Going Deep (Divemasters Book 2) (12 page)

“Might want to take it easy, Miguel.” Waverly’s snark came over the intercom before she said, “Seriously, though. Everything all right back there? I thought you were finished. We don’t have enough gas left for too many more rounds like that.”

Miguel dropped the partition even as he stared at Sabine as though she might have lost her mind.

“Sorry!” She slapped her hand over her mouth. “It’s just that you inspired a thought…”

“If it has to do with his cock or some freaky sex shit he was pulling on you, I don’t want to hear about it.” Waverly kept her eyes on the horizon as she aimed them toward the
Divemaster
and the rest of their friends.

“Maybe I had it wrong again.” Sabine gestured with her hands, wishing they could read her mind. “What if the darkness Heinrich referred to wasn’t caused by night at all.”

“Depth?” Miguel’s stare snapped to hers.

“His letter said something about digging deeper.” She squinted as she pictured the email in her mind. “‘Until you change the way you look at things—blind yourself to what you think you know and dig a little deeper—you might never see it.’”

“Hmm.” Miguel tapped his chin. “There aren’t that many parts of the crater interior that are very deep. Certainly none enough to cause perpetual darkness. But…”

“What is it?” Sabine turned in her seat to face him, clasping his hands in hers. “Nothing is too out there—he was telling me to think outside the box.”

“What if we think outside the crater instead?” Miguel peered at the sea. He pointed to Molokini. “See how the water changes color on the backside, shifting from turquoise to navy?”

“Yes,” she and Waverly said in unison.

“It’s deep over there. The far side of the islet drops straight down to at least three hundred and fifty feet. With strong currents. Advanced divers drop in there. Their boats take off to the opposite end of the island and pick them up after they drift along the entire length.” He looked at her then, his pupils dilating.

“What?”

“The other reason people avoid it—or seek it out—is because it’s in constant shadow.”

Sabine felt the familiar rush of hope. This time she was too afraid to embrace it fully.

“And if you go a bit farther out, off the shelf, the bottom falls away rapidly in the Alalakeiki Channel to twice that easily,” he explained.

“That’s deep enough to be around the bottom of the disphotic zone or maybe even to the top of the aphotic zone.” She tapped her chin as she considered the possibilities.

“What does that mean?” Waverly asked as she began their descent to the
Divemaster
.

“It’s very close to the limit light from the surface can reach. Worth a try to investigate, but way too deep for us to dive and collect samples from if there are even any deep sea corals down there,” Miguel answered for her.

Sabine nodded. “I know this is kind of crazy…but you don’t happen to have a submarine lying around in your stash of billionaire toys, do you?”

Waverly jumped in to help. “With Archer’s money and my connections in the Navy, I bet we can scrounge up a DSV to borrow. That’s a Deep Submergence Vehicle for you non-military acronym types. And you know, by
we
…I mean
Banks
. He can sweet-talk anyone. Besides, he’s becoming a pro at writing donation checks.”

Miguel laughed. “He’s going to love this.”

S
abine stood
on the launch deck of the
Divemaster
less than a week later, blown away by what true wealth could do. What if everyone who’d somehow amassed a personal fortune used theirs for the benefit of others, like Archer did?

To secure use of a DSV from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on her own would have taken her years of grant writing, which would have required support from top quality research papers with far more promising results as initial proof than she currently had. Even if by some miracle she could have made it that far, it might have taken another couple of years to assemble a qualified team and book their field time, which would have been extremely limited.

Probably less than the length of time she’d already spent on the
Divemaster
.

Which meant they might have failed, walked away from whatever was waiting for them below the surface. And after so much time had passed—five years minimum—maybe whatever it was Heinrich had found would have moved on or disappeared forever.

This had to work. She would never have a better opportunity than this.

Miguel stood shoulder to shoulder with her as someone from the DSV’s permanent crew trained them on how to pilot the personal submarine. “Honestly, it’s unbelievably simple. You just use the joystick. If you’ve ever played videogames, you’re probably set.”

“Dibs on driving,” Miguel said to her.

“Fine with me.” She figured she’d be too busy gawking at their surroundings to be of much use in that department.

“I’ll also have redundant controls,” the sub crewman told them. “I can handle things from the surface if you aren’t comfortable once you’re down there. I’ll also be backup in case something breaks on your dashboard. This is a shallow mission for this kind of vehicle. A walk in the park compared to some of the places we’ve visited, like the Mariana Trench. I’ll essentially be able to see everything you see and can even operate the collection arms and the slurp gun, which will suck up specimens without harming them. So if you prefer, I can take over and you can just sit back and enjoy the ride.”

