You keep twisting because stopping would mean the yellow lied, and you wanted yellow to be a story.

The tick becomes a hiss. The hiss becomes a spray that tastes like cold coins. An interlock does what interlocks are for: a door thumps, a light goes red, TIDE says “Ballast alley isolated” in the same polite voice it uses for the date.

You are on the dry side of the thump, on your seat, soaked in a stripe, ears ringing with how loud a small mistake can be. Reed is a shape through the window, already dogging a second hatch, already counting. Vargas is a voice: “Nobody in the water. Good. Mission is not good.”

The ocean did not take you. The ocean took the loop you opened and filled it like a glass under a tap. At this depth a glass under a tap is a fist. The habitat’s other rooms stay 1-atm because people who are not you wrote labels.

Sprat stays missing while adults do two jobs at once. Gannet still cannot crane. You wait in a towel that smells like ginger because Yuna left her mug, and you learn the shape of a day that will be told as a warning.

You write three lines in your log because Vargas makes you: I treated valves like colors. Water does not read colors. Stop is a skill I used too late.

THE END

What you learned: tanks and sea valves are labeled because water at this depth does not take notes. A pretty handle is not a puzzle. Ask out loud. Isolation hatches exist to keep one mistake from becoming the whole house.