment beneath layers of sarcasm. But also something more. Something that still burns.

I’m too tired to even be annoyed by him. «News flash: I’ve been a woman too, more than once. And countless other things you wouldn’t even know how to pronounce.»

Hermes smiles, but his eyes tell a different story. «Oh, don’t flatter yourself. You’ll always be Demetrius to me.»

«Call me that all you want. It won’t change a thing.»

Hermes looks away, but the smirk that lingers on his lips is just a mask. And I don’t want to know what’s behind it.

Lilia stiffens. I know she caught the name, but she chooses not to react. I don’t know if I could have done the same.

A faint groan breaks the heavy silence. Calypso. Her eyelids flutter, then slowly lift, revealing dazed, unfocused eyes.

«Where…?» Her voice is hoarse, thick with exhaustion and pain.

I lean over her, my hand instinctively brushing against her forehead. «You’re safe. Or as safe as we can be right now.»

She tries to sit up, but a wave of pain forces her back down. «The base…?»

«Gone.» Yaku’s voice is dry and blunt. «There’s nothing left.»

Calypso closes her eyes for a moment, breathing unevenly. When she opens them again, there’s a new understanding in her gaze. «So it’s really over.»

«Great, huh? Just a bunch of freaks loose in the world now. This is gonna be fun, right?» Savannah’s voice drips with sarcasm, but her expression betrays anything but amusement. She clutches her injured side, then lets out a rough sigh. «They’re going to come after us. Everything’s about to blow up.»

Calypso drags a hand down her face, the movement slow and weary. Then, with a muffled groan, she forces herself upright, frustration outweighing pain.

«I don’t know how this happened. Or why… or who’s behind all of it.»

Her words unsettle me more than my face lets on. If even she doesn’t know what happened—and I have no reason to doubt her—then something far bigger than us is moving in the shadows.

A heavy silence settles, broken only by the faint hum of the submarine and the rhythmic rise of bubbles drifting toward the surface.

«Chaos,» Lilia murmurs, staring at something invisible beyond the transparent hatch. Her voice is low, almost lost in thought. «Whoever’s behind this… they’re unleashing it for a reason.»

Her words hang in the air and in my mind.

«To hide something else?» I suggest, the thought forming faster than the words.

Hermes scoffs, his smirk crooked and empty. «Or to reveal it, maybe. Sometimes, the best way to hide something is to put it right in front of everyone’s eyes.»

Yaku remains silent, arms crossed over his chest, gaze fixed on the floor. But the tension in his muscles and the sharp set of his jaw betray his unease.

Lilia brushes her fingertips against her lips.

«It’s possible.» She lifts her gaze to mine, and in her eyes, I see something that wasn’t there before—the weight of a responsibility none of us ever wanted. «Whatever the reason, it involves us. Running from this isn’t an option. We can only face it.»

Savannah shakes her head, a bitter laugh slipping out before she can stop it. «As always. Only now… it’s all out in the open. No more hiding places. No more shadows.»

And in that moment, I realize she’s right.We are no longer hidden. We are no longer invisible.The world is changing. And we will be forced to change with it.

«At least we know where this thing is taking us?» Savannah breaks the silence, her voice rough and laced with irritation as she grips one of the handles to steady herself against the subtle sway of the submarine.

Calypso shrugs, a gesture that seems heavier than it should. «Somewhere safe. Away from the other submarines. We’ll find out soon—the base wasn’t far from the coast.»

There’s no certainty in her words, only a fragile hope disguised as pragmatism.

Yaku tightens his grip on his spear, his knuckles turning white from the tension. «What’s the plan once we get there?»

No one answers. Because the truth is, we don’t have a plan.

After an endless silence, it’s Lilia who finally speaks. Her voice is steady, even as doubt flickers just behind her gaze.

«Information. We need to understand what’s happening out there—how the media and the authorities will react.»

A brief, bitter smile plays on Hermes’ lips as he leans lazily against the submarine’s wall.

«And how do you think they’ll react?» he asks, tilting his head slightly. «Panic. Screaming. Accusations. A witch hunt… the same human farce as always.»

Lilia shoots him a look sharp enough to cauterize more than a few of Savannah’s wounds.

«And it’ll be people like us who pay the price.» Her voice turns colder, a thin blade of ice slicing through the air between them. «We need to understand how. If the authorities are prepared to act—and I expect they are—then we’ll have our confirmation that none of this was random.»

A thought creeps into my mind, more unsettling than I want to admit: What if chaos isn’t the result of a mistake… but the product of a perfect plan?

Hermes looks away, but his smile doesn’t fade completely.Perhaps because he knows more than he lets on.Or perhaps… because he’s always known this moment would come.

And in that silence, thick with unspoken warnings, the submarine continues its blind race toward a coast that might not offer us any refuge at all.

Everyone retreats into their own corner, searching for a sliver of peace where peace doesn’t exist.

Savannah curls up against the metal wall, her knees drawn to her chest, staring at a point only she can see. Yaku remains alert, his spear still clutched tightly in his hands, as if even inside this metal cocoon, it could somehow make a difference. Calypso lies back down, her eyes half-closed, but her uneven breathing betrays that sleep is a luxury she can’t afford.

I stay seated, my back against the bulkhead, legs stretched out in front of me. I feel hollow, drained from everything that has happened. But the heaviest weight isn’t exhaustion. It’s her.

The steady hum of the submarine fills the space between us. The air is thick—not just with the claustrophobia of this metal shell, but with everything we’re not saying.

Lilia holds her knees to her chest, arms wrapped tightly around herself, as if they could protect her from something no wall could keep out. I’m close enough to feel the warmth of her body, but not close enough to touch her. And yet, every fiber of me wants to.

«You’re not alone. You don’t have to carry all of this on your own.» My voice is a whisper, fragile as the thin thread that ties us together.

She doesn’t answer right away. She inhales deeply, then exhales, a sigh heavy with exhaustion. «It doesn’t feel like I have much of a choice.»

A knot tightens in my throat. «We always have choices. Sometimes they just scare us.»

She turns slightly toward me, her profile illuminated by the faint red emergency light. Her eyes find mine, filled with doubt and something else. Something that has no name—or maybe too many.

We stay like that, staring at each other, the world reduced to just a few inches of space. The tension is a wire stretched to the point of snapping. There are no more explosions, no more racing thoughts.

She lowers her gaze for a moment, then lifts it again. In her eyes, I see something that hurts and heals at the same time.

Without thinking—or perhaps because I’ve thought about it too much—I reach out and brush my fingers against her cheek.

It’s a light touch, almost imperceptible, but for me, it feels like crossing an invisible boundary. She doesn’t pull away. She just closes her eyes for a moment, letting my touch linger there, suspended between fear and longing.

Then, slowly, she rests her head on my shoulder.

The gesture is simple, but inside me, it’s like a silent explosion. I wrap an arm around her shoulders, pulling her just a little closer, and feel her breathing slow, deepening.

We don’t say anything. We don’t need to. Words, in this moment, would only get in the way.

We stay like this, caught in a fragile balance between what we are and what we could be.

And for the first time since all of this began, I feel that maybe… I’m not completely lost.

The submarine continues its silent journey into the abyss, while the weight of all the things left unsaid fills the air more than the oxygen we breathe.

Because, in the end, the hardest thing to face isn’t what’s waiting for us out there. It’s what we carry inside.