Chapter 4
Corbin
I was even more cautious as I made my descent to the reef.
While I was drawn back to it and wildly curious about the entity that had contacted me, I was well aware that there was danger and I couldn’t afford to drop my guard.
My instincts, such as they were, told me the entity was benign, but supposition wasn’t proof.
Unfortunately, there was always an empirical risk when testing any theory.
I made it to the sea floor, casting a glance back upward to where I could barely see the signal repeater’s flashing light.
No matter what Mercer said about not getting cut off by the wreck, the wreck was where I’d heard the voice, so that was where I intended to go.
I couldn’t be too direct about it, however, since I didn’t want to give any indication that I had motives of my own.
Slowly I began cataloging again, making my way slowly toward the wreck.
My attention wasn’t focussed on my work, however, but on the edges of the reef.
Maybe it was just my imagination that made me think there were eyes observing me, but the sensation was persistent, no matter where I moved.
Again I was aware of movement in the water, a subtle pressure change that told me there were creatures about.
Then, almost in front of my nose, a small Grimpoteuthis octopus popped out of the coral, bobbing playfully.
I flowed back, startled by its sudden appearance.
It moved toward me again, tentacles reaching out to brush lightly against my face, as if it was curious.
I didn’t move, letting it satisfy whatever question it had about my existence.
The breed, unkindly called a Dumbo Octopus because of the ear-like protrusions on the sides of its head, were cute and not at all dangerous, though it was surprising to find one in Atlantic waters.
Normally they were found in the Pacific, so I made note of the presence of a possible migration.
It lingered for a moment before dropping down to examine my tentacles.
No doubt it couldn’t fathom what I was, and I imagined it was confused about whether I was friendly or not.
I raised one of my own tentacles, caressing it gently as I might have done if it had been a dog or a cat, and it leaned into the touch as though it enjoyed it.
Then it wrapped all of its tentacles around the one I’d raised, latching on playfully.
Well. Maybe it thought I was its parent? I couldn’t help but smile at the ridiculousness of that notion.
I was so focussed on the small creature that I missed the first pressure against my mind until I heard the words in my head.
Michael? Is it really you?
Again there was a note of yearning in the question, and I froze, my heart suddenly pounding. But I didn’t move. This was what I’d come to find, not for Mercer, but for myself.
My name is Corbin, not Michael, I thought back, not knowing if it would be heard or understood. Can you hear me? Who are you?
There was a pause, but the connection was still there. I could sense it in a way I couldn’t describe.
I’m Kaius. There was confusion in the mental tone, then dismay. Abruptly, the mental pressure was gone.
Wait! Come back! I thought as hard as I could, but the odd sense of communication was gone. If it had even happened at all.
I turned, looking all around me for any sign of movement. I caught a flicker off to my left, away from the old wreck, and I used all my tentacles to push in that direction, moving as quickly as I could. I wasn’t as fast as with my tail, but I could still move pretty quickly.
When I gained the edge of the coral outcropping, I peered around it, catching the flip of a tail as some creature fled into an area between two large rocks.
The tail fluke had been horizontal, not vertical, and pale rather than dark, so a dolphin or a porpoise.
Yet I didn’t detect any echolocation clicks, which was puzzling.
I moved more slowly toward the rocks, cautious lest I spook whatever I was following. While the smaller cetaceans were generally friendly and tended to like people, a dolphin could hurt me badly, and perhaps even kill me if it felt threatened. I was tough, but I was far from invulnerable.
I reached the rocks and peered around them carefully, only to see a swirl of sediment as my quarry took off again, heading toward what looked like a series of caves in the coral.
This puzzled me, since a cetacean wouldn’t want to be trapped in a place where it couldn’t get back to the surface to breathe.
Bottlenose dolphins could hold their breath for quite some time, but I couldn’t imagine one wanting to get cornered by a predator and not have a route to escape.
I wasn’t stupid. My analysis of the situation told me that there had to be a back way out of the caves that the creature knew of, so it wouldn’t get trapped. That was the highest probability, of course, but there was another, more intriguing one.
That the being I was chasing wasn’t a cetacean.
It wasn’t logical, but neither was something or someone contacting me telepathically.
I could feel my heart racing, and I sped up, not wanting to lose the creature in the caves.
It was a reckless move on my part, since I, too, could become trapped, but I simply had to find out what was going on.
Nothing made sense, and I needed an explanation for everything I’d experienced.
The cave system was a labyrinthine structure, full of twists and turns that led deeper into the coral system.
Strange bioluminescent algae covered the curved walls at intervals that made it possible to see.
My CPU was recording my path, so I’d be able to get out again without any trouble, as I followed the disturbances in the water which indicated where the creature was going.
Then, unexpectedly, I found myself in a large chamber, the coral arching overhead some ten meters, and I realized the pursuit had led me downward.
There were innumerable tunnels leading into this area, as well as stalactites dangling from above me like a thousand swords ready to fall.
A few meters below where I floated, the matching stalagmites rose upward, and the entire area suddenly felt like the mouth of a giant shark ready to snap closed and rend me into pieces.
Ridiculous, I told myself. This area of the Blake Plateau had once been above sea level, and the rock formations were completely natural, a car.
The cave system had simply been overtaken by coral when it sank beneath the sea.
The area was no doubt riddled with similar structures, and it made sense for coral, which were made of calcium carbonate, to latch on to the sedimentary rock made from the exact same substance.
Logic had nothing to do with what I was feeling, unfortunately.
It seemed like the walls were closing in, and I whirled in place, feeling something I refused to call panic.
As I turned, I sensed movement off behind a large stalagmite to my right, and when I focussed in that direction, alert for danger, I saw something that froze me in place.
A face. A human face, peering at me from around the stalagmite, dark eyes wide, a cloud of dark hair floating around it in the water. Then it disappeared so quickly that it might have never been there at all.
It was the man from my dream.
Impossible.
A pounding started in my head. The type of thing that happens when your heart is beating so fast and so loud that you can feel it like a pressure as though it was attempting to pummel its way out of your chest. There was also a building pressure in the water all around me, and I swear the cave really did feel as though it were about to snap closed and devour me whole.
Suddenly everything was too much. I felt so much fear, regret, and sadness that my vision went gray around the edges, and I couldn’t control the thrashing of my limbs as I desperately tried to escape.
But I wasn’t coordinated. My brain was so overcome by primitive reactions that I was trying to run on human legs that weren’t there.
I couldn’t breathe because my gills snapped closed in response to my sense of danger, my body wanting to breathe through my nose and mouth as though I were on land, not a hundred meters beneath the ocean.
At the deepest part of my psyche, apparently, I was still a human, despite my trappings of being a creature of the sea.
No, no, no! You’re safe! You’re fine!
The words were accompanied by an odd wave of mental reassurance.
I reached for it, trying to cling to the sense that someone was throwing me a tether, trying to rescue me from the betrayal of my own mind.
I thought perhaps I could escape this sense of being crushed, but apparently it was already too late.
My oxygen-starved brain shut down, and suddenly, perhaps mercifully, everything went black.
Waking was strange, especially considering that I’d never expected to wake up at all.
I was breathing, which was such a relief that I gasped, sucking in air that was cool and clean and held a tinge of salt.
I abruptly opened my eyes, expecting to be back on the Nautilus, but instead I found myself in a room with walls of rough coral, the space lit by glass globes filled with the same luminescent algae I’d noticed before.
I was lying in a pool of water set into an actual floor, deep enough to cover my tentacles to keep them wet, while shallow enough to allow my torso to semi-recline against a soft surface.
But I was definitely breathing through my human lungs, and oddly enough, I felt no injury anywhere on my body.