Afterdeath Ship 소설 & 이야기

"The explosion was localized to the cabin. Thermal scans confirm no survivors. We are currently dredging for the debris of the hardware token." Thorne didn't look pleased. He was a man of sixty, with hair like silver wire and a suit that cost more than a mid-sized apartment. He tapped a glass tablet, zooming in on the final satellite image of the Vesper before it ignited. "You’re a fool, Captain," Thorne said, his voice a smooth, terrifying rasp. "Look at the wake. The sloop was dragging something beneath the keel. A submersible pod. They didn't die; they traded a wooden shell for a carbon-fiber one."

One moment they were pulling triggers; the next, they were nothing but fine white ash dancing in the draft. ​The Acheron gave a terrifying groan. The massive iron plates of the hull buckled and warped. The ship was no longer a vessel meant for the sea. It was an altar, and we were the twin deities of its destruction. ​Silence returned, thick and heavy. Only the rhythmic, mournful creak of the sinking ship and the splash of water entering the lower decks remained.

C managed to catch it right out of the air, and it happened so fast I didn't even see him make a move. The metal hissed against his palm. Every hunter instantly shifted formation. Not around him. Around me. Target acquisition. My stomach dropped. Not captive. Not victim. Threat. There it was. The final illusion dying quietly inside my ribs. There was no going back. Elias’s voice echoed coldly through the cathedral. “Selene Virell is deceased.” The words hit harder than any weapon. “She ceased to be human the moment she turned.” Some of the hunters glanced at each other uncertainly - I knew a few of them, we had been through training together, and we had been wounded together too.

“Talk.” He hesitated. “One of our captains — the Sorrenti crew out of Naples — flipped.” “To who?” Luca asked. Mateo’s jaw clenched. “We're not sure. But two of our intel are dead, and someone leaked the coordinates of our cargo ship in the Adriatic. It was hit an hour ago. Sunk.” Amara’s face didn’t change. “How many casualties?” “Ten. Including the captain.” Her silence was louder than a scream.

"Fran, midnight has arrived. You just need to die in this world, and you can go back." I picked up a sharp piece of glass and raised my hand, dragging the jagged edge across my artery. Finally, I was leaving this world where no one loved me. Everything was finally going to end.

Tears rolled down my cheeks as I listened to them speak, eventually freezing into ice. Silence grew once more in the room. However, the temperature was still dropping. My mind grew even hazier. 'Mom, I'm coming to you. I'm sorry. I can't live on. I'm sorry...' I was dead. I died. I died in that icy basement they locked me in. As the last shreds of warmth fled my body, I thought to myself, 'If there is a next life, I don't want to see them again.' However, I never realized my mind would stay past my death.

"Must have carried fifty thousand people." "Life signs?" "Faint. Very faint. But present. Something is alive in there." They docked carefully. Boarded the derelict. The ship was a tomb. Bodies everywhere. Thousands of them. Preserved by vacuum and cold. "They died centuries ago," the medical officer said. "Looks like life support failed. They suffocated." "Then what is generating the life signs?" They followed the signals. Deep into the ship. To the cryo bay. And they found them.

"Elara, if your friends aren't here..." "They’re here," she whispered, looking at a small, pulsing light on her own modified watch. "Drop the anchor. Kill the lights. We have to go completely cold." They sat in the pitch-black silence of the North Atlantic. The only sound was the water slapping against the hull and the heavy, terrified breathing of the four of them. Suddenly, a massive shape rose from the depths—not a submarine, but a gargantuan, rust-stained hull of a ship that seemed to materialize out of the fog. It had no lights, no flags. It was a ghost ship of the modern age.

Like I was already floating away. Maybe this was it. Death. [System Online]

“Lady Ever—” “No names.” Becky lifted a hand without slowing. “Not mine. Not yours. Not tonight.” The man bowed his head. “As you wish.” “Is the ship ready?” “Aye.” He jerked his chin toward the vessel moored at the far end of the dock. It was a weather-beaten cargo ship, hull patched, sails rolled, the Eastwind insignia freshly painted over with a darker, unfamiliar crest. “False flag, false registry, false manifests. No one’ll track where she’s goin’.”