The Labyrinth Key

by Christopher Cartwright

  Sam opened his eyes fully under his regulating mask, still slightly foggy from sweat and his quick breaths, noticing that the tight hole had opened into a hallway and which showed signs of being underwater for eons. To his side rested a deteriorated stairway with marine fauna glazing each step in a thin green layer.

  Continuing to recover, this discovery provided a welcome distraction. Sam squinted closer and finned forward. The steps seemed a little too high for anyone’s comfort. He doggy-paddled the rest of the way to the stairway, unslung his air tank, and set it aside as he sat on one of the steps. When he was sure that all his equipment was secured and the string remained in plain sight, he leaned over to the tank and checked his oxygen gauge.

  Eighty-three percent. Damn.

  In. Out. In. Out. The tank’s meter vibrated with every inhale and exhale, but he could tell his heart rate had slowed significantly.

  Welcoming the short respite, he planned out the return trip. Great that he had made it through, but now, even worse, he would have to return through the same passageway. The familiar flash of panic blinded him momentarily, but Sam fought it down into his stomach and stowed it away. He would cross that bridge when he came to it.

  Breathing easier, he wanted to turn his mind to something else. Pointing the flashlight ahead of him, he could see what appeared similar to Mayan inscriptions on the wall.

  Focus, Sam heard his sensible side say. You’re here on a mission.

  Still, he detached his helmet light and swung it around in a wide arc, taking in all his surroundings. Mayan inscriptions spanned all the walls and the engravings seemed reflective under the shine of the light. They were capped with some sort of metal and knowing the Mayans, it was probably a form of silver.

  His one world history class in college had served him well, but these inscriptions were different. And the way the stones were placed around the entire room inexplicably triggered a primal uneasiness in Sam. The whole system felt hostile.

  “Feeling like I’ve overstayed my welcome,” Sam muttered to himself into his regulator, just to hear a human voice, despite the waste of air.

  He swam forward, following Tom’s string. In front of him two tunnels branched off into different paths, just as Tom had described the maze. Sam felt himself center. Okay, getting lost in an underwater maze might be scary, but Sam could deal with scary a lot better than tight.

  Continuing onward, Sam followed the string with both hands, ignoring the internal voice of his instructor. He gripped tight as worries and thoughts buzzed like bees in his head. He couldn’t hear anything but the rush of his own blood, and the occasional bubble release of the rebreather. The passageways were even more intricately designed the deeper that Sam traveled into the maze. The ancient Mayans must have had a lot of time on their hands, he thought to himself.

  The string began to feel looser and looser as he followed it through every single turn and passageway. When it ran into the wall, he looked up. He’d found where Tom had wedged it tight between the wall and a rock, so he must be near the…

  Shining the flashlight around, he saw the fins and diving equipment Tom had mentioned. He was in the right place. Cold leaked into his neck, having nothing to do with the chillier temperatures deep under the earth.

  Now it was time to look for a body. The water was as still as a corpse and Sam knew that whoever’s body was down here couldn’t have gotten far. If anything, the body should have floated up and away by now, as the bacteria inside would cook and release gases, essentially making the corpse one nasty hot air balloon.

  Starting with the right, Sam swept the ceiling with his dive light, checking every nook and cranny for anything that could indicate a passage into another room or anywhere that the mystery diver could have found passage.

  Now sweeping back and forth, Sam’s light caught on a patch of a darker dark. Of course. He swung back, to reveal that there was a small opening above the entrance of the cave, certainly larger than the hellish tunnel he’d been forced to navigate earlier, but small enough to pass unnoticed without careful review. Tom must have missed it when he turned around to get out before his oxygen depleted; thankfully Sam had the advantage of the rebreather and bigger air tank.

  Sam swam up and cautiously felt around the opening, then shined his flashlight into it to aid his search. The sides were smooth, unlike the unrefined entrances he’d already come through. Maybe this cave was the one that held the secrets they had entered the pool in search of to begin with.

  He peered closer, pulling himself up like a schoolboy at the side of the pool. Through the hole, Sam could see refraction in the water, meaning there was air up there. Bingo, he thought, as he swam through it.

  It was easily big enough for a grown man to fit through, yet it was curved around the opening so that it was near impossible to see unless you were specifically looking for it. Even then, any novice would have mistaken it for a small curvature in the rock.

  Popping up at the surface, Sam was surprised to find a hallway that was designed like the underwater ones that he had just come through except that… well, it wasn't underwater.

  As Sam surfaced, he was instantly relieved of the tight feeling from the damp suit. His skin relaxed and the water slid off his face in droplets.

  Working through his surprise, he hauled himself up and out onto the ground. Things were starting to make sense, maybe. He took his fins off and carefully placed them on the ground right next to him near the water. His hand hesitated over his mask, but Sam ultimately decided against it, choosing instead to breathe through the rebreather. He had heard too many horror stories of divers getting excited about a dry cave underwater, taking their mask off, and dying of hypoxia as carbon dioxide filled the space with invisible poison, with nowhere else to go.

  Time to explore the cave.

