A shape veered close. Too close. One of the ladies had drifted off course, her scooter angling toward Tula. Okidu's hand shot out, redirecting the woman back to her partner. Even in the dark, Tula could sense the panic in the woman's movements, the way she overcorrected, almost spinning herself around before her Guardian got her steady again.
Sarah, Tula thought, recognizing something in the way she moved, the particular quality of her fear. Sarah had always been the one who catastrophized every situation. Being underwater in the dark must be difficult for her.
They kept going, the formation spreading out and bunching up like an accordion as people struggled with their scooters. Someone ahead suddenly stopped, their trigger slipped or released, and their partner had to circle back, grab them, and get them moving again. Each stop meant everyone behind had to stop too, waiting, breathing air that might run out if they delayed for too long.
Tula checked her air gauge, the luminescent dial visible when she brought it close to her mask. Three-quarters full. That should be plenty, but they'd only been under for thirty-two minutes. At this rate, with everyone breathing hard from anxiety, using more air than they should...
Stop it. Don't borrow trouble.
But she couldn't help calculating. Two hours at normal consumption. But they were going slower than planned, breathing faster than normal. Would the tanks last? What happened if someone ran out? She'd seen buddy breathing in movies, two people sharing one regulator, but the thought of trying that while still managing the scooters, in the dark, with panicked people who'd never dived before...right.
They could surface and swim, but this close to the island, it was risky even with Navuh gone. Despite what she'd told Yamanu and the others, Navuh had enough lieutenants who could take over for him. They might not be as effective, but they had all been safeguarding the island for a very long time, and they knew what they were doing.
It was safest for their group to reach the sub as planned.
Her baby chose that moment to move, a flutter so faint she might have imagined it. But there it was again, the butterfly sensation that had become familiar over the past weeks. Her baby was alive, moving, seemingly unaffected by the pressure and the underwater environment. The relief was so intense she almost released her trigger.
An hour in, her forearms were screaming. The constant grip, the exact pressure needed, the vibration from the scooter combined into a burning ache that ran from her fingers to her elbows. She tried adjusting her grip, flexing her fingers one at a time, but that just made the scooter wobble.
Around her, she could sense the others struggling too. The woman to her right kept dropping back, her partner having to slow down to match her pace. Was it Beulah?
Someone else was going at an angle, listing to one side like a boat with a broken rudder, fighting her scooter's tendency to turn.
Then Tony's scooter just died.
One moment he was moving forward, the next he was drifting, his scooter hanging from the wrist strap while he looked around in what could only be panic. His Guardian partner immediately moved in, but Tony was already sinking, the weight of his gear pulling him down without forward momentum to keep him level.
The Guardian grabbed him, shared his own scooter by having Tony hold on to his shoulders, but that meant they were now moving at half speed, disrupting the entire formation. Everyone had to slow down to match their pace.
Tula's air gauge read just over half.
They'd been under for ninety minutes.
We're not going to make it.
The thought came unbidden and unwanted, but once it arrived, she couldn't shake it. They were moving too slowly and using air too fast. They were going to run out before they reached the submarine.
Stop it. Trust the Guardians. They know what they're doing.
But did they? Had they accounted for how slowly inexperienced divers would move? For equipment failures? For the panic that made everyone breathe like they were running a marathon?
The water around them suddenly glowed.
For a moment, Tula thought she was hallucinating, oxygen deprivation, nitrogen narcosis, or whatever happened whendiving went wrong. But the water itself was lighting up, billions of tiny organisms disturbed by their passage, creating trails of blue-green light that followed their movements like liquid starlight.
Bioluminescence. She'd read about it but never imagined she'd see it, especially not like this. It was beautiful and terrifying in equal measure, making their passage visible, marking their trail through the water like a sign sayingwe were here.
One of the women, Liliat most likely, given her body shape, started thrashing. Not swimming, not controlling her scooter, just panicking. Her Guardian tried to calm her, holding her steady, but she was shaking her head. The Guardian checked her gauge, then made a signal to the others.
They all stopped.
Floating there in the bioluminescent water, Tula watched as the Guardian worked to calm Liliat, getting her breathing under control. When they started moving again, Liliat was buddy breathing with her Guardian, sharing his air because hers was too low to risk.
That was one. Who was next?
Tula's own gauge read one-third. They'd been under for two hours.
At this rate, they had maybe forty minutes of air left. How far was the submarine? How much longer?
