I count the days by the number of times Mom asks me to come eat. Sometimes I do—when Dad is out for a football game, when even I can't ignore my hunger—but mostly I don't eat.

  I hear them arguing through the walls again.

  “She’s always not hungry,” Dad says, his tone dry. “It’s an excuse. She just doesn’t want to eat real food.”

  My stomach tightens. “I said I’m fine,” I shout, like I'm on the other side of the ocean, even though it's just a cheap door painted blue to look like water.

  “Mai—” Mom starts, her voice muffled, but she must decide not to finish because now I hear her and Dad walking away.

  The familiar quiet of my room wraps around me like a heavy bnket. My monitors glow faintly in the corner, casting shades of blue and green over the walls. The reef on my paused game screen sways gently, the fish caught in their endless loops.

  I sit down at my desk, my fingers brushing against the edge of my notebook. I pick it up, flipping to the page filled with jagged lines and scrawled notes.

  The pattern stares back at me, unrelenting and unsolvable.

  The light from the game reaches out and bathes the pages in soft, flickering hues.

  I press my pen to the page and start drawing again.

  The arguing, the date, my parents—all of it fades from my memory as the lines take shape.

  I draw the rhythm over and over, trying to make sense of it, to pin it down, but it slips through my fingers like water.

  The room grows darker as the sun dips below the horizon, but I don’t notice. The glow of the monitor shifts with the motion of the reef, the colors blending together in an endless loop.

  The rhythm beats in my chest, steady and deliberate, and I don’t stop until the page is filled with marks that mean nothing and everything all at once.

  The bed is gone now; the desk, the walls; repced by the endless echo of the waves.

  And I wonder if they’ll ever let me go.

  °????.??*:?????*?? ?? ?????:*.??????°

  The forum is open on my second monitor, its dark background glowing faintly in the room’s dim light. Threads scroll past, each one a fragment of someone else’s curiosity: blurry photos of fish barely identifiable, debates over the ethics of deep-sea mining, endless specution about what lies at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

  My cursor hovers over the search bar, the blinking line daring me to type something. But what? Ocean pattern? Strange rhythm? Two small, one rge, pause?

  It’s not like the ocean would’ve written itself into a forum thread. It doesn’t care if I understand it.

  Still, I start typing, the keys clicking softly under my fingers. Unexpined wave patterns.

  The results flood the screen, a deluge of half-answers and threads dating back years. Most of them don’t match—discussions about tides, rogue waves, natural disasters. But one catches my eye:

  “Unusual Ocean Rhythms—Theories?”

  I click.

  The thread is old, the replies scattered over months, but the first post hits me like cold water:

  “Has anyone noticed strange, rhythmic patterns in ocean currents? Not random, but consistent, like a pulse. I’ve only seen it twice in over ten years of research, but it stuck with me. I tried to find a logical expnation, but nothing fits. Just curious if anyone else has experienced this.”

  My heart picks up speed, matching the beat in my head. Two small. One rge. Pause.

  The replies are a mess. Some users suggest underwater volcanoes or seismic activity, while others bme faulty equipment or misinterpretation. A few ugh it off entirely, their comments dripping with sarcasm.

  But one reply stands out, buried near the bottom of the thread:

  “Could be the signal.”

  I click their username and move my fingers to the keyboard, itching to type a question, but the user’s profile is inactive—st seen three years ago. I click their name anyway, scrolling through their old posts, piecing together fragments of their thoughts like shards of gss.

  Their most recent post links to an article: “The Deep Sea Signal—A Mystery Still Unsolved.”

  The headline sends a shiver through me.

  I click the link.

  The article is dry and technical, filled with terms I only half understand, but the basics are clear enough: in the early twenty-teens, researchers detected a sound deep in the Pacific Ocean. A low, rhythmic pulse that didn’t match any known natural or human activity.

  Theories ranged from geological phenomena to military experiments, but nothing was ever confirmed. The sound faded after a few weeks, leaving nothing but questions.

  I reread the article twice, my fingers brushing the edges of my notebook as I take in the details.

  A rhythmic pulse.

  Unexpined.

  Forgotten.

  “Two small,” I whisper. “One rge. Pause.”

  The rest of the night blurs.

  I scour more articles, more threads, chasing mentions of the signal like a single fish in a school. Most of it is noise—wild specution, conspiracy theories, unreted anecdotes—but every so often, I find something. A sentence, a phrase, a fragment of an idea that feels like a breadcrumb leading me deeper into the maze.

  By the time I gnce at the clock, it’s past two in the morning. My eyes burn, my head throbs, but I can’t stop.

  The waves are in my head, louder now, pounding against the edges of my mind.

  Two small. One rge. Pause.

  I lean back in my chair, letting the screen blur into a swirl of colors and shapes. The article, the threads, the signal—they all swim in front of me, a chaotic tangle of words and patterns I can’t quite untangle.

  I close my eyes, but the rhythm is there, steady and unrelenting, pulling me back to the beach, back to the cold sand and the endless ocean.

  The sound is inside me now, humming in my chest like a second heartbeat.

