CreepsMcPasta Creepypasta Radio - "The Deepest Part of the Ocean is NOT Empty" Creepypasta

Episode Date: July 5, 2020

What could lie 50,000 feet under the sea?AUTHOR'S FACEBOOK► https://www.facebook.com/thejesseclar...CREEPYPASTA STORY►https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comm...https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comm...Creepypastas are the campfire tales of the internet. Horror stories spread through Reddit r/nosleep, forums and blogs, rather than word of mouth. Whether you believe these scary stories to be true or not is left to your own discretion and imagination. LISTEN TO CREEPYPASTAS ON THE GO-SPOTIFY► https://open.spotify.com/show/7l0iRPd...iTUNES► https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast...CREEPY THUMBNAIL ART BY- Edin Durmisevic:►https://www.artstation.com/artwork/eQLGP►https://www.instagram.com/artofedin/SUGGESTED CREEPYPASTA PLAYLISTS-►"Good Places to Start"- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7YCb...►"Personal Favourites"- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEa2R...►"Written by me"- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gX6RA...►"Long Stories"- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list...FOLLOW ME ON-►Twitter: https://twitter.com/Creeps_McPasta►Instagram: https://instagram.com/creepsmcpasta/►Twitch: http://www.twitch.tv/creepsmcpasta►Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CreepsMcPastaCREEPYPASTA MUSIC/ SFX- ►http://bit.ly/Audionic ♪►http://bit.ly/Myuusic ♪►http://bit.ly/incompt ♪►http://bit.ly/EpidemicM ♪-This creepypasta is for entertainment purposes only-

The ocean has its silent caves, deep, deep quiet and alone, though there be fury in the waves, beneath them there is none. Over the course of the last few weeks of training, I'd memorized nearly every facet of the Tuscany, every dial and every readout and every knob and screen and nuance of structure, and the quality of the personal submarine's craftsmanship never ceased to astound me. It was a remarkable feat of engineering, this little beast. designed with such care that even the equipment on the hull could withstand more water pressure than the sea could muster up at any achievable depth.

It was my Pegasus, my Trojan horse, my very own Apollo 11, and inside this matrix of layered synthetic foam, I would follow the ballasts to the gratuitous and unexplored depths of Higgins Moore. I began the separation sequence, and the deep diver fell away from the escort and dipped beneath the sun. surface of the Pacific with silence and grace and a few knots of speed, and then I was consumed in a whole new world, albeit one I'd frequented, that of the sea. Schools of fish swam by me, and when their cloud passed through a sunbeam, it glinted silver, and beneath them swam

rays that rolled their wings to the beat of the current, and out on the rocks crawled the crustaceans, and set the plant life that spruced up all the white wash stones there, like holiday ornaments. But I had an appointment to keep, and the oxygen tank was a demanding clock, so I dove right on past the old reef and out into the open waters, where the seabed couldn't be seen for many, many miles yet. The more, Rubin had said, 50,000 feet below the surface, spooker, 50,000. Do you know what that means? Means is a whole hell of a lot deeper down there than the Challenger Abyss. He nodded at that. Are you ready to make history?

Was I? I thought I was. I'd prepared for this lonely dive and nothing else for some years now. It was the culmination of a lifetime of work and study in the field and so tight was its grip on my mind that I often dreamed of it in my sleep of what I'd find at the bottom

and what it would mean. And what monstrous things might take offence to my presence there. No, no, I shoved their thought aside. Tuscany was all the protection I needed in that regard. It offered technology on the bleeding edge in lieu of a heavy hull, and that was enough to withstand enough water pressure to crush bones beneath skin and inches of steel. What animal had jaws more powerful than the ocean itself had fathom?

So I hit the thrusters, and down I went, like a bullet to the pitch. I eyed the depth meter as much as I did the sea 100 feet 200 sharks and turtles and uncountable fish swept past me 300 feet 500 feet 700 700 1000 1250 The inverse height of the Empire State building 1,500 16

The water began to blur and grain up and darken as the sunlight struggled to push on through. 2,025, 3,000, 32, where the light no longer shines. And soon all the lights I had to spill glow to the path ahead and down were the lights of the Tuscany. I continued the descent for hours.

The pressure meter ticked up in spasmic bursts but up it went. Up, up, up. soon ticking past the point where the weight of the sea would have crushed the steel of another vessel one mile down 1.3

1.6 Where even sperm whales hit the lowest dive I can now claim with confidence that no mammal on earth was as deep down at that very moment as myself and still I dove

2 miles 2.1 2.2 the water was as black a space now, except for where the light of the Tuscany pierced through it, and the thickness of the fluid made it look like ink or oil, or some kind of alien sludge that smeared up against a reinforced windows and slimed its way across the hole. Things were tight down here, despite the vastness of it all. Yet still I dove. 13,000 feet. The Abyssal Zone. Pressure stands at 11,000 PSI. I saw an angler float

by, and it was startled by the sheer volume of light spread by the Tuscany that dwarfed its own bioluminescent glow. It swam away, and I dove further. Fifteen thousand feet, three miles, 3.1. Now, things get interesting. Mankind had visited these depths almost infrequently enough to count the expeditions on a single pair of hands. I was now ranked among the illustrious few explorers, and although I wasn't the first to hit these marks, I'd hit the deepest one yet before this journey was over. I was determined, and I was capable. So, I checked the depth chart. 16,000, 281.4 feet, nearly halfway to the world record. The Tuscany continued its dive. 20,000 feet, the Hidal zone. Pressure here is 1100 times what it is at the

