Still meters away, he stops and hovers there for a moment. Then he shrugs and turns around, only to freeze when he looks my way.
His mouth opens wide with shock, and he lets out a surprised sound of alarm.
Seeing him react like that makes my heart stop. What the hell does he see? I start to turn around to look, but before I can, I’m slammed from behind with a force so hard I spin across the room, clouds of silt and limestone exploding around me. The terrifying thought that I might be ripped from my suit passes through my head. I’m dead if that happens.
Disoriented, I catch a foggy glimpse of something moving—swimming—toward the tunnel where we came. What the hell?
There’s someone in here with us. Before I even try to process that, I look down at my arms and realize I’m stuck. My arms are snagged in the damn aramid rope I was tying down when that thing hit me, and I can’t reach my line cutter.
This is how divers die.
“Hold on. I’m almost there,” Finn shouts as he approaches through the silt. When he reaches me, he takes his dive knife and attempts to cut me out. It barely scratches the rope. He spots thetitanium knife secured to my belt and tries it. It’s cutting a little better, but not much. At this rate, I’m not getting out of here.
“The steel line cutter. My right leg.” I kick my leg up for him to see.
Finn nods and moves to put my knife back. His eyes grow large behind his helmet, locked on the knife’s blade. “Christ,” he whispers.
He’s just staring.
“You good, man?” I ask him, trying to snap him out of his daze.
“Right.” He puts back my knife, then finds the cutters and slices me out of the rope with ease.
“Good?” he asks.
“What the hell was that, Finn?”
“We’re running a bit short on time.”
I give him a long look. I, for one, am shitting in my pants over what I just saw. Finn, while shocked at first, seems to have already gotten over it.
“Yeah, let’s get out of here.”
The coolant has been running for about thirty minutes. We put on the thrusters at forty meters per minute and go. We’re still in survivable temperatures that are dropping as we exit. So, we’ll be fine. But who was that? It had to be another diver.
When we get to the spot we left Scott, we see him waiting. He exhales when he sees us.
“Did you see anyone come by while we were in there?” I ask him.
He jerks his head toward me. “What do you mean? Did I see anyone?”
Finn jumps in. “Nathan ran into some silt and got hung up in the lines near The Torches. We resolved it quickly, so we didn’t call for help.”
The hell? He just fucking lied to Scott.
“You got to The Torches? What did you see?” Scott asks. Ignoring Finn, he’s looking directly at me.
“Whatever it was, I didn’t see it, but Finn did.” I turn to Finn, waiting for him to explain. He doesn’t.
“What I saw was you struggling in silt,” Finn says firmly.
Scott gives him a death stare but doesn’t say anything else. “Let’s get out of here,” he mutters. We follow him to the main cavern.
Mission successful.
When the briefing ends, Finn pulls me aside. “Nathan, may I speak with you in private?”
“Sure.” I’m pissed. Finn completely whitewashed the briefing, giving a sanitized version of events. Focusing on the copious amounts of data retrieved, the distance covered, and the discovery of The Torches. What he conveniently forgot to mention was the unidentified diver who nearly knocked me out of my suit. Ithadto be a diver. But who? And where the hell did he exit the caves?
