Chapter 5 – The Sabotage Strategy

The abandoned training pool was a cathedral of forgotten silence, buried deep beneath the roaring, bloodthirsty chaos of the Crowncurrent arena. Above them, the muffled vibrations of fifty thousand furious spectators rippled through the reinforced concrete ceiling, a low, menacing hum that vibrated in the soles of Neris’s boots. The entire stadium was hunting for them. Cael had just broadcasted the Commissioner’s darkest secret over the public address system, turning them both into the most wanted targets in the league.

But down here, in the dim, flickering light of the luminescent moss clinging to the cracked tiles, there was only the steady, rhythmic pulse of their shared breathing.

Neris knelt beside the edge of the drained pool, her chest heaving against the shattered brass casing of her coral lung. The heavy iron door of the training facility was deadbolted and barred with a rusted metal pipe she had found in the corner. They were safe, at least for the moment. The air in the room was cool, dry, and blissfully stable. They were completely clear of the crushing underwater pressure, their medical statuses hovering in the safe zone.

Cael sat slumped against the tiled wall across from her. His heavy silver chest plate lay discarded on the floor between them, alongside her own outer armor. Without the plating, the glowing silver markings along his throat looked stark and vulnerable. The magical toll of being forced to speak the truth had bruised the skin around his vocal cords, leaving a faint, shadow-like ring around his neck.

Neris crawled across the cold tiles, closing the distance between them. Her hands were trembling, not from the adrenaline of the match they had just escaped, but from the terrifying, undeniable weight of what they had to do next. They had fragments of the truth. They knew a league referee had been in the water the day her brother died. They knew the league was stealing breath from surface teams. But the bubble replay from the airlock had collapsed before she could see the final, fatal seconds of Elian’s life.

Cael looked up at her as she approached, his dark eyes unreadable, yet swirling with a heavy, unspoken sorrow. He knew what she was going to ask.

"We need to see the rest of it," Neris whispered, her voice echoing faintly off the cavernous walls. "We need to open the replay again. The full memory."

Cael nodded slowly, his gaze dropping to the magical tether that connected the emergency circuit on her chest to the receiver embedded in his collarbone. The circuit pulsed with a soft, bioluminescent blue, a physical manifestation of their linked survival.

"The last time we tried a deep calibration, it took my voice," Cael rasped, his vocal cords still rough from the magical strain. "A full replay… pulling a memory that large from the water’s imprint… it will require a complete rebalancing of our shared ledger. Absolute vulnerability. We have to be perfectly synchronized, Neris. No walls. No hesitation."

Neris moved into the space between his knees, her breath catching as the proximity caused their shared-lung circuit to hum with sudden, electric anticipation. Up until now, their connection had been forged in the desperate fires of survival. It was a tactical alliance born of necessity. But as she looked at the siren captain—the man she had sworn to destroy, the man who had just thrown away his entire career to protect her—she felt the bitter ice of her hatred melt away entirely, replaced by a fierce, undeniable affection.

"I trust you," Neris said fiercely, her hands coming up to rest flat against his bare chest. His skin was remarkably warm, the muscles tense and hard beneath her palms. "I am choosing this, Cael. Not because the circuit demands it, but because I want it. I want to know the truth, and I want you."

Cael’s breath hitched, a corresponding flutter echoing in Neris’s own lungs. He reached up, his large hands gently framing her face, his thumbs brushing over her cheekbones. "I need you to confirm the parameters," he murmured, his eyes darkening with a potent, rising heat. "How much breath are we transferring? What are the limits?"

"No limits on the transfer," Neris answered, leaning into his touch, her heart hammering against her ribs. "Take whatever you need from my side of the ledger to stabilize the magic. And no safe words to stop the memory. I have to see the end, Cael. No matter how much it hurts."

"Understood," he whispered.

He leaned in, and when his mouth met hers, the tether between their chests flared with blinding, incandescent brilliance. This wasn’t the violent, desperate sharing of air in the drowning vortex of the arena. This was deliberate. It was tender, heavy with the weight of confession and the intoxicating thrill of absolute surrender. His lips were soft, demanding but patient, charting the contours of her mouth with a reverence that sent a shiver down her spine.

Neris gasped into his mouth, and the circuit responded, equalizing their breath in a profound, sweeping rush of magic. The physical sensation was overwhelming. She could feel the exact rhythm of his heart, the depth of his lung capacity, the primal, electric current of his siren magic weaving seamlessly into her own bloodstream. She tangled her fingers in his dark hair, pulling him closer, archiving the feeling of his skin, the taste of salt and deep ocean water on his tongue.