surface. 22,000 feet, 26, 29,000. The height of Mount Everest. 30, 30.5, 31. The same distance from the surface as a commercial airliner at the peak of its flight. The Challenger Deep. What had previously been the lowest recorded place on the seabed, sat at roughly 36,000 feet below the surface, in the depths of the mariner trench. No light from the sun had ever come close, and to the best accounts, life existed here, but only sparsely, and the pressure is unspeakable. But I was going somewhere vastly deeper, even than that. All we know is we found a canyon, Rubinette said, dwarfs the grand sitting dead center in the Pacific seabed, about 1,200 kilometres west of Hawaii, and another 900 south, and near as we can

figure, some 50,000 feet straight down. 36,000 feet. I was now tired for the world record. 50,000 feet, why the hell I was just now seeing it? 36.5. I did it. My heartbeat swept up to a faster rhythm. I was officially a world record holder.

No human being in recorded history had ever been as deep blood. the surface as I was at that very moment. New seabed scanning technology helped, gave us a more detailed topographical map of the hydrosphere than we ever had before, and once we got back the results, we took a look, and there it was, just waiting for us, inviting us down.

37. So what's down there? 373. Hell, doctor, if we knew that, we wouldn't be sending you, would we? 379. I suppose not. 38. 38.5.

The awful spirits of the deep hold their communion here, and there are those for whom we weep, the younger, the bright, the fair. Higgins Moore. According to the best information available to me at the time of departure, is a pit, roughly a full kilometre across. It begins at approximately 46,000 feet below

the surface and is estimated to bottom out at Higgins deep, a small valley that sits at its base, some 5,000 additional feet below that. The moor is the largest and deepest such formation in the hydrosphere, and yet its dimensions and location are the only things concretely known about it. That, of course, is where myself and where the Tuscany comes in. 43,000 feet down. I hit the floodlights underneath the Tuscany and the glow washed over an alien landscape

that likely hadn't seen light in over a billion years there were mountains here mountains ones that rivaled the Alps and wild arches and plateaus that stretched far off to a murky horizon before being shrouded by seawater I even saw life down here in the depths

a squid light thing of simply monstrous size swam on by my boat. It stopped for a moment, and during that moment I thought it might take offence to me, but after looking hard at the Tuscany and brushing a tentacle down the port side, it swam off in search of other things.

At a girl, I descended further, 44,000 feet, 45, and then, all of a sudden, there it was. The more, my mouth hung by the foot, the jaw as the sheer scope of the beast came into view. It was a breathtaking sight to

behold, a monstrously large and equally dark hole in the crust of the earth that plummeted in inconceivable fathoms. I descended a bit further, 45-5, 46,000 feet, and Tuscany fell into its yawn. Somehow, things were even blacker in the depths of the thing, even though the sunlight had long since been blotted out. 46-5, 47, 472. I began to become aware of a low current pulling me downward. It wasn't particularly powerful, but it was unexpected and it was therefore alarming.

And yet I couldn't bear to pull myself back up. Not yet. I'll turn around if it gets bad. So I went down deeper and deeper and deeper, still into the cavern. 48,000 feet, 485, 49, 491. And then I saw it. A glow.

I squinted and dim my lights to confirm the intuition. What in the name of God? It was there indeed. A dim reddish purple, then green, then purple again, and then blue, floating on a mist of current, so some few thousand feet down. I reassume the dive to chase it. 495, 497, 499. The glow, whatever it was,

was getting deeper and wider and brighter. Soon it filled up the whole path down and ahead. I dimmed the Tuscany's underlights to the lowest setting, and by 50,000 feet, I could see that the glow was coming from somewhere, not directly beneath me, but off to the left and around a wide corner. The cave isn't a straight pit, and sure enough, the whole bottomed out here,

and then opened up to its left. Holy God, holy God. It was a cavern chamber, at least a kilometre up and deep, and side to side and across, and only the enormity of its radius maintained the darkness of it, despite the presence of thousands of floating bioluminescent pods that pulsed purpose. and green and blue and red and dimmed in interim. I took the Tuscany in deeper, and her cameras were to life. Calmly and wearied, seamen rest beneath their own blue sea.

The ocean solitudes are blessed, for there is purity. The cavern became darker still when the pods faded into the water behind the ship, but there were more things to be seen here than rocks. Tuscany, about a quarter hour after entering the chamber, soon floated on by a bizarrely rope-like plant of utterly impossible size, one that appeared to nearly stretch across the height of the cave and grew wider at the base, although the bottom of it was shrouded in blackness. I took the submarine in for a closer inspection and hit the lights to their fullest setting. Glack

My heartbeat slammed. There were suction cups on it, each one as big as the Tuscany herself, and they writhed and pulled across and down the full length of what was now very clearly her tentacle. In a panic, I shoved the Tuscany back and away from the thing, but when I tried to turn her around, the base of the hull collided with a beast and stuck fast to one of the cups. I gunned the thrusters and could hear a wet tearing sound as the machine ripped itself free from the cup's grasp. But then the tentacle came to life. It whipped and whirled and smacked around the cavern and pressed itself to the roof and then it fell down, deep beyond with the darkness

blanketed the floor. Come on, baby. I hit the thrusters again and the Tuscany rocketed off the way it came, through the darkness and off towards the pods, whose glow I hoped would afford me an opportunity to shut the lights off the ship and make my escape. if I were so lucky. But very soon I began to hear and feel the movement of something unspeakably titanic rolling across the floor of the chamber.

