The ocean wasn't blue. It was gray sludge.
The Neptune cut through the water like a rusty knife through spoiled meat. The wake it left wasn't white foam; it was a thick, oily brown trail that didn't close.
Marcus stood on the bridge. He stared out the window.
He saw nothing.
The Black Fog had swallowed the world. It was industrial smog, heavy with heavy metals and ash, that had settled on the water's surface. It blotted out the sun. It muffled sound.
"GPS is dead," Valeria said, tapping the glass of the compass. "Magnetic interference is spinning the needle. We're sailing blind."
"Maintain heading," Marcus said. "East is where the sun should be."
"There is no sun," Valeria snapped. "Just gray."
[STATUS: LOST]
[RESOURCES: WATER CRITICAL]
The UI in Marcus's mind flashed red. He rubbed his eyes.
A scream cut through the muffled silence of the ship.
It came from the cargo hold.
Marcus turned and ran.
He burst onto the lower deck.
The refugees were huddled in the corners. In the center of the room, a man was thrashing on the floor.
It was Titus, a young soldier who had survived the mine.
He was screaming.
"The divers! They're on the hull! Don't let them in!"
He clawed at his own face, drawing blood.
Decimus and two others were trying to hold him down. Titus kicked wild, sending a crate of supplies skidding across the deck.
"Get off me!" Titus shrieked. He grabbed a metal spoon from a bowl of gruel. He stabbed at Decimus.
"Hold him!" Marcus ordered.
He stepped in. He didn't draw his sword.
He grabbed Titus's wrist. He twisted. The spoon clattered to the floor.
Marcus pinned the boy's chest with his knee.
"Look at me!" Marcus shouted.
Titus's eyes were wide, the pupils blown. He wasn't seeing Marcus. He was seeing monsters.
"They have no faces!" Titus wept. "The water... it whispers!"
Galen pushed through the crowd. He held a syringe.
"Sedative!" the physician yelled.
He jammed the needle into Titus's neck.
The boy convulsed once, then went limp.
Marcus stood up, breathing hard.
"What is this?" he demanded.
Galen looked grim. He walked to the water tank in the corner. He opened the tap.
Brown liquid trickled out.
"The filters are clogged," Galen said. "Bio-matter. Algae. The fog is poisoning the rain. We are drinking hallucinogens."
"Fix it," Marcus said.
"I can't," Galen said, holding up a black, slimy filter cartridge. "I have no spares. If we keep drinking this, we all go mad. If we stop, we die of thirst in two days."
Marcus looked at the refugees. They looked sick. Pale. Shivering.
"We need supplies," Marcus said.
PING.
The intercom crackled.
"Captain," Valeria's voice. "Get to the bridge. Now."
Marcus ran up the stairs.
Valeria was staring at the radar screen. It was glowing green in the dark cabin.
A massive blob dominated the center of the scope.
"Is that land?" Marcus asked.
"Too small for an island," she said. "Too big for a ship."
"Distance?"
"One mile. Dead ahead."
Marcus looked out the window.
The fog swirled.
A shape emerged. Massive. angular. Gray steel rising out of the gray water like a cliff face.
It was a ship.
But not like the Neptune. This was a floating city. A flat-top deck stretching into the mist. A tower rising ten stories high.
[OBJECT IDENTIFIED: AIRCRAFT CARRIER - USS GERALD R. FORD]
"An American warship," Lucilla whispered, standing behind him. "Nuclear powered."
"Is it active?" Marcus asked.
"No lights," Valeria said. "No heat signature. It's drifting."
"A ghost ship," Marcus said.
He looked at the massive hull.
"They have desalination plants," Marcus realized. "They have filters. Fuel. Med-bays."
He turned to the team.
"We're boarding."
"It's a tomb," Valeria warned. "Whatever killed them might still be there."
"Thirst will kill us faster," Marcus said. "Bring us alongside."
The Neptune looked like a toy next to the carrier.
Valeria brought them under the overhang of the flight deck. She fired a grapple line. It caught on a catwalk railing.
Marcus, Narcissus, and Lucilla climbed the rope ladder.
They pulled themselves onto the catwalk.
The wind here was cold. The silence was absolute.
They climbed the stairs to the flight deck.
It was a wasteland.
F-35 jets sat in rows, rusted to the deck. Their canopies were shattered.
"Where is the crew?" Lucilla whispered. "This ship carries five thousand people."
Marcus drew his Vibro-Gladius.
"Check the tower."
They walked across the deck. Their boots echoed on the steel.
They found the first body near the blast shields.
It was a sailor. He was sitting against a wheel chock.
Marcus knelt.
"Hey," Marcus said. He touched the man's shoulder.
The shoulder didn't move. It crumbled.
A chunk of gray dust fell off.
The man wasn't flesh. He was stone.
Calcified. His skin was gray rock. His uniform was fused to his body. His face was frozen in a silent scream.
"Salt," Narcissus rumbled, sniffing the air. "He smells of salt."
"Not salt," Galen said, coming up behind them. He touched the dust. "Fungal calcification. The spores in the fog... they breathed it in. It turned their cells to stone from the inside out."
"Statues," Lucilla breathed. "They're all statues."
They looked around.
Dozens of them. Frozen in mid-stride. Huddled in groups. Statues of salt scattered across the deck.
"Don't touch them," Marcus ordered. "Respirators on. Tight."
He checked his mask seal.
"To the bridge," Marcus said. "We need the logs. And the supplies."
They entered the command tower.
The corridors were dark. Emergency red lights flickered on dying batteries.
Statues lined the halls. Some were reaching out. Some were fused to the walls.
They reached the Bridge.
The Admiral was sitting in his chair. He was a statue, staring out at the dead ocean.
Lucilla ran to the main console. She jacked in her datapad.
"Power is low," she muttered. "But the black box is active."
She pulled up the log.
Static.
Then a voice. Tired. Broken.
"This is Admiral Hayes. Day 40. The sky burned. We tried to nuke the orbital platform. We fired everything."
A cough. Dry and dusty.
"It... it just absorbed the blast. Then the fog came. It's in the vents. It's in the water."
"My legs are stiff. My skin is hard. We are turning into the heavy metal we breathed."
"If anyone finds this... the Grid has a blind spot. Coordinates attached. Use it. Save yours..."
The audio cut out.
Lucilla stared at the screen.
"A blind spot?" Marcus asked.
"The Orbital Defense Grid," Lucilla said, eyes widening. "It has a maintenance cycle. A gap in the sensor net over the Mediterranean. It moves."
She downloaded the map.
"We can use this," she said. "We can cross the open sea without getting glassed by the lasers."
"We have a route," Marcus said. "Now we need the water."
CLANK.
A sound from the corridor.
Heavy. Rhythmic.
CLANK. DRAG. CLANK.
Marcus spun around. He raised his sword.
"Narcissus," he whispered.
The giant raised his shield.
A figure stepped into the red light of the doorway.
It was a sailor.
But he was made of stone.
His skin was gray rock. His eyes were gone, replaced by crystalline growths. He moved stiffly, his joints cracking like breaking granite.
He wasn't dead.
He moaned. A sound of grinding gravel.
"Salt Walkers," Galen hissed. "The fungus... it animates the nervous system."
The statue lurched forward. It raised a fist that was basically a rock hammer.
Behind it, another stepped out. Then another.
The corridor filled with the sound of grinding stone.
"They aren't statues," Marcus said, activating the hum of his blade.
"They're the crew."
The Admiral in the chair behind them cracked his neck. He stood up.
"Run," Marcus said.
He swung the sword.