This was useless.

I was sitting in a hall of library shelves, one notebook beside me and my laptop open in front.

So far, I had read three tectonics books and one biology. They didn't tell me anything new other than the fact that there were way more trenches to search than I thought.

"Excuse me, ma'am? We're closing."

I peeked up, pencil between my teeth as I typed. "Five more minutes?" I asked hopefully after hastily removing the pencil.

"Sorry, but we were already supposed to close ten minutes ago. We open at 11 tomorrow, though so feel free to come back,"

She walked off and I sighed, shutting my eyes with my laptop. Leaning slightly against the bookshelf for a minute, I took a few deep breaths and started packing up my things.

When I got on the bus, I was hopeful for the turnout of these books, and it built up the whole drive here. However, I lost it after the first few books.

It was hopeless. They were gone - most likely dead - but I couldn't bring myself to accept it. I couldn't lose anyone else.

Not again.

Once back at the motel I was staying in, I dropped my bag on the mattress and flopped down.

I'd be heading back to the library again tomorrow, as I hadn't gone through a few still.

Even though I wasn't home, my mind constantly traveled there.

To the times Aaron helped me study for math in high school, then the group studies with everyone and even the short and sweet studies we had at the library or at my house alone. Even that one time I went to his house.

"Y'know something? I've never been to your house before. This is the first time." I smiled at him, turning back to look around his room. It was half as I had expected.

Simple. Red and black, and clean thanks to the maid his father hired.

There was a red bed that I knew was bigger than he liked. He wasn't a vanity person, also not much for luxury since he's had it his whole life.

The side tables were black, matching a desk and dresser. In the corner was a large black beanbag where he sat. There were a few picture frames - multiple of us together since we had nobody to hide from, one with the whole group, and one with a young Aaron and a big white dog.

I picked up the last one and giggled. "You were so cute!"

"Still am," he replied. I heard the smirk in his voice.

Setting the frame back down, I glanced at the desk. There was a computer tower under it neatly, and a monitor above it. The keyboard was pushed back under the monitor and papers were spread across the surface.

The pencil was on the floor, so I grabbed it and put it back, finally resting myself in Aaron's lap.

He smiled, holding my waist so I wouldn't fall.

Touching my hair, he moved it from my neck and kissed it lightly once. Then a second time, but slower.

"Mm." I breathed in and out. My brow furrowed and I whined, "I wish we could just sit here all day."

Kissing my neck for the last time, he looked up at me. "Yeah, me too. But, that calculus homework won't do itself."

I sighed, cupping his face and kissing his lips.

I was going to pull away, but he pulled me back gently into another. I laughed into him, and finally pulled away and off his lap.

Grabbing the work, I laid on my stomach on his bed facing towards him. He watched me, amused.

"Okay. Number one. . ."

I smiled, remembering his room. He'd been saving forever for a place of his own, but his dad worked hard to keep him home.

Aaron complained to me constantly how money vanished from his bank account and started saving in cash. That started to go missing, too.

He started keeping the cash at my house which was still there, hiding in the box that originally contained my necklace. I touched it, the metal warm from my body heat.

His dad was semi-overprotective. . . By which I mean his dad wanted him to take over the family business, but Aaron didn't want to. His dad made sure he knew where he was almost all the time, and wanted him to stay living there so he would eventually give in and accept.

Aaron never had a good relationship with anyone in his family other than Melissa - whom I've only met once. His parents were always working, leaving the two of them home alone most nights.

He's told me stories of them playing board games when the power went out, making dinner with recipes they found on Tv. They even played hide-and-seek and tag.

I sobbed a smile, ignoring the small tears on my temples when I remembered the joy on his face at times he talked about his childhood with Melissa. The only other times I had seen that look were times we talked for hours just the two of us.

I fell asleep, dreaming about the endless memories we shared.

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The next day, I was back at the library almost the minute it opened.

I grabbed even the books I finished, and this time sat in an aisle on the opposite side of the library. It was relatively small, but there were still a few hardcovers after this I could try that were much bigger.

Oceanic trenches are a distinctive morphological feature of convergent plate boundaries, along which lithospheric plates move towards each other at rates that vary from a few millimeters to over ten centimeters per year. A trench marks the position at which the flexed, subducting slab begins to descend beneath another lithospheric slab. Trenches are generally parallel to a volcanic island arc, and about 200 km (120 mi) from a volcanic arc. Oceanic trenches typically extend 3 to 4 km (1.9 to 2.5 mi) below the level of the surrounding oceanic floor. The greatest ocean depth measured is in the Challenger Deep of the Mariana Trench, at a depth of 11,034 m (36,201 ft) below sea level

I groaned quietly as to not disturb anyone nearby. There weren't many, but I didn't want to be kicked out. This was information I already knew, it was repeated constantly over and over in all of these books.