It rumbled and thundered and shuddered and shuck, and soon clouds of dirt and rock flew up out of the black pitch and I could hear boulders smack against the ceiling of the cave before sinking again to where they'd been. The sound had erupted across the entire breadth of the cave, cave at once. My airdrums nearly burst and likely would have had it not been for the muffling

of the explosion provided by the walls of the Tuscany. The submarine shook too, but she held up her integrity well enough for me to fly past the floating pods, some of which were now knocked about on their sides and rolling and back towards the yawning mouth of the tunnel that would take me back out and into the open sea. Smack! The Tuscany buckled and rolled with an impovered. The Tuscany buckled and rolled with an impact. The tentacle, I realised, and shot up from the ground and hit the bottom of the ship

between her ballasts. But luckily, it knocked her with force up towards the tunnel. I rolled the Tuscany with a hit and managed to regain some control and I boosted the thrusters into the turn and up again, now back into the moor.

Then I began to climb. 52,000 feet, 515, 51. So what's down? there. Come on baby, come on, don't you fail me now. Don't you fail me now. Don't you damn fail me now? Hell, Doctor. If we knew that, we wouldn't be sending you, would we? 50.5. 50, 59, 496. Tuscany ascended with panic speed and all the while she did it, I could feel the rumbling of the tentacles pursuit in the walls of the pit. It smacked its way on through the tunnel,

and whipped and thrashed, but Tuscany was too quick a runner. 47-5, 47, 468, 464, 46,000 feet and climbing high. I suppose not. Tuscany burst out of the moor and was about to rocket straight on back up to the surface. But then the tentacle flew out beside her, nearly smashed in her front window. I bent the controls to the edge of their set casing and Tuscany tanked to the left. and up a bit and missed the ground by inches. I hit the lights again to navigate the labyrinth of rocks

as I struggled to remount the climb. But in the light of the ship, I saw it. These weren't rocks after all. They were other ships. Massive vessels, Imperial warships from ages past, bent and crooked and broken at the bottom of the sea, pulled down here by whatever it was that now threw its back to my devouring.

The tentacles smashed along behind me. Mainmasts and battlements and flat decks and rustled iron and wooden boat-alls were splintered up and tossed to the winds of the sea, never again to reconvene. I took Tuscany through this nautical graveyard with far, far too much speed for my safety. Under ship towers we went and threw cannon mounts and past the blades of the dead engines and around upended rudders. The carcophony of my flight and the destructive path set by my hunter awoke the life in the place. Fish washed out of holes and cabins and captains quarters and deep-deck stair flights and soon joined me in my effort to escape. But it seemed there was no escape to be found here.

The entire ground for countless miles shook and rumbled with seismic force. It was thunderously loud and it picked up speed and violence with time. Tuscany finally flew up to miss a splintered crow's nest atop the mast by less than a foot and finally use that directed momentum to put away distance between the seabed and herself with as many knots of speed as a thrusters would allow without bursting from the effort.

The depth chart began to rise. 459, 452, 45,000 feet, 448 Come on you! The water itself seemed to shift with the sound. And then, out of nowhere, Tuscany was no longer the only thing spilling light into the abyss. An orange glow flashed across the sea, and for an instant illuminated nearly the entire of its vastness. Then it blinked, and then flicked on again and stayed active.

I shut off the Tuscany's lights to preserve every molecule of power for the ascent. 44-2-44-43-7 Beside me in the glow I could make out other creatures retreating too Once of spectacular size again That mankind had never catalogued And that I, sadly, would not have the time at all to study There were city bus-sized Manta ray-shaped things

Wrapped up in clouded wisps of transparent jelly And even that squid The size of a building all flying upwards in a mass panic. I led the charge. 43-1, 428, 42-3-43-42. Go-r. I looked behind me and down through the rear window.

The moor had moved. It was alive. God Almighty. I was in its damn throat. I saw its tentacle tongue lash out of the moor and collect enough fish to feed. a small town. Tuscany rocketed ever upwards as the Leviathan whipped even larger tentacles behind it and gained speed with a force of a hurricane.

The Leviathan opened its moor yet again and spewed for his tentacle tongue and with it whipped up several Olympic swimming pools worth of water into a gale-force maelstrom. The mammoth squid was caught in its fury, I saw, and then it vanished into the pit forever when the moor snapped shut with a thunderous echoing snap. Tuscany, meanwhile, continued to rocket upwards and managed to escape the whirlpool by a foot. 39-5-39, 387, 382, 38,000 feet and climbing. But the Leviathan pursued me relentlessly,

riding on the flood of its own current. Its tentacles, each dozens of feet across and a mile long, beat the water back and tried to gain speed for their host. 375-37-364. Tuscany had proved a worth with speed and the pressure gauge now fell in jumps. It remained in the red and wood for some time, but it was falling steadily, even as the depth chart rose.

29,000 feet, 283, 275. But the Leviathan hadn't given up the chase. Not yet. I could feel it doubling its efforts. The displace water rocked the Tuscany as she buckled and rolled in the synthetic current. Then I heard the moor opened up behind me, and the water began to whip and swirl itself into a frenzy by the ocean load. I punched the thrusters to breaking point. Come on!

