But was it collapsed? Blocked? Would it be their tombs as it just led to a dead end?
No, have to believe… It’s getting us out of here. It had to lead to the shallows and the coral around Nan Madol’s temples, to its canals and walkways and to Nina and Jacob and freedom.
But first…
As he approached the crack and what he saw now with the light’s radiance was large enough to easily fit through for both of them, he feared they were drawing attention; but it couldn’t be helped. Now it was a race. He had to hope Nina had cleared the way out there, and they had something to return to; but until then, they had a tunnel to traverse. And if his glimpse earlier was to be trusted, then maybe another sort of treasure awaited. Not the one they sought, but something, nonetheless.
He wriggled through, still holding his breath and running out of time, and Aria was right behind him. If she feared tight places or worried about rushing headlong into the unknown, she didn’t show it. In fact, the opposite. She came in fast, and he saw why.
The fish had scattered in a hurry. And as he tried to see in the spinning light, all he could tell was the water was cloudier.
Redder.
Aria had her knife out, but Alex couldn’t figure out why.
Until he saw the black form rushing toward them.
The giant fin. The sparkling teeth.
Shark.
She pushed him, and he tumbled into the dark, banged his shoulder painfully and dropped the light. Her body tangled up with his, rolling and kicking. His mouth opened in an anguished cry, and the rush of icy water hit the back of his throat
They were through, he knew that much. But not much else. The light spun this way and that like caught a chaotic dance at some ballistic club, and at one point it revealed a pointed snout and blazing eyes and sharp teeth trying to break through the crack.
Great White, he thought, but it didn’t matter.
Nothing mattered except…
They stopped moving. She held him down, using leverage with her feet against the ruggedly carved walls. She found his lips with her fingers and passed the secondary mouthpiece quickly to him.
The air was so thin, barely breathable. He started hyperventilating. Fear took root, but then he realized something. It was her. Why did she…?
She had seen the shark and called to it — cutting herself. He could see the slash now on her forearm.
And then it hit him.
She was always the smart one.
With Jaws out there, the divers aren’t getting through after us.
He fished for the light, calmed his breathing and flushed out the last few coughing bits of water. Shined the beam back and saw the eyes gone, the teeth flashing away, hopefully meeting the incoming threat.
Deal with that, he thought.
We have our own shit here.
With that, Aria took the main regulator, and now he could hear her breaths, and they calmed him. Enough to turn and swim. Side by side, they barely fit, and as they kicked he took the measure of this tunnel.
Walls thick with slime and crusted coral, organisms that hadn’t seen light in a thousand years or more.
Without willing it, another vision came, shattering through the blue: men digging, digging, hauling out debris and pulling out larger stones — almost effortlessly with another staff-like object, crating everything away, into a chamber waiting not much farther, a chamber…
He started seeing red. Spots now, blossoming in his vision.
Passing out.
No…
She shook him, even as he thought he could make out something changing with the passage ahead. It widened, and… were those stairs beneath them now?
He looked up, and there was Aria, with her mouthpiece out.
No! he wanted to scream, but nothing was registering. She was going to die!
He reached for her arms and tried to pull her close, but sudden bubbles appeared in his vision, scattering like his views of the past. And then he was the one being lifted. Standing weakly, about to pass out, her fingers reaching for his mouthpiece, ripping it out.
He gasped and thought this was it. She’s gone crazy from deprivation and thinks we can breathe underwater.
Air cascaded into his lungs. It felt amazing, fresh and like heaven. For the first few gulps, after coughing out salt water and algae and grime. Then it was stale and moldy and dank, but that wasn’t something he’d describe for several more minutes; much later, after they’d ascended the stairs and took their measure of the chamber they had discovered.
The flashlight beam spiraled upwards and pierced a darkness that hadn’t been disturbed in so many generations.
“Where are we?”
Aria’s voice, timid and reverent, seemed to echo from everywhere, even bubbling up from the cold tunnel water below. It echoed, bouncing off the impossibly tall pillars, some broken and chipped, but all decorated with images in faded colors — obscure scripts, complex designs and byzantine lettering that made hieroglyphics look simplistic.
“I thought this was a burial chamber,” Alex replied, licking salt water off his lips. He shuffled off his air tank, still marveling that he could breathe in here, and let it slip into the water as he took the last step out and stood on the uneven floor.
He moved the light around from the tiled floor littered with dust and rocks, larger pieces of masonry and marble. “It’s not level. Definitely got rocked in the cataclysm, but not as bad as the city we just saw. The ground held up better.”
Aria stepped ahead of him. She shivered and took huge gulps of air as her light beam trembled erratically and danced about, trying to find anything that could be a threat — or a way out.
“There’s air,” she said. “Not the best, but that has to mean we’re near the surface, or there’s ventilation shafts.”
Alex closed his eyes, and in the comforting dark emerged a flash of one of his previous visions. “We’re near our first stop earlier. The main Nan Dawas complex — where that boulder stopped us.”
“That boulder,” Aria echoed as she carefully pulled off her fins and gingerly stepped around some jagged stones with her bare feet. “Seem to recall we couldn’t budge it last time.”
She turned and as the beam played across a portion of a mural depicting a breathtaking seaside landscape, she met Alex’s eyes. He saw resignation and fear there.
Taking her free hand, he held it to his chest. “We’re not dying in here.”
“And I’m not swimming back through that tunnel. Not without air, and with a shark, and murderous divers and angry stingrays and…”
“And we’re getting past that boulder.” He pressed his forehead to hers. Felt her arms circle around his back. She tried to smile, their lips so close, and he leaned in — just as something moved in the interplay of light and shadow.
By the looks of the shadow, something huge.
Towering over them with some sort of weapon.
He screamed and backed up, pulling Aria beside him as he fumbled for the light. Aimed it, hoping to blind whoever it was, but the attacker didn’t move. Didn’t blink, didn’t waver.
It stood over them to the right, beside the first pillar. Fifteen feet tall, with a broad chest and rippled arms. Colorful floral skirt and boots, and a crown of once-resplendent colored gems, while in his grip — a great staff, curled like comma at the apex.
“Thought you vision-swiped this chamber,” Aria said, gripping his arm from behind, and eliciting a slight chuckle. “Old bronze statue here didn’t show itself?”
Alex let out a long sigh as the beam left the sad, expressionistic eyes, then roamed across the main area to the flanking statue — its twin beside the next pillar. Half of this statue had been sheared off, along with the base of the pillar. Its staff, likewise was only a fraction of its former length, a broken bit clenched in a damaged hand.