“Is this our only way in, Timothy?” Michael asked.
The AI’s hologram flickered to life. “According to the knowledge I have gleaned from records accessed, this is the only entrance into the facility.”
“Say we manage to activate the defectors,” Layla said. “How do we get them out?”
“They can function underwater,” Timothy said. “You just have to tell them where to go and give them a way to climb out, which shouldn’t be a problem now.”
Les shuddered at the thought. This plan was looking bleaker by the minute. To Layla, he said, “You definitely found a way inside?”
“Yes.” She wiped her wet visor. “The hatch into the facility is in the tunnel ceiling, and it’s also open. I surfaced and found a chamber. There’s an open door inside.”
“Okay,” Michael said, “let’s stop lollygagging and get this done.”
Les reinventoried his gear for the dive. Almost everything was stowed, but his obsessive-compulsive tendencies had him worried about some of his electronics in the dry bag, especially his second minicomputer, which he had used to hack into old facilities just like this one and would soon be using to reprogram the defectors. After making sure it was watertight, he got in line behind Michael.
Les tied two butterfly knots in the rope, at twenty-foot intervals from the end that was clipped to Layla. He clipped his waist carabiner to one loop, and Michael clipped into the other. The far end was already in the water, tied to something inside the open hatch below.
“You sure it’s tied tight?” Les asked.
“On my life,” Layla replied. “I’ll lead the way just to make sure. You help Michael. Timothy, we’ll see you once we get inside, okay?”
“Roger,” the AI replied. “And good luck.”
His form dissolved in the night.
“Let’s dive,” Michael said.
Layla stepped back to the edge and jumped into the water. Michael went in right after her. Les hesitated until the slack between Michael and him played out, and then said “screw it” and jumped in.
He sank ten feet before he started kicking, and fear gripped him as the world turned pitch black. His armor, the bag, and the gun over his shoulder pulled down on him. Struggling, he kicked and used his arms to pull him upward. Once he was right under Michael, he grabbed the fixed rope.
All he had to do now was kick and pull his way up to the open hatch. Layla was already through.
As Les waited his turn, he glanced down at the gray pillars, like gigantic spider legs, that held up the pier. He couldn’t see the bottom where the pillars were buried, but he could imagine what dwelled down there. In his mind’s eye, he saw giant crabs, squids, sharks, and glowing beasts.
A flash of movement past his helmet made him flinch and grip the rope tighter, but it was only a large bubble that had escaped his vest. In a way, this reminded him of his first dive from the Hive. But jumping through the clouds, you didn’t have monsters that could swim up and bite your leg off or swallow you whole.
Kicking harder, he pulled himself up toward Michael, who was struggling. An arm reached down from inside the tunnel. Layla grabbed Michael’s left hand, and Les pushed up on his butt to give him a boost.
She pulled him up into the passage and then moved out of the way for Les. Sometimes, he really hated being so tall.
By the time he pulled himself in through the hatch, his legs and feet tingled from the adrenaline. The hard part was over now, and his heartbeat gradually slowed to normal.
White noise filled the speakers in his helmet, and Michael came online. “Helmet lights on,” he said.
Les reached up and turned his lamp on, then directed it back down through the open hatch. The beam penetrated perhaps fifteen feet into the depths. Beyond that range, anything could be lurking.
Seeing nothing, he moved back into the submerged tunnel, where Michael and Layla crouched. She shined her light on the end of the rope she had tied to the spin wheel on the hatch. They unclipped from their butterfly loops and set off down the tunnel.
Moving was difficult inside the cramped passage, and Les felt as if he was fighting a current. The weight of his gear didn’t help. His rifle barrel bumped and scratched against the ceiling, so he just tried to keep low, pushing his boots against the cylinder wall to move forward.
He ran his helmet light over the walls, stopping on a long gash from a laser bolt a defector had fired two hundred fifty-some years earlier. Another chunk of ceiling was missing where the second shot had punched a hole through Dana’s skull.
The violent images in the video had him on edge again, but he shook them away and pulled himself through the water.
They were ten minutes into the journey, and he was already feeling the burn in his fatigued muscles.
Michael and Layla stopped ahead to rest.
“You okay back there, Giraffe?” Layla said, her voice crackling.
“I’m…” He took in a breath. “Good.”
The next stretch of tunnel showed more evidence of the defectors. Grooves from hyperalloy fingernails streaked across the floor. Here was something else, too, which Michael and Layla had missed.
Les worked a small black object out of the crack between two panels of the tunnel floor and held it up to his beam. There wasn’t much left of whatever it was, but he had a feeling it had probably belonged to Julio or Dana.
He dropped the artifact and swam on.
The team moved for the next fifteen minutes without stopping until they reached the hatch in the tunnel’s ceiling.
Another transmission crackled over the comms channel. “I’ll go first,” Michael said. He climbed through the opening into the chamber and then pulled the short laser rifle from his holster.
Les followed Layla into a round room with a vaulted ceiling. Their lights revealed walls stained with some sort of green and red moss, the same kind he remembered seeing in one of the ships docked at the piers, where they had found the strange pile of bones and machines.
He put his backpack down and pulled three magazines from his dry bag, stuffing them into his vest.
Michael was already walking toward the exit. The steel door lay on the concrete floor where it had fallen.
“I’m bringing Timothy back online,” Layla said. She pulled out a tablet from Deliverance that allowed the AI to travel with them beneath the surface. A few taps to the screen, and his hologram emerged like a ghost.
A fourth beacon flickered on their HUDs as the AI took form.
“Everything working properly?” Layla asked him.
Timothy flashed several times and then let his hands fall to the sides of his suit jacket. “I’m one hundred percent functional and—remarkably, if I do say so myself—still connected to the airship.”
“Good. So you’ve already scanned these levels with the airship’s infrared sensors?” Les asked.
“Working on it, Lieutenant. Give me a minute.” The AI vanished, almost as if he was annoyed.
Michael jerked his helmet toward the door. “Let’s move, guys.”
“You don’t think we should wait?” Layla asked.
“We don’t have time, and Timothy already cleared the facility once. Now, let’s hit it.”
Layla slung her bag and pulled out her laser rifle. The team moved into another hallway, which had power conduits snaking along the walls. The lines connected to a bank of electrical boxes. Beyond this, several chunks of ceiling had broken away and fallen to the floor.
Laser rifle up, Michael navigated the debris. The three helmet beams flicked back and forth over another scene of violence. Bullet holes pocked the walls, and broken glass crunched under his boots. Les froze, gritting his teeth at the noise. The other two divers glanced back at him.