The cave was illuminated by their dive lights and was full of different types of fish. One of them brushed up against Kathleen and she jumped, looking at Ashlyn for reassurance.
“They won’t bother you, just ignore them.”
Stewart waited at the bottom for Mark, ready with the mouthpiece.
Before Mark submerged he took several quick, deep breaths to hyperventilate himself a bit, and then he went under. Swimming as fast as possible, he reminded himself to stay calm to conserve oxygen. Stewart had given Mark the flippers and the mask to use for the descent. It would make it easier for him to swim down, and in case he started to blackout, it would make it easier for him to keep the water out of his nose.
The water was colder than he had expected, and he had no wetsuit. At 175 feet under, even in the Bahamas he was in danger of hypothermia. At least it was if he took the time to decompress properly. If he had to make a choice, then hypothermia was the best one.
The corridor seemed much longer than it had been on the way in, he thought as he swam down in the freezing water all alone. Of course, the last time he had a wetsuit on and air to breathe. He was starting to get dizzy, and feared blacking out. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew that he was no longer swimming and that his natural buoyancy was dragging him back up. He forced himself to fight it, to swim again, but …he was losing the battle.
***
“It’s taking too long”—Ashlyn said—“I’m going after him.”
She motioned that to Stewart with hand signals, but he shook his head, and gave her a hand signal that meant no. He motioned more, reminding her that she might block the exit.
Then suddenly a burst of bubbles began pushing out the shaft propelling Mark out with them. She reached out to grab him, her dive light creating just enough illumination to see that he opened his eyes.
Stewart gave him the oxygen, and Mark blew the last of his expended air into the mouthpiece to clear it, and then started breathing in greedily, before pointing back at the bubbles that continued to pour out of the opening. He gave the oxygen back to Stewart.
“Is that normal?” Kathleen pointed at the bubbles from the shaft.
“No”—Ashlyn shook her head—“the air pressure must be building up in the room above. We need to get out of this cave.”
Mark gave the flippers to Stewart because he would be wearing the weight-belt, and would require them to push against the water while Mark would have to fight to stay down and not ascend too rapidly.
Outside the cave, Stewart showed them the rope he had tied there on his descent and Mark gave him a thumbs up. He had a decompression computer built into his dive watch. He had already programmed in a rough estimate of their situation, and they would all stop together each time.
It wouldn’t be entirely accurate because the variables were so different. Mark’s temperature would be lower, and the women had a different combination of gases because of the rebreathers. Kathleen had spent more time under the dome. In the end, he had decided that they should base their stops on the ambient pressure rather than linear feet.
On the way up, the men went first because Ashlyn and Kathleen had plenty of oxygen, and both had wetsuits. In this way, Ashlyn could also keep an eye on Mark to see if he were displaying any signs of hypothermia or hypoxia. These dangers had to be carefully balanced with the need for a slow ascent.
The rope made the way up the slope much easier. They stopped to decompress for three minutes at the top of the drop off. Stewart and Mark were doing an admirable job at buddy breathing, but Ashlyn was acutely aware of how cold and miserable Mark looked.
Mark retrieved the rope as they continued their ascent. Ashlyn was trying to help Kathleen, who was having a difficult time fighting against the weight-belt. At the next decompression stop, while they were just hanging there, he swam around her and removed it. He placed it on himself. It made it more difficult for him not to sink.
He took several quick, deep breaths from Stewart's tank, and then let gravity pull him down far enough to remove the flippers from her feet and put them on himself. Then he swam up for more air. Ashlyn held onto Kathleen so that she could stay with the group. A shark swam by, and her eyes widened.
“Don’t worry”—Ashlyn said when she saw Kathleen’s expression—“it won’t bother us.”
However, it began circling around them, and it wasn’t ignoring them the way they would have normally expected it to. Ashlyn could hear Kathleen’s breathing change markedly. If she panicked, she would put them all in danger.
