The hunt had begun.
“They said she hit a submerged peak,” Leo said, reading her silence.
Marina slammed the box shut. The vision vanished. The sea was calm again.
“We dive at dawn,” Marina announced. The water was a cold, green cathedral. Marina’s dive light cut through the murk like a knife, revealing the Ilhabela 2 in terrible glory. Her brass fittings were verdigris-green, her wooden hull encrusted with feather stars. She lay on her side, as if sleeping. Ilhabela 2
“Don’t open it, Marina. It’s not treasure. It’s a trap.”
But Marina looked at the coordinates on her GPS, then at the jade box. Her father’s voice still echoed in her skull.
Behind them, a single amber light flickered on in the deep, then went out. The hunt had begun
“That’s no rock,” her first mate, Leo, whispered, wiping salt spray from his brow. The screen showed a clean, sharp anomality resting at forty-seven meters, just outside the channel’s main traffic. A hull. Intact.
She reached for it. Her glove touched the cold jade.
Leo was pale. “We’re leaving that thing at the bottom. Now.” The vision vanished
The expedition had been funded by a maritime historian, a quiet woman named Dr. Yuki Tanaka, who believed the Ilhabela 2 held something more precious than lost souls. A cargo manifest from the 1920s, never declared, about a jade box bound for a private collector.
“What is it?” he asked.