Introducing: Derelict

March 12, 2026·53 min·4 clips

Agent Blaine reveals he can believe Edgar's theory that the ancient alien vault was built to keep something trapped inside rather than to keep intruders out.

1. 'Introducing: Derelict' is a crossover promotional episode of The Amelia Project presenting the first episode of Fathom, a sci-fi thriller prequel to the podcast Derelict by Night Rocket Productions. 2. The episode stars Elizabeth Laidlaw as Dr. Eva Graff, the project director, with Michael Mao as ISD Agent Blaine, Eli Goodman as Commander Joe Freeman, and Danny Payne as Dr. Sarah Clayton. 3. The episode's central question is whether a seven-million-year-old alien artifact, called 'the vault,' should be opened — and whether the people pursuing that goal are still mentally fit to do so. 4. Fathom Base sits 19,000 feet underwater, studying a 2,000-foot-diameter circular door made of an alloy harder than plexi steel, which no drilling, laser cutting, or explosives have scratched. 5. The vault broadcasts a signal at 11 kilohertz, which carries a binary-encoded equation with two variables — the base has been solving combinations for eleven months without success. 6. The previous week, Dr. Edgars — a triple-PhD, Nobel Prize-winning engineer — planted explosives that killed eleven people, apparently to stop the vault from being opened. 7. Edgars told colleagues he heard voices in the vault signal and believed the structure was built not to keep people out but to keep something trapped inside; three other researchers independently reported the same voices. 8. Agent Blaine reveals that Edgars died by hanging in his cell the previous night, before Eva could dismiss his breakdown as simple deep-sea psychological collapse. 9. Mac, the base's virtual intelligence, has been exhibiting unexplained errors since the explosion — waking staff at wrong hours, forgetting identities, turning lights off mid-shift — despite physical inspection finding no hardware damage. 10. Emerson, the only engineer who fully understands Mac, has been unreachable all morning, with Mac's own personnel tracking system also down, adding a second unexplained disappearance to the crisis. 11. Blaine orders Eva's science team to the surface, restricts Mac from critical systems, and shuts down the relay to the vault, effectively ending active research. 12. Blaine also confronts Eva directly, noting her own medical chart records her reporting voices in the signal, her inability to sleep, and erratic behaviour reported by her team. 13. Eva's estrangement from her wife Angela — who left a message saying they haven't spoken in two months 'yesterday of all days' — is framed as connected to the death of their daughter, the grief Eva came to Fathom to escape. 14. Blaine suggests Eva may have taken the project director role specifically because 19,000 feet underwater offered a place with 'nothing to remind you of home,' and that what she fears most is having to leave. 15. Eva cracks under Blaine's interrogation and admits she does not sleep, and that when she does, 'I hear her' — referring to her daughter. 16. Working alone after the confrontation, Eva notices that Mac reports the vault signal is exactly ten seconds long with exactly two-second intervals, accurate 'down to the millisecond.' 17. Testing x=10 and y=2 in the equation, the result resolves to exactly eleven — matching the signal's own 11-kilohertz frequency, a self-referential key embedded in the artifact's own transmission. 18. Eva immediately contacts Commander Freeman and proposes they circumvent the ISD mandate by walking to the relay in person to broadcast the solution before Blaine can stop them. 19. The episode's tone shifts between quiet psychological dread in Eva's personal scenes and tense procedural confrontation with Blaine, with a cinematic audio production style throughout. 20. Listeners who enjoy deep-sea and space horror, AI malfunction narratives, and psychological pressure-cooker drama in the tradition of Aliens and 2001: A Space Odyssey will find this episode an effective entry point into the Derelict universe.

As heard by us

An effective underwater sci-fi opener where an ancient door turns corporate logic into mortal danger.

The Amelia Project positions Derelict as a pick for listeners drawn to stories about things that were better left undisturbed. Fathom opens on a vast ancient door at the bottom of the ocean, where a powerful corporation has built a research base with the aim of getting it open.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You get an ancient ocean door, a tense research base, and one very expensive VI caught in the blast radius.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from The Amelia Project