The encasing synthetic foam was pressed to its limit The reinforced glass began to chip ever so slightly But the chips broke into cracks And those cracks began to crawl across the width of the windows 20,000 feet 19, 194, 193 The ascent was slowing Come on baby, come on, come on, come on, come on

Please God, be with me now, be Grew In the orange glow of the the Leviathan's eye, I could see how quickly the water was slipping by Tuscany and getting swept up into the maelstrom. The submarine began to sway port, to starboard, and shudder and shake. 174, 17,000, 169, 163, 161, 16,000. I watched the gauge with a nauseating depression.

59, 592. I could feel her slowing to a crawl. Come on, come on, come on. 5925, 594, 596. Damn it! And that was it. Tuscany was caught. And no sooner did the depth chart begin to slip,

then did I feel the whole submarine lose all sense of control and tumble backwards and around. I was thrown out of my seat and smacked my nose against the roof of the pilot's sphere. Blood exploded and it drenched my shirt and sprayed the glass and the entirety of the control set. I grabbed my face and began to apply pressure to slow the blood loss, but Tuscany again flipped ballast over ballast

to starboard in the whirlpool and slipped me by into the hatch ladder. I felt my shoulder dislocate and my kneecap smack into the bottom rung. My head swam, and still Tuscany tumbled backwards. The cracks in the window spread faster. 163, 164. I could smell the inside of the morn.

through the hull of the ship. But then, all at once, and not a moment too soon, I got an idea. It wasn't a particularly good one, but hell if it wasn't better than nothing. I managed to limp and tumble my way to the controls and grip the handles as the ship rolled. Wait for it, wait for it, wait. Now! The sound of the roar was so close. close, every last control surface in the sphere rattled in its case.

My eardrums rattled too, but then I flayed up the thrusters again, full thrust and at an angle, and the Tuscany shuddered and flipped and shook, and, with fortune, fell straight out of the maelstrom with inches to spare. I felt the edge of the Leviathan's moor grazed the starboard side, and the impact again sent me into the roof while the ship rolled end over end over end again. I smacked my ribs up in a dip and in the alcove and fell back into the seat, head first, and then out under the floor. I managed to right myself with my good arm and get my bearings. I was free.

The Tuscany banked and tumbled again and rolled, slower now, in the absence of the whirlpool's flood current, but not yet in control of its pull. I tried to steer away, but it was useless. The ship flipped around the back of the Leviathan's Titanic Moor and up over its head as the beast flew on by underneath me like a freight train. And, for the first time since catching the monster's eye, I began to fully appreciate the magnitude of its size. Its back was an endless, snake-like and sharp finned spine, the size of a minor mountain range, and only quick maneuvering moved Tuscany away from the jagged back fins that chugged up towards me and sliced open the sea of the sea of the sea. itself. They missed me by feet, and the blast of the current they swept up sent the submarine reeling backwards, off a bit further, and into relative safety.

I quickly dimmed the lights to the lowest setting and caught my breath. As the full form of the leviathan washed on past me, it stretched far away into the abyss for well over a mile, and dragging away behind it with thousands upon thousands of tent A forest of the things, each the size of a six-lane highway and tipped with razor-sharp hooks and a flurry of wing fins. It took a full three minutes for the beast to pass by me fully, and then it curved around in the other direction and swam off in search of other things to devour. The form soon slipped away into the shadow, and then it was gone. I surfaced hours later, having allowed the battered Tuscany to take its time with a journey. She was solely responsible for my escape, my quick thinking be damned.

A marvel of engineering indeed. Once I did break the surface, I dispersed a distressed beacon and then promptly collapsed from exhaustion. Evidently, I was picked up with a coast guard some hours after that, a few hundred miles southwest of Hawaii, and pulled from the near wreckage of my submarine and taken to a hospital on the mainland. It was there that I woke up a full day later. As I recovered, I heard some isolated chatter of tremendous seismic activity near where I'd been

and how the whole ocean floor had changed and moved and shifted form. But I couldn't care less. I told them what I knew, and on top of that, they have the Tuscany and they have all the recorded evidence, and you now have this written account. What everyone does with this information now is entirely up to them. All I know is that I won't be doing any more diving anytime soon.

I've come to a realization that mankind has more than enough space to expand throughout and live upon and thriving above and near the surface, and on land and in the skies and soon, hopefully out there among the stars. But there are things in the sea that hold ownership of the sea. deep, and perhaps it's best to leave it that way, for all our sake. The earth is guilt, the others care, unquiet are its graves, but peaceful sleep is ever there beneath the dark blue waves. Nathaniel Hawthorne.

The USS District of Columbia, a two-men Eisenhower-class Navy stealth sub called Agincourt, which I served as navigator alongside engineer Lovill, and once it was loose, it slipped away into the Pacific and began to part with its escort. The sea was in a shambles here. There were dead fish and splintered boat-holes floating in the current, but it was far from unexpected. It was recently estimated, in fact, that since the Leviathan awoke some months ago, it is critically disturbed over four hundred trillion cubic tons of water, and

all the life they're in, and was becoming a potential threat to shipping lanes as well as naval operations. It has been classified for these reasons and others as a severe national security threat, and so the Navy-built Agincourt untuscanist blueprint and selected Lovell and myself to man it, and then instructed the pair of us to hunt down the leviathan and lure it up from the deep so District Columbia could move in for a swift kill without exposing herself in the chase. For some hours after we entered the sea There was little else but quiet there And the hawking mass of the district of Columbia

As it followed But then even that faded into the seawater And when it did Lovell and I found ourselves alone In the midst of the ocean He descended the hatch ladder from the operation centre And join me for a moment in the sphere So Latner

You're the nav How do you plan on finding this thing in the middle of the ocean I said back. I'm already tracking it. You see that? I pointed up at a corridor of seawater that was moving north and that carried on for miles. We'd been following it for some time. Lovell pursed his lips.