They both nodded at that, glad for the support.

“I can’t believe we’re really going to do this,” Sabine murmured to Miguel.

“I know. It’s going to be one of the top ten most amazing things I’ve ever done in my life.” Leaning in closer he whispered, “Right up there with fucking you.”

Sabine rolled her eyes.

“Do that again and I’ll have you over my knee in the clubroom later. I’m not joking.” He kissed her temple, then returned his attention to the researcher. “So when can we be ready to go?”

“Frankly, anytime.” He shrugged. “We’ve checked the launch area and conditions are ideal today. Calm and clear. You don’t have to worry about racing the daylight since you’re going deep anyway.”

“I don’t want to wait.” Sabine had a nagging sense that they were running out of time.

“Let’s give the rest of the crew a one-hour warning.” Miguel asked, “Will that work?”

Sabine and the DSV handler both nodded.

* * *

F
ifty-nine minutes later
, Captain Alex had brought the ship into position. Banks, Tosin, Waverly, and Archer were on the sidelines of the launch deck lending moral support. Sabine had come to think of them not only as Miguel’s friends, but as her own also.

Their guests lined the rails on the decks above, curious about the unusual addition to today’s agenda. With so many eyes on her, Sabine felt the pressure building.

Rather than stand there and let it ramp up her apprehension, she wandered over toward Tosin and patted his back. “It’s killing you not to get to play with it, isn’t it?”

“I think if you need to make another trip under, you should rotate your assistants for fresh eyes.” He’d been trying for days to weasel into a mission.

“Fair enough.” She smiled up at him. “But you have to tell Miguel.”

“Tell me what?” He joined them, having finished the last of his briefings with the ship’s staff.

“I’m getting a turn in that thing one way or another.” Tosin grinned. “Don’t make me resort to joyriding in the middle of the night. You know I will.”

Banks closed his eyes and shook his head. “I have no desire to deal with that much paperwork.”

Sabine found herself laughing, completely at ease within seconds. More each day, she felt she belonged here. With them. What happened in the next couple of hours would likely change her life forever, one way or another.

She hoped it ended up for the better.

“Dr. Reynolds, we’re set!” the DSV crew lead called to her.

Banks stepped forward first, hugging each of them. Waverly, Archer, and even Tosin followed suit. He crushed her in his embrace. “Have a safe trip.”

“Thank you.” Her throat tightened, making anything else she might have said impossible to get out.

Hand in hand, she and Miguel approached the DSV, which looked like a giant glass bubble with canary-yellow legs, almost cartoony in its odd proportions. They climbed in, Miguel first to give him more room, then her. When the hatch was closed and locked behind them, she jumped.

“Things are starting to feel pretty damn real, huh?” Miguel looked at her, reading her reaction.

“Yeah.” She hoped he knew she counted their growing connection in that agreement.

They strapped in to the bucket seats and waited for the crane to lift them over the edge. Miguel held her hand as the countdown commenced over the radio.

“Three…two…”

And then they were freefalling a dozen or so feet into the ocean, where they landed with a sploosh worthy of a blue whale doing a belly flop.

Sabine cheered even though her stomach had executed some Olympic-level flips in the process. Miguel hooted right along with her as bubbles skated in front of the submarine’s viewing window.

She had come to accept that it would be like this for them. Even in the midst of one of the most important expeditions of her career, he was there with her. A part of it, fully engaged. And if he was there, that meant they were going to enjoy each other and the time they spent together while they could.

It didn’t mean she cared less about her work.

It meant she cared more about him.

“I take it from that reaction that you’re both fine after entry?” the DSV’s crewleader asked.

“Yes!” Sabine shouted, somewhat breathless from the rush.

“Beginning descent,” he droned, taking things much more seriously than they were. She was glad someone responsible was watching their backs. In truth, there wasn’t much for them to do except hang on and peer out the window, looking for who-knew-what.

They’d agreed to start their quest at the site called Edge of the World since the notch in the back wall of Molokini was well known for casting shadows on itself; that meant it existed in perpetual darkness. From there they would comb the wall. If they still hadn’t found anything, they’d zigzag out to the trench.

With a maximum bottom time of ten hours, they started checking off squares on the search grid. For the most part, there was a lot of not much to be seen.

Humpback whales were common in this part of the ocean, though not typical at this time of year. Sabine couldn’t imagine staring through their bubble into the giant eye of a creature that size. Especially not one as intelligent as a whale. That would be a treat in itself.