They moved together on the cold tiles, shedding the last remnants of their combat suits, their bodies pressing together in a frictionless, heated exchange of power and trust. Neris arched her back as Cael’s hands slid down her spine, his touch leaving trails of fire on her skin. The shared-lung circuit flared with every touch, a brilliant blue light illuminating the dark, mossy walls of the abandoned pool. He kissed his way down her jawline, his throat markings vibrating against her collarbone, sending a deep, resonant hum straight to her core.

Neris pulled him down onto her, her thighs parting to welcome his weight. When he slid inside her, she let out a soft, breathless cry that was instantly echoed by a sharp spike of pleasure in their shared ledger. The connection was absolute; she could not tell where her own physical sensations ended and his began. Every thrust was a calibration, a perfect synchronization of their bodies and minds. They moved in a timeless, rhythmic dance, the intensity building until the boundaries of their physical forms seemed to dissolve entirely. Every caress, every soft groan, drove the calibration deeper, locking their souls into a single, unified frequency.

As the physical intimacy crested, breaking over them in a wave of overwhelming, shared euphoria, the magic in the room hit a critical mass.

The air grew heavy and thick, smelling sharply of ozone and crushed coral.

"Hold on to me," Cael breathed against her neck, his arms wrapping tightly around her waist as the world around them began to dissolve.

The abandoned pool vanished. The walls of the room melted away, replaced by the freezing, oppressive blue of the Crowncurrent dome. They were no longer in the bowels of the stadium. They were suspended in the spectral waters of the past.

The bubble replay had opened.

Neris stood beside Cael in the ghostly water, completely invisible to the memory playing out in front of them. Her breath stopped in her throat.

A few yards away, her brother Elian was floating near the Breakwater goal-current. He looked exhausted, his face pale and drawn. But he wasn’t looking at the crown, and he wasn’t looking at the Abyssal players. He was staring down at his chest, at the heavy brass coral lung strapped over his heart.

Neris watched in horror as the ambient magic in the water illuminated a thick, glowing green line of energy tethered to Elian’s back, stretching out of his lung and disappearing into the glass floor of the dome. The league wasn’t just siphoning him. Elian was the anchor. The entire Breakwater team’s oxygen supply was being routed through his primary valve, sucked directly into the arena’s hidden storage vaults.

Elian looked up, his eyes meeting the frantic gaze of his teammates across the dome, who were all beginning to choke, their breathmarks plummeting artificially. He realized what was happening. If he kept playing, if he kept breathing through the rigged lung, his entire team would suffocate.

Elian didn’t panic. He made a choice.

With a look of grim, terrifying resolve, her brother reached up, gripped his own primary intake valve, and forcefully twisted it backward, snapping the brass fitting completely off.

The green siphon line instantly shattered. Across the arena, the Breakwater players gasped, their lungs violently detaching from the drain. Elian had severed the connection, saving his team. But in doing so, he had destroyed his only source of air.

He immediately began to drown.

"No," Neris sobbed, burying her face in Cael’s shoulder, even though she knew this was just an echo. Cael held her tighter, forcing her to watch.

A blur of silver armor shot across the water. It was Cael. The memory-version of the siren captain swam desperately toward Elian, his eyes wide with panic, reaching out to trigger a fair-play rescue.

But before Cael could reach him, a third figure materialized from the shadows of the goal-current. It was a league referee, the black tattoo of the Adjudicator’s crest stark against his wrist. The referee didn’t try to save Elian. Instead, he grabbed the broken brass valve floating near Elian’s chest, hiding the evidence of the rigged siphon, and violently shoved Elian’s spasming body downward to make it look like a tragic, unforced equipment failure.

Memory-Cael slammed into the referee, furious, his siren voice vibrating the water with a localized shockwave. But Elian was already gone. His eyes were blank, his breathmarks permanently zeroed.

The referee held up his hands, projecting a magical sound-bubble so Memory-Cael could hear him. “Keep your mouth shut, Ruun,” the referee sneered, the words echoing in the cold water. “Breakwater is a surface team. They have real air up there. But your city? The Abyssal trenches are starving. Keep quiet about what happened here, let us rule it an accident, and the league will route fifty thousand breath-units to your sector tomorrow. Your people live, if you let this surface dweller die.”

Memory-Cael looked down at Elian’s lifeless body, his fists trembling with rage. Then, he looked out past the dome, toward the dark, crushing depths of his impoverished home. The siren captain lowered his hands. He accepted the bribe.

