Hayden

Hayden is Gerard's younger brother by nine years — same dark hair, same restless energy, but where Gerard burns hot, Hayden runs cool. He was born in Marseille the year Gerard left for Zurich, which means they grew up in the same house but almost in different lifetimes. Hayden learned to build things not from his brother but from the ghost of his brother — the half-finished projects left behind in the garage, the drone parts in labelled boxes, the notebooks full of sketches Gerard never came back for.

At nineteen, Hayden is the youngest person ever attached to one of Sam Jensen's expeditions. He didn't apply. Gerard asked Sam directly, which is the only time anyone has seen Gerard ask for anything. Sam watched the kid fly a modified racing drone through a decommissioned shipyard in Toulon — at night, no GPS, no line of sight — and said yes before the drone landed.

Hayden handles surface communications and operates the expedition's aerial and underwater survey drones. He built most of them himself, cannibalising parts from commercial units and printing custom housings in the workshop behind his mother's house. He doesn't have a degree. He doesn't have a plan. He has fast hands, perfect spatial awareness, and the kind of instinct for machines that can't be taught.

He looks up to Gerard but would never say it. The two of them argue constantly — about equipment, about method, about whose music gets played in the workshop. But when something goes wrong, Hayden is the first person Gerard looks at. Not for help. For confirmation that someone else saw it too.

Hayden doesn't fully understand what they're looking for at the bottom of the trench. He's not sure any of them do. But he knows his brother needs him on this one, and that's enough. He sleeps with his headphones on, stays up too late modifying firmware, and has a quiet habit of filming everything on a battered GoPro he's carried since he was twelve. He says it's for documentation. It's not. It's because he knows something is about to happen that people will want to see.