  He shined his flashlight around. He jerked back in surprise. There, where there should be nothing, was a young woman collapsed on the ground.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Sam quickly moved toward the woman as fast as he could in the diving suit, heavy with water. The suit thrashed around on the cold rock floor, making loud slurping noises that resonated through the caves. The woman before him remained motionless. For a second Sam thought of Tom’s limp body when he was pulled out of the water in the nick of time.

  There was no question that this was the owner of the equipment down at the room that he had just come from- there could only be so many explorers lost in a secret cave.

  That wasn’t his main concern, though. His main concern was why she had collapsed. There were several possibilities and Sam’s military mind flashed on all of them: an injury, lack of oxygen, drowning…

  He knelt next to her. She didn’t move. She was still breathing, but her pulse was weak. There were no other visible signs of injury, but he knew that a head wound might not show.

  Then, as he listened to the rebreather, a small thought intruded: What about hypoxia?

  The cavern was tiny and it wouldn’t take much time for carbon dioxide to replace the oxygen in the air in such a small space, especially if there’d been no clean air moving in or out. His father had yelled at him for constructing blanket forts for just this reason and, if Sam hadn’t kept the rebreather in, it was very likely he could have suffered the same fate.

  Now, kneeling beside the woman, Sam realized he was sweating, beads of salty liquid mixing in with the musty cave water drying off his skin.

  She was lying face down. Sam crouched beside her and took hold of her forehead from the top and torso. Quickly, carefully, he turned her on her back, mindful of the possibility of a neck injury. Normally, he would have checked for water in the lungs, but she was too far from the water-side to have collapsed of drowning. And there was no easy way to do it. Besides, she was breathing on her own, albeit shallowly. No need for mouth to mouth. If it was hypoxia, that would only make it worse.

  He checked her pulse again. Very weak, but she was alive. The fact that there was a pulse meant t
hat she was just out of oxygen. At least he hoped that was it. He knew he could give her his oxygen tank and hope that she woke up in the cave, but there was no telling if she was ever going to wake up. And the longer he waited inside, the more anxious those on the outside would get. And the higher the chance that someone would come after him and do something stupid to try and bring Sam back.

  Sam paused to briefly consider any other solutions, but there weren’t any. He would have to get her back outside. And he had to act now, before her condition worsened or any more people got injured.

  “Okay, if you’re going to go, then let’s go,” he muttered to himself. Sam got his footing under himself on the slick rock, then leaned forward and carefully picked her up from her back, marine-style, and dragged her back to the water side. Even wet, she was lighter than he thought, and easy to carry. He wondered how old she was. Her unconscious state and her wet hair made her look anywhere from thirteen to twenty-six.

  Sam perched on the edge of the water and quickly got into his fins. Time for the mask. With the hand of a practiced diver, Sam quickly split his oxygen-Trimix mixture into both tanks. This would automatically deactivate the rebreather. The countdown started now. Sam briefly shuddered at the thought of limited time, yet they had no choice. He’d worked under the gun before, and besides- they still had fifteen minutes. They would make it in fifteen minutes. They had to.

  Sam took his tank pack off and attached it to her, cinching the straps so it wouldn’t slip off. He would just have to worry about carrying his. And quite possibly carrying her.

  Hearing the hiss as both tanks activated, Sam glanced at the tanks’ oxygen levels. Both at around thirty-five percent. Should be good enough for the trip back. Thankfully, since she was not conscious, this would actually help lower their oxygen usage: Her shallow breathing meant that she would probably run out of the air more slowly. Sam reattached the two tanks and began filling his up to forty-five percent.

  If she threw up, she would suffocate in her own vomit. He shuddered. That wasn’t a pretty way to go. He would just have to push both of them back up to the surface before she died.

  A thought popped into his head, so surprising and sudden that he slipped the fill and struggled to start it again.

  What if she wakes up halfway through and panics?

  It was possible with the increased oxygen flow, and her brain reactivated to more normal levels, he thought, as the tank resumed its fill. As long as he didn’t waste any time getting lost or getting scared and he kept his wits about him in the tight passageway and got her through with no problems, they would have enough air.

  And if the worst happened… well, Sam would just have to leave her there, as she had left her equipment behind on the cavern floor. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d been forced to abandon dead weight.

  It didn’t mean he had to like it.

  Best not think about that now.

  Carefully, he eased her body down into the water, sticking his legs out straight under her to make sure she didn’t sink all the way down. She floated like a log as he disconnected the rebreather from his tank and made the final adjustments to their air systems.

  Then, collecting his wits and sending up a prayer to whatever ancient gods were listening Sam slid in off the ledge next to her.

  She wobbled with his entry and started to sink. He steadied her and tried to figure out how he was going to manage. As he thought, he adjusted this nameless, unconscious woman so that she faced head-first to the entrance. He kept her right next to him, lifeguard-style, so he could help her if it was needed. He hoped again she would not wake up in transit.

  He checked everything again, once more for luck. Her tank was working, her mask gently fogged. Her lashes lay on her cheeks as if in sleep. Behind the glass, damp with the residue of her toxic breath, she looked quite young.

  Sam jumped in and all the way under.

