At twenty, Adeline Assalas lost her father, famed shark biologist Chris Assalas, during a mission to find the deadly shark, Lilith. Only Adeline, her stepmother Sophia, and another team member survived, but grief tore them apart.
Three years later...
The ocean was dark and endless, the way it always was in Adeline's nightmares. She stood on the deck of the research vessel, her heart pounding as she stared at the monitor in front of her. The camera feeds from four divers flickered on the screen, each one showing the murky, blue-black waters of the deep. One of those divers was her father.
She tried to calm herself, telling herself it was just another dive, just another mission. But her hands shook as she gripped the edge of the console. She knew how this ended. She'd seen it again and again, every night since it happened.
Her father's voice crackled over the radio, steady and calm like it always was. "Everything looks good down here," Chris Assalas said, his camera showing nothing but the vast, shadowy expanse of the ocean floor. Adeline's eyes flicked between the screens—her father's, then Juan's, then the other two team members who were little more than blurry shapes in the water.
Then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw something. A flash of movement on one of the feeds. Too fast to make out, too brief to be sure of what it was. But her heart lurched.
"Dad," she said into the microphone, her voice tight. "Be careful."
He didn't respond right away, and she watched as his camera panned slowly across the ocean floor, revealing nothing but emptiness. But the feeling in her chest tightened. Something wasn't right. She could sense it.
There was another flicker, this time on Sam's camera. Adeline's pulse quickened. "Did you see that?" she asked, her eyes darting between the screens.
"I didn't see anything," her father replied, his tone still calm, still focused. Too calm.
The seconds stretched out, the silence unbearable. And then, all at once, it happened. A blur of white and grey shot past the cameras, fast and massive. The screens shook as the divers reacted, their voices rising in panic.
"Shark!" someone yelled, their voice high with fear.
Adeline's breath caught in her throat. The cameras were chaos now, jerking in every direction, showing glimpses of thrashing water and dark shadows. She couldn't tell what was happening. But then, her father's camera steadied, focusing on something just ahead.
It was Lilith. The great white shark, bigger than any she had ever imagined. Way too big. Its enormous, jagged body moved with terrifying grace through the water, circling the divers, its eyes dark and cold.
"Dad, get out of there!" Adeline screamed into the microphone, but her voice sounded distant, like she was underwater herself.
Her father didn't move. His camera showed Lilith turning, her powerful body cutting through the water, heading straight for him.
"Chris, move!" someone shouted, but it was too late. The shark lunged, its jaws opening wide, rows of razor-sharp teeth glinting in the dim light.
The screen filled with a blur of water and blood. Her father's camera spun wildly before going dark. The other screens showed nothing but panic, the divers' frantic movements as they tried to get away.
Adeline's heart raced, her breath coming in short gasps. She couldn't tear her eyes from the screen, even though she knew what was coming. Another scream—Tom's this time. More chaos. More blood in the water.
One by one, the cameras went dark.
Adeline jolted awake, her body drenched in sweat, her heart hammering in her chest. She was in her bed, not on the ship, not watching her father die again. But the terror clung to her, the images burned into her mind. No matter how many times she dreamed it, it never became less real.
It had been three years since that dive, and still, every night, she watched her father die all over again.
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