You wanted a periscope.

Vargas lets you say it, which is not the same as agreeing. Reed’s mouth goes small. TIDE lists the flood-back steps in case you become a cork.

Habitat ballast tanks blow with a shudder you feel in your teeth. Nereid lightens. The moon pool’s silver sags, then climbs the rim like it wants your socks. A cup walks off a table and chooses the floor.

TIDE: “Positive buoyancy. Ascent rate increasing. Air in tanks will expand as outside pressure drops. Expansion adds lift. Lift adds rate.”

That is the runaway. You learned it on a whiteboard. The whiteboard did not rattle.

Yuna, from sonar, very calm: “I cannot ping a house that is leaving the map.”

You can still flood back—pump water in, kill the extra lift, sit on the terrace like a sensible brick. You can still let the rise happen because the surface has weather and weather has Gannet and Gannet feels like parents.

Parents cannot crane in a storm. Corks do not search vent fields.