Didn't realize there was draft that big down here. There wasn't, I said, until earlier this morning. That leviathan swam on down this way a few hours ago and it left this as a little present for the two of us. Well then, we'll be sure to thank it. How much longer before we see the damn thing? Not long. Look at those fish. I nodded towards a school of the things.

You ever see anything like that? He shook his head. They look panicked. And they're swimming towards us for a reason. Closer we get, the more we'll see. Just wait. And we did. What started?

as an isolated school of fish, soon became several, and then the nautical retreats boiled over in scale and number into a mammoth, seething clouds of life, all whirled up into a frenzy and pushing desperately south against the riptide, like birds from a storm cloud or the onset of winter. The two of us said not a word until the crowd broke, and Agincourt again found itself floating in the open and quiet sea. And then I brought Achencourt to a full stop,

and Lovell said, Holy God. Ahead of us, and not more than two miles off, was a titanic mass of shadow, unmoving, and so breathtaking and huge that not even all of its edges

could be fully seen. It was the Leviathan. Blue whales and dinosaurs themselves paled in comparison to this monstrous, mountainous thing. And, as Lovell and I sat and stared at it, it made its first move.

a turn away into the depth behind it, followed by a sharp dive. In doing so, of course, the silhouette of its full form came into view, and the sight of it stole the breath right from our lungs. We couldn't have said a word at the moment, even if we'd known the words to say. We simply stared out at the thing and did our unworthy best to appreciate the magnitude of its vastness. It was as long as they said it was. an enormous slithering serpent thing whose tail broke into a thousand other tails that drifted and curled and dragged lazily behind it and fell deep away into the blackness. But seeing it in person was altogether a new experience. Before saying another word to me, Lovell hopped back to the ladder and climbed up to the operations room.

Agincourt, the District of Columbia, I heard him say, this is Lieutenant Lovell, we've located the Leviathan, 33.934 by negative 153.4570. We're given chase, but it's moving fast and is moving down. Look to the riptide, advise the district follow our mark, but stand by to engage until we've brought it back up to you. I gun the thrusters as he spoke and followed the slipping shadow away and into the deep. 12 knots of speed, 12.2, 12.4. Agincourt crawled and then crulled.

cruised, and then ran with all haste in pursuit of a monster. Lavel came down the hatch ladder a few minutes later. District is on route. Making speed? She's moving, but she's not coming out into the open till we got this thing where she wants it. Any ideas on that front? A moment passed before I said, Are you seen the footage from Toskany?

Bits and pieces, yeah. Well, the pilot caught the Leviathan's attention and it chased him straight up to the surface. But he made it, didn't he? Yeah, by the skin of his teeth, from what I hear. Gave up deep diving altogether. What's your point? Point is, Ashen-Court's faster than Tuscany.

If we can get the thing to chase us, we can outrun it, and then get district on its flanks, a couple of torpedoes to the side, and boom, we have ourselves a 300,000-ton museum piece. There was another pause, and then Lavelle broke it with the worst question of all. And what if District can't put a dent in that thing? You saw how big it is. Well then, I suppose we'll need to find another ride home.

The Agincourt filled up a ballast and followed the Levitan down into the depths of the Pacific, passed where the water stopped the sunbeams at the gate, and before long, all that could be seen was nothing at all. From that point forward, it was the boat's humble capacity, for sonar that kept us moving in the right direction, with the occasional nudge for the monster's own flood current. The veil broke the long silence. What's the plan? At the moment, I'm just trying to get the damn thing's attention.

The closer we are to district when it notices us, the better. But as it stands, we're getting in too deep, way too deep. And we were? By the depth chart, we had just passed 15,000. thousand feet, and we needed to get things turned around. Go ahead, strap yourself in. He did, in the passenger's chair beside me, and then I hit the front lights and gun the thrusters. What the hell are you doing?

Like I said, I'm getting it to... But then I stopped, and I eased back on the thrusters. The lights of the Agincourt spilled their glow to the whole of the abyss, and they found it empty. Where the hell did it go? I dialed up the brightness of the lights and brought the boat to a full stop. I don't know. We scanned the water for a hint of movement or shadow, but there was no movement, and there was

nothing but shadow and silence. I moved Agincourt from a rest to a light cruising speed, and a searchlight swept and swooped and cast themselves to the rocks. Nothing. Damn. Useless. I hit the lights off. Now what? What is it? There's no in hell something that big just disappeared.

So, where did it go? I blew the ballasts and adjusted Agincourt's heading for the surface. And then, I gun the thrusters harder than ever. It didn't go anywhere. It knew we were there all along. It just dragged us down into the dark to shake our tail. What? I think that size is afraid of being hunted.

