Salt and Silence

311 Days

The van rattled as it passed over the uneven highway, tires hissing against cracked asphalt. Rika sat in the back seat, her bag hugged close to her chest, tablet balanced atop it like an egg, fragile and absurdly vulnerable.
The documents were backed up five times across three cloud accounts, saved locally five times, sent to four different empty group chats, and a physical drive, but she still clutched it like it might vanish if she blinked.

They were heading east, toward the coastal edge of the country, where the cliffs dropped into open ocean and the wind always smelled like salt and metal. It is one of the few places still untouched enough to be called quiet.

Kirishima had secured access to an old underwater observatory platform—a facility abandoned years ago when funding dried up and priorities shifted. Now, it would be repurposed into something far more ambitious.

The sky above remained unnaturally pale. Not gray. Not blue. Just faded—like laundry forgotten on the line, bleached dry by the sun. And the moon still hovered far too low, heavy and swollen on the horizon, like it was leaning in to listen.
Rika tried not to look at it.

Instead, she looked out the window.
A woman selling noodles from a battered and old cart, her voice hoarse but cheerful as she called out to passersby.
A man in a business suit standing motionless at a crosswalk, eyes locked on the sky.
A pair of children chasing each other down a sidewalk, laughing in a way that made her chest ache.
A street artist painting a mural over a crumbling wall—bright reds, vibrant golds, a phoenix in flight.

So many people just… living.

It was easy to forget how normal everything could look. How the world didn’t wear its doom on its face.
The news still ran.
The trains still arrived.
Convenience stores still played gentle pop songs over crackling speakers.

The end was coming—but not loudly.
It crept.
Quiet, patient, inevitable.

Her fingers curled tighter around the strap of her bag. A message pinged on her tablet. She glanced down:
Kirishima: ETA 3 hours. I’ll meet you at the lower dock entrance, just down the street from where you’ll be dropped off by the van.
She typed back a quick OK, then leaned her head against the window.

The van vibrated with every turn in the road. The city faded behind them—buildings giving way to empty fields, then thickening forest, then the occasional weather station or relay tower rising like skeletal fingers from the hills.

She remembered traveling roads like this when she was a kid. Her parents used to take her on summer drives when they had the time—
Back when the sky was still the right color.
Back when she didn’t know what the word inevitability really meant, how heavy it would be.
When time still felt infinite. Something you could waste without consequence.

She used to press her face to the glass just like this, watching the world blur by in smudges of green and gold, counting cows in fields, making up stories about the lonely houses perched on hills.
They’d stop at quiet lakes, eat too many snacks, and fall asleep in the back seat with the windows cracked open.

Now she was older, and the sky had changed, and everyone spoke about the moon like it was a ghost in the room, present, but impolite to acknowledge for too long.

Back then, the roads always led somewhere simple.
A summer fair.
A quiet beach.
A rented cabin where the roof leaked when it rained.

Now the road led somewhere different.
Somewhere heavier.

The van crested a hill, and for a moment, the ocean came into view—wide and sharp and endless, stitched to the horizon like a second sky. Rika’s breath caught in her throat.
Even from here, she could make out the broken ruins of the observatory platform jutting from the water like the ribcage of some ancient, drowned beast.

It wasn’t much. Rust-stained and listing from years of disuse, it looked more like a forgotten oil rig than a lab.
But beneath the surface, anchored to the ocean floor, were several levels of reinforced structure.
Old power sources.
Unused generators.
Rooms that hadn’t seen sunlight in half a century.

It was perfect.

The van pulled into a cracked lot beside the cargo lift. Rika stepped out, her legs stiff from the long ride. The sea wind hit her like a slap—cold and briny and real.
She breathed in deeply.

She spotted Kirishima ahead, a speck in a sweater and button-up against the blue expanse of sea and sky. He stood near the lift with a thermos in hand, and raising it in greeting as he spotted her too.

“Welcome to our moon-punching fortress,” he said.

Rika snorted. “It looks like it might fall apart if I sneeze.”

“That’s why we brought duct tape.”

They rode the cargo platform down in silence, the elevator groaning the whole way.
As the surface disappeared above them, swallowed by water and sky, Rika felt something shift in her chest.

Not fear.
Not exactly.
Just… gravity.

Everything they were about to do, everything they risked, was now real.

Above them, the moon shifted behind a thin veil of clouds, dimming the world for a breathless second. The sky almost looked normal then, normal enough that if you squinted, you could pretend it was just another overcast day.

Normal enough that maybe, maybe, things could still be saved.

But the illusion didn’t last.
It never did.

And somewhere deep in her chest, Rika felt it—that same gravity she’d been fighting all along.Tugging.Tightening.A quiet, impossible pull.