“It won’t hurt you!” Ashlyn said forcefully.
She looked up at Mark, fighting the cold misery with limited air, and then at the shark. She couldn’t see the boat where she thought it should be. It could be stormy topside; it was hard to tell. The water wasn’t as clear as it normally was. Normally, they might have used the anchor cable for a guide, but they dare not waste the time to look for it today.
At about fifty feet, she saw the hull of the boat; it was right where it should be. She motioned to the others, but noticed the shark was swimming around a little too aggressively. She didn’t dare say anything about it to Kathleen, but when a second shark appeared to be circling Mark, Ashlyn suddenly remembered Mark’s gunshot wound. His shoulder was bleeding, and now looking at it, she could see the swirling blood. This was not good. Even a lemon shark might attack if a diver was bleeding.
They were only about thirty feet from the surface, and Ashlyn was finding it hard to control her fear for Mark while trying to calm Kathleen. Suddenly, Stewart signaled Mark that the tank was empty. The two men quickly dropped their weight-belts and began to ascend rapidly.
“What’s going on?—” Kathleen’s voice was filled with fear “—is it the shark? Shouldn’t we follow them?”
“No”—Ashlyn tried to calm her down—“the tank ran out of air, so they had to surface. They are fine. We must keep decompressing.”
“Why?—” Kathleen asked terrified “—I want to get out of the water now. If they are fine, why do we have to keep going this slowly?”
Ashlyn forced herself to remain calm, and then calmed Kathleen. When Ashlyn saw Mark and Stewart break the surface, she felt a wave of relief wash over her. It was actually easier now that Ashlyn knew that Mark and Stewart were safe. She wasn’t a religious person, but she had been praying the entire time anyway.
***
Mark and Stewart hit the surface, gasping for air. The sea was not at all calm. The sky was overcast, and there was lightning. The water was tossing them around like toys in a bathtub; there was an unusual pull in the water. Mark had noticed it underneath but had dismissed it as turbulent seas; now he wasn’t sure. Luckily, they had been moving in the direction of the boat as they ascended so that now they were right next to it.
In spite of the proximity, they had a difficult time getting to the ship and up the ladder. It seemed more than just the tossing of the waves, but the two managed to climb onto the lower landing of the ship. Stewart wanted to kiss the boat and felt like crying with relief, but wasn’t about to behave that way in front of Mark. Besides, Stewart was still worried about Kathleen.
Mark was shaking severely from the cold. They climbed up onto the aft deck and dumped the scuba gear.
“Mark, you need to go get warm, go jump in a hot shower.”
“No”—he argued—“I’m waiting for Ashlyn.”
“I can wait for them Mark, go, you have hypothermia.”
“I said no.”
Stewart could see that Mark was not going to budge, so he ran to the other room and brought back a large beach towel for Mark to wrap himself in. The women had taken their last decompression break at twenty feet and were now ascending the rest of the way when the boat began to twist around from the pull in the water.
Watching their ascent, Mark noticed the turn because the boat because it most definitely was moving away from them.
“Watch them—” Mark ran toward the stairs “—make sure they are okay.
”
It was an entirely unnecessary directive. Stewart was glued to the lower landing, watching for them to surface. Mark ran up the stairs, through the pilothouse, and out onto the flybridge so that he could get a better vantage point. Something was going on, and he needed to see what it was.
A little way off, about where he estimated the cave entrance to be, the water was bubbling so hard that it almost looked as if it were boiling in that spot. There was wind, lightning, and electricity in the air. To the west, the clouds above were circling in an odd fashion, as if waiting for the dying. Below the circling clouds, in the water, he finally saw what was pulling on the ship. There was a whirlpool, spinning like a bathtub drain, not more than one hundred feet from them.
He stared at it in confusion. He was so cold and so tired, and it seemed that these bizarre and unexplainable events would never end. For once, can’t something just make sense?