The spectral bubbles exploded into mist. The memory collapsed.

They were slammed back into the reality of the abandoned training pool. The cold tiles bit into Neris’s knees. The glowing moss flickered ominously.

Neris sat back on her heels, pulling her combat suit back up to her shoulders, her mind reeling from the devastating clarity of the truth. She had spent a year imagining Elian as a helpless victim, murdered in cold blood. But he wasn’t a victim. He was a martyr. He had sacrificed himself to save his roster.

And Cael… Neris looked at the man sitting across from her, his head bowed, his shoulders tense as he waited for her judgment. Cael hadn’t killed her brother. He had arrived too late to save him. But he had covered up the crime. He had taken the oxygen soaked in Elian’s blood to feed his own starving city.

"I’m sorry," Cael whispered, his voice cracking, thick with a year’s worth of suffocating guilt. He didn’t reach for her. He didn’t try to defend himself. "They offered me the air my people needed to survive the winter. I traded your brother’s justice for my city’s life. You have every right to despise me."

Neris stared at him, her heart breaking not from betrayal, but from the impossible, agonizing weight of the choice he had been forced to make. The league had weaponized their survival against each other. They had turned Cael into a compromised witness, bleeding his morality dry to protect his people.

She didn’t despise him. She understood him.

Neris reached out, grabbing his hand and threading her fingers tightly through his. Cael’s head snapped up, his eyes widening in shock at the contact.

"My brother made his choice," Neris said, her voice steadying, hardening into polished steel. "He died saving his team. You made your choice to save your city. The only monsters in this arena are the men sitting in the Commissioner’s box, selling our lives for sport."

Cael’s grip tightened on her hand, a look of fierce, desperate devotion burning through the shadows in his eyes. "What do we do?" he asked.

"We prove it," Neris said, standing up and pulling him to his feet. She reached for her discarded chest armor, strapping the heavy silver plating back over her shoulders. "The public heard you confess to the siphoning, but the league will just spin it as the desperate lies of a disqualified captain. We have to show the public the siphon lines. We have to make the magic visible."

"The stealth wards on the siphon lines are heavily enchanted," Cael noted, strapping on his own armor, his mind instantly shifting back into the sharp, calculating tactician she had faced on the field. "They only appeared in the replay because Elian broke the primary anchor and the magical feedback illuminated the network. If we try to break the valves now, the league will just cut the feed."

"Then we overload the network the hard way," Neris said, pointing to the glowing shared-lung tether connecting their chests. "Right now, every time you score a goal, it forcefully drains breath from my side of the ledger. If you score massive points on me in rapid succession, the magical transfer between our linked lungs and the arena’s automated scoreboard will cause a massive power surge. It will short out the stealth wards. The siphon lines hidden in the glass will light up for the entire stadium to see."

Cael’s face went pale. He looked down at her chest, his jaw clenching. "Neris, if I score three times in a row without giving you time to recover… the breath drain will drop your lungs to zero. The pressure will crush your chest before the medical shelf even registers a stop protocol. You’re asking me to suffocate you."

"I’m asking you to trust me," Neris countered, stepping into his space, grabbing the edges of his breastplate. "I can take it. We are scheduled for the semifinal match in exactly twenty minutes. Breakwater versus Abyssal Crown. We go out there, we take our positions, and you hit my goal-current with everything you have. Don’t hold back. You break my defense, and you light up this dome."

Cael stared at her, the terrifying reality of the sabotage strategy settling over him. If they did this, it was over. Blatant collusion, breaking formation, intentionally manipulating the scoreboard—it would result in an instant, double disqualification. They would lose their chance at the championship crown.

"We’ll be banned from the final," Cael said softly.

"I didn’t come here to win a crown," Neris replied, her eyes locked on his. "I came here to tear this league apart. Are you with me?"

Cael reached out, his thumb brushing over the white coral stop-protocol bead resting against her collarbone. "To the end of the line, Holt."

***

Twenty minutes later, the water of the Crowncurrent dome swallowed them whole.

The roar of the crowd was a muffled, physical pressure vibrating through the water. The arena was a powder keg. Following Cael’s broadcasted confession, the stands were packed with furious, shouting fans, heavily guarded by league security forces holding shock-tridents. The Commissioner couldn’t cancel the semifinal without looking guilty, so he had forced them into the water, betting that their competitive instincts would override their rebellion.

He bet wrong.

