1
“The fish are small,” Amir lamented. “The catch is pitiful. They won’t fetch a good price. I’m afraid we can’t raise the money for the operation, Papang.”
Amir’s rough, hard hands deftly manipulated the blade, cleaving through the dolphinfish with precision. Flesh, sinew, and bone yielded beneath his touch. He ripped out the entrails, fillets the glistening meat, and scoured it with rough sea salt. Blow flies, enticed by the pungent offering, darted anxiously, torn between their primal hunger and the repulsion of the saline tang.
Amir glanced at his father to see if the old man heard him. Turing’s hearing had been steadily deteriorating, the left side particularly. Turing kept on salting the filleted Dorado silently.
Amir sighed as his thumb and forefinger idly touched the single black pearl on a frayed leather cord around his neck. He found this treasure when he was a boy, a boy who could dive deeper than his playmates, who would fearlessly steal the barangay captain’s boat on a dare, who one day fought in a war and came back to his hometown a quiet man, a man who ceased trying to find sacred things. Yet, he clung to this talisman that he believed brought him luck a few times, maybe even saved his life on a couple of occasions. Perhaps there was still some luck left in it.
Amir heard the melancholic flute music drifting from within the small hut nestled amidst the coconut grove. Nearby, the briny relics of the day’s labor—lesser fish, squid, and other sea creatures—hang drying on bamboo poles, holy martyrs silently bearing their excruciation. Between the trees, Amir could see the fishing boats, small vessels without any outriggers. And beyond that stretched the inevitability of the sea, where the waves smashed relentlessly against the jagged rocks. Above, the sun was already high, the blinding eye of an indifferent god casting its dispassionate gaze upon the just and unjust alike.
“Our house has withstood the storms for decades,” Helen once told Amir, back when they first learned of her affliction. “We will weather this storm, too. This is what we are. We endure.”
We endure.
The flute music faltered. From inside the house, Elsa emerges with her stick and a pitcher of water. Tap-tapping lightly on the ground, the teenager finally reached her father and grandfather. They thanked her for the water. She then sat on a bench, where the sea breeze cooled her brow. She took out her flute and started playing again.
As Amir stretched the salted dolphinfish on bamboo sticks and prepared it for drying, he sighed. “The Dorado season is almost over…storms are coming.”
The old man coughed and spat. “There’s always next year, Amir.”
Amir’s brows furrowed as he scooped salt from a sack. “I promised Helen on her deathbed that I’d have Elsa’s eyes operated on this year. I promised Elsa she’d be able to go to school next semester. That scholarship is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity…”
A wounded look passed across Turing’s face. “If only I were stronger, I’d help you, son. I’m sorry…”
“I’m not blaming you, ‘Pang. I’m just so frustrated. I want something better for her…better than this!” Amir gestures angrily at the fish drying in the sun.
They continued the muted cadence of their labor, Elsa’s music and the whistling of the wind filling their souls. Yet something angry and defiant was awakening in Amir’s heart. When he spoke, his voice had fallen a full octave: “I have a plan. Tomorrow, I’ll go to the old island. There, Dorado are as long as people are tall.”
Turing stopped and looked at Amir. “Susmariosep! Are you crazy? It is forbidden there!”
“Only the foreigners forbade us from going there, Papang. They’re brave because their boats are big. Because they have long guns. But the people in town say they haven’t been seen for a long time. They might have already left.” Amir took the knife again and began gutting another fish. “I’ll find out tomorrow…”
Turing’s expression darkened with apprehension.
2
Toktoktoktoktok…
Amir’s slender pump boat sliced through the choppy sea. The high waves struck the side of his vessel like a challenge. The wind whipped at his hair and clothes as he expertly maneuvered through the rough waters, one hand on the rudder stick and the other firmly holding onto the boat, feet planted on the wooden ribs of the craft. Huge dolphinfish, still displaying their iridescent golden and green hues, jostled at the bottom of the boat, a substantial catch. Despite the rough journey, a triumphant gleam danced in Amir’s eyes as he secured his precious cargo. When a school of flying fishes suddenly darted across his path in a fleeting ballet, Amir erupted in joyous exultation and whooped victoriously: “Hala! Arya! Wooohooo!”
Before long, the wind died down and the water turned placid. Amir let out a sigh. The sea had allowed him a brief respite. From his breast pocket, he fished out a cigarette and his battered brass lighter. He ignited the lighter, yet before the flame could touch the tobacco, his eyes were drawn to an island in the distance.
