We found a secret base at the bottom of the ocean. It should have been left alone.

It wasn’t until I found myself standing on the deck of an unnamed military ship, sailing out into the middle of the ocean, before I finally started to question the mission I’d signed up for. The exceptionally large sum of money had been the initial hook, but the allure of a top secret mission was not something I longed for. Still I had to ask: why had they chosen me, and where were we actually going?

“A good soldier keeps his fucking mouth shut,” I remembered my Seargent yelling at my face more than a decade earlier. Things had been so simple then, I followed orders and never questioned whether or not our actions were inherently good. In my eyes, I was doing the right thing, but the line between good and evil quickly blurred as I’d gotten deployed.

“I know they told you not to talk to the crew, but I gotta ask, what in God’s name made you sign up for this mission?” a man asked as I stared out at the ocean. He was well built, clearly a soldier based on his posture. Though his outfit didn’t match the rest of the crew.

“I fit the profile,” was all I responded.

“Do you even know where we’re heading?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“That’s probably why they chose you. The name’s Ulrich, I’m the leader of this mission,” he said.

I looked over at him. I wouldn’t have taken him as the man in charge, he looked more like an enforcer, a man with more power than brains. His age fit though, and his cold, emotionless demeanor was enough to tell me he’d seen a thing or two.

“I’m Shaun. I’m guessing you’re going to tell me where exactly we’re heading?” I asked.

“Down there,” he said as he pointed to the cold, blue ocean.

I chuckled. “I’ve never served aboard a submarine. If you think I can aid you in underwater warfare, you’ve chosen the wrong man.”

He smirked in return. “That ain’t it, Shaun.We’re going deeper, all the way to the bottom.”

I had to admit that the man had piqued my curiosity more than the initial briefing.

“Why? What’s down there?”

“Atlantis! What else?” he exclaimed as if announcing a long awaited reveal.

“The mythological sunken city? That’s a real place?” I asked, still awaiting the punchline.

“No, of course not, at least not in a historical sense. The Atlantis we’re visiting is a base built shortly after the second world war. In anticipation of nuclear war, a lot of rich bastards wanted a safe place to hide. They decided the bottom of the ocean would fit. It had to be kept a secret, of course. Only a handful of government employees ever learned about the project, and they’ve since taken the secret to their grave.”

The look on my face must have been enough, because I didn’t have to ask another question before he started talking.

“The base remained a secret until a few documents resurfaced a couple of years ago. Apparently we lost contact with the base in the eighties, alongside all the science put into the base. Can you imagine the kind of things they kept down there?”

“No,” I said.

“That’s why we’re going down there. We’re going to get the station back up and running, and retrieve as much information as possible…”

Two other men joined us, both clearly military. They were Jacon and Benjamin, the combat engineers meant to accompany us on the mission.

As the ship finally stopped, Ulrich led us to the starboard side where a strange vessel had been prepared. It looked more like a lunar landing probe than a sub, one with an exceptionally thick hull.

“Ever been in the depths?” Jacob asked as we were escorted inside.

I shook my head, as did Benjamin. The truth was that the four of us were all strangers carrying only fragments of information. Due to the risk of leaking top secret information, I half worried we’d be executed upon completion.

The vessel shook as they dropped us into the ocean, but as soon as we’d fell below the surface, an odd sense of peace washed over us. The descent itself was rapid, with light quickly giving way to infinite darkness as we sunk into the depths below.

A few instances of small-talk broke up, but we quickly fell silent again with each creak of the outer hull, settling under the immense pressure of the ocean. I felt tense the entire ride, and it wasn’t until I felt an abrupt stop, before I realized we’d reached the bottom.

“I guess this is it,” I said.

“Alright. Jacob, initiate docking procedures. The rest of you gear up, I don’t want anyone leaving this vessel without their atmospheric suit. You take point, Shaun,” Ulrich ordered. I nodded in agreement, and Jacob made contact with the docking station without much hassle. From there, we could connect to the station’s monitoring systems.

“Looks like the pressure inside is fine. Life support is partially broken though, only a few sections still have oxygen. We might be able to get them back up and running, but I can’t promise anything,” Jacob said.