It went on to list twenty-two "notable" trenches, four ancient ones, and ten deepest ones.

I flipped through it, basically finding the same as any of the other books, and soon changed to the next biology book. They would need to be able to build, and if it were too deep then the pressure would kill them.

The deepest point ever reached by man is 35,858 feet below the surface of the ocean, which happens to be as deep as the water gets on earth. To go deeper, you'll have to travel to the bottom of the Challenger Deep, a section of the Mariana Trench under the Pacific Ocean 200 miles southwest of Scaleswind.

To put these depths into perspective, three Ru'an football fields laid end to end would measure 900 feet (274.32 m) long — less than the distance these divers reached underwater. Most recreational scuba divers only dive as deep as 130 feet (40 meters), according to the Professional Association of Diving Instructors.

There seemed to be things I could connect, so in a bout of slight desperation, I opened my laptop and searched up the human body's comparability with the ocean's domain.

Pressure can generally be defined as the force, per unit area, applied to the surface of something. We're always under a certain amount of pressure, we just don't notice.

For every 33 feet, a diver descends the weight of the water above them increases by 15 pounds per square inch. At only a few feet below the surface, the water pressure is already too great for the muscles that expand and contract our lungs to work, making it extremely difficult for us to draw breath. A couple of feet of water pressure isn't enough to do serious damage yet, but looking at deeper levels shows how pressure affects us a little more gradually.

At a depth of around 100 feet, (remember, you'd have four times the normal pressure pushing down on you at this point), the spongy tissue of the lung begins to contract, which would leave you with only a small supply of air that was inhaled at the surface. An ancient "dive-response" is then triggered in our body, which constricts the limbs and pushes blood toward the needier heart and brain. This extra blood expands the blood vessels in the chest, which balances out the pressure from the outside water. During their deepest dives, a diver's heart rate can dip to only 14 beats per minute; for reference, this is about a third of the rate of a person in a coma. Scientists aren't sure why we're able to sustain consciousness at considerable depths like this, but our instinct to survive can do some pretty crazy things at life-or-death moments like these. A convenient mechanism, for sure, but we can't survive like this for long.

Hm. So most likely, they would have to come up occasionally and even put the pressure. Though, they could do that with travel between submarines-

"Uh!" I yelped to myself when a book dropped on my head. Somewhere behind me, someone shushed the noise and I apologized quickly before glancing at the book.

It wasn't a book I would expect to be on a shelf here - it was a notebook. The cover was blue plastic, and instead of spirals, it was bound like a novel. There were sticky notes and bookmarks everywhere marking pages, and while it looked messy, there was an organization in the chaos.

Further, there seemed to be a key needed. It went from cover to cover, clasping in the center with a lock similar to the locker I had in high school.

Good thing I had worn my hair up today with hair ties and bobby pins because this was exactly what I needed.

I knew because the Trench's symbol was drawn over the front. This was one of theirs.

The biology book was open in my lap, and I shoved it away quickly, ignoring the second shush I was given.

I felt the glares in the back of my head for a moment but fiddled a bobby pin into the lock. It was too big, but I also brought some safety pins in my bag, which fit perfectly as I managed three at a time.

The front page was immediately filled to the brim with writing.

Flipping through the pages quickly, I noticed long paragraphs with barely any breaks, corrections in the writing including words and sentences crossed out, arrows connecting things and connecting what they meant to say rather than what they originally wrote. There were occasional drawings, sketches, and examples.

It was a complete and utter mess.

The bookmarks that outline every page were in several different colors - green, pink, orange, yellow, blue - but one was just white, with three U's connected like an upside down pyramid in black.

I opened to that page once I noticed the difference, and found it. It was of course in ink, but it was written almost like a log you would file online for archives.

Prison Location- #2247. Trench 9. Prisoner count- 15. Updated 4-23-18.

That was the day they went missing.

Sure enough, I flipped back a page or few and found the same thing, except it was updated 4-18-18, and the prisoner count was 8.

The bookmark glared back at me, the three semicircles all close to touching but not coming in contact.

They were meant to resemble scales.

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Word count: 2043
ωнσ'ѕ яєα∂у fσя ѕσмє иєω ¢нαρтєяѕ? 😏

Sources:
-Medical Daily. (2019). "Just How Much
         Pressure Can The Human Body
         Take?". [online] Available at:
         https://www.medicaldaily.com/. 
         breaking-point-how-much-water-
         pressure-can-human-body-
         take-347570
         [Accessed 8 Jul. 2019].
- En.m.wikipedia.org. (2019). "Oceanic
         trench".
         [online] Available at: https://
         en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/
         Oceanic_trench
         [Accessed 8 Jul. 2019].