With the unlit cigarette hanging between his lips and the flickering flame of the lighter battling against the wind, Amir watched the shape of the island as it glided past to his left. His eyes scanned the horizon; there were no foreign vessels to challenge his passage. He put the lighter back into his pocket as curiosity filled him. A smirk played on his lips as he adjusted his course towards the island, foam churning in the wake of his vessel.
Toktoktoktoktok…
Minutes later, Amir secured his boat to a sturdy coconut tree on the rocky beach before turning his attention to the enigmatic edifice perched atop the island’s highest peak. A windowless facade looked back at him, the only markings upon it were large Chinese characters. The island seemed abandoned. With a determined stride, he set off towards the structure.
Crabs scuttled across the ground as Amir reached the mysterious facility. Silence reigned in this forsaken kingdom, punctuated only by the rustle of trees in the wind and the persistent crash of waves against the shore. Towering before him stood an imposing metal door, reminiscent of those found in aircraft hangars.
Adjacent to the colossal entrance, a smaller door caught Amir’s attention. He attempted to open it, finding it firmly locked, with a keypad nearby. Randomly pressing numbers yielded no results. With a resigned shrug, he turned to depart.
Suddenly, a woman’s voice crackled through the intercom, startling him. “Please…wait…”
Amir froze.
The voice, thick with accent, persisted. “I see you…you are…fisherman…yes?”
Amir looked up and saw the CCTV camera peering down at him.
A few moments of silence ensued before the woman spoke again. “I am injured… I need help…”
The smaller door unlocked with a click and slowly slid open. Amir tried to peer inside, but the interior was cloaked in darkness. Uncertainty gnawed at Amir as he deliberated whether to step inside or to turn away.
“Please…please help…”
Cautiously, Amir crossed the threshold and entered the building.
The pillar of light coming through the open doorway showed Amir what seemed to be a sprawling cargo unloading area. Crates, military vehicles, forklifts, and boats clutter the space, amidst scattered machine parts.
A faint pounding drew his attention upward to a small office, its glass walls revealing a middle-aged woman clad in a blood-stained cleanroom suit, frantically gesturing for him to approach.
Upon entering the office, Amir immediately noticed the blood pooling beneath the woman’s chair, a tear in her suit revealing bandaged wounds beneath. She had a pained expression as she braced herself against a shelf and stood up.
“I…I will take you to a hospital—” Amir started, but his words were cut short as the woman produced a pistol. With her free hand, she pulled a lever. Through the glass wall, Amir saw the door to the outside world slowly shutting.
A surge of panic gripped Amir, his instinct urging him to flee before he was sealed in here. Yet, the woman’s weapon held him at bay, her gaze daring him to make a move.
As darkness descended, the woman donned a pair of strange goggles and tossed another to Amir. The world was engulfed in shadow.
A faint, high-pitched buzz accompanied Amir’s activation of the goggles. The world reemerged, filtered through the eerie phosphor glow of the device—distorted yet strangely tangible. As he gazed at the woman through the goggles, her form took on a surreal quality, outlined by pulsating waves, her shape rendered in a ghostly silhouette. Her movements left shimmering trails in the air, each gesture captured in subtle shifts of the bizarre waves. Despite the surrounding darkness, her features remained discernible but with an ethereal quality, as if she existed simultaneously in the physical realm and the realm of shadows.
“Experimental technology,” the woman explained. “Echolocation data translated to visual representation. We see like biānfú…like bat.
Amir’s fists clenched “What do you want from me?”
“We go down now,” she motioned with her gun.
Together, they stepped out of the office. The two headed down an eerily silent corridor until they reached a cavernous cargo elevator. The woman, Jing, used a key card on a panel and the elevator began to descend with a low sound. Amir noticed the blood pooling around Jing’s feet.
“You have lost a lot of blood,” he remarked coldly.
“No matter,” she murmured. “I am Doctor Jing. I am…a scientist. We were tasked by our government to study this place for minerals, oil, resources—”
“To steal,” Amir said grimly.
Jing smirked. “You cannot steal what you already own. History backs our…” she sighed. “This is not the time for politics. Here in Facility N-314, we found something else…ancient, dangerous. My people call it Shadow…Lóng…Shadow Dragon. In your culture, you call it…Yu…Yusari…”
“Yusari? That’s just a bedtime story. Close your eyes or Yusari will devour the sun,” Amir retorted.