It's not being hunted. We are. Agincourt lifted herself up through the water with as much speed as she could muster up for the running. But time was against us. Up ahead, we saw the shadow of a titan moving fast to block off our escape. It was the difference in shape

between deep twilight and midnight black. We've got to move, I said. See if you can raise the district. Lavelle unbuckled his seat and flew to the hatch ladder and climbed it two rungs at a time. Clang, clang, clang, clang, clang. And not a moment later, I heard the static of radio as he lifted a hail. Hello, hello. District of Columbia, this is Agincourt. Can you read me, over?

Static, audible, even in the pilot sphere. The sheer bulk of the Leviathan was blocking the signal. Keep trying to raise the escort. I'm going to get out from under this thing and clear the way. Hello, Lo, District of Columbia, this is Lieutenant Lovell of Agincourt. Can you read me, over? Asincourt, banked hard over to a starboard flank, and I allotted all the speed for the escape. 17 knots flat, 17.3, 17.5, 17.7.

I looked up. The Leviathan's shadow bathed the whole of the seabed in its mass. Still, we ran Hello, hello, District of Columbia, this is the USS Agincourt. Can you hear me, over? More static? 19 knots, 192, 19.4 Agincourt was moving faster than most vessels already,

and yet the shadow above us had not struggled at all to keep us within perimeter. So big was its source. 21 knots. District of Columbia, this is Agincourt, Can you read me? Over? Respond. Still, nothing. 21-9. 222. I looked up.

The shadow was murky and ill-defined, but I could make out the monstrous alien forest of its almighty tentacles, which wrapped and curled and spread out on all directions in the absence of movement. It looked like a black star, seen through a bent lens of time. But it was slipping back behind,

us. Asyncourt was more than a match for speed. 23.5. Hello. District of Columbia. This is Lieutenant Lovell of the Agincourt. Can you read? Still, I heard static. But there were bursts of clearer sound too. Just barely over the threshold of audibility. We were getting into the clear and quickly. 25 knots. 253. Almost too quickly. Hello, District of Columbia, this is Agincourt.

Do you read over? Can you hear me? I looked up and back over my shoulder. 258, 259, 26 knots. The Leviathan wasn't pursuing us at all. It was moving back up. I fired up all of Agincourt's lights and thrusters and blew a ballast. We began to climb. Lavelle.

What, what is it? Any luck on the radio? None yet. Why? Leviathan's not moving after us. It's going up. Good. Districts later when it gets close then. It's not going to get close. It's going to come up right underneath the boat. So it won't be able to use this armament of that range. There was a pause. 23 knots now. We lost speed when we moved up. 23-1. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. Move. Move. Move. God. Goh, God. Get us up there.

Just keep trying to raise the ship 25.4 knots 257 The massive shadow of the Lovitan was moving up into the brighter waters And I could see his tentacles falling into line As a gained speed Hello hello

District of Columbia This is Agincourt Can you read me over Respond Respond 27.3 knots 3,000 feet below the surface 2,000 roughly to Districtor

district's test depth. Aschincourt continued to climb, and gracefully as she did, the waters began to brighten. The pressure gauge began to fall, and the Leviathan, now swimming fast far above and to the left of us, came closer into view. Only then did I understand fully. District of Columbia stood no chance, even in an unfair fight. This beast was unstoppable. Hello, hello, District of Columbia, this is Agincourt. Can you read me?

Over. Fifteen hundred feet to the escort's test depth. Hello, Jingort. Is district? Columbia here. Reading. Over? We're...

Move... Listen to me, in sign. We're telling you, we do not have the Leviathan in tow. I repeat, we do not have the Leviathan in tow. It got between us. and is heading for the coordinates I listed earlier. If you're there, you need to fall back immediately. Do copy.

Leave now. 1,000 feet, 800, 750. Breaking up, the coordinates listed. To 3.4 by negative 150. 0.45. Ding by package. Wait. Wait.

District of Columbia, do you copy? This is Lieutenant Lovell of the USS Agincourt. Are you there? Do you re... Gr... My heartbeat kicked up into my throat. I knew that sound. The roar of the Leviathan from the Tuscany tapes. Clearly the beast had exhausted its usefulness for stealth.

And that could only mean a single thing. Damn it. Lavelle joined me in the pilot's fear. Jesus, what the hell was that? We're too late, that's what it is. We're too damn late, and we were. Although Agincourt's current of speed swept us in closer before, I pulled it to a full stop.

It was a stop with a view, though, a helpless and terrible view. We saw the mountainous back of the Leviathan, and its Great Moor, covered with a shield wall of its writhing tentacles, absorbing a series of torpedo charges from the escort sub. It discharged the flurry of Mark 48s from the pods. Those torpedoes left on rockets and detonated in waves. Boom, boom, boom! And for a fleeting moment, I thought it might be enough,

if properly targeted, to turn back the Leviathan or wound the damn thing or something. But the beast took the hits and only crawled forward and before long the sub had only its ballistic arsenal, nothing appropriate for a fight like this. It began to throw its whole effort into a retreat, but an Ohio class is a hulking mammoth, two football fields in length and nearly 19,000 long tons of metal and rivets.

It is fast, but not fast enough. The District of Columbia was doomed. Try to raise the dixon, Lovell, I said, and my voice trembled when I did. This trick is dust. As I said it, the final torpedo in the Columbia's armament cache was launched. It sped through the water

and trowed to skipping, sputtering wake, and hit a tentacle, and exploded tremendously, but fruitlessly upon it. And then, after a moment of silence, the Leviathan unraveled itself, and its tentacles blocked out the last of the sunbeams at dusk,

And they swirled and curled and wrapped their vastness around the hulk of the district. And then the vessel was gone. I pulled Agincourt away from the feasting with all speed. 20 knots. 20.1. 20.4. Hello, USS Dixon. Do you read? This is Lieutenant Lovell of the Agincourt. Respond, over. 22 knots. Hello, hello, Dixon.

