He was in the middle of a vision. A precog one, by the sensations she was receiving, being a conduit and a carrier of these psychic elements. She could tell by the variations in the vibrations, the psychic thrill of peeking ahead this time, not behind.
His eyes shot open before she could join in the vision, not that she wanted to, having to keep her senses alert. Hard to hear anything now above the wind and the chopper engine. Enemies could creep right up…
“Back to the boulder!” Jacob insisted, his voice too loud for comfort.
“What? No, we have to stay in cover and lead these assholes away.” And pick off as many as we can, giving the lovebirds time for their swim and collection mission.
Jacob shook his head and started pulling her back east. “No, trust me. It’s the only way.”
“It’s blocked!” she countered, drawing the gun and trying to focus through the bending branches and flaying leaves. Something was out there.
Three somethings, coming fast, right toward them.
Damn.
She dropped to one knee even as Jacob started shooting, almost as if he knew exactly where they were.
Two fell with cries of surprise. The third got off a volley of automatic fire, in the wrong direction, before Nina took him out with two shots to the skull.
No time for any more respect for her son’s improving skill — or a combination of psychic ability and innate fighting talent. She crouch-ran ahead and scooped up one of the AK-47s. Better to use their ammo.
She ducked out of cover to get a clear shot, just as the helicopter flew into sight. Sprayed its underbelly with bullets and chipped the windshield. Tried to get inside the cargo bay, but it was closed. Bad news, she thought, seeing the guns mounted on the side.
It flew off, but she knew the pilot would just be getting some distance, then coming back at a strafing angle. She tossed the AK-47 and loaded the MP5.
They had to move. She grabbed Jacob by the shoulder.
“Again,” she said, meeting his eyes. “Why are we going back? That tunnel’s blocked, the big ass boulder…”
“It’ll be gone,” he assured her, and ran off ahead, through the dense brush and out into the coral pathway.
His voice carried back, and it sounded like he said: “…at the right time.”
22
The oxygen gauge was just clicking into the red.
He took Aria’s and checked: she had burned through more, as he expected. He aimed her light away from the gauge before she could see it, and just gave her a thumbs-up sign so she wouldn’t worry.
They had to ascend. Had to go back up and out. He knew there were tunnels and access points down there, much lower, but they would never make it. Not even another twenty feet deeper, much less hundreds, if his estimate of this Pharos-like tower’s length was even remotely close to accurate.
He thought suddenly again of the tunnel system, the underground pathways and secret access points that led up to the island. Did the survivors, with the help of the remaining psychics and their technological artifacts, use them to burrow back to the city to try to find or rescue anybody?
As they approached the exit, he froze. Expecting at worst to have to clear a path through the stingray blockade, he didn’t expect this: lights speared through the depths, seeking them.
Divers.
Aria grabbed his wrist and this time the shock was faster and more direct and came with an almost electrical shock of fear. Her fear.
He could feel it, the pure terror that they were about to die. Couldn’t go up, and couldn’t stay here, nor go any lower. Air almost depleted, he didn’t even want to waste a moment and check their tanks. If his breaths were shallow and tough going, he could imagine what she was feeling, and had a swelling of pride for her toughness.
She had survived the worst life could throw at her. Her parents killed. Her village decimated by terrorists; having to be awake to block their location for days on end… She had been through hell, so maybe this wasn’t so bad. But it was entirely different, opposite in fact, from the sweltering heat and the dust and the suffocating tunnels in Afghanistan.
Still, hold on Aria.
He tried to convey this, but her grip was too intense, her fear too palpable and her oxygen — almost gone. She was gasping, and her eyes were so wide and frightened.
Their enemies were coming, lights probing into the hole. He had to act fast, and even as the visions pummeled his senses, vying for control, he tried to keep them at bay, sifting only marginally through the glimpses they offered, while he took her light and shined it up and zigzagged it along the underside of the barnacle-coral-littered dome.
Where the light almost died at the end of its beam, he caught motion: a school of fish, mahi or something large, swirling and circling in and out of a fissure.
He kicked toward, it, pulling Aria along with him, and as the trio of light beams worked through the crack behind him, he shut off the light. They swam in the dark, blind, toward the fissure — and the tunnel he had seen in his vision.
The tunnel constructed ages ago after the cataclysm by the survivors. One of dozens, attempting to reach back into the glory of their former capital… He could still see it in his mind, and he flicked the light once, while the beams behind them were scattered and the tiny forms of the divers were swimming in different directions.
He turned off the lamp after fixing their destination — and saw the glowing eyes of the hundred or so fish swarming over the opening. But first, Aria tightened her grip on him and he saw her pointing to her gauge and then wildly to her throat.
Shared tank breathing.
He had only practiced it for a minute in the YMCA pool when he took his certification class back in Rochester, but this was different. This was life or death. This was never seeing his family again. Never kissing Aria again, never breathing fresh air or seeing the world.
Or saving it.
They had to survive.
Had to get to that tunnel.
Had to breathe long enough to make it there.
She took his mouthpiece as precious bubbles scattered form his lips. She drew a breath, eyes still on his. Nodding, looking relieved, but concerned now for him. He shook his head, tightening his grip on her hand — and on the flashlight, and flicked it back off as he kicked toward the direction of the fish, and escape.
She came with him and what seemed like a minute passed, and his lungs started to burn, and he couldn’t see anything in the gloom but shadows that took on stranger and stranger forms: twisted serpent bodies, gnarled fingers, a giant squid’s conical head…
Then he had to risk it. After a glance behind them, ascertaining that the lights, still dim, were far off, he switched on the beam again. Aria drifted to him, settled in his arms and he felt her trembling. But she had her hand on the mouthpiece. Her eyes sought his, and she nodded as she took one more breath, then passed it to him.
Greedily he took it, cleared his breath and took in a shallow but desperate gulp. Another, and then deeper, and he passed it back, just after she wriggled out of her air tank, and he was impressed. She didn’t need it any longer, and it would only slow her down and lead to more oxygen deprivation.
Holding his breath, he turned and aimed the light — and was pleasantly shocked. They hadn’t gone too far off course. The edge of the dome was there, about ten yards distant. The fish scattered as if the light burned their scales and, in their absence, they created a runway of sorts, a tunnel through their wriggling cold bodies to the other tunnel he knew to be there.