  °????.??*:?????*?? ?? ?????:*.??????°

  The audio file from 2013 is buried in a public database, tucked away like an artifact no one cared to bel. Its name is a meaningless string of numbers and letters, as obscure as the sound it holds.

  I download it, my heart pounding, and open it in my audio pyer.

  When the waveform loads, I stare at its jagged peaks and dips, trying to imagine the sound before I’ve even heard it. Then I press py.

  Static crackles first, faint and broken, like distant whispers carried on the wind.

  And then it begins: a low, deliberate pulse beneath the static.

  The sound feels like it’s coming from somewhere deep—deep in the ocean, deep in the earth, deep in me. It presses into my chest, filling the space between my ribs, between my breaths.

  This is it.

  I lean closer, the headphones pressed tightly against my ears. The pulse repeats, rhythmic and unrelenting, like it’s holding its breath for something.

  It feels small, trapped in the confines of the headphones.

  I pull them off and switch to the speakers.

  The room shifts instantly.

  The sound expands, vibrating through the desk, the chair, the floor. It rolls through the air, filling every corner, pressing against the walls until there’s no space left untouched.

  This is how it’s meant to be heard.

  I crank the volume higher.

  The pulse surrounds me, louder and more alive with every repetition. It seeps into my skin, buzzing faintly in my chest, my fingertips. I close my eyes, letting it take over, until the world outside the room ceases to exist.

  I grab my notebook, my hand moving on instinct, and start sketching the beach, scribbling notes in the margins. Words and shapes pour out of me, chaotic and desperate, as if trying to pin the sound down will stop it from slipping through my fingers.

  It doesn’t work. The signal is too big, too infinite.

  I crank the volume even higher, the speakers straining against the weight of the sound.

  The night passes in fragments.

  I listen, draw, write. I trim and loop the audio file and py it again, over and over, each repetition pulling me deeper into the sound’s gravity.

  The static shifts sometimes, faint cracks and pops breaking the rhythm, but the pulse always returns, steady and deliberate.

  By the time I gnce at the clock, it’s past three in the morning. My head throbs, my ears buzz faintly, but I don’t stop.

  The sound has grown rger than me, rger than the room, rger than anything I can put into words.

  It feels endless.

  When the first light of dawn spills through the cracks in my curtains, the pulse is still pying, quieter now but still present.

  My notebook lies open on the desk, its pages filled with jagged lines and notes that make no sense. The pen sits beside it, its ink smudged across my fingers.

  I lean back in my chair, staring at the waveform on the screen. My eyes burn, my body aches, but I’ve never felt more awake.

  The signal hums softly through the speakers, patient and unbroken. It’s waiting for me to do something.

  I don’t know what yet. But I will.

  °????.??*:?????*?? ?? ?????:*.??????°

  The morning light snts gently through the windows of the house, casting soft patterns on the floor. I can hear Mom stirring her tea from the stairs.

  “Did you hear anything weird st night?” Dad asks, trying to sound casual, but there is an edge of unease in his voice.

  Mom's voice carries up to me as I walk down the stairs. “What kind of weird?”

  Dad hesitates. “Low sounds. Rhythmic. I thought it was the heater at first. But it wasn’t.”

  In the hallway, I halt mid-step, my breath catching in my throat. My heartbeat quickens as I process his words, a chill running down my spine. Quietly, I back away, careful not to be noticed. The signal isn’t just in my head. Dad could hear it, too.

  °????.??*:?????*?? ?? ?????:*.??????°

  The signal feels louder in my headphones tonight, even though I haven’t touched the volume.

  It’s not just sound anymore. It’s weight. Like when the ocean hugs against your wetsuit when you're diving. A constant pressure against the edges of my mind, reshaping every thought that tries to surface.

  I can’t tell if it’s pulling me toward something or dragging me under.

  I don’t sit at my desk. Not tonight.

  The chair feels too small, the desk too confining, the glow of the monitor too focused. Instead, I sit on the floor, my back pressed against the edge of the bed, the notebook sprawled open in front of me.

  The pages are a mess of lines and scrawls, the ink smudged where my hand pressed too soon after writing.

  I flip through them slowly, my fingers brushing against the edges, the rhythm of the signal looping faintly in the background. Each page is a snapshot of something I almost understood, a pattern I almost grasped.

  But none of it fits.

  I gnce at the stack of books on the floor beside me, their covers worn and creased from years of being pulled and repced. Mom always made me buy used textbooks at school.

  Marine biology. Oceanography. Geophysics.

  I pick one at random and open it to a chapter on ocean currents, the words swimming in front of my eyes.

  It’s been a long time since I’ve looked at text that wasn’t in a dyslexic-friendly font. The letters blur and shift, their shapes twisting like seaweed caught in a current.

  My lips move silently as I read, forcing the words into order, but they slip away as quickly as I catch them.

  I skim the section on thermohaline circution, looking for something, anything, that might expin the sound.

  But the words feel hollow, their precision too rigid for something so alive.

  I set the book aside and grab another.

  An hour slips by, then two. The pile of books grows smaller, the words blur together in my eyes and their contents blur together in my mind.