This is the U.S. Yes, Agincourt. Over. Requesting a pickup. Do you read me? Over. 23. I felt a rumbling and a shaking and a mighty displacement in the water behind us. Agincourt buckled and rolled. I looked behind me. 23.5. Hello, Dixon. This is the Agincourt. Do you copy? Over.

236? Oh God. The Leviathan. had finished this meal and was turning around. His tentacles alone forced a flood of riptide. And then, God Almighty, there it was. The more. It was big, hideously, monstrously, impossibly big.

A yawning canyon and a mouth all the same. What the hell was this thing? 24.1 knots of speed. 246. Hello. Ajincourt, this is the USS Dixon, responding to your request for pickup. What's your heading? The Leviathan opened its eyes, and Asincourt was suddenly awash in an orange glow.

Damn. Lovell? Hold on, Dixon. What? 26 nuts. Cancel pickup. What? Why?

263. It sees us. Tell Dixon to get itself to safety. We'll try to shift. shake this thing in rendezvous. 268. 27. Dixon, do you copy?

Over? Loud and clear, Arjuncourt. 275. The Leviathan's tentacle flew into form behind it as it gave chase. Help us, please, please Jesus. 27-7. Listen to me.

We are currently heading northwest with all speed. The USS District of Columbia has been destroyed. We... 279. 28. I'm sorry. Say again over. The Columbia is gone?

Affirmative. The Leviathan has destroyed the USS District of Columbia. We are now... Gour... Damn it. I gunned Achencourt's thrusters for all they were worth. They groaned and protested. But they did their job.

If only just... Thirty knots. 30.2. 30.3. Even if the ocean itself seemed to be draining into the thing's mouth by the lake load. Come on, baby, come on, come on, come on.

As in court, this is Dixon Actual. Confirmed destruction of District of Columbia, over. 32 knots. Yes, sir. The Leviathan took everything District had to throw at it, sir. And then it just ate the ship. Grew. 32-5, 32-9.

We've located your beacon, Arsincourt. The destroyer group is moving into rescue and engage. My heart stopped. 33-nuts. Lovell! I know, I know. Dixon, are you there? Captain Gilsey, do not engage, sir.

Do not engage. I promise you, sir. There is nothing short of a damned nuke that can stop this thing. Get that destroyer group to safety, and we will meet you there. negative Agincourt You've brought the thing into the open We'll handle it from here Gilsie out

34 knots and climbing Dixon Respond, over Ashingort flew admirably But from the sound and from its own effort It rumbled and shook And it swam against the might of the current 34-7-35

Come on baby Come on baby Dixon This is Agincourt, requesting you to disengage immediately. Respond. Respond, God damn it. The Leviathan was gaining. Whether or not that meant it was moving swift

or simply dragging the sea itself into its yawn was unclear and irrelevant. All I knew and all I cared to reverse was the fact that Agincourt was failing, despite a mighty effort to put distance between herself and a hunter. It was a race against time and all the odds. and it was a race we were losing. 36 knots, 361.

Dixon, this is Agincourt. Answer me, you psychopaths, disengage. Gr... Every dial and needle and stick and leather rattled in their seats, and my eardrum shook. And upstairs, I can hear LaValle screaming in rage and pounding the side of the control desk with a wrench.

37 knots. 373. The closer the Leviathan got, the more speed we needed just to keep ourselves alive. It was like being caught by pull of gravity on the edge of an event horizon. One wrong move, a simple mistake would doom us. I began to see the shadow of the moor creep over the ship. Agincourt was nearly at capacity now. 39 knots.

And it wasn't enough. Ashincourt Dixon! Asynchord Dickson! Do not engage! I repeat... The bell paused when he heard the static. Once again, the mass of the Leviathan blocked our signal, and there was nothing we could do to stop it. The water rushed into the moor, and Asingort went with it, tumbling helplessly and desperately, and, with its thrusters flaring with all their strength of arms and all their force. Latner, he said, are we? Boom!

The force of the explosion, from an anti-submarine ship-to-ship missile, undoubtedly expanded. Undoubtedly, expanded through the sea and seemed to set the whole ocean ablaze. The Dixon had arrived. Boom! Another explosion went off and it shook our ship to the core, and the Leviathan rerouted its core. rerouted its course for the surface with demonic speed. Gour...

Behind us, by not more than a few hundred feet, we felt its mass as it moved. Undersea waves were unleashed that enveloped and consumed the Agincourt and sent a tumbling ballast to ballast and left her nearly belly up in the water before she rolled around again. Boom! Boom!

The explosions were getting closer. Lavelle. They don't know we're down here. Boom, boom, boom. I don't know. They might have lost our beacon with a radio signal. What does that mean? Boom, boom, boom.

It means they think we're dead. Can you try to raise them again? I don't know. Well, there was a mighty flash of light and then. Boom. The force of the latest depth bomb washed through the sea and through the Agincourt's battered hull and into a cabin.

It sent me reeling, despite my restraints. My ears rang and reported back nothing but that ringing, and the ship buckled and tumbled and groaned and shuddered and shook, and the lights flickered, and the alarm blared, and the panels flashed red. I embuckle myself from the toppled chair and rose to my feet, shakily, and stumbled over to the controls. Boom, boom, boom.

