“We were about two-thirds of the way through our course,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “We’d already found both of the team members with the tampered tanks but then another tank failed.”
“Whose tank?”
“Uh, Boris… yeah, it was Boris,” he said. “We still had a third of the way to go and with three tanks down, we were burning through our tanks too fast.”
“Why didn’t you notify one of the observers?” the Dean said sharply, “There were two assigned to that route.”
He shook his head. “We never saw an observer.”
“Not a single one?”
“No, ma’am.” He coughs and I know it must be killing his ribs.
“Here, can you drink some water?” I hold the cup for him and he yanks it out of my hand.
“I’m capable of drinking from a glass all by myself,” he says irritably, and even the Dean rolls her eyes.
“Let’s continue. Were you attacked?”
“The rock channel we had to swim through was tight,” he said. “I went last to make sure everyone got through. I knew I was low on air, but I had about an eighth of a tank left. When I came out of the channel, someone hit me in the back of the head, with a rock, I think. Then someone kicked me in the ribs. It was a good aim, they knew my broken ribs were on the right.”
“Did you see your attacker?” she asks.
“No, whoever it was tried to rip my mask off. I think I nailed them pretty hard with my elbow, but I don’t know where I hit them. I was seeing double by then. They took off.”
The Dean crosses her arms, tapping her fingers thoughtfully. “Are you sure it was just a single assailant? Could there have been more than one?”
“It’s possible,” he shrugs, “The kick to my ribs came right after getting hit in the back of the head, but…”
“Given the angle, it would be hard for one person to strike you twice with only seconds between them,” she said. “What then?”
“I cleared my mask, it was cracked after they tried to rip it off my face, but it worked well enough to get through the next part of the course. I ran out of oxygen and I knew I couldn’t make it all the way back…”
Konstantin swallowed and I squeezed his hand tighter. He could have died down there, suffocated under all that rock. How long would it have taken them to find him?
“I remembered passing that chamber on the way through, I diverted from the course to swim there. I thought I could hold out long enough for one of the observers to find me.”
“Your team raised the alarm when you didn’t surface with them in the main cave,” Dean Christie said coldly, “but it took them long enough. The observers heard Miss Morozova shouting from the next cave just moments later.” Her cool gaze moved to me. “Now, how did you hear Mr. Turgenev?”
“I’d just surfaced in one of the bigger caverns on our course,” I said, “Lucca and a couple of other teammates were still trying to get through a very narrow tunnel. I’m smaller, so I think that helped me move faster.”
Not because I was terrified and barely holding it together,I thought.
“When I surfaced in that cave, I could hear Kon coughing.”
“You recognized him by his cough?” she asks, pursing her lips.
“Well, he was cursing in Russian, too. It’s a very Konstantin thing to do,” I said. I could swear that woman wanted to laugh, but she held it together.
“Did he say anything to you? Anything about the attack?”
“No, he was barely conscious. I slapped him rather hard to get him to pay attention. He tried to argue about sharing my regulator, but nothing about the attack. His drysuit was torn over his ribcage and he was bleeding. But the worst part…” I cleared my throat. I’m not going to cry. He would never let me hear the end of it. “He was bleeding from his mouth. I was concerned that he might have a collapsed lung.”
“Dr. Giardo seemed quite surprised that you hadn’t,” the Dean said. “You’ve got a rather large bump on the back of the head, Mr. Turgenev, so you will be woken every hour as a precaution, though the doctor didn’t think you were concussed. You must have a skull made of titanium.”
“Or granite,” I mumbled. Yes, there was that little quirk of her lips again.
“Good night to you both. I’ll be conducting an investigation and will quite likely be back with more questions. Both of you think carefully about anything you might have forgotten, something you saw, or heard.”