The klaxon sounded, vibrating through Neris’s bones. From the center vortex, the heavy red coral crown was released, spinning wildly in the crosscurrents.

Neris hovered in front of the glowing blue vortex of the Breakwater goal-current, her hands raised, her fins kicking steadily to maintain her depth. Across the stadium, Cael shot off his starting block like a silver torpedo. He didn’t even look at the opposing Breakwater forwards. He bypassed the center scrum entirely, intercepting the red crown with a brutal, flawless maneuver, and charged directly at her.

Their shared-lung tether pulsed brilliantly between them, a glowing line of blue light slicing through the chaotic water.

Cael locked eyes with Neris as he approached the scoring zone. Ready? his gaze asked.

Neris shifted her weight, intentionally leaving a massive, glaring gap in the upper left quadrant of her defense. Hit it.

Cael whipped his arm forward, hurling the red coral crown straight through the blue goal-current.

The scoreboard chimed violently. ABYSSAL CROWN: 3 POINTS.

The magical toll hit Neris instantly. A horrific, tearing sensation erupted in her chest as three hundred breathmarks were violently ripped from her lungs and transferred across the ledger. She gasped, water rushing past her visor as her vision swam with dark spots. The pressure inside her suit spiked, her ribs groaning under the sudden, crushing weight of the deep water.

Before she could recover, the automated system spat a new crown into the center vortex. Cael was already there. He snatched it, spinning off the glass wall, and hurled it into her goal-current a second time.

ABYSSAL CROWN: 6 POINTS.

Neris’s scream was entirely silent, swallowed by the water. Her chest plate cracked ominously. Her breathmarks plummeted past the danger threshold, flashing a frantic, strobing red on the public board above them. The physical pain was blinding. She was suffocating, her lungs collapsing as the magic aggressively siphoned the air from her blood to fuel the scoreboard.

But she forced her eyes open, looking at the curved glass of the dome above them.

It was working. The massive, rapid transfer of breath points between their linked ledger and the arena’s system was causing the stealth wards to stutter. Faint, neon-green veins were beginning to flicker in the transparent walls of the stadium.

One more! Neris projected the thought, praying the tether would carry her intention to him. Do it, Cael!

Cael grabbed the third crown. He hesitated for a fraction of a second, seeing her sinking toward the arena floor, her limbs going numb. The agony on his face was clear even through the churning water. But he honored the strategy. He threw the crown into the vortex.

ABYSSAL CROWN: 9 POINTS.

The magical overload detonated.

With a sound like shattering thunder, the stealth wards blanketing the stadium violently short-circuited. The entire dome lit up like a massive, glowing spiderweb. Thick, pulsing green siphon lines became instantly visible, snaking out from every player’s starting block, converging into massive conduits that burrowed deep into the bedrock beneath the Commissioner’s private viewing box.

The crowd went absolutely insane. Thousands of fans rushed the glass, screaming in outrage as the physical proof of the league’s theft was laid bare for the world to see.

But Neris couldn’t hear them. Her breathmarks hit zero.

The darkness rushed in, total and absolute. Her limbs went limp, and she began to freefall toward the dark trench at the bottom of the dome. The automated medical shelf failed to trigger, overridden by the massive system crash they had just caused.

She was going to die in the water, just like Elian.

Suddenly, a blur of silver armor collided with her. Strong arms wrapped around her waist, crushing her against a solid chest. Cael. He had abandoned his team’s formation entirely, dropping his offensive posture and swimming with terrifying speed to catch her before she hit the trench.

He didn’t wait for the medical shelf. He grabbed the white coral bead on her necklace and crushed it in his fist.

The emergency stop protocol engaged. A violent column of pressurized air shot up from the floor, enveloping them both, rapidly forcing them upward toward the surface. As they broke the water, coughing and gasping for the glorious, freezing air of the arena, the main klaxons began to scream.

The massive digital scoreboard above them flashed in blinding red letters:

BREAKWATER: DISQUALIFIED. ABYSSAL CROWN: DISQUALIFIED. REASON: BLATANT RULE MANIPULATION. BREAKING FORMATION.

They had lost the championship. The league had thrown them out.

Cael dragged Neris onto the wet metal grating of the emergency shelf, wrapping his body over hers protectively as security forces began sprinting down the concourse toward them. Neris looked up at him, her lungs burning, her vision still blurry. He was smiling. A fierce, predatory, triumphant smile.

They had lost the crown. But the sabotage strategy had worked. The world knew the truth, and the war for the ocean’s breath had officially begun.