“Please,” Savannah added.
“And you guys stay here,” Eric said, setting the timer on his dive watch. I used to make fun of him for wearing it around the cottage. Now I was grateful. “Hopefully, we’ll be able to get in touch with you from the Comm room, but if we can’t, stay here and at least we’ll be able to find our way back to you or send help.”
Nate looked grim. “For how long?”
“What?”
“An hour? Four hours? How long should we stay? When should we start freaking out?”
“We’re not already freaking out?” Howard asked. “I thought that them strapping on old scuba diving equipment and leaving the rest of us here with no escape route was us freaking out.”
Savannah bit her lip. I wasn’t sure if she was keeping herself from snapping at Howard or whimpering in fear.
“At least an hour,” I said. “We’ll know by then if we can get a message out.”
“And what if Fiona and those guys show up?” Savannah asked.
“We’ll hide behind the seats,” Nate assured her. “Don’t worry. As long as we’re together, I’ll keep you safe.”
Once upon a time, Savannah might have fainted dead away at the prospect of Private Pizza saying something like that to her. Now she just looked unsure.
There were probably more plans we should have made, but I knew if I spent any more time thinking about it, I’d never be able to get in that water.
I hugged Savannah, waved to the Nolands, and lined up next to my brother on the edge of the railing. He took a big step off the balcony, and when he cleared out of the way, I followed him into the depths.
17
UNSEEN DEPTHS
I SPLASHED DOWN INTO COLD BLACK WATER, THEN BOBBED BACK UP, fitted my regulator in my mouth, cleared my mask, and pulled it down over my eyes. Far above me, I saw the others’ flashlights, up on the balcony. I waved to them, but I couldn’t tell if they could see. Eric, his face distorted by the equipment, made the OK signal at me. I returned it, he pointed his thumb down, and under we went.
Scuba diving takes a lot of precision, but when you get your balance right, it’s pretty easy—you feel weightless. No wonder they used it for astronaut training.
I’d scuba dived in the dark before. But that had been in class, with Eric and my parents, in a cave that had been certified completely safe for beginners. The abandoned movie theater was nothing like that.
Hand in hand, we kicked our way down the aisle, our head lamps roving over row upon row of empty seats. In places, the velvet or the carpet had torn and pieces drifted up toward us like ghostly arms of seaweed. We avoided these as we floated over the chairs and to the stage up at the front. There, my head lamp cast a giant shadow of Eric’s profile on the glowing white movie screen. I laughed, and bubbles escaped my regulator.
Eric gave his shadow bunny ears, then moose antlers. He turned his arms into Godzilla and pretended to make it eat his flipper. You’d never guess he was the same boy who’d freaked out over giant earthworms. This is what happens when you get my brother in the water. I wondered if the others were up on the surface watching this. If they could even see us fooling around when they were trapped up there.
I grabbed his arm and pointed to my wrist. Time, Eric.
Okay, he signaled back. At least he wasn’t afraid of the shadows. As for me . . . well, the nice thing about being underwater is you can’t fall. Besides, the bubbles always go up.
Together, we floated over the stage and behind the screen to the movie theater’s back door. Eric turned the doorknob and swung it open, sending some grit on the floor swirling into little eddies. Eric swam through the doorway and I followed.
By now, the others would see the lights passing out of the room and know we’d at least made it to the next chamber.
I tried not to think too hard about how that meant that if something went wrong, there’d be no way for them to reach us, but the fact loomed up, even larger than the walls of rock separating us from the surface. My breath sped up in my regulator and I reminded myself to calm down. We needed to conserve our air. I checked the pressure gauge—still at seventy percent.
I shut my eyes. Up on the surface, Dad was waiting. I imagined his face when we told him what we’d found, and what it would mean for his research. I held the image tight in my mind as I opened my eyes and swam on.
We headed single file down a narrow hallway and then out through another door. This one was a much larger chamber, and when we entered, my jaw dropped so suddenly I barely hung on to my regulator. It was a parking garage. On the map, it had been marked with a simple P, just like on a map at the mall. But I’d never seen a parking garage that looked like this.
The beams of our head lamps bounced off windshields and metal hoods and darkened red taillights. Through the murky water, we could make out the giant shapes of submerged vehicles. From tiny golf carts to giant cement mixers, backhoes and diggers and flatbeds and four-wheel ATVs, there had to be at least twenty vehicles parked in this chamber, end to end, like cars packed into a ferry.
