One at a time, her fingers finally opened and she immediately reached in to the rear vents of Orca’s steering system and grabbed one of the struts, using all her strength to bend it slightly and cause the torpedo-shaped vessel into a change of direction — upwards.
In just a few seconds, the nose of Orca breached, dragging Cate and Alex up behind it. Cate spat out her mouthpiece and dragged in a deep and humid breath. After the artificial air of the tanks, everything tasted thick, moist, and… alive. The atmosphere was a deep, shadowy blue, as if a lamp had a colored scarf wrapped tightly around its bulb. She looked up at the twinkling stars of millions of bioluminescent organisms living on the cave roof overhead — they were like tiny blue fairy lights on a black cloth hundreds of feet above them. Save me, she wanted to scream at the little stars.
Her vision popped with light, and she felt the lightheadedness return. I’m going to black out, she thought. She whimpered, as momentary panic threatened to overwhelm her. Not now, not now, she pleaded. Tears blurred her eyes within the mask, and blinking them away, she felt a thrill of hope surge through her. About two hundred feet away was a dark shoreline, with what looked like trees, a forest perhaps? But it was still so far away, and maybe too far at their current speed.
She refused to look back down into the deep, dark water in case the monster was there, coming up fast, its cavernous mouth swung open. More time, just five minutes more, might make a difference. She began to kick her legs again, her thighs burning. She looked over her shoulder and screamed.
“For god’s sake, wake up, damn you. Help me.”
She let one hand go, and wrenched her arm back, elbowing Alex in the back of the head — once, twice. “Wake… the fuck… up!”
Just then, several hundred feet out to the right side of her, there was a breach of the surface as a striped hump rose. It glided closer, and closer, passing a dozen feet in front of them, and then out to left where it slid vertically back down, finishing with the tip of a stubby reptilian tail that left a swirl of dark liquid.
“Oh god, no.” Cate knew enough about deep sea predators to know that the angle of its descent meant it had dived deep. If it followed a similar attack pattern, surging up from the depths, using speed, power, and surprise to overwhelm whatever creature it hunted, it would come up out of the dark like a colossal missile. They wouldn’t be able to outrun it, and they wouldn’t be able to get out of its way. They could only wait to be eaten alive.
She finally put her face down, and peered down into the hidden depths. There was one option left. She jammed her hands back into the steering struts and bent the fins with every ounce of strength she had, this time angling the nose downwards. Orca began to dive, taking them both with it. She sucked in a deep breath.
Sorry baby, but you have one more job to do, she thought. Cate began to feel pressure on her eardrums, and pulled her arms in, and then pushed out hard, sending the submersible on its way — straight down.
The sleek, cigar-shaped probe powered on into the depths, and Cate began to frantically swim upwards, kicking hard and fast. She kept watching as the strong white beam of light created a pathway into the deep, its white beam a ball of light against miles of blackness. She pumped her legs hard, trying to put distance between herself, the probe, and what she knew must surely be coming up fast from below.
She broke the surface, sucked in a huge gasping breath, and then began to breaststroke hard. She sank under Alex’s weight, and once again jerked her arm back at him.
“Please, please, wake up.”
She sank again, but just before she went down, she heard a cough. She kicked upwards, and broke the surface.
“That’s it, Alex, wake up.” She began to swim. “Just kick, that’s all I need from you. Kick, kick hard.”
Cate felt the surge at her back — weak, but it was enough to cancel out the drag his body was making. She dipped her head, trying not to look or even think about what was down there. From deep below them there was the sound of an impact, and then a crushing-crumpling noise that went on for several seconds. She knew immediately it was Orca’s toughened steel casing coming into contact with something that probably had a bite pressure in the tens of thousands of pounds.
The shoreline beckoned — sixty feet now at most. She dragged in a huge breath, and started to throw her arms up and over, dragging the water past herself. Forty feet, thirty, twenty, they were only a dozen feet from shore but there was still nothing but darkness below them. There were no shallows, as the shoreline must have been the edge of an underwater cliff, rather than the gradual shallowing encountered on a coastal beach. Her scalp and neck tingled, and once more she felt the sensation of something large approaching.
“Kick, kick, kick!” she screamed. In answer, she felt herself speed forward. Alex’s legs now starting to churn, even though his head still lolled groggily on her shoulders.
“That’s it, harder…” Eight feet, five feet, she looked down and saw a small rock shelf. She clambered on, not trying to stand with Alex on her back, but instead scrabbling forward on all fours. She dived and scrambled the last few feet onto a gritty shoreline, rolling over on top of Alex and looking back, just as something that was like a striped mountain breached and half rolled, so its huge eye could stare dispassionately for a second or two before it veered sharply away.
The only thing that went through her head was that the huge eye of the beast was different to the one she had seen on the monitor all those years ago. She slumped back against the rock.
CHAPTER 19
Bentley pushed his chair back and got to his feet. “She’s dead.” He turned to kick the chair across the small room.
“Don’t say that,” Sulley yelled back.
“The bloody idiot.” Bentley pulled at his nose, eyes screwed shut.
“You’re an arsehole, you know that?” Timms growled through his straggly beard.
“Game over,” Bentley responded.
“Maybe not,” Sulley said, furiously hitting keys, and slowly moving a dial like a safecracker. “Orca might have just been knocked offline by the impact.”
“Knocked offline? Orca got hit by a flamin’ express train. Whatever hit us had a sonar signature that tapped out around sixty-five feet with a displacement of a sperm whale. If it kicked the shit out of a titanium hull, what would it do to flesh and blood?” Bentley came and leaned into Sulley’s face. “You do remember the teeth, don’t you?”
“Not all of us are ready to give up just yet,” Schmidt said, not turning away from his screen.
Bentley snorted. “Best case is, she’s hurt — better send a rescue team. Oh, wait, that’s right, there is no such thing.” He straightened, sneering. “Better for her if she is dead — it’d be more humane.”
“You truly are an arse,” Sulley said turning in his seat.
“I’m a realist.” Bentley sighed. “Better tell HQ.” He started for the door.
“The speed — that thing was moving at forty-two knots.” Schmidt turned to stare. “Holy shit, it was flying… literally flying under the water.”
“Unbelievable,” Timms said. “And how horrifying for Cate, and that other guy.”
“The other guy.” Bentley paused at the door. “He’s dead, she’s dead, Orca’s dead, game over.” He shouldered his way out of the room.