CHAPTER 78

The clanging from above was constant. Resonant, like the toll of a mission bell.

It had to be Valerie. Only she could have figured out he was here. He swore into his regulator, releasing a cloud of bubbles. He didn’t know how much damage the device might cause, but he didn’t want anyone near when it went off. He had to get to them.

Mack’s own breathing was too loud, too fast as he struggled out of the cavern, toward the narrow shaft of light ahead. He was fighting to not float into the ceiling, since he wasn’t wearing a weight belt. The device had provided more than enough negative buoyancy on the way in. He looked back over his shoulder, his light bouncing wildly over the cave walls as he continued kicking forward. He wondered how close the octopus was. Unless it had left to feed again, it was back there somewhere, in that gloom.

He felt a slight change in the still water, as though he had just encountered a light current. He looked forward again, shined his light along the cavern walls. Nothing.

Maybe the blue hole was about to blow—to expel cold water from underneath it. All the more reason he needed to make haste. He finned hard toward the shaft, searching the cavern. Then he realized something was wrong. He no longer saw the shaft of light.

He slowed, hovered, catching his breath. He couldn’t possibly have gotten turned around, could he? He’d looked back a few times, but only for a few moments. He didn’t have a safety line—

He felt it again. A movement of water. It rushed past him, ever so lightly, like a muffled shock wave. He wasn’t sure which direction it had come from. Then it was gone. It was not a current.

It could only be one thing.

A pressure wave. Created by the movement of something very large, very close, as it displaced thousands of gallons of seawater.

He kicked harder, toward where he thought the exit should now be visible, angry at his weaker leg, where a fin was strapped to his modified prosthetic limb. He didn’t look back. If the octopus was right behind him, he wouldn’t be able to outswim it anyway.

He felt confused, in the same way as a person in the woods who has just realized he has taken the wrong path, a path that has petered out into brambles in a dark, strange part of the forest. But he could not turn back now.

Where the hell was he? This had to be the right way....

There. Ahead, the dark tunnel suddenly grew lighter again. But it wasn’t natural light, from above. It was just his own beam, reflected off an obstruction. Something lighter in color. He strained to see past the smooth outlines of stone, to find the outlet that would deliver him back to the main shaft, and to the surface. But something wasn’t right. In the dim light, the rock wall here looked too even, too smooth.

He slowed, turned and looked at the wall directly beside him, a few arm lengths away.

In his light, it too had an odd appearance. It was striated with what looked a little like conglomerate—a crumbly matrix of sedimentary rock cementing together numerous fragments of rounded stones. A geological class that didn’t belong here, in this limestone cavern. The rounded river rocks embedded into it were too circular, too even.

Ahead of him, he spied a darker spot in the wall. Probably just large enough for him to pass through. A way out? He kicked toward it, paused.

He could still hear the slow, steady clanging of the lead weight.

He stared at the dark spot in the wall. It was near the center of the tunnel. He fluttered his fins once more, toward the black, almost perfectly round anomaly. Then he knew. It was not an opening. It was not part of the tunnel.

The fleshy confines surrounding him quivered.

He looked again at what he had thought were rocks embedded in the wall. They began to bulge out of it, to take their usual form. That of discs. And in the dark circle ahead, he saw movement as the great beak within gnashed once. And he knew it was too late.

I’m so sorry, Valerie—

The web of skin around him collapsed, huge volumes of seawater tumbling his body as he was smothered inside the impossible profusion of living flesh. He felt rigid suckers the size of dinner plates press against him, immobilizing him. His light now gone, he could no longer see what was happening.

But even through the thick blanket of flesh, he could still hear the hollow, bell-like ringing from above.