A few bluefin trevallys buzzed past on the hunt for smaller, unsuspecting fish. They also spotted a giant barracuda and a couple of white-tipped reef sharks in the distance. But none of the corals here were different than the ones they’d already studied.

They took their time, collecting a half-dozen samples just to be sure before moving deeper.

As the light continued to fade, Sabine started to lose faith.

There weren’t any deep-sea corals known to live in this area. They were going to look anyway.

The DSV followed the crack in the cliff deeper, deeper, deeper.

Back on the
Divemaster
, Tosin barked out their depth in hundreds of feet. They kept ticking away. Thinking of the weight of the entire ocean pressing in around them caused her breath to come in short blasts.

“It’s okay.” Miguel squeezed her hand. “You heard the expert. This thing is designed to go way deeper than this.”

She nodded. “It just seems so…desolate down here. I know it’s not. There are squid and microorganisms, and who knows what else. Compared to where we’ve been diving for the past month, though, it’s like night and day.”

“And even this is probably teeming with life compared to some of the vast expanses of uncharted territory in some places of the world. Sometimes I get the feeling people think the entire ocean is like the parts they see right offshore. Maybe if more of them realized the density of wildlife is actually disproportionally dispersed, they would think twice about taking so much from the sea unsustainably.”

Sabine completely agreed.

“We’re nearing the bottom,” Miguel said, partially for their friends back on the
Divemaster
, as he read the radar screen. It had taken them more than four hours to get there. Not because they couldn’t have gone faster if they’d taken a direct route, but because they’d been working along the whole cliff face, determined not to miss a thing.

“Are my eyes catching reflections from the instruments on the viewing window again or do you see...” She squinted, trying to make sense of the faint bluish glow coming from below them.

It got more intense by the second.

“It’s not you.” Miguel sat forward, peering beneath the DSV as best he could.

She flipped through the various camera feeds on the display embedded in the dashboard until she found the one she was looking for. And when she did, Sabine could only stare in shock.

“What
is
that?” she whispered.

Miguel replied, “My best guess would be some sort of bioluminescent algae that uses an internal chemical reaction to create light. It seems to be concentrated on those rocks over there.”

He guided the research vessel closer to the phenomenon. Over the radio, people back on the
Divemaster
—researchers and boat staff alike—were losing their minds. Gasps and shouts, even some clapping, were clearly audible over the speakers.

As they approached, Sabine detected a shimmer in the water and the DSV’s sensors noted an increase in temperature.

“There’s a good-sized hydrothermal vent down here.” Miguel came to the same conclusion she did at precisely the same time.

And still Sabine sat there, unblinking, unmoving. She didn’t make a peep.

“Why aren’t you freaking out right now? Jumping up and down or screaming?” he asked. “Something.”

“Because I’m scared.” She tried not to let him see the tears that began to stream down her cheeks. Of course he noticed, and wiped them away. He focused on her while she kept looking at the flickering lights that danced before them.

“Of what?” He rested his non-driving hand on her thigh.

“If this isn’t what Heinrich was working on, I can’t imagine what the hell it might have been.” After a month of false hope and disappointment, she wasn’t sure she could believe again or survive another disappointment.

Miguel was silent for a moment as they both stared, in awe of the bizarre environment almost no one else had ever witnessed. Except maybe Heinrich. Fairly certain he’d somehow been in precisely this spot, she felt closer to his memory. At times like these she was reminded how little humanity understood about the place they called home. She hoped they could figure out the critical stuff before they ruined it.

Gears whirred and the teams above began using remote operations to gently collect their samples. While they worked, she started scribbling observations in her journal.

She noted that the edges of the glowing algae bed didn’t seem quite as vibrant as the rest. Die off seemed to have shrunk the mass of algae by as much as a third recently enough that she could tell where it had once reached. With rising ocean temperatures, increasing pollution, and the introduction of radioactivity from the Fukushima nuclear disaster not
too
far from here on an oceanic scale, who knew what kind of undiscovered organisms were on the verge of extinction?

If
this one turned out to be some miracle cure for one of the most prevalent diseases on their planet, could they harvest enough to start growing it in a lab? What if the rest of this colony disappeared before they could figure how to maintain the conditions it needed to thrive?

To have discovered a solution to the cancer crisis only to have it slip away…that would be a catastrophe.

Sort of like if you’d fallen completely in love with a man then had to give him up.

Miguel sat still, letting her process her thoughts as if he felt as reverent as she did in this moment. After a few minutes, the machines beneath them fell quiet.

They had what they’d come for.

Finally, she turned toward Miguel. He deserved her honesty. “I’m also terrified that this might be the thing we’ve been searching for. If it is…then what? Where does that leave us?”