The air on the upper deck did not smell of burning oil. It smelled of dry parchment, lavender water, and formalin.
Yan Zhiqiu emerged from the central air-flow shaft behind the officers’ mess. She moved through the narrow passageway with the silent, fluid stride of a hunter stalking through sea-grass. Her bare feet left wet smears of grease and soot across the polished rosewood parquet.
Unlike the lower holds, where raw iron ribs and leaking steam pipes dominated every arm-length of space, the upper superstructure of the Abyssal Siphon had been fitted out with high-born decadence. The inner walls were paneled in lacquered teak. Brass gimbaled lanterns swung from coffered ceilings. And heavy velvet curtains muffled the roar of the steam turbines below. Glass display cases held preserved specimens of deep-sea anglerfish, stone-hard trilobites from the lowest trenches, and ivory-inlaid octants salvaged from drowned flagships of the First Dynasty.
Yet the ship was dying from within.
The deck tilted nine degrees to port, causing crystal decanters to slide across dark wood sideboard tables and smash against the floor in pools of golden wine. Distant thuds echoed through the air-flow shafts as the flooded lower holds continued to settle, and the smell of sulfur smoke was beginning to seep through the brass heat-registers.