“Any sign of life?” Ulrich asked.

“Couldn’t tell you based on this alone, but without oxygen what could there possibly be?” Jacob asked back.

“Still, stay alert. Let’s get this over with,” Ulrich said.

My ears painfully popped as the doors opened. I raised my rifle and took the first step inside Atlantis. The station was running on its emergency backup systems, supposedly fuelled by underground volcanic activity, but it meant we had little more than emergency lights to guide our way.

The rest of them followed closely. As we exited the airlock, we found ourselves in a neatly decorated hallway that was more reminiscent of a fifties hotel than a submarine base. While the metal walls still stood exposed, they’d clearly put a great deal of effort into making the place feel like home.

On each side of the hall were several, metal doors, each marked with simple numbers and letters. Between each door hung a picture of one of the inhabitants; most of them scientists, some military.

“I don’t see anything,” Benjamin said.

“Neither do I,” Ulrich agreed. “The coms should be in section 7H alongside the control room, somewhere in the center of the base. We should deal with life support first. It should be right around the corner in 3C.”

The decoration made the station seem more gloomy rather than making it feel like a home. I supposed times had changed since then, but I couldn’t help but feel like we were walking through a graveyard.

“This is the one,” Benjamin said as we opened the door to the life support systems. Unlike the neatly decorated hallways that room was little more than a generator room with machines and metal walls. It produced oxygen directly from water through electrolysis, essentially an infinite source of breathable air.

There was also a map of the station on the wall, each showing habitability and biological activity. “No signs of life at all. I guess we’re safe for now,” Benjamin said.

I lowered my guard ever so slightly, while still staying alert.

“Shouldn’t be too hard to fix this,” Benjamin said. “Almost looks like someone purposely sabotaged it, but they didn’t do a very good job.”

“Alright, we’ll go ahead and repair the coms. Are you fine on your own?” Ulrich asked.

Benjamin nodded.

“Then let’s go.”

Leaving one of our engineers behind, we kept moving towards the control room.

“So if the station went dark, but no one ever left, where are the bodies?” I asked.

“Who knows if they got out. Might have fled and stayed under the radar,” Ulrich said.

On the way, I took a peek inside a few of the already opened doors. They were bedrooms and offices, all neatly decorated to look like home, with personal effects and unmade beds. If the crew had left, they clearly didn’t bother to take anything with them.

By the time we reached the central hub, about twenty minutes had passed. The station was massive, large enough to house at least five hundred people, all of whom had just vanished without a trace.

Then we walked by a door marked differently than the others. “Z9,” it read, a massive jump if the rooms were marked alphabetically. In addition, the room was labelled “laboratory.”

“Should we check it out?” I asked.

“Later, we need to fix the coms and upload the data,” Ulrich ordered.

But as we tried to proceed through into the control room, we were met with a sealed door that had been fused shut.

“Someone really doesn’t want to let us through here,” Jacob said as he put down his bag of tools. “But I can get through, just give me ten minutes.”

“I suppose we could check out the lab in the meantime. There might be some valuable information there,” Ulrich said.

The two of us entered the lab. It was impressively large with rows of tables and hundreds of vials and equipment neither of us could recognize. There were a few typewriters and what looked like ancient computers probably only meant to decipher messages.

The tables themselves were empty, except for one occupied by a lump hidden under a large, plastic cover.

Ulrich went to gather documents, while I went to the occupied table. I had to take a few steps back in pure shock as I dragged the sheet away. What lay beneath it was a disfigured being I couldn’t even begin to recognize. It was about the size of a human with pale, smooth skin. In place of its head it only had a hole with numerous, long teeth that resembled blades more than chewing components. The only other appendages were four, thick legs that ended in spiky bones, and multiple holes all across its body that resembled gills.

But what truly worried me was the multiple gunshot wounds it had suffered, all of which only penetrated an inch deep due to its thick skin. The actual cause of death appeared to be a massive hole in its abdomen, but what had caused it I didn’t know.

“What the hell is this?” I asked.

Ulrich turned around, holding onto a bunch of papers. His face lit up with confusion as he saw the horrific creature, but he didn’t seem all that surprised.

