A faint creak drew Roy's eyes downward. A panel in the center of the battered Presidroid's chest was slowly coming loose, catching his attention with a jittery, mechanical twitch. With trembling fingers, Roy gripped the cold metal edge of the panel, carefully prying it open, terrified that he might break something vital in his clumsy desperation. It resisted at first, locked up from corrosion and damage, but Roy leaned closer, his breath catching as he pressed harder. With a reluctant click, the panel finally swung open.
Instantly, the Presidroid shuddered in Roy's lap, its damaged torso spasming with jerky movements. Roy recoiled in panic. "Arthur, no—!"
A brief storm of sparks illuminated the tiny bubble, sizzling briefly against Roy's skin, making him hiss sharply. As they faded, the droid's single remaining lens flickered weakly, a dim, unsteady pulse of pale blue, barely piercing the gloom.
"Captain…" Arthur's voice emerged painfully, each syllable a warbling static hiss, layered with electronic strain. Yet, compared to before, its speech was notably clearer—urgent rather than barely audible. "You must… re-reroute my power. Immediately."
Roy's pulse quickened; his heart hammered against his ribs. "How?" he asked desperately, his voice cracking with tension. He had no talent for this, no innate understanding of these machines, but Arthur was his last lifeline to sanity down here. "Tell me exactly what to do."
The Presidroid's head slumped abruptly, briefly lifeless, causing Roy to sharply inhale in dread. Then its head jerked upright again, another internal burst of sparks lighting the gloom. Roy flinched but forced himself closer, teeth clenched, adrenaline clawing at his veins.
"Subsystems…three and five… marked wires… yellow… and gr-green," Arthur stuttered out, words clipped and harsh, each one a struggle against failing circuitry. Roy swallowed, nodding frantically as he memorized every detail as he maintained focus on the barrier.
"Disconnect wires… two, sev—seven… eight… completely."
Roy forced his shaking hand to steady, urgently licking a finger and tracing the instructions onto his forearm with saliva and desperation, leaving faint trails through the grime and salt crusted on his skin. Yellow and green. Two, seven, eight disconnected—he etched each command into his arm, the words burning into his memory.
"Lower modules… compromised beyond… functionality," Arthur rasped, voice dipping alarmingly, fading almost to silence. "Reroute power into primary bus… upper Alpha ports… four and nine. Necessary… restore speech… logic… motor function… right arm."
"Yes, yes, got it," Roy whispered back, urgency knotting in his chest. "Subsystems three and five, remove two, seven, eight. Connect to upper Alpha ports four and nine." He repeated it back to himself twice, eyes stinging from concentration, terrified of forgetting.
Arthur's voice cracked into silence. The static hum hung heavily between them, a crushing pause in the dim glow. Roy's breath caught sharply, tears welling with sudden, overwhelming dread.
"Arthur?" Roy's voice trembled, begging for an answer. "Arthur, come on—say something, damn it!"
The silence lingered an agonizing moment more then, with a flicker so faint Roy almost missed it, Arthur's eyes brightened gently once more.
"Captain," Arthur whispered, voice almost a ghost. "I—I'm still… here."
Roy exhaled shakily, relief rushing through him. "You scared me, you metal idiot," he laughed weakly, choking back emotion as he frantically moved to follow the instructions.
Hands trembling uncontrollably, Roy reached into the droid's internal compartments, pulling aside damaged, tangled wires carefully, working swiftly but delicately. Each movement was an anxious gamble, like defusing a bomb he barely understood. He disconnected wires two, seven, and eight, noting their frayed, melted insulation as he tugged them free. Sparks spat briefly, startling him, but he forced himself steady. He found subsystems three and five, wires clearly marked in faded yellow and green, guiding them with agonizing slowness into the indicated Alpha ports. His breath froze in his lungs as the connections clicked home, soft mechanical snaps resonating like gunshots in the stillness.
With the final wire in place, Arthur's dim lens flickered violently once, twice, then went completely dark. Roy recoiled sharply, heart freezing. Maybe he was just rebooting? He wanted to scream, but he could only stare in mute horror as the Presidroid fell utterly silent and still.
"Arthur," Roy whispered, voice breaking. "Come back. You have to come back."
Minutes dragged past with brutal slowness. Roy stared numbly at the droid, anguish pooling in his chest, his head pulsing in agony from maintaining the barrier. Every heartbeat thundered painfully, each breath rattling with grief and despair. The reboot stretched endlessly, punctuated only by Roy's shaky, whispered pleading.
Time twisted strangely, stretching and folding upon itself. Roy began to lose hope, his shoulders trembling as despair seeped deeper into his bones. Had he ruined it somehow? Had he misunderstood? He almost couldn't bear the thought. He squeezed his eyes shut, jaw clenched tight, barely holding back tears of frustration and helplessness.
Then, without warning, the droid's chest hummed softly beneath his fingertips. Roy's eyes snapped open. Warmth radiated gently through its plating, spreading like a tiny heartbeat. With a crackle, Arthur's lens flickered back to life, a steady, reassuring glow brightening the cold darkness.