This was not like scuba diving with my parents. This was more like dreams of flying.
We floated over the hoods of frozen pickups and by the windows of big rigs, glancing in at their unused, drowned gearboxes and headrests and cup holders. I couldn’t imagine how such big machines had gotten here in the first place. There had to be some kind of giant elevator or driveway or ramp or something that could have let such big vehicles get all the way down to this level. Maybe there was even an alternative route to the surface. But though Eric and I made a full circuit of the chamber, I didn’t see any kind of entrance or seam cut into the rock walls. Enormous metal plates reinforced the chamber in places. Maybe behind one of these plates there’d once been an opening, but now they were all bolted shut.
We gave up and continued our search for the exit. Eric’s dive watch showed we’d been under for fifteen minutes. My pressure gauge now read 2500 psi, which meant the air was fifty percent gone.
Finally we found a door marked with a stair symbol. We opened that one and swam into a stairwell, where we found the cracked remains of the collapsed staircase we’d been trying to reach from above. I glanced up at the surface glittering at the end of my head-lamp beam. That meant we were more than halfway to the staircase we needed. My breath shuddered in my regulator. More than halfway there, and half my air gone. Could we still make it there and back?
Eric must have sensed my fear, since he squeezed my hand as we slowly went deeper, clearing our ears and checking with each other as we descended one flight, then another. We passed through an open door into another small, narrow hallway.
I gestured to Eric. You go first.
He cocked his head at me as if to say, You sure?
I waggled my arm through the air like a snake. “Worms,” I gurgled through the regulator.
Bubbles erupted from his face as he laughed. But he still went first.
There were more dark doorways, more black, underwater rooms. Some were bare, some filled with crates or mechanical equipment I couldn’t identify. One had an examining table, another what looked to be a pretty elaborate dental chair, with a lamp and a drill arm and everything. Shards of metal flashed on the floor as I cast the beam of my head lamp across the room. I peered closer, only half surprised to see scrapers, picks, and even one of those little tooth mirrors scattered across the underwater floor. Guess it was a dentist’s office—or had been, once upon a time.
Finally, we hit the end of the hallway. Here was another door with a stair symbol on it, but though the knob turned, we couldn’t get it open. Eric tried from above, then even let some of the air out of his vest, put his feet on the floor, and shoved against it as hard as he could. He turned to me and lifted his hands in defeat.
I checked my pressure gauge: 1700 psi, or two-thirds of the tank gone. We were losing air faster than I’d have liked. According to our training, we should surface when we still had about 500 psi left, or the pressu
re in our tanks would be too low for us to move air out of them when we breathed. And now I saw our mistake. The way above had been blocked—we should have realized the lower passage might be too. And we’d already used over half our air, which meant we wouldn’t have enough for the return trip.
Which meant there was no way back to Savannah and the others.
I exhaled in a rush of bubbles through my regulator. Okay, Gillian. Think.
We could go back to the stairwell with the collapsed staircase. At least there we could breathe. We could call out to the others. They’d probably hear us. But then what? We’d be trapped at the bottom of the stairwell.
Every way I looked, I saw the walls closing in. Even my head lamp couldn’t shine a way through the darkness surrounding us. I lost track of my breaths as I tried desperately to think of an alternative.
I didn’t even realize I’d been drifting until my tank thumped loudly against the wall of the hallway. I wheeled my arms through the water and knocked my head lamp askew.
My breath in my regulator went wild.
I felt Eric still me, straightening my head lamp. He made the OK symbol in front of my mask. I nodded, miserably, and answered him. OK.
But I was not okay. I was miles below the Earth, dead-ended in an underground chamber with my brother and two ancient scuba tanks. And even my friends who could breathe on their own were trapped while lunatics with guns were looking for them.
Great idea, Gillian. Just get the pizza delivery guy to drive his little brother, you, and two of the people you love most in the world out into the middle of nowhere to look for something bad guys with a lot of power are willing to ruin lives over. Ignore the fact that when Fiona comes looking for Omega City, she brings two burly dudes, at least one gun, and a whole truck full of equipment. There’s no way this could all go wrong.