  I hate the way the letters twist, like they’re mocking me for trying. I used to love books—before I knew how much work it would take to wrestle the words into pce.

  When I pick up the st book, my hands are trembling, the edges of the pages rough against my fingertips.

  The chapter titles mock me with their simplicity: “Tides and Waves,” “Seismic Activity,” “The Deep Ocean.”

  None of it helps.

  I toss the book aside, the sound echoing in the quiet, and press the heels of my hands against my eyes.

  The signal hums softly in the background, unbroken and steady, and I hate how calm it sounds.

  “What do you want from me?” I whisper, the words spilling out like water from a cup held by an unsteady hand.

  The sound doesn’t answer, but the pressure in my chest grows heavier, the pulse vibrating faintly in my ribs.

  I reach for the notebook again, flipping to a bnk page, and grab my pen.

  This time, I don’t sketch waves or scribble notes. I write questions instead, the words jagged and uneven, like they’ve been ripped out of me:

  What is the signal? Where is it coming from? Why now?

  The pen stops, hovering above the page, but the question I really want to ask is too big to fit in the lines.

  Who’s sending it?

  I set the pen down and gnce at the monitor. The audio pyer’s waveform flickers faintly on the screen, its jagged peaks and dips mirroring the chaos in my mind.

  The forum tab is still open, the thread on unusual rhythms sitting idle. I click into it, scrolling past the same wild theories and half-answers I’ve read a dozen times.

  Volcanoes. Submarines. Geological shifts.

  It all feels too small. Too human.

  The screen blurs as I scroll to the bottom of the page, my eyes catching on a comment I had thought was too obvious to be worth anything before:

  “The sound doesn’t match any known patterns. It’s too consistent, too deliberate. Some researchers thought it might be a beacon, but they never proved it. Makes you wonder.”

  My hand hovers over the keyboard, the cursor blinking back at me like it’s waiting.

  Beacon.

  I close the thread and lean back against the bed, the word looping through my mind like the signal itself.

  A beacon isn’t just sound. It’s a call. A signal meant to be answered.

  The pulse vibrates faintly through the headphones, its rhythm unbroken, and I wonder if it’s waiting for someone to respond.

  And if no one else will, maybe I have to.

  °????.??*:?????*?? ?? ?????:*.??????°

  The glow of the monitor lights the room like a lighthouse beam, steady and soft against the dark. My notebook lies open on the desk, the pages filled with jagged lines and looping questions I can’t answer.

  The forum thread sits idle on the second monitor, the words swimming in front of me like shadows in deep water.

  I’ve kept the volume low, barely more than a whisper, but the signal still fills the room, looping endlessly. The sound has settled into my chest now, quiet and steady, a second heartbeat that no one else can hear.

  Write it down, I tell myself. Post something. See if someone knows more.

  The thought sits heavy in my chest. It feels too big, too vulnerable, like I’m about to drop a stone into the ocean and wait to see what ripples it makes.

  I take a deep breath and log into my profile and start typing.

  The keys feel harder to press than usual, my hands deliberate and slow. The words are trying to escape before I can pin them down.

  I describe the sound carefully, sticking to the facts: the rhythm, the pitch, the static that hums around the edges. I include time stamps and technical details, all the things I’ve been scribbling into my notebook.

  But the words still feel small. They don’t capture the way the signal presses against me, fills the space around me, demands my attention.

  I sit back and read the post again, my fingers twitching over the keys. It feels vulnerable, leaving my work exposed like this, but I force myself to press “Submit.”

  The screen fshes, and the post disappears into the vast ocean of the forum.

  For a moment, nothing happens.

  I stare at the screen, the blinking cursor mocking me for watching it. Do I really think someone is going to reply this fast?

  Then a notification pops up: One new reply.

  My chest tightens, my breath catching in my throat. It’s fast, almost too fast, like someone has been waiting for this exact moment.

  The reply is short, barely more than a sentence:

  “Can you record it? You need to get proof.”

  My heart skips, the words sinking in slowly. Proof.

  Recording it. Of course.

  Why didn’t I think of that?

  I open a new tab and start searching: Underwater microphones, hydrophones, how to record water sounds.

  The results flood the screen, a mix of professional-grade equipment and DIY solutions. I scroll through the options, clicking on links and skimming reviews, trying to figure out what I can afford.

  The professional gear costs hundreds, sometimes thousands of dolrs—more than I’ve ever spent on anything. But there are cheaper alternatives: small hydrophones, secondhand gear, things I might be able to cobble together if I’m careful.

  I grab my notebook and start scribbling again, this time listing the names of brands and models, comparing prices and specs, sketching rough diagrams of setups I don’t fully understand.

  The search pulls me in, my thoughts tumbling over one another in a rush. Each piece of equipment feels like a key, a step closer to unlocking the answer to the question that’s been looping in my chest since that night.

  I don’t stop until the notebook page is filled, the columns of text crammed into every corner.

  When I finally lean back, the screen blurs in front of me, the outlines of the equipment fading into the glow.

  The pulse is still there, faint and unrelenting, pressing against the edges of my mind.

  But for the first time, I feel like I might be able to cup it in my hands.