The elevator ground to a halt. When the door opened, discarded shell casings rolled into the elevator. Yet what made Amir freeze was the grim tableau of charred corpses littering the corridor beyond. Amir’s stomach churned at the sight. He had seen carnage in the jungles of Mindanao. But not like this. Gods of his ancestors, not like this.
His gaze then turned towards the vast abyss yawning beneath them, dark and seemingly bottomless.
The weight of urgency marked Jing’s voice. “We discovered Yusari prison below. Opened it. Many killed. I was injured. Now, all dead. Yusari is trying to escape the facility, to find sunlight. So it grows into its true form and consumes the sun. We must put it back in prison. You must help—”
Before she could finish, the pistol slipped from Jing’s grasp, clattering to the edge of the walkway. Bloodied and weakened, she collapsed into Amir’s arms.
In a final, desperate plea, Jing pressed a marine flare and a blood-spattered phone into Amir’s hand. “It follows light. Lure it back to prison and…press call to… detonate…”
“Detonate? What do you mean—” Amir’s protest was cut short as he noticed the explosives duct taped along the walkway. “Diyos ko…”
“I have rigged entire facility…all blow up…collapse…bury everything!” Jing’s voice wavered, her grip tightening on Amir’s wrist.
“No! I have a family!” Amir recoiled.
“All die if Yusari sees the sun! You have to—”
In an instant, something too fast to be human descended upon the scientist, brutally seizing her by the crown of her head. Her anguished cries were stifled by the merciless grip of her captor, a misshapen horror slithering among the pipes above. Cursing under his breath, Amir retrieved the scientist’s pistol (an American gun, how strange) and quickly leveled the weapon towards the intruder perched overhead.
What he saw made him pause.
It was a biomechanical aberration, encrusted with the detritus of ancient oceans, its form a grotesque amalgamation of organic and metallic components. Glistening gills bristling with rows of serrated teeth quivered on its sides, while a multitude of eyes darted about in a frenetic dance of madness. With a vice-like claw, it holds the squirming scientist in its grasp.
Suddenly, its malevolent eyes fixated upon Jing. Its hideous countenance split asunder, revealing a cavernous maw aglow with an ominous red light that seemed to come from the engines deep in the creature’s belly. The glow turned brighter and brighter until a searing beam of crimson light poured out of the creature’s mouth. There’s a muffled scream and the sickening sizzle of flesh as the unfortunate scientist was consumed by the unholy fire, her form reduced to charred, smoking remnants that clattered upon the cold steel floor. As the pieces of the creature’s visage once more snapped together into a mask of malice, its gaze shifted towards Amir.
With a trembling hand, Amir pulled the trigger. Click! The pistol’s chamber was empty. He stood there, facing the terror as its visage split once again. Amir leaped away as the creature unleashed its devastating fire, the energy slicing through steel pipes, cables, struts, and scaffolding. The world erupted into chaos. With a harsh squeal, the steel path gave way beneath his feet, sending him and the beast plummeting into the depths below.
Amir tumbled into the hole, his hands flailing around wildly, seeking something to grab onto. The Yusari fell past him, bellowing its rage as it disappeared into the blackness. Finally, his hand found some old ropes in the darkness. He instinctively tightened his fingers around it. It halted his fall, and he crashed into strange old planks that mostly disintegrated under his weight. He felt the bones in his arm shattering, a few ribs snapping, sharp wooden shards tearing through the muscles in his thigh. He tasted the blood in his mouth. And then came the soul-wrenching pain.
In agony, Amir picked himself up, his surroundings brought into focus through his goggles. He realized he’s upon the great carcass of a wrecked Spanish galleon embedded in the wall of this cavernous hole. Peering around, he observed a haunting graveyard of broken ships implanted in the walls, resembling the bones of dinosaurs.
His wonder at this magnificent sight, however, was short-lived. The Yusari’s red beam lanced up from the darkness, barely missing Amir’s head. He looked down and saw the beast clawing its way up the wall of the pit.
Amir remembered what Jing said: We will all die if it sees the sun.
Amir took out the phone detonator. Suddenly, the galleon’s wooden deck collapsed, sending Amir down again until he hit the metal hull of another ship. And the world turned black.
