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THE SUB:
“Nice job you have, Okana. What’s up with you and Rita?”
“Just friends, for now. It’s not a good idea to have a relationship with someone you work with. Especially when living on this ship so much.” He glances up at the rear view mirror and sees the sad expression in Alex’s eyes. “I’m sorry, Alex.”
“That’s okay. And you’re right. Sevi would be alive and on some photographic assignment right now if we hadn’t fallen in love.”
“I’m just glad it was me who extracted you from Russia. Our orders were to stop you, period. Some of our people would have shot you on sight.”
“In that case, I’m glad, too.” He studies the inside of the exterior walls and the coating appears glazed on, not painted. “How deep does this thing go?”
“It’s rated at nine-thousand-feet, but I sure as hell don’t want to test it.”
“I don’t recognize this material on the walls. Some new metal alloy?”
“No, the pressure hull is ceramic.”
“You’re kidding?”
“Welcome to the New World, my friend.”
Alex grins. “Great. I’m diving to the bottom of the ocean in a clay pot.”
Okana looks at Alex’s reflection in the mirror. “We’re coming up on the drill head.”
Alex leans forward and around Okana’s chair to stare through the front window. The lights illuminate a two-foot thick, by six-foot-diameter stainless steel disk on top of the massive slab of methane. Four separate one-inch steel cables are attached to the outside of the disk and look like long black spider legs disappearing into the darkness. The orange tube is attached to the hole in the middle of the heavy disc. He notices it swaying with the current, and it looks smashed in some areas. “Is the tube supposed to be flat?”
“The tube is just a guide for the steam drill and fiber optic cable. It’s full of sea water, so the pressure is equal to the outside, preventing the tube from collapsing under the pressure.”
They hear a voice in their headphones. “Okana, this is Lisa. How do you read?”
“Loud and clear. How’s the picture?”
“Your camera is good. I can see the transmission from the fiber optic lens, so we’re ready to start melting the ice. Are you sure you want to stay down there? You won’t be able to see the pictures from the lens.”
Okana turns off his microphone and looks in the mirror at Alex. “I’d like to stay down until I’m sure the drill head and optical lens are working properly.”
“I’m fine. This is exciting, compared to my usual job teaching.”
Okana turns on his mic. “We’ll stay for a while to make sure everything goes as planned, Lisa.”
“Okay. We’re starting the steam now.”
From their point of view in the sub, the only noticeable change is the white bubbles wobbling up around the steel disk. The bright white light from the optical cable is reflecting through the methane ice like a prism, putting on a light show on the outside edges, similar to the illuminated end of a glass rod.
“Hey guys. What does it look like down there?” Lisa asks.
“Everything looks okay,” says Okana.
“Okay. I’m starting to go through that dark material.”
Alex and Okana notice the light in the ice flicker, then tumbling red bubbles boil out from the methane around the drill head. It lasts several minutes before the red bubbles stop and the white bubbles reappear.
“We’re looking good, guys,” says Lisa. “It just punched through and the ice is so clear I can see the object down at the bottom. It’s a long cylinder, but I’ll need to go deeper to determine the size. It appears to be gray. Probably some type of metal.”
Alex covers his headset microphone with his hand and leans forward, close to Okana’s ear. “Remember that crazy idea I told you about? It may not be so crazy after all.”
Okana glances over his shoulder. “Okay, I’m waiting. Tell me about it.”
Blinding blue light suddenly flashes in front of the submarine for a fraction of a second and both men blink furiously to clear their vision. The pressure wave slams into the sub and the front window becomes vertical before flipping upside down. The seat belts dig painfully into their waists, keeping them from smashing into the ceiling.
The sub flips end over end above the seafloor as the wave carries them away from the drill head and Okana struggles to regain control, but the thrusters cannot overcome the power of the wave. The sub keeps tumbling, and he realizes it’s much more powerful this time.
Alex grabs the back of Okana’s seat with both hands as he is hurled forward against the back of Okana’s chair. The sub hits the ground hard, and his shoulder slams against the wall. The sub tumbles in every direction, and Alex is tossed from side to side, with only the seatbelt to keep him from being flung out of the chair.
The front window suddenly slams down onto the seabed and the lights blink out. Alex’s head bounces off the video screen on the back of Okana’s chair, then the sub slowly leans over onto its side in a billowing cloud of silt.