"Captain…" Arthur's voice was weak, but stable, stronger. "Power… reroute complete. Primary functions… online."
Roy's head dropped back against the barrier's shimmering wall, breath shuddering out in relief. A tear traced a slow path down his cheek, and he laughed brokenly, exhausted.
"Welcome back, Arthur," he murmured, voice thick with emotion. "You…you really had me scared there."
"Apologies," Arthur said, sounding almost sheepish. "I will endeavor not to… frighten you further."
Roy choked out a half-sobbed chuckle, letting his head lean gently against the droid's warm metal casing, suddenly feeling a shred of hope in the crushing darkness. "Good. Because you and me, we're not done yet. You hear me? We're not going down that easy."
The only reply he needed was Arthur's soft mechanical hum. He had mostly been talking to himself anyway.
Hugging the droid to his chest, Roy looked out at the pitch-black water through the bubble's shimmering wall. How long has it been? Will they even guess to look this deep? Another violent flicker of the barrier forced him to his knees. He gasped as a wave of near-unbearable pain knifed through his skull. Another few drops of blood trickled from his nose. He coughed them away. Not yet, not yet, not yet…
Desperate for any distraction, Roy forced out a story he barely remembered. "My uncle, who was only a few years older than me, once told me I didn't need a dad because he'd take his place. He was better, he said, than 'that utter waste of Dice DNA.' He was around, at least, until the military took him for all but a few weeks each year."
He realized he was rambling, but it was the only way to stay awake. The Presidroid beeped softly, and Roy let out a trembling laugh. After a few more failed attempts at pulling the chain or expanding the barrier, he sighed and sat down. "I guess the only plan I have left is to wait for rescue. Keep this bubble from popping. Or… maybe I go insane."
His chin dropped to his chest. He was so tired. He tried to fight it, to keep his eyes open. The bubble trembled, flashing in and out of existence like a dying firefly. Roy felt an abrupt whoosh of water slice his cheek for half a second as the barrier flickered. The freezing brine ricocheting off the barrier stung his skin, shocking him awake. He nearly screamed, jolting upright.
"Don't you fade on me!" he yelled, voice echoing in the watery silence. He seized the Presidroid and pressed his forehead to its cold shell. "If I pass out, I'm dead. So talk to me, Arthur. Show me a reason to… to keep it together. Because my mind is… it's unraveling."
The Presidroid flickered its lens. "Captain," it said again, as if it heard the terror in his voice. "You are not… alone. The functioning sensors I have… left are reading… life signs nearby. And it's enormous."
Roy almost didn't care. He forced himself upright, leaning against the rock he let into the barrier to look around. There was only black emptiness pressing in from every direction. The hush was so total it was deafening. Each time the bubble flickered, the pain in his head lessened. For an instant, he felt tempted by that relief to let the ocean swallow him.
He let the tears come. No one was around to see. The Presidroid's lens simply blinked, flicker after flicker, unwavering. Eventually, Roy wiped snot and saltwater off his nose. "But I'm not giving up. Not yet. If the ocean wants me, it can fight me for a few more minutes. Captain Roy Gunn doesn't go down easy, do I?"
His voice rose, echoing in the bubble: "Do I?"
Silence answered, absolute. Roy's heart pounded. He forced a final reservoir of mental stamina and hammered it into the barrier. The weight of the entire ocean pressed back. The contradictory signals battered his mind. Near-infinite mana, but a minimal skill pipeline. The unstoppable force meets the untrained conduit, producing sheer agony in his skull. He clenched his eyes shut, screaming into the abyss. The bubble shimmered with a fresh intensity, nearly luminous enough to see a wide radius. Strange, ghostly shapes flickered in the far distance, lured by the glow. Roy refused to look at them. If they attacked, the barrier was all he had. Let them come.
Sweat slicked his brow. His arms quivered. He kept them extended, palms outward, as though physically supporting the bubble. "I'm… not… letting it break," he said, each word forced out between gasps. "Someone… will find me… or… or not. But I won't… just… quit."
The Presidroid beeped, a faint sound. Perhaps it was shorting again, or maybe trying to speak. Roy's vision blurred. He willed himself not to pass out. A swirl of silt rose behind the chain; something had disturbed the ocean floor. He didn't want to know what. Focus.
In that suffocating hush, with the taste of iron on his tongue and the stench of burnt metal from the battered Presidroid's chassis, Roy breathed raggedly. Each inhale felt like a brand against his chest, each exhale a scream in slow motion. The ocean was silent, yes, but it was a lethal, waiting silence. An executioner's quiet.
And yet Roy clung to that faint bubble of light, to that trembling pocket of air, to life itself, too stubborn to surrender.
Seconds bled into minutes, minutes into hours—he couldn't tell. All he knew was the chain, the ball, the fear, and the bubble flickering around him in a slow, unsteady heartbeat. He waited in the dark, at the bottom of the sea, nightmares made real, refusing to let go. "Five more minutes," he muttered to himself occasionally.