A long swim, she thought.
Maybe too long. Professor would be back with a rope. The smart thing to do was stay put and wait to be rescued.
She ducked her head inside and swam forward.
Just a little ways, she promised herself. As far as she could go before her lungs demanded she head back to take another breath.
The distinctive sound of a splash reached her ears. There was an air pocket above her. She surfaced, letting her breath out slowly while allowing the unfamiliar atmosphere to waft into her nostrils. It smelled like the ocean.
As she breathed in, cautiously at first, then eagerly, she surveyed her new environment. The air pocket was not an isolated bubble but occupied the ceiling of the passage, stretching out as far as she could see.
Better, she thought. There was no guarantee that this route would not lead to an impassable dead end but there was air to breathe and turning back was always an option.
She filled her lungs again, and dove beneath the surface, kicking hard to reach the chamber where Rafi waited. She broke the surface and found the shivering student ducking away from an invisible assault.
The ghosts.
She had almost forgotten about them, but almost from the moment her head broke the water they were there again, lurking just out of view. Worse, the pain behind her eyes, which she now realized had abated somewhat during her initial exploration of the passage, returned with a vengeance.
It’s definitely something about this chamber, she thought. And whatever it is, I don’t want to spend another second here.
“Rafi! Come on. This way. We’re getting out of here.” She seized hold of his arm and pointed down, signaling for him to follow.
A few seconds later, they were both in the air pocket. The pain in her skull immediately relented and the hallucinations ceased as well. Jade did not pause to offer an explanation. Instead, she began immediately paddling down the length of the tunnel. Rafi followed along without question but it was plainly obvious that the change of scenery had energized him.
She swam the length of the passage, more than a hundred yards, noticing all the while that the ceiling overhead was getting closer. Her first thought was the passage was sloping down, but when there was just six-inches of air above her, she realized what was actually happening. The water level was rising with the tide. In a few more minutes, the tunnel would be completely filled and the precious air pocket would be gone.
Crap.
“Rafi! Big breaths!” She gulped in air, filling her lungs to their full and rarely used capacity. Her body rose until she was nearly horizontal, her back scraping against the smooth ceiling. “Stay close,” she called, letting the breath out and immediately sinking back. “And whatever you do, don’t stop swimming.”
She took another deep inhalation and then plunged downward, paddling and stroking furiously.
The flashlight revealed the long, smooth-bore tunnel, as straight and perfect as a length of steel pipe, seemingly without end. Her strokes felt sluggish, the effect of the incoming tide pushing against her like a current, but she did not relent.
A faint spasm in her diaphragm reminded her of the need to breathe. She ignored it but knew it was only the first of many to come. Before long, her lungs would begin to burn from the buildup of too much carbon dioxide, and while she knew that she was capable of pushing through even that discomfort, Rafi did not have her experience or training. If she was feeling it, then he was probably already starting to panic.
She did not look back. Salvation, if any existed at all, lay ahead. The exchange of tide water strongly suggested an outlet to the ocean, but how far away that outlet was and whether it would be large enough to let them through were variables beyond her control.
In the glow of the flashlight, she spotted something that gave her reason for hope. The floor and walls of the tunnel were dotted with sea life — anemones and mollusks — just a few here and there at first, but increasing into a veritable ecosystem, supplied with nutrients by the relentless ebb and flow of the tides.
The light suddenly revealed a barrier directly ahead, filling the tunnel from top to bottom. Before she could process what she was seeing, much less even think about slowing, Jade collided with the obstacle which was not a solid mass but rather a collection of fibrous stalks, like slimy ferns. Her momentum carried her through and she found herself abruptly enfolded in a literal sea of green. Daylight, almost intensely bright after the darkness of the submerged passage, filtered down through the water to reveal the blurry tidal zone.
Jade swam for the light, kicking furiously even as her lungs screamed for the fresh air that she knew lay just a few more feet above. The light grew brighter and the water warmer as she neared the surface which remained maddeningly out of reach for several seconds, and then, as if shot from an undersea cannon, she burst through.
For a moment, all she could think about was sucking in fresh air, but after the burning sensation in her chest began to abate, she began to orient herself. An incoming swell lifted her high enough to see the white water frothing on the golden beach and just beyond that, she could make out the museum, a few parked vehicles, and a small cluster of people gathered in front of the structure. Further away rose the rocky ridge of the Cerro Colorado, and somewhere up there, Professor was probably trying to figure out what had happened to them.
“Rafi!” She spun around in the water, calling out and searching for him, but there was no sign of the young intern.
She rotated forward and thrust her head once more beneath the water. Nothing moved in the blurry foreground. Rafi was still in the tunnel.
She kicked hard, clawing back into the depths. A brown smudge of disturbed silt marked the spot where she had broken through the kelp. Reaching it was a Sisyphusian struggle against buoyancy but she did not give up. After what seemed an eternity, she caught hold of the seaweed and pulled herself into the concealed opening.
Rafi floated motionless, fifty feet away. Jade did not hesitate to swim toward him. That he had drowned was plainly obvious, but that did not mean he was beyond resuscitation. Regardless, she was not going to leave him behind.
As soon as she reached him, she grasped his head in her hands and pulled his face close, pressing her lips to his, exhaling a breath into his mouth. She hoped that would be enough to bring him back, but the air simply bubbled back out, pooling on the ceiling of the tunnel like droplets of quicksilver.
She let go of his head and grabbed the back of his shirt collar instead, dragging him along as she began kicking back toward the mouth of the tunnel. His dead weight slowed her down and before she could reach that intermediate goal, the primal urge to breathe seized her once more, tearing at her lungs like a desperate animal caught in a snare. She fought back, using every trick she knew to fool her nervous system, blundered through the mass of kelp blocking the tunnel and clawed her way back to the surface.
As soon as she broke through, she exhaled another rescue breath into Rafi’s mouth, then rolled him over and commenced a one-handed backstroke toward shore. The incoming tide which had nearly killed her in the tunnel now worked in her favor, supplying added impetus to her efforts. Lazy swells propelled her ever closer, but in the sheltered bay on the eastern shore of the peninsula there were no breakers to carry them into shore. She kept swimming until, at long last, she felt the coarse sand bumping against her knees.
Her arrival went unnoticed by the crowd gathered in front of the museum more than five hundred yards away. She tried to call for help but her croaked supplication was barely loud enough for her to hear it over the low murmur of the sea, so she abandoned the effort and turned her full attention to Rafi, dragging him up above the tide line. As soon as there was relatively solid ground beneath her, she started chest compressions.