***
THE CABIN:
Wesley is watching news reports and footage from the rescue efforts in the islands when he feels his recliner rise up and down a fraction of an inch. The alarm for the seismometers in the workshop suddenly begins beeping. “Oh, crap!”
He leaps out of the chair, runs through the kitchen, and out the back door. He runs across to the workshop, yanks the door open, and remains standing at his desk as he uses the mouse to zoom in on the readout from the seismograph. “Oh, crap!”
The needle jumped off the paper again, but this time the gap is nearly one eighth-inch-long. He hears two separate beeps and changes the picture to his sensors from Mt. Rainier. The lines on the readouts start as small wavy lines, which increase to two-inches-wide before tapering back to zero. “Oh, crap.”
He reaches into his pocket, grabs his phone, and calls Alex. After four rings, he’s asked to leave a message. “This is Wesley. We just had a major event. Call me.”
***
POLAR ICE SHEET:
Tom drives the hammer down onto the surface. Brilliant blue light suddenly fills the ice as a bolt of blue lightning shoots up from the top of the pyramid, then a thunderous crack echoes across the ice. The surface beneath their feet heaves up, tossing Sonja into the air and driving Tom against the surface.
Sonja slams down onto the ice as the surface shifts in all directions, rolling her toward the edge. “Tom!” she yells as her legs slide over the edge. She claws at the ice with the tips of her gloves in a futile attempt to stop sliding over the edge. “Help me!”
Tom tries to stand and run over, but the movement tosses him back down. He rolls onto his hands and knees, desperate to grab one of her hands as she slides farther over the edge. Her face is a mask of terror, her eyes wide, and her mouth opens in a silent scream. He drives his foot against the runner and shoves with all his might, sliding across the ice and curling his fingers over Sonja’s gloved hand as she slips over the edge.
“Nooooo!” he roars, digs his fingertips into her glove, and pulls back with all his strength, but he slides across the ice with her. He feels his foot hit the crossbar on the runner, so he curls his ankle around the bar, but their weight and motion threaten to tear his foot away.
“Aaaaahhhhh!” he screams against the pain, but keeps his foot around the bar.
Sonja sees the agony on Tom’s face. She sinks her teeth around the glove of her free hand, rips it away, then swings her arm around with all her strength. She grabs his coat sleeve, struggling to keep from falling two-hundred-feet onto the newly frozen ocean.
The motion abruptly stops and Sonja drags herself over Tom’s shoulder, back onto the surface. She scrambles onto her hands and knees, shoving her shoes against the slick surface, desperately trying to gain traction away from the edge, then pushes herself up off the ice.
Tom releases his foot and rolls onto his back, staring up at the sky while trying to catch his breath.
Sonja drops onto her knees beside him, taking deep gulps of air while trying to calm her frazzled nerves. “Are you all right?”
Tom stays on the ice and nods vigorously. “Yeah. I’m okay. And You?”
Sonja holds his hand. “Yes. Thank you.”
She remains kneeling next to Tom and stares out across the new ice sheet below, but the end is difficult to distinguish from the sky on the horizon.
Tom notices her staring into the distance, her mouth slightly open. “What is it?” She points south, and Tom rolls onto his knees. He follows her gaze to a beam of sunlight being reflected off the surface like a spotlight into outer space. It fades to nothing, and he turns to Sonja. “That’s something you don’t see every day.”
Now that her adrenaline level is returning to normal, Sonja starts to laugh. Tom laughs with her, and after a few moments, he stands and grabs her hand to help her up off the ice. “Remind me not to use a hammer next time. Let’s get out of here.”
Sonja turns to get into the helicopter and notices her jar and lid still on the surface. She bends down to pick them up, but stops, turns to look at Tom, and points at the helicopter’s runner. “Look.”
Tom looks down at the small mound of ice crystals scraped from the surface when the helicopter slid on the ice, then he looks up and gives her a puzzled expression. “Did I do that?”
“I don’t know.” She kneels down, scrapes the ice into the jar and closes the lid, then gets up. “You are right. We should leave.”
Tom hurries around the helicopter and climbs into the pilot seat, and once Sonja is strapped in, he takes off and points the helicopter toward the CHARS facility.