“Listen to this,” he began. “19th of October, 1978. The runners have infiltrated sector A and B. We’ve managed to seal off the sections, but it’s not going to hold for long. Ballistic projectiles have little effect, seeming only to briefly slow them down. The railgun has proven to eliminate the runners with moderate effect, but with only one still operational, we can’t hold them all off.

We’ve retrieved one of their bodies. Preliminary findings show that they’re airless creatures. They filter oxygen directly through their multiple gills, and have thick skin and unbreakable bones that…” he trailed off. “It just goes on to describe their anatomy, but check this out:

They only flee when the Secutor appears. As far as we know, there’s only one of them, but it has proven impervious to all weapons. Should it break through the lockdown, we need to evacuate the station.”

He finished reading, and just stared at me. “What the hell is the ‘Secutor?’” he asked.

“I don’t know, but we-” before I could finish that sentence, the sounds of fans broke the otherwise silent atmosphere. And with that, our radios lit up.

“Hey, it’s Benjamin. I got life support working. Don’t take off your masks, it’s going to take a few minutes until the air is breathable.”

“Alright, meet us at the control room,” Ulrich said.

We covered the mangled creature back up, and went to meet Jacob who’d already managed to break through the containment. The control room was a circular area with tons of radio equipment and workstations. The floor was littered with small pieces of what looked like old wood. I bent down to pick one of them up, only to realize they were shattered, human bones.

“Eh, guys. I think I found what remains of the crew,” I said with a nervous voice.

“What the fuck?” Jacob chimed in.

“We’ll be fine, the creatures have to be dead by now. Attach the transmitter to the coms, and let’s upload all the data we can get.”

Jacob went to work with Ulrich as I guarded the room. I kept thinking back to the creature on the bed. Based on the log, it had already been there for decades. But if that was the case, why hadn’t it decomposed, and where were the others, what was the Secutor?

I took a peak at some of the documents Ulrich had taken with, but a section stood out to me, one on the very last page.

30th of October 1978. They’ve broken down our evac systems. The handful of survivors that still remain are trapped. We’re trying to send out a distress signal, but the surface isn’t responding. The only solution we’ve found is to flood the station with carbon dioxide. It doesn’t kill the creatures, but it seems to put them into an indefinite stasis. Our engineers are already on route to destroy the life support systems. The control room runs on a backup system, so we should be fine until help arrives.

Based on the bones on the floor, it seemed like rescue never came. I listened to the fans humming, and thought back to the fresh, but ancient corpse. Just as I started to put the pieces of the puzzle together, another call came through the radio.

“There’s something in here with me, I can hear them in the walls!” Benjamin called out.

“What are you talking about?” Ulrich asked back.

“As soon as the oxygen rose, I started hearing knocks inside the locked rooms and walls. I thought it was the pipes or something at first, but then they started growling, and- wait, what the- oh, God, I see-”

A brief scream was heard before the radio cut out, and Benjamin went dark.

“Shaun, you’re coming with me. We’ve got to help Benjamin,” Ulrich ordered.

But before we could even get going, we heard muffled growls coming from within the hall, and some coming from down the hall. Whatever Benjamin had seen, it was coming towards us en masse. Then a few holes in the wall blew open without damaging the outer hull, and the first of the horrific creatures emerged.

“We’ll hold them off. Jacob, get those coms working, now!” Ulrich yelled.

“I’m on it!”

Ulrich and I took position in front of the broken up door and raised our rifles. A dozen creatures came running down the hall, with more emerging from the holes in the walls. Their gills pulsated as they inhaled the fresh oxygen that was being pumped into the station. Before we could even open fire, the hallway was full of monsters.

“Where the hell did they come from?” Ulrich asked.

“They were sleeping. The air woke them up. We did this,” I said.

We unleashed a hail of bullets, most of which hit the creatures, but some went too far, forming holes in the wall. Luckily the outer hull was far too thick to be penetrated. Our weapons were significantly more powerful than those used by the former inhabitants of the station, able to maim the creatures enough to render them harmless.

“There’s too many of the fuckers,” I yelled over the sound of gunfire.

“How much time do you need?” Ulrich asked.