Eric tapped the pressure gauge dangling off my BC. 1500 psi. Less than a third of my air was left.
I held my breath, which was something they taught you never, ever to do while scuba diving. Then again, they also taught us not to dive in unexplored caverns, so it wasn’t like we were really following directions, anyway. I breathed in, as slowly and calmly as I could. Think. Quickly.
I opened my eyes and looked at my brother through the lenses of our masks. His eyes were wide and scared, too. I gestured to his pressure gauge and he held up five fingers. Fifty percent. Okay, at least he was doing better than I was.
Behind him I saw a pair of metal double doors with a button box on the outside. An elevator? If it was stuck on this floor, we were done for, but what if it wasn’t?
This was our only option. I didn’t need to think about Dad’s research right now. Not with my brother floating in front of me, breathing ancient air and looking nervous, even behind the scuba mask.
I signaled for Eric to wait and swam back down the hall to the dentist’s office. I grabbed a handful of metal implements off the floor, then swam back and shoved the thin end of a few of them inside the crack between the doors.
Eric got the picture quickly. We used the metal sticks as leverage to widen the crack, then pushed our hands in, tugging with all our might. The doors ground and squeaked against their runners, but opened. Eric eased into the empty shaft and aimed his head lamp up, while I crossed my fingers that the elevator car was higher than the water level. I caught the flash of his light against the surface of the water, several stories up.
He looked at me, a question in his eyes. I gave him a thumbs-up, which in scuba language doesn’t mean “okay.” It means let’s go up now.
It was tight quarters in the elevator shaft, what with our tanks and all, but we wrapped our arms around each other. It was like Eric said. We wouldn’t be afraid if we were together.
I checked my pressure gauge. Only 750 psi left—the red zone. I hugged him tighter. It would be okay. All I had to do was go up.
Up.
We started to ascend. One story. Two. Numbers were painted on the inside of the elevator doors. The ascent was agonizing, but Eric, of course, made us follow guidelines, going slowly and stopping to readjust to the pressure. I refused to look at my pressure gauge. Three. Was the air inside my regulator getting thinner? Was I breathing more than I should? Would I have any warning or would I try to breathe in and find nothing to suck? We passed the door marked 4, and then hit the surface.
I instantly ripped the regulator off my face and breathed in real air. Above us, my head lamp illuminated an endless shaft with no elevator car in sight. I quickly looked back at the water level before I started getting dizzy again.
Air. Real air. I was happy staying here forever, now that I knew I’d have something to breathe.
“What floor are we going to?” Eric asked, bringing me back to reality. Right. Bobbing in an elevator shaft was not a permanent option.
“Six.” I paddled over to the ladder built against the wall. “But we won’t be able to climb up with our tanks on.”
“If we climb up,” he said, “will we be able to open the door from the inside?”
Another good question. We probably should have saved the dental tools, but it was too late to go back for them now. I didn’t have the air and I doubted Eric did, either. Eric unhooked himself from his tank and it bobbed away from him, kept afloat by the inflated vest.
I did the same and grabbed the rungs of the ladder. “Kinda slippery.”
I kicked off my flippers next, then went up a few rungs, hooked my arms around the ladder, and slipped my shoes back on. Eric followed. The ladder wasn’t so bad, as long as you just stared at the rung in front of you and tried not to think about anything else, like your soaking shoes or your cold, slippery fingers, or what might be waiting when you got to floor six. Also, there was real air to breathe. That was a definite plus. I concentrated on that: breathing and climbing.
This was the only way. Up one rung. We’d figure it out when we got there. One more rung. Wouldn’t Dad be proud? Another rung. Check that Eric was still right behind me. Think about how, if we fell, at least it would just be splashing down into the water.
You know, as long as I didn’t slam against the wall.
When we got to the floor marked six, the door was indeed shut, and I saw right away that there would have been no point bringing along those dental tools. We’d never be able to pry the door open while dangling off the ladder.
“What’s the holdup?” Eric asked from below.
Four feet higher, near the top of the door, was an old rusty lever that looked like it was supposed to be attached to something. I looked at it. The handle part had a wide base. I wondered if it was somehow supposed to connect with the actual elevator door when it hit the floor. I pushed on it and the doors groaned, which seemed promising. I threaded my