Ryan M. Patrick

As I mentioned in the last blog update (they all can be found at the bottom of the page here) I went back and rewrote all 40,000+ words in the last few weeks.

Here’s the new version:

• Prologue – no change to the scene with the Russian submarine. However, I added a scene at the end where American operators pick the event up on the SOSUS network and make a secure phone call.

• Chapter One – almost no change until the very end
• Chapter Two – lots of changes, mostly due to the technical details.
• Chapter Three – totally different. They ride an elevator rather than a bathyscape down to the ocean floor. Carmano tells a lot of “ghost stories” which will be relevant later.

• Chapter Four – Grace’s introduction to the facility, where we meet the key players. Probably one of the chapters I plan on modifying the most in edits.

• Chapter Five – Very, very different again. More introductions to the facility. Another one that I’m planning to add significantly to.

• Chapter Six – Similar in scope, different in style. Parkowski boards the submersible Nautilus for her first working dive. The crew tries to rattle the civilian with graphic descriptions of implosion and crush-depth physics.
• Chapter Seven – A gigantic sonar contact charges them, brushes the hull hard enough to rattle teeth, then veers away at the last second; Parkowski glimpses something immense and alive. The crew dismisses it as a whale, but tension skyrockets. I show “more” of the mosasaurs here and I think it works better.

• Chapter Eight – more of the same from the last version. They collect samples and return.

• Chapter Nine – Analysis of the wreckage under electron microscopy reveals inexplicable molecular-scale patterns etched into the metal—almost as if something rewrote the material at the atomic level. Captain Vasco privately briefs Parkowski on the geopolitical stakes. Lots of connections to Lag Delay.

• Chapter Ten – More ghost stories and foreshadowing.

• Chapter Eleven – and even more. I’m going to add some things here about one of the B plots in edits.

• Chapter Twelve – Parkowski powers up recovered Russian components in the lab; everything works but feels subtly wrong. Sonar registers another large contact that circles close, then disappears. Lots of technical details.

• Chapter Thirteen – On a new dive the Nautilus searches for a lost missile, encounters bioluminescent clouds and a clear serpentine silhouette, and recovers the missile’s avionics box—an intelligence jackpot.

• Chapter Fourteen – Multiple huge contacts now shadow them openly. Debate rages: unknown biology, secret enemy weapons, or something else entirely? No one can rule anything out.

• Chapter Fifteen – Back in the habitat, Armstrong speculates about surviving deep-sea megafauna no one has ever seen. Hydrophones capture eerie, patterned, almost linguistic sounds on shifting frequencies.

• Chapter Sixteen – After a grim breakfast both submersibles (Nautilus and Seaquest) sortie to the main Vepr wreck to recover the quantum core itself. Atmosphere aboard is fatalistic. As Nautilus (with Parkowski, Carmano, and Armstrong) makes final approach, large shadows circle the wreck silently.

• Chapter Seventeen – A false hull-integrity alarm spikes panic. On final approach a gigantic scaled creature with powerful jaws brushes the submersible—best look yet, but still not enough to identify. Amid rising terror they cut into the wreck, seize the Aquarius core, and begin a desperate rush back to the habitat.

As you can see it’s a very different book based on the same concept. I’m leaning into some of the more horror aspects – the mosasaurs are like the shark in Jaws. Preston & Child and Crichton – the authors I’m basing this on – do a lot of that too.

I’m actually well into the twenties from a chapter perspective but I’ll do 18-20 next week! I hope this is somewhat enjoyable – you’re being able to see how the sausage is made.