From the moment she stepped aboard, Bella had retreated to the captain's quarters and hadn't come out since—absorbed in her collection of ancient manuscripts and scrolls.
The Sakura Dragon, with no cartoons to watch, had reverted to its true form as a sinuous eastern dragon, coiled into a ring and sleeping deeply. Whether eastern or western, dragons grew stronger simply by sleeping—a clear advantage over humans in every respect.
The ghost ship navigating underwater had no sonar system and offered its passengers no lighting whatsoever. None of that affected Bella. On her ship, light existed when she said so, and vanished the same way.
She kept herself reasonably entertained—teasing the Sakura Dragon during quiet moments, slipping off to spook the ghost-averse Bumblebee when the mood struck, and spending whatever time remained trading barbs with Shatter.
The four living passengers she largely left to their own devices. In her assessment, the ship carried no real danger—the whispers, phantom footsteps, and dripping sounds were nothing more than a natural accumulation of residual negative energy. None of it could actually harm anyone. Ignore it, and it would leave you alone.
These were minor hardships. Four seasoned professionals shouldn't have any trouble weathering them.
And indeed, the moment they started belting out the Internationale on Day Five, her theory was confirmed. No accompaniment, no audience—four people pouring everything they had into the Internationale at the bottom of the ocean. If she hadn't needed to maintain her image, she'd have walked over and joined in.
That's what it means to be elite.
"Ladies and gentlemen, prepare yourselves. We're almost there."
Bella's voice carried through the hull. The living passengers breathed a collective sigh of relief.
Their voices were nearly shot.
Theoretically, they could have held out for several more days without reaching a real breaking point—but they hadn't come all this way to be confined to their cabins. If they burned through all their reserves now and ran into trouble later, what then?
The four took a brief moment to collect themselves, then made their way up to the deck. The depth gauge read over 8,000 meters (more than 26,000 feet) below the surface. The deck was pitch black, but standing out here still felt better than being stuck below.
The Puerto Rico Trench sat at the boundary of the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. They had traveled underwater the entire way—the Flying Dutchman departing from Los Angeles, looping around Mexico, cutting through the Panama Canal, and entering the Atlantic. With exact coordinates, an increasingly experienced captain, the ship's innate magical properties, and five days of travel, they found their target by early evening.
Resting at the bottom of the trench was something enormous.
It resembled an oversized gyroscope, tilted and lying on its side. The bow, stern, and wings were arranged in a cruciform pattern, with a ring of passages connecting all four points. Seen from a distance, it looked like a magnificent city cast entirely in steel.
The ghost ship slipped inside through one of the exhaust vents—an opening wide enough to serve as a giant's gate, standing nearly 65 feet (20 meters) tall. The Flying Dutchman glided through without difficulty.
Bella stood at the helm, using the ship's senses as her own eyes to survey the interior.
Sixteen hundred years. The ventilation ducts were blanketed in dense algae, and a labyrinth of conduits and cabling ran along every ceiling and wall. With the main control system offline and no power supply, the spacecraft was nothing more than an immovable fortress of steel.
"The air inside is sufficient—no diving equipment needed. Prepare to surface. Ladies and gentlemen, get ready."
Bella spun the wheel hard. The ghost ship banked through a corridor, dropped from a ledge nearly 260 feet (80 meters) high in a smooth, controlled fall, leveled out, and began to ascend.
Bumblebee was the first off the deck—this ship had done more than enough damage to his nerves. He'd had enough.
The others followed: the four living passengers, then Shatter.
Bella had left Jason and the rest of the wandering spirits aboard to stand watch. She still wasn't sure about Merlin's temperament, and if the old wizard happened to dislike restless souls, she wasn't about to risk it.
"This architecture is Cybertronian." Unlike Bumblebee, who still hadn't recovered his memories, Shatter's mind was perfectly intact. She recognized the craftsmanship the moment she laid eyes on it.
006 and Gavin exchanged a puzzled look—it was the first time either of them had heard Shatter speak. The robot clearly didn't belong to Weyland, and clearly not to the Brotherhood. Their curiosity about the forces Bella had quietly assembled grew considerably.
"It is indeed a Cybertronian vessel," Bella confirmed. "Do you know where the main control hub would be located?"
Cybertron was a highly advanced civilization with a complex social structure.
Take Optimus Prime, for instance—before receiving the Matrix of Leadership, he had been a librarian. Classic hidden-potential archetype. The best ones were always like that: Laozi, the Sweeping Monk, all cut from the same cloth.
Megatron's former occupation was equally memorable: miner. A classic rise-from-nothing profession.
Starscream was a step below—merely a scientist with a talent for stirring up trouble.
And Shatter? Before the war between Autobots and Decepticons broke out, she'd been an edgy teenage girl with no formal occupation to speak of.
She didn't want to look ignorant. But glancing left and right, she genuinely had no idea where the main control hub was.
"Never mind. We go by instinct." Bella shook her head. Standard sci-fi logic: in a ring-shaped spacecraft like this, the main control hub was almost always at the center. Follow the ventilation passages inward and you couldn't go too far wrong.
The ship's power systems were completely offline, but basic functions—air circulation, ventilation, drainage—were still running.
The interior corridors held roughly 3 feet (1 meter) of standing seawater—all ocean water, bitterly cold at this depth.
Bella wasn't bothered by the water, but she had no desire to walk around soaking wet. She settled herself on Bumblebee's shoulder and took her place at the front of the group.
006 and Gavin Banks, seasoned professionals both, weren't about to be stopped by a bit of water. They fell in directly behind Bumblebee.
Anton Vanko's body couldn't handle the strain of a long march. He stayed aboard the Flying Dutchman.
Ivan Vanko went with the team to find the main control hub. He might have been a scientist, but Russians carried a natural resistance to harsh environments in their bones. He stepped into the meter-deep (3-foot) seawater without hesitation, moving like a bear wading through a stream.
"I hate water. It's going to ruin my skin." Shatter was a Triple Changer—she could transform into a fighter jet and a car, but not a boat. She muttered a complaint or two, then waded in after the others.
Jason stood at the bow of the Flying Dutchman and watched them go in silence. O'Rin drew out her shamisen and played a funeral melody right there on the spot—the kind of music you'd hear at a burial procession. 006's face turned a shade of green.
The group left the Flying Dutchman behind and followed the ventilation passages deeper into the vessel.
The environment wasn't completely dark—a faint ambient glow filtered through from somewhere—but the metal decking was uneven, littered with tangled cabling, shattered components, and scattered debris from sixteen centuries of settling. Bumblebee moved through effortlessly. The humans were less fortunate, needing their flashlights trained on the ground just to walk without tripping.