He did a rough calculation in his mind of where they were. Suddenly he understood, he thought about the anchor for a second and decided it would hold. He then ran down the steps into the pilothouse and then further down and onto the aft deck. He practically jumped onto the lower landing, relieved to see that they were all aboard.
“It’s the elevator shaft”—he yelled—“it must have breached near the top. Now the water is pouring into it, creating a whirlpool.” He would have thought the world underneath the dome would have been filled by now, but that must not be the case after all. The wall of water had only been about ten feet high.
The area had been nearly two hundred square feet, and he had no idea of how high the dome reached. It was clearly not full, and now the water must be draining in from above the elevator shaft as well. Kathleen had told him that the Navy shaft was only accessible by submarine, twenty-five feet down she had said, just twenty-five feet. It was clearly close enough to them to be creating a drain-like effect, just like when the plug is pulled in a bathtub.
“What?” Stewart asked.
Kathleen looked up in confusion, but Ashlyn didn’t hear him, busily trying to get her helmet off. The anchor chain must have suddenly gone taut because there was a tremendous jolt against the ship. Ashlyn hadn’t been holding on to anything, and had just dropped her helmet on the landing when the jolt knocked her over the edge and back into the water.
“Ashlyn—” Mark screamed her name “—help me get her.” However even as he spoke, he saw her being pulled quickly away from the anchored boat and knew that the current was too strong.
She was being ripped away, pulled into the churning, spinning water of the whirlpool. She was trying to swim, trying to pull against the current.
Mark was about to jump in the water when Stewart barred his way. “You won’t be able to save her that way, the current is too strong.”
Mark was hysterical; she was no longer at the back of the boat. He ran up the stairs to the aft deck, flew up the stairs to the pilothouse, and nearly broke the door as he went through it out onto the flybridge.
He looked around for the life preservers. He found one attached to a rope and threw it with all his might. It hit the spot he was aiming at, but the current had already pulled her further than he had anticipated, and she could not reach it. She almost seemed to be moving in slow motion, no doubt, she was exhausted.
“Ashlyn!” he screamed again, but his voice was lost in the wind as the water took her under.
He stared at the sight with unbelieving eyes. He thought about diving in after her, but he knew that it was too strong a current, even for him.
Stewart arrived on the flybridge just as Mark was about to dive in anyway. Stewart looked over at the whirlpool, and the life preserver attached to the rope, but Ashlyn was nowhere in sight. Mark began to climb over the edge to get into a better diving position, but Stewart stopped him.
“You can’t save her! The current is too strong.”
Mark was breathing heavily, the hypothermia forgotten, maybe even gone from his vigorous flight up and down the stairs. His mouth was open as he stared at the water where he had seen her go under. A million ideas raced through his mind, one after the next, but none of them would save her.
When he finally accepted the fact that she was gone and that he couldn’t do anything, he fell to his knees and sobbed openly.
Chapter 22
The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen
at once. — Albert Einstein
~
All over the world, clocks were going haywire. Some were running backwards, some were spinning wildly. People were vanishing and reappearing in different places. Things were levitating, and metal was randomly melting. Strange non-combustible objects like concrete were spontaneously bursting into flames. In some forests, trees were turning to metal. Across the entire globe, swirling clouds of strange mists, openings to the fourth dimension, were touching down in random places like tornadoes. The full intensity of the Time Storms predicted by the Atlanteans had arrived.
***
Stewart stood next to Mark on the flybridge. He was sobbing uncontrollably now.
“I’m sorry, Mark.” Stewart touched him on the shoulder, but didn’t know what else to say.
Mark leaned his head against his friend’s leg. Stewart knelt down and put his arms around Mark. Kathleen slowly followed up the stairs to where the men were, but when she saw the look on Stewart’s face and heard Mark’s wrenching sobs. She felt as if she were intruding.