The explosions were no further off than before the last one, but my ears struggled now to report them properly. Everything was muffled. Everything swam. My head, my vision. I fumbled at the controls and found half unresponsive and the others blaring. What? Lavelle, I heard myself shout.

Lavelle, can you raise the Dixon? Lavelle? I kept fumbling over the controls. dials and readouts and panels were in their off-state I tried boosting the thrusters but heard only the click-click-click-clicking of the control in the set Lavelle, are you there?

Boom, I could hear my own heart more so than the battle. Lavelle! And gradually the shock began to fade and when it did it gave way to something worse. Fear Lavelle

I ran from the control set to the hatch ladder and looked up A droplet of water hit me in the eye Then another and another I started to climb Boom boom boom As my hand hit the top rung It slipped on fluid But I grabbed it tighter and pulled myself up into the operation centre below the hatch

Lavelle There was no response Of course there was no response Lavelle was sitting at an unnatural angle Against the far wall And his eyes were still shut And a bit of blood pulled from his right here And down onto his shoulders

Where he was washed away By a steady trickle of seawater from the bent hatch The lights flickered again I reached my friend and knelt next to him in the water Lavelle Hey buddy Hey can you hear me Not but the slightest quietest whimper

but it was drowned out by other sounds quickly, the roar of the beast. Far more ominous even than that. I heard rushing water from down below. When I looked over the edge, I saw the ocean inside the pilot sphere and it was rising up to meet me, but I could only see it from a sunbeam

that struck through the hatch. I grabbed a wrench. Lavelle, we're at the service. I can see the sun. It's right there, buddy. That's home. Just sit tight, okay? I climbed up two more rungs on the ladder and swung at the hatch with the wrench. Clang! It bent up ever so slightly. I swung again. Clang! An inch of progress. The water crested the threshold of the operations room. Lavelle whimpered. Hang in there, buddy, okay? I swung. swing again.

Clang. Boom, boom, boom. The light shut off for a final time. Agincourt tumbled and groaned as she died. Clang! Come on, please Jesus, please God. Clang! The hatch began to bend a bit more.

The sunlight brightened and the water from below now had reached the midpoint of Lubell's upturned service boots. Clang! I felt a release. Got it! I had forced the hole in the hatch big enough to put a hand through, but then water dumped inside at twice the rate of the search from below. I turned my head and slid down the ladder and stumbled back as he began to pull up.

What the? Then I looked up through the hole, and only once I did did I realise the mistake. We weren't at the surface. We were merely close to it, not more than a few hundred feet away, but many, many feet too far. Water flooded the operations room from both ends and washed me up against the wall next to Lavelle. The ocean threw itself to our beating and it pounded us in waves and torrents and buckets.

I couldn't breathe for seconds at a time and he squeezed it with all the mighty had, just enough to bend his fingertips around the side of my palms. And then we began to float up to the ceiling. I'm sorry, buddy. I'm really, really sorry. I tried. I heard no more explosions from the battle not far off. Just the triumphant roar of the Leviathan,

and the rush of water, and my own ragged, heaving, shaking breaths. I pressed my lips to the ceiling and sucked in all the air that was there to breathe, and I could feel Lavelle slipped beneath the surface and the water tightened up around my chest and then it was over my face

then a shadow fell over the hulking bones of the Agincourt's hull and I felt a slamming impact and a rush and then clang they're inside I opened up my eyes

they hurt I didn't know when it was I knew nothing at all in fact But I heard footsteps and saw a shadow And then I felt something grabbed my shoulders and hoist me up A bucket to other sea water fell from my shirt and hair and face What You're okay, you're okay

Lieutenant Latner, is it? Hey, come here, it's okay We're gonna get you out of here, okay? And sign, and tell Eng we've got a survivor Yes, sir. I don't know. I don't know what... It's okay.

Lavelle. What's that? Lavelle? Is he um... I don't... I don't remember. I can't... I started crying in pitiful, racking, heaving, messy sobs.

Hey, hey, it's okay, it's okay. Can someone help me out here? And then I started to slip. Hey, I'm losing him. I'm losing him. I'm... And then everything went black. I woke up in a hospital bed. For more than a day, I was delirious. But once I came to, I was filled in, as I, in turn, was able to recall my story for a report.

From what I was told, the following had happened. The Dixon had been destroyed, lost with all hands, along with his own. escort and of course the District of Columbia. All told the Navy lost more than 700 good men in the operation. Among them was a lieutenant named David Scott Lavelle in the deadliest day in the history of the Navy at peacetime. But I learned something else as well. Based on the impact mark alongside the Agincourt's rectal,

it is evident that after feasting on the Dixon, the Leviathan hit Agincourt and knocked it clear to the surface where another ship, the Arleigh Burke destroyer Tecumseh found a rolling in the surf with a broken hatch. The Navy will undoubtedly make an effort to cover up this story

and explain away the losses as a disastrous training failure. But I'll have no part of that, nor any further efforts to hunt down the Leviathan. No, this story needs to be told. For those lost men, and for Lavelle surely,

and for you. Like the pilot of Tuscany before me, I have accepted the fact that the thing down there should not be disturbed, and neither should it's home. For the love of God himself, do not venture far into the deep, deep pit of the wild Pacific.

For all our sakes.