3
Amir’s consciousness stirred to the haunting melody of Elsa’s flute, mingling with the rhythmic symphony of crashing waves.
Gradually awakening, he found himself nestled in his boat, the shoreline within sight. As he sat upright, he gazed at the familiar figures of Elsa and Turing, silhouetted against the radiant sun and cloudless sky. A pair of hands touched his shoulders. He turned and saw Helen as she was before her body turned against her.
“I am home,” Amir whispered.
The tranquil scene, however, darkened before his eyes. A shadowy veil began swallowing the sun whole and turning it into a black disc. From within that obsidian core emerged the unsettling visage of Yusari, its multiple eyes scanning the surroundings with eerie intent.
Amidst the unfolding chaos, the sea itself froze, the ice capturing a school of flying fish mid-leap. Helplessly, Amir witnessed Elsa and Turing encased in ice, their forms preserved in a chilling clasp. The ice reaches Amir’s boat and begins crawling up Helen’s body.
“We endure, Amir,” Helen whispered through the frost before she succumbed entirely to the icy embrace. “We endure…”
Amir opened his mouth to scream.
4
Amir’s eyes fluttered open. His goggles were cracked and malfunctioned. He could barely see the weathered metal beneath him. He noticed the tattered remnants of a Rising Sun flag draped over one of the twisted gun turrets. Spotting the detonator nearby, he moved, gnashing his teeth in pain, and crawled towards the device. As he snatched it up, he heard the great beast roaring below him. He looked over the ship’s edge and saw the creature clawing its way up the rocky precipice. He willed his broken body to budge, he pulled himself up on the bent railings.
Contemplating his next move, Amir’s eyes darted to the heavy chains strewn across the side of the ship, leading to a coil nearby. He glanced towards the elevator suspended by a lone cable. At that point, the goggles ceased operating, and the cavern turned black as sin.
Gritting his teeth, Amir retrieved the flare from his pocket and ignited it, bathing his surroundings in a fiery red glow. He pulled off his goggles and threw them away. Brandishing the flare, he cursed at the creature to lure its attention: “Here! Here, you son of a devil!”
The beast let out a primal roar as it leaped onto the warship’s deck.
Maintaining his distance, Amir edged rearward until his foot touched the coil of chains. As the creature advanced, its eyes fixated on him, it trod upon the rusted chains. Suddenly, its grotesque maw split open, emitting its eldritch fire. Amir narrowly evaded the lethal beam, which struck the coil of chains, dissolving the rusted locks and setting the anchor free. Plummeting into the abyss, the anchor dragged the chain with it, ensnaring the monster’s leg and yanking it overboard.
Amir leaped over the edge and, with his good arm, caught the broken elevator’s cable, desperately holding on for dear life. He kicked the elevator with his injured leg, lightning bolts of unimaginable pain clawing through his body, and the elevator plummeted as he ascended, propelled by the falling counterweight.
Emerging back on the surface, lighting his way with the red light of the flare, Amir limped towards the office to open the door, the sound of unlocking mechanisms echoing from below. The daylight pouring in from the opening door was blinding at first. Amir threw away the flare and headed for his escape. Hastening to the entrance, he paused, casting a glance back at the elevator shaft as a distant roar reverberated through the structure. He spat blood and stumbled out into the sunlight.
Not long after that, Amir’s humble boat chugged its way into the vast expanse of the sea, its small engine laboring against the waves. Pausing to steady himself, he retrieved the detonator from his pocket, the weight of the pearl pendant around his neck a comforting presence against his skin.
Meanwhile, deep within the facility, the Yusari emerged from the elevator shaft, greeted by the sight of an open door and a sliver of sunlight casting a bright white beam across the floor. With a victorious bellow, it lumbered towards the beckoning light, a length of the warship’s chain still entangled around its leg, trailing behind it.
In his boat, Amir’s thumb hovered over the detonator’s call button. He pressed it, and a deafening explosion erupted behind him, sending shockwaves through the air.
As the reverberations faded, Amir found himself sprawled amidst his bounty of dolphinfish. Taking a moment to collect himself, he retrieved a broken cigarette, spattered with his own blood, and placed it between his lips. He reached for his lighter, but the mechanism was wet. It seemed his luck had run out at last.
“We endure, my love” he mumbled, the words barely audible over the sound of lapping waves. Then, a chuckle escaped him, at first softly, then growing into hearty laughter across the open water.
