21
WHEN GORDON FINALLY woke up, he threw back the black curtains along the side of his bunk and peered out towards the day room. O’Keefe was slumped by the hyperbaric chamber’s padded seats, listening to music on his headset while munching from a takeout container filled with crackers, sliced cheese, and assorted cold cuts. Rubbing his eyes, Gordon slid onto the floor and put on his flip-flops before padding over to the wet pot and relieving himself.
Looking at the wall clock, Gordon could tell he had slept for a few hours, and his body was now hinting it needed more fuel. After sliding back into the living space, he sat down on the opposite seat and grabbed a cracker and a piece of cheese to make an impromptu sandwich.
O’Keefe looked up at him with a smile as he paused the music on his laptop and slipped off the headset. “Wakey, wakey, Sleeping Beauty!”
Gordon nodded while chewing absentmindedly. “That last time outside really took all my energy.”
“Yeah, you were out like a light the moment we got back. You didn’t even say hi to Haakon and Bill when they were about to start their shift,” O’Keefe said. “You just sat down, ate your food, then climbed into your bunk and snored.”
“I’ll greet them when they get back here.”
One of the junior tenders watching from the outside tapped on the porthole and grinned while waving at them.
O’Keefe waved back. “Hiya, turd. I bet you don’t even know what I’m saying.”
The tender outside just kept smiling, completely oblivious to O’Keefe’s words due to the inches of steel separating them.
Gordon shook his head while filling out the menu before placing it into the chamber’s side airlock. The tender outside waited, and then acknowledged he’d received it with a thumbs up before disappearing from view. “Where the heck do you get your energy from? I’m always beat every time we get back from the bell.”
“It’s all the crystal meth I take,” O’Keefe said. “Just kidding. I love this job, Gordo. Every time I’m back on dry land, I can’t wait to get back in here.”
“You’re one of a kind,” Gordon said. “Any word from your girlfriend?”
O’Keefe’s cheery demeanor quickly darkened. “Goddamn sons of bitches suddenly stopped our internet. Outside phone service is out too. I’m down to my videos and music files.”
Gordon muttered a curse. Mullins had made an announcement over the intercom to the entire team after O’Keefe had told his girlfriend on the phone about some aspects of the structure they were repairing. The rest of the diver team supported O’Keefe as a show of solidarity and howled in protest, but Sandor was soon heard over the speakers, threatening them all with breach of contract. From that point on, all communications with the outside had been stopped, and there was nothing they could do about it.
O’Keefe grimaced before pounding the table with his fist. “I can’t freaking believe it!”
“They got us,” Gordon said softly. The night before, Sandor had placed copies of their signed contracts through the airlock so they could all see the clauses that were marked, explaining that the company could revoke their communications with the outside world whenever it saw fit.
O’Keefe gave a short, sarcastic laugh. “When this job’s done, I’m pretty sure I can get into one of the other diving outfits. Maybe I’ll try the North Sea. What’s it like working over there?”
“You’ll be up to your ears with Brits and Scandinavians,” Gordon said. “They do a few things differently, like drawing lots for your bunk. The cold and the currents are pretty intense too.”
O’Keefe leaned back and sighed. “I can live with that. Sure beats working for freaking Morgenstern Oceanic. I mean, just building oil wells is better than whatever this crap we’re doing, right?”
Gordon locked eyes with the other man. “We’ve signed NDAs before, but this is the first time they’ve enforced it.”
“Yeah,” O’Keefe said. “I’m pretty sure they were monitoring our phones and internet. That Sandor guy is a real piece of work. I bet he’s behind all this.”
“He’s an asshole alright, but he doesn’t strike me as the boss, just some corporate drone being told to watch over us to make sure we don’t talk.”
“Who do you think the big boss is? That billionaire guy?”
Gordon shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe. This job that we’re doing is totally weird too. It’s a habitat alright, but what is it supposed to do?”
O’Keefe leaned forward, as if to whisper in his ear. “You watched that stuff about the island resort the company built, right?”
“Yeah, with the tiger and the shark killing a whole bunch of people.”
“No, the other stuff. About the secret lab that the Indian authorities supposedly found but covered up.”
Gordon shook his head. “That’s all conspiracy theory crap. I don’t get into any of that.”
“But it’s true though,” O’Keefe insisted. “Two undercover reporters from the Daily Sky went to that island to get a story, and now they’re both dead. My girlfriend told me all about it. Those reporters communicated with their boss about something hidden inside of Lemuria.”
“What story is that?”
“I looked up the Daily Sky website, and one of their linked articles was titled Lady Frankenstein,” O’Keefe said. “It was about this brainiac chick who was a mad scientist or something, and she supposedly created some sort of monster that killed one of her fellow doctors or something like that.”
Gordon raised an eyebrow. Other divers would always pass stories about strange underwater sights like seeing ghosts and sea monsters in the deep, and he always hated hearing those kinds of tales, because they unnerved him. “Come on, dude.”
“I’m serious, bud,” O’Keefe said. “I know you’ve heard all this stuff before, but this was on the net.”
Gordon remained incredulous. “It’s got nothing to do with whatever we’re working on.”
“I’m telling you there’s a connection,” O’Keefe said. “We’re a subsidiary of the same company that was involved in this Lemuria thingy.”
“Coincidence.”
“No, bud! It’s related.”
“How?”
“This habitat we’re doing repair work on,” O’Keefe said. “It’s way too similar to the supposed lab they found in Lemuria.”
Gordon made a dismissive gesture with a wave of his hand. “If that thing really was a lab, then it was on an island. We’re out in the deep blue sea.”
“Yeah, exactly. We’re out in the middle of nowhere, right above the deepest underwater habitat ever built, and our bosses don’t want us to talk about it.”
“So what do you think it is?”
“It’s gotta be a lab of some sort,” O’Keefe said. “Bill and Haakon told me they got to work on one of the upper modules while you were asleep, doing a site inspection to make sure the chambers above the big structure were still watertight and pressurized.”
Gordon narrowed his eyes. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah,” O’Keefe said. “They told me they saw a hatch that could double as a moon pool just above the northernmost strut. It means that someone could go in and out of that habitat.”
“You think there’s someone inside of it?”
“I dunno, maybe we’re fixing it to get it up and running.”
“What else did they say?”
“You know Silent Bill, he doesn’t talk much,” O’Keefe said. “But Haakon said he thinks he saw an emergency hyperbaric lifeboat docked alongside one of the chambers when he looked up.”
“A lifeboat? Down there? No way!”
“I’m telling you Haakon said he did. You can go ask him when he comes back.”
“I will. Why the hell would they place a lifeboat in that habitat?”