Leo chuckled at the memory of Madison hitting Flynn over the head… He zoomed in on them and adjusted his focus. There they were! He recognized their raft right away. Madison was standing on the platform… His eyes lingered over her tall, lean body until she bent down and disappeared from his viewfinder. Leo shifted his binoculars, and there she was again… Crouching at the edge of the raft, talking to Flynn Perry.
“C’mon Perry boy, do something stupid! Really, really stupid!” Leo muttered through his teeth. It looked like Flynn was stringing something together, constructed out of sheets of plastic and floating in the water next to him. Something that looked like a diving bell… Yes, Leo was sure it was a bell… Madison was handing Flynn some kind of a tool now. She got up again, walked away, and came back carrying a big rock. The weight for the bell… So far, nothing out of the ordinary, thought Leo. The Free Scavengers were obviously doing their drills… Leo needed more.
“And where exactly are you?” he muttered and shifted his binoculars away from the raft, slowly scanning the area around it. He stopped at a crooked sign with the words “TOXIC WASTE!” written on it with big letters. Right next to the sign, hung another one, saying “DO NOT ENTER!” The signs were old and rusty, the letters faded. Obviously, no one had been at this site for years.
“What is that place?” Leo pulled back a bit, revealing four gigantic smokestacks sticking out of the water, surrounded by a makeshift chain-link fence. He readjusted his zoom and pulled back farther. Flynn’s raft appeared to be all the way across the Hudson Bay.
“Aha! I know where you are!” Leo couldn’t contain his excitement and lowered his binoculars. The Power Plant… the submerged and completely off-limits nuclear power station! What were these two doing there? Had they gone on their own, or had Duncan Roth sent them? The man’s name made Leo’s face turn red with anger and hatred… That bastard never wasted an opportunity to humiliate him… especially in front of his father. But it seemed impossible for Leo to weaken Duncan’s hold over his dad. Until now that is, he thought… Leo prided himself on smelling trouble from a mile away… and he was certain something was up…
Leo lifted up his binoculars and looked through the lenses again. It took him a second to find the raft. Perry was gone, along with the diving bell. Madison was standing alone on the deck, a pigeon perched on her shoulder. A moment later, Perry’s head reappeared in the water. He heaved himself back on the raft, walked over to Madison and put his hand on her shoulder.
“Don’t touch my girl, you prick!” cried Leo, flinched and lost his focus on them. When he found them again, they seemed to be arguing. Madison looked angry and was waving her hands. She appeared to be shouting at the Perry boy. “That’s more like it,” Leo muttered to himself and stepped away from the window. His mind was made up now. Something was going on at the Power Plant… He had to get a closer look at this place. Sneak in, wait and when the divers were gone, he would check out the site. Leo quickly gathered his stuff and left the apartment.
“Don’t be silly, Flynn!” Madison was seriously annoyed now. “We’ve done what we were asked to do! It’s time to get out.”
“Just one quick look, alright! I need to see what’s down there.”
Flynn stood on his raft in front of Madison, dripping water all over the deck. He had just dragged the last diving bell underwater and tied it to the bottom of what was a semi-submerged chain link fence, doing exactly what Duncan had asked. The job was done. They could go home now. But something was bugging him… They had been bringing stuff here two days in a row, dumping it and going back for more… Where was it all going? Simply sitting at the bottom of the ocean? Flynn was struggling to make sense of it… Why would Duncan bring their scavenged supplies to this abandoned old place? There had to be logic behind that. Otherwise, it was just plain crazy!
While attaching the last diving bell, Flynn had taken a good look down below. He had seen the smokestack disappear into the darkness, and felt the need to dive deeper and find out more about the site! Now he was itching to go, but Madison was not having any of it.
“It says TOXIC, in case you can’t read!” she shouted, pointing at the rusty sign on the fence. “You want to get yourself poisoned? Seen anyone else diving around here…”
“Madison!”
“Besides, if Duncan finds out… we’re done! It’s over…”
“Madison!” Flynn placed his hands on her shoulders, to steady her and stop her waving her hands in his face. “I’ve been in the water a few times already! Nothing’s wrong with it. If there was… I’d be ill by now, right?”
She said nothing, just glared at him.
“As for Duncan Roth…” said Flynn, glancing around, “he’s nowhere to be seen, is he? We’re alone here.”
The two of them looked at each other for a long moment. Then Madison pushed away from Flynn, walked over to the seat and slumped on top of it. “Go on, then!” She folded her arms across her chest. “But don’t expect any help from me! I’m not pumping any air down to your bell!”
“I don’t need any!” Flynn grinned and snapped his goggles on. “I’ll be in and out!”
He stood still at the edge of the raft for a second then dived in. The cool water swallowed him as he sank past the fence with the two new diving bells attached to it. He followed the vertical drop of the closest smokestack. Going down, Flynn saw the smokestack end where the outline of a huge rectangular structure began. He kept his dive steady along one of the outer walls of the building. There were no windows, no doors… no openings of any kind. It looked like one massive block of concrete, covered in barnacles and slimy, brown weeds. Flynn had never seen anything like it! He was almost at the bottom of the wall now. The murkiness of the water was making it harder for Flynn to see where he was going. He was about to switch his flashlight on, when a movement a few feet beneath him caught his attention. A school of fish shot out from the wall and swam away in a hurry. Where did they come from, wondered Flynn.
A moment later, a beam of light followed the fish and illuminated a small opening at the bottom of the building. Flynn looked desperately for a place to hide, saw none and flattened himself against the wall. Gripping the wall with his fingers and toes, he did his best not to float away and reveal himself. Despite the awkward angle, Flynn still managed to peer down at the source of the light. To his amazement, he saw a hand holding a torch emerge out of the opening, followed by the dark silhouette of a body. The mysterious diver made a few strokes and the light of the torch fell on what was an Ethanol barrel… This was another surprise for Flynn. He knew he had dumped at least twenty of these barrels in the past few days… but now, there was just one, lying on the ocean bed near the opening. The rest of the barrels were all gone! Flynn watched the diver loop a thick rope around the barrel and drag it back toward the opening.
It was at this precise moment that Flynn caught a glimpse of the diver’s face and felt his blood run cold… It was Ann Baxter’s! Stunned, Flynn lost his grip on the wall. He had just seen his teacher… But that was impossible… inconceivable, he thought as he recovered his position against the wall… The underwater light and shadows were playing tricks with his eyes… Ann Baxter was long dead… But the diver was definitely a woman! He was sure about that. Within seconds, the mysterious figure and the barrel had disappeared out of sight. Flynn tilted his body upward and began his ascend back to the surface… He couldn’t wait to tell Madison!