  If he’d thought coming into the cavern and navigating the system was nerve wracking, doing it in reverse with a passenger on limited air was doubly so. The currents caused by his own passing constantly disrupted her, and so she knocked against him in a syncopated motion that made his own transit more difficult than it had been on the way in. He wished he dared drag her along with some force, but he was terrified of disrupting the connection between mask and tank and killing her by accident. As shallow as her breaths were, it was a good bet he wouldn’t even know anything was wrong until it was too late. Unconscious as she was, too late was too late.

  He eventually worked out a pattern that allowed him some regularity, and he’d been in enough tough spots to know that rhythm could be the difference between success and failure. He repeated the steps, and repeated them again until he hit his stride, and then he held his breath with intent focus so he didn’t lose it. He was making good time through the narrow passageways. First, he would follow the string a few feet ahead to make sure it was the right direction, then come back and push the woman ahead of him along the path. He couldn’t afford to break the string, so he had to plot his movements carefully, but nor could he allow her to sink and detach from her regulator. So he had to paddle as fast as he could right beside her to keep her afloat. It was terribly awkward, but he sank into a survival mentality himself, and his awareness narrowed to his fake breathing, her fake breathing, the feel of the cool-warm water on his skin, and the darkness.

  One stroke at a time, he crept toward the entrance.

  When he reached the narrow passage that had detained him in the beginning, he pushed down the rising panic and found it easier than expected. Her life, quite simply, depended on his lack of fear. As it had before in rare moments of grace, that fear evaporated with stunning speed, resulting in a clear, certain focus.

  Now. The question became: Who was going to go first?

  After a quick deliberation, the best plan, he decided, would probably be to get himself through first and pull her through, second. With the tanks depleting by the breath, speed mattered, and this option seemed like it would get them to the other side the fastest. Right or wrong, Sam knew he had to stay focused and alert and with a backup plan at the ready.

  He maneuvered behind her and carefully slid the tank off over her head, making sure it was still attached by the straps. Then, holding it awkwardly in one hand, he removed his own.

  Carefully, as if he were working with explosives, Sam sidled as close as he could to the opening, dragging her with him and nudged his tank through. Then, in quick succession, he went through himself, before he had time to think about it. He went in head-first, kicking hard and reeling around to still keep hold of her hand, her tank. Quickly he looped his arm through his tank’s strap to free up his hands, then, blessing her thinness and general pliability, guided her through. He scraped her shoulder in the process, but it was better than hitting her head. The connections between tank and regulator and mask remained solid.

  In the relative safety on the other side of the wall, Sam didn’t even stop to revel in his triumph over the claustrophobic space. He simply reattached the tanks, quick, precise, and certain, and then resumed his guide-pull-glide maneuver back along the string, back toward the exit, back toward freedom.

  At long, long last, a glimmer of light peeked in the distance. Sam felt like he was seeing a sliver of heaven’s glory through dark thunderclouds. As the light illuminated the tunnel exit more and more clearly, he called on the reserve of energy he knew he didn’t have, needing to rely on the sometimes robotic, but always impressive, capacity of the human body to overcome physical obstacles if the mind is strong enough. He kicked harder, gaining a rhythm and losing himself in it as he stroked strongly for the surface, trailing the unconscious woman closely behind. As he went, he played the same game he’d developed to get himself through swim team practice decades ago, a game he had played countless times since. Five more strokes. Five more strokes. Five more strokes.

  It worked as it had always worked.

  The light got brighter, grew and blossomed,
and he had the odd sense that he was witnessing a surreal kind of dawn, despite the fact that by now it was late afternoon. Maybe almost evening. In the growing glow, he could see the brown reeds all around the lake, waving beyond the surface like a damn Dali painting.

  Sam surfaced, gasping. The regulator hissed in the real world like some science fiction man-machine. One armed, he groped for the ledge, treading water as he did so. Through the foggy mask, he saw a flurry of motion but oddly, heard no sound as the locals, some of whom had been lounging by the edge smoking cigarillos and some who’d been playing cards, waited for Sam to return. Now they looked over from their repose, taking in the scene. They cheered Sam’s arrival in a jocular fashion, but when they saw the woman’s head pop out next to him, they upended their logs or rocks in their shock. Sam fought to spit out the regulator, passing off the woman’s arm to some other arm already reaching down to give him a hand.

  “Help her, unconscious, hypoxic, I think,” he panted, as the rubber and metal left his mouth and swung on its clip by his shoulder with a small thump.

  The locals all shuffled uneasily at the water’s edge, apparently unwilling to approach the mystical pool. Now Sam could see that it was only Tom willing to get on his knees and haul the woman out. It was Tom who laid her gently on her side, disconnecting the regulator from the borrowed tank so she could breathe fresh, clean air. Fiery impatience surged through Sam and his vision blurred. These men were willing to haul equipment to bring up treasure, but they wouldn’t help a dying woman? What did they think she was?

  Possessed?

  His irritation was diverted by Armando pushing through the ranks of the babbling locals. Armando silenced them with a curt command in Spanish, panting. When he saw the woman on the ground before them, his eyes widened in surprise.