“Don’t believe him, Cy. He got away. We’ll find John and then head up.” Mack raised one of his spearguns.
“You won’t win this fight, mate.” Richards pointed a handgun at Mack. “You can either help us, and we all get out, or fight us and die here.”
Something bobbed to the surface at the water’s edge. “I got it!” Simms set his laptop down, went over, and pulled floating pieces of exosuit out onto the rocky ground.
“Is that the one Smith had on?” Cyan said.
Richards nodded.
“Then he must’ve made it onto Shelf 9,” she said.
“Maybe,” Richards said. “Not that it matters much now. Lower your weapons.”
“All right, be calm,” Mack said. “You opened it while he was in it, though? You dag.”
“Oh my god.” Cyan gasped and slipped forward, squeezing her trigger.
A shot cracked the air. Wet heat splattered Cyan’s face. She dropped to her knees. “Mack!” His body fell back with a thud. The bullet left a hole between his eyes. Half of Cyan’s spear stuck out of the captain’s shoulder. He grabbed the base of his neck and winced. “Simms, get this out!”
“It’s barbed, Captain.” Simms grabbed a pair of bolt cutters and a small package from his case then placed the blades around the shaft.
“I’d have pulled it myself if it wasn’t.”
“Okay, then. On my count. Three, two—” He snipped, and the captain howled then swore, spewing saliva from the corners of his lips as Simms dropped the cutter and yanked the metal from Richards’s flesh. He tore open the package and injected white into the hole. Richards screamed as the substance foamed. Simms went around and removed the other half of the shaft then filled the exit wound. Then he dropped the syringe, picked up Richards’s gun, and went back to his laptop. “There’s morphine if you want it.”
“Not before I go down,” Richards said. He glanced at his shoulder, no longer bleeding, then eyed Cyan. “Polyurethane. I don’t think it’ll help your friend, though. Sorry. Involuntary finger twitch to being shot with a speargun.” Richards dragged Taylor’s body to the water’s edge and rolled it in with his foot. Hundreds of rori on the cave floor twisted and flopped in after it.
How were these sea cucumbers surviving on land? They also seemed attracted to blood. They’d covered every inch of Mack while Simms worked on Richards. Cukes slithered over one another on top of his corpse, excreting slick, milky froth, a spawning and fertilization practice that occurs underwater. The DNA manipulations she and John had made shouldn’t have caused these runaway evolutionary developments, and so fast. Her mind raced, but she remained kneeling, unable to move.
Richards put on the upper half of the exosuit. Sea cucumbers climbed his leg, sucking at the blood that had run down his wetsuit. With a few keystrokes, Simms sealed the helmet on. Richards shook his foot. All the rori on him went guts out, shooting white strings like fireworks across his lower extremities. “Get them off!”
Simms yanked them free, chucking their carcasses at the water. He brought over the bottom half of the suit and secured Richards into it.
“You ready, Captain?”
Richards nodded.
Simms went back to work on his laptop. The suit arm pushed Taylor’s bobbing remains aside then descended.
She had a mission to complete too. Cyan scoured the cave entrance, stopping at the nitrox. Her Predator mask and vest sat on the ground nearby.
Simms watched her switch tanks and gear up.
“Where are you going?” he said.
Richards’ voice came through the laptop’s speakers. “Better be Shelf 9.”
“I wasn’t talking… never mind,” Simms said. “I see you’ve made it to the opening. What’s your status?”
“I can’t see anything down here but shit. Like swimming through a long drop with the sea slugs everywhere. Tell Dr. Blake I’ll be reporting her for shooting me with a speargun, and for creating these bloody monsters.”
“Um, yes, sir.”
“Lead the way in, Simms. And make sure she’s not watching the footage!”
Cyan stepped over to the rori cocoon that encased Mack and picked up one of his spearguns. “I don’t think John set off an alarm on 9. The cukes probably did. I’m heading further in to find him.” She pointed at the dark end of the cave with the spear tip. “Try not to bleed while I’m gone. Seems they’re drawn to it.”
“Thanks.” Simms eyed her weapon then glanced down at his guns. “You’d get there faster without all that equipment.”
“I’m taking it with, in case you two decide to head out on your own and take everything with you. But, eh, you wouldn’t want to give me one of those now, would ya?”
“Don’t think so. Besides, I’ve seen your handiwork, and you’re better off with that.”
“Can you tell me now, then,” she said, “what’s down there on Shelf 9?”
“It’s classified. But don’t worry. There’s no chance it’s anything to do with your science project run amok, I promise.”
“That’s bloody reassuring.”
Screams blared through Simms’s laptop. Richards came on, yelling blather about the rori cracking his helmet glass.
Cyan clicked the torch around her wrist and headed in, carrying her mask in one hand, speargun in the other. She didn’t want to be around for the captain’s return.
WHO KNEW SHELF 5 went back so far? Fewer sea cucumbers traveled to and fro along the tunnel the further in she went. After about an hour, her body ached, and she sweated buckets in the neoprene, which sloshed in her boots as she hiked deeper still. Something glinted near a rori. A bolt snap from John’s buoyancy compensator with a miniature US flag attached. She knew he’d gone into Shelf 5. Cyan put the clip in her pocket and carried on.
The cave narrowed, and the hefty tanks bore down her shoulders. Their steel scraped against the rock walls, shoving her off balance from one side to the other. Cyan unfastened the vest and let everything slide to the ground. Then she dragged the gear, hoping the nylon BC wouldn’t snag and tear, harming the inner air bladders.
Gunfire, then shrill screams, bounced off the rock surrounding her. Richards and Simms, she thought. They’d have to wait. Cyan trudged on, and hunched then crawled as the cave walls closed in. When she had to lie prone and pull herself forward, rori inching alongside her, she debated leaving the gear. The torch went out, and Cyan whimpered then cursed. Cold stone met her punching fists, but she avoided striking sea cucumbers on the ground, getting her sad out.
A distinctive blue glow rippled several meters ahead — an easy distance. The tunnel ended in a short drop to a brilliant pool at the bottom of a dome covered with bioluminescent algae. It would be the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen under any other circumstance.
John’s glove floated in the water below.
He’d come this far, and she would too. Cyan stretched and wiggled forward with a firm grip on the gear. Her neck strained to keep her chin and the top of her head from hitting solid rock underneath and above. She inhaled, held her breath, and squeezed out as if the stone bore her.
Icy water stung as she plunged in, gasping for air after bobbing to the surface. The speargun slipped away and sank while she geared up with shaking hands. She turned on the visor light and released air from her BC in bursts, descending into the unknown.
Cyan trembled at the abyss beneath her. No light could penetrate that darkness. Its depth, she hoped, would remain a mystery. Her heart clenched and she forced herself to look away. Light beamed up the wall, revealing a lava tube opening. She spun around and lit up what she could, not finding anything else. The entrance appeared to get smaller as she approached.
Damn. The tanks won’t fit.