She was about to leave when Stewart looked up at her and with his eyes, pled for her to stay. Stewart sat there with Mark until his tears were finally spent. Mark finally pulled himself up off his knees and sat mournfully on one of the captain’s chairs.
Mark stared at the swirling water. It was not only losing her that was killing him, but the uncanny parallel to his past life. Memories of his boys, caught in the powerful current under the ice, drowning just as she did. There had been no way to save them and no way to save her.
I should have gone in after her. Drowning with her would have been better than this agony.
“Mark”—Stewart said quietly—“we should get you warmed up.”
Mark neither stirred nor answered. He just stared at the place that he had seen her go under.
I don’t care if I have hypothermia. It should have been me not her.
It was clear that Mark was not going to move. Out of respect, Stewart motioned to Kathleen, and they quietly left Mark alone with his thoughts.
He sat there for an hour, then two. He never took his eyes off that spot. The water was still turning in its never-ending spiral into the abyss below.
A bird flew by him so closely that it almost hit him, no doubt as lost in the storm as he was lost in his pain. It continued its flight into the sun and then slowed down to nothing, suspended in the air. Its wings were frozen in place.
He stared at the bird, not comprehending why it didn’t fall into the green tinged water below. A few moments passed. He struggled to understand what he was seeing. The bird hung there, suspended in the air as if time, itself, had stopped.
Suddenly, he sat bolt upright, and then stood and looked at the water swirling under the bird. Something had been bothering him, nagging at the inside of his mind like a demon. The sea was the wrong color. He had been so busy looking at the whirlpool that he hadn’t noticed. He looked around at the surrounding water—it was different. There was a soft, green glow, which had gone unnoticed in the late afternoon sun.
Mark looked up at the bird, perfect in its stillness. It was suspended above the spinning water below. Now he could see that the perfect funnel shape was fixed in place. He wondered when it had stopped moving. He noticed for the first time how the life-preserver, which he had thrown into the water, was not bobbing on the waves as it should be or circling in a path down the spiraling drain. It also sat there, impossibly still below the stationary, outstretched wings of the bird.
***
Mark was like a man possessed; he jumped up and ran down th
e stairs. Stewart and Kathleen were sitting in the salon. They stared at him in disbelief as he quickly put on his wetsuit.
“What are you doing?—” Stewart stood up “—Mark, what are you doing?”
“I’m going to get Ashlyn.”
“What? Mark she’s gone. I’m sorry, but I can’t let you do that.”
He ignored Stewart and ran through the salon and down the stairs to the engine room where he picked up a full oxygen tank, he wasn’t using his rebreather system this time but a plain scuba tank and mask. Then he ran back up the stairs and back to the aft deck.
Alarmed, Stewart again tried to stop Mark.
Stewart’s protests began to sound like gibberish and faded out into nothingness in Mark’s mind.
He picked up the long rope, which they had brought back up from the side of the underwater cliff. It was long, at least 150 feet. Mark examined it to make sure that it was in good condition.
Kathleen broke through the silence that had enveloped him. “Mark, what are you doing?” she shrieked in horror.
“I’m getting Ashlyn,” he repeated vehemently.
He tied the rope to a hook on the lower landing of the boat. Once he made sure that it was secure, he tied it tightly to his waist. He was so determined that it didn’t even register when Stewart screamed at him not to do it.
Stewart tried physically to block Mark, but he easily shoved him aside. Then, air tank and mask on, Mark plunged backwards into the water, and the current carried him away toward Ashlyn.
Stewart stared, in horror, at the rear of the boat where Mark had been.
“He must have gone mad with grief,” Stewart said.
Kathleen said nothing.
He knelt on the lower landing and then fell down, more than sat. He opened his mouth. Grief pounded through him, and it was worse than the beating that Justin had given him. Even with the rope, it was unlikely that he would be able to get Mark back. The whirlpool draining into the abyss below was too strong. It had already pulled the ship hard against the anchor chain.
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