CHAPTER 6: WHERE ARE THE MOUNTAINS?
Nunes smiled, looking at her with a strangely mischievous gaze.
"Heard you." His voice came through the monitor, answering her.
"Alright, go on, get going." She pointed to the exit, impatient.
"Positive." Nunes advanced down the corridor to the manual exit to the outside.
The first hatch opened with a brief hiss. The pressure stabilized.
He stepped forward. Entered the tiny transition chamber—a space so tight he could barely move. The door behind him shut with a dry, metallic snap.
Silence.
A few seconds later, the final hatch opened.
And there he was.
Outside the ship. Alone.
With the echo of the past still reverberating in every corner of his soul.
The sight before him was both terrifying and hypnotic.
There was no solid ground.
No rocks.
No islands.
Only ocean.
A world made entirely of water—dense, murky, alive.
Oily shades of deep blue rippled across the surface, darkening toward the edges, while pale strokes of celadon shimmered where cosmic light managed to touch.
Above, the sky was absurd. Vast. Shifting.
The neighboring planet loomed impossibly close, suspended like a dream—its clouds spinning in slow motion, a lazy vortex in the heavens.
And beyond it all...
The black hole.
Colossal. Like a wound torn in the fabric of the universe.
At its center, pure nothingness.
But around it—the accretion disk burned like a ring of frozen fire.
Glacial blue. Metallic violet.
Bands of light spinning at impossible speeds, liquid radiance spiraling into the void.
The ship drifted there.
Aimless.
Far too small in that ancient sea.
Slow waves rocked the silver hull, and the reflections from above danced over the water—colors bending and shifting.
Dreamlike blues.
Flashes of electric indigo.
Nunes climbed to the top of the ship, bracing himself on the hatch.
There was no wind.
And the silence...
Crushing.
He turned slowly, scanning every direction.
Only water.
Water in every direction.
Murky. Infinite.
A mirror reflecting both fear and beauty.
"Twenty miles of deep ocean," He remembered.
That was it.
Floating above a liquid abyss thirty thousand meters deep.
But worse...
was what lived beneath it.
Far off, something leapt.
And vanished just as quickly.
Fast. Graceful.
Pearlescent scales flashed for a moment before disappearing again—like an alien dolphin.
Only... much, much bigger.
Other shadows followed, deeper down.
Slow, circular movements.
Some had tails thick as ships.
Others, fins as sharp as blades.
Monsters.
Sharks with multiple mouths.
Whales with no eyes.
Creatures a thousand meters long, swimming beneath him like forgotten gods.
And the human above...
A speck of dust.
Or a snack.
"…Holy shit," Nunes whispered, chuckling nervously. "I just noticed…"
He looked around again, frowning.
"Weren't there two mountains around here? We nearly crashed into them, didn't we?" He mumbled. "Could it be that this moon's waves carried us to a different valley from the one we fell into?"
A roar.
Distant.
Low.
Resonant.
Water cascaded downward—
from the peaks. From the crests
The "mountains" were moving.
His eyes widened. His breath froze.
"Nunes?" Ketlen's voice came through the radio, cutting through the silence.
"What was that noise? Sounded like Jailson Mendes screaming. You okay?"
He didn't answer. Just stared.
The mountains kept moving.
No...
...they weren't mountains.
They were backs.
Massive, rising backs, covered in spines that slowly broke the surface.
"Answer me, idiot. I'm talking to you," Ketlen insisted, the joke starting to fall flat.
He swallowed hard.
"Remember those mountains?"
"…Huh?"
"They…"
He watched—one veering left, the other right, parting the sea like tectonic plates.
"…they're walking."
Radio silence.
"…Walking?"
"Uh-huh."
Another roar.
Closer.
Louder.
"You ever heard of the Bloop?"
"What the hell is going on?!" Ketlen now screamed.
And then…
The creature emerged.
Not all of it. Never all.
Just a fragment.
First, the shell.
Then, the fins.
And finally...
An eye.
An eye the size of the entire ship.
Black.
Unfathomable.
Calm—as if it had lived here for millennia.
Bored—as if it had already devoured suns.
And there, before him,
the universe felt...
small.
Then the creature sank.
Like a mountain, tired of being awake.
Like an international flight plane falling into the ocean.
Nothing.
Absolute silence.
Only the waves remained—
as if nothing had ever happened.
"Come here, outside. You need to see this." Nunes's voice sounded calm, very serene, almost an invitation for a stroll.
Ketlen, rolling her eyes, impatient. "No fucking way, what do you want?"
"Just come on." Nunes's calm was a challenge.
"I already said no, damn it." Her irritation was palpable over the radio.
"There's a suit your size. I'm waiting."
"Then you'll keep waiting, dummy!" She retorted, almost childishly.
"Damn it... JUST COME ON, YOU ANIMAL!" Frustration finally burst in Nunes's voice, his eyes wide.
"FINE, YOU INSFFERABLE ASSHOLE!" she replied, her eyes wide with frustration, ceding to his insistence.
"Tsk... Silly girl." He smiled, murmuring to himself, until he remembered something peculiar.
"My suit... It has a display here, doesn't it? On the left forearm..."
"I think it shows today's date, let me just confirm real quick..."