“It’s already uploading. Let’s get the fuck out of here!” Jacob yelled.

But escaping was easier said than done, and before long we had been overrun by the creatures. Jacob joined in and emptied a magazine into the horde with little effect. One of them managed to get through, and bounced off the wall to pound Ulrich. With a single bite, it ripped the flesh from Ulrich’s arm. He let out an agonized yell as he fell to the ground. I walked straight up and put a bullet in what I assumed was its brain, which flung it to the ground.

With that, every single creature froze in place. For a brief moment, the entire station had fallen into deafening silence. Then we heard it, a sickening, guttural growl coming from the distant hallways. It sounded almost human, but far too low pitched, emitting a mixture between agonized pain and anger. One the echo stopped, each and every one of the pale creatures retreated into the various holes and rooms of the station.

“What the fuck was that?” Jacob asked.

“The Secutor, I take it,” Ulrich groaned as he tried to stop the bleeding with a makeshift tourniquet. “But let’s not stick around to confirm it.”

We quickly moved back towards the airlock, planning to destroy the life support systems before leaving for good. As we turned the corner, we found long streaks of blood that presumably belonged to Benjamin, along a few bullet holes in the walls.

“Where did they all go?” I asked.

The station had fallen eerily silent in the wake of the creatures. We stopped for a moment just to get our bearings, when the silence was broken by a sickly crack that vibrated through the air. Though the echo made it heard to locate, it seemed to come from the direction of the airlock. We raised our rifles, and proceeded with care. As we turned another corner, we found dozens of the creatures, all dead and torn to shreds. At the end of the hall stood a large, humanoid figure with its back turned to us. It was the Secutor.

It held one of the creatures in its unnaturally long arms, which ended in little more than bony knives.

Jacob tried to point his rifle in its direction, but I signalled for him to stop. Based on the notes we’d read, bullets wouldn’t do a thing to it. But despite our silence, the creature somehow seemed to sense our presence. It turned around, still holding onto the pale creature. Its face held little more than two, massive, black eyes and a poorly formed opening for a mouth. Covering its entire body was clearly visible, red veins.

It let out another growl as it ripped the runner to shreds, before it dropped the pieces of flesh and started rushing in our direction. Jacob raised his rifle for the second time and started fireing while Ulrich and I retreated deeper into the station.

“Jacob, for fuck’s sake, run!”

But he was frozen in shock, only able to keep his finger firmly pressed on the trigger until the magazine had emptied. By then the creature had already reached him. It dug its hands into his torso with little effort, and raised him into the air.

Jacob let out a brief whimper, but had died before he even realized what was happening. Still his death provided little more than a minute distraction for the creature, giving us almost no time to flee. We weren’t going to be able to outrun the Secutor, and we both knew. As we passed one of the open rooms, Ulrich grabbed onto me with his remaining, functioning arm.

“Get out of here, bomb the shit out of this place,” he said before pushing me into the room.

With that, he too opened fire, hardly hitting anything other than the wall, but he wasn’t aiming to hit the creature, he just wanted to draw its attention.

“Run!” was the last thing he said as he started retreating away from the airlock, luring the creature away from me. I’d been given a chance at escape, but it had come at the cost of Ulrich’s life.

I only allowed myself a second of hesitation before spurting to the airlock and our escape vessel. I sealed the hatch, and tried my best to get the submarine moving with my limited knowledge. I took one final peek through the miniscule window, wondering if Ulrich had already been killed, then I left Atlantis alone.

The trip back was filled with a silence only interrupted by the settling hull of the vessel. The mission had been completed, but so many questions still lingered, and I feared answers would be scant.

At the surface I gave my mission report, and was paid handsomely as promised. Ulrich, Jacob and Benjamin all died at the bottom of the ocean, all for a bit of intel that will remain classified until the end of time. I recommended they drop a nuke down there, but a part of me fears that we were never sent down there to retrieve research, but to confirm the existence of these horrific creatures.

What they have planned for the future, I don’t know. But I fear by delving down to the bottom of the ocean, we’ve awoken creatures that were never meant to be found, and if they are brought to the surface, that will be the end of life as we know it.