After a few circuits of the island, he paused to hunt, not wanting to take the time but knowing he needed the energy to replenish what he had exhausted with his frantic all-night and all-day swim. Somewhat refreshed and a little more energized, he examined the island more analytically, thinking about what he needed to do to get in.
It was at least theoretically possible that he could simply retrace the route that he had taken to get out the first time. He had found his way through the minefield using his echolocation. At that time, there had been no other cetaceans—dolphins, orcas, and whales—among the Colonel's recruits and prisoners. Some of the others were swimming creatures, like polar bears, but they couldn't spot the mines. Dane's ability to find and avoid them was unique, and therefore he was able to swim through the minefield without danger.
He swam closer, moving with great caution. He sent out pulses of sound, reading the locations of the mines and the underwater shape of the island.
Then abruptly the world washed out in a horrendous, overwhelming, deafening flood of noise.
Dane thrashed wildly and desperately. His sensitive hearing and delicate vibration senses were overwhelmed. For horrible minutes he had no idea what was up or down, even whether he was underwater or exposed in the air. He was reduced to raw instinct. He couldn't think.
Then the sound cut out. Dane sank toward the bottom in sheer relief, and then surfaced to look around. He found that, without realizing it, he had swum several hundred yards away from the island, desperate to get away from the horrible sound by any means necessary.
His orca, in his mind, was still panicked and shaken, but Dane knew what had happened.
The Colonel had put in some anti-orca defenses.
The sound was meant to incapacitate him and foil his echolocation. They couldn't leave it turned on all the time; it must be hard on the sensitive hearing of the other shifters on the island. But even short pulses were going to be a huge problem for him. He might be able to learn to ignore it and suppress his orca's panic response, but even if he could do that, it was still effectively blinding him. He couldn't sense the location of the mines or even how close to the island he was.
It was very simple and yet obnoxiously effective.
But it wasn't continuous. It might become so if the Colonel realized that he was close to the island, but for now he would have to do all of his exploring and planning between the pulses of sound. He wondered how frequently they turned it on. It couldn't be too often, or he would have noticed it as he approached.
Okay, so I'm wasting my window. Time to get moving.
It was shockingly difficult to make himself swim back toward the island. It would have been hard enough anyway, knowing what he was heading back into, but his entire body was still ringing with that horrendous pulse of sound.
The only thing that could make him approach that terrible place was knowing that Mira was almost certainly a prisoner there. There was no telling what was happening to her inside, what terrible tortures were being inflicted on her.
Dane took a deep breath and dived so as to avoid being seen from above. He worried that he had tripped the sound pulse by setting off an unseen sensor, but if so, he managed not to do it again. This time, dodging mines and avoiding security cameras, he was able to swim all the way up to the base of the island. Cautiously he surfaced enough to look around.
I can't believe I'm doing this.
The rock was sheer in front of him, slick and wet with spray. There was nowhere to climb out, no place to rest or shelter. The island was as brutal and unforgiving as the man who ran it.
Water spurted suddenly from a pipe sticking out of the rock, some ways above his head. It splashed down into the ocean waves.
That was how he and Eren had escaped the first time. Dane had been kept imprisoned in his orca form in a large water tank. The drain was, of course, much too small for an orca—but it was large enough for a man. The Colonel had believed that Dane was trapped in his orca form, no longer able to shift by conscious control after the brutal training he had received, but instead reliant on his handler's commands. This was not true. Dane could shift; it was simply difficult. He had taken great care to make sure the Colonel didn't find out. It was the only ace in the hole that he possessed.
During their infrequent training in their human forms, he and Eren had made plans. On the night they broke out, Eren and a few of the others who had been trusted with their escape plan had slipped into his tank. Eren had shifted into a bear and used his strength to open the drain. Then they had all shifted human and swam to the outside.
It had been very much easier said than done. They were all in excellent shape and could hold their breath for a long time because of their military training, but even so, Dane and Eren were the only ones who actually got clear. The others had been recaptured almost immediately in the waters around the island. But Dane had dived, taking Eren with him, avoided the mines, and managed to get outside their initial search radius. After that it was just a matter of getting as far away as possible.
He reviewed it now in his mind, forcing himself to turn his thoughts back to that terrible time.
It wasn't possible, he decided, to get back in the same way. He would have to somehow climb to the drain pipe and then swim against the current all the way up. And there was no telling where the pipe led now. There was probably still some kind of swimming pool for water training on the other end, but it could very easily have a drain too small to admit a man. Even if it was big enough, he would have to open it by hand, and he wasn't sure if he could do that in his human form.
If he tried, he would almost certainly drown.
The utter impossibility of his task seemed to rise up in front of him, as impossible to scale as the island's sheer cliffs.
Okay, let's assume I can't get back in that way. Then how?
He blew out a breath of spray and slipped beneath the water.
The island appeared impenetrable, but it was not. These days, it was accessed mainly by air, but he recalled there were supply boats that came and went by way of a mine-free channel on the south side. Doors would open to access the loading area underneath the island's bulk.
He and Eren hadn't tried to escape through the loading dock because the security was very tight. There were always guards, and only the Colonel's hand-picked, trusted troops were allowed access to that area or the higher levels of the island.
For similar reasons, it would be difficult to get in that way. He wasn't even sure if there was a way to open the doors from the outside at all. And he couldn't afford to wait around until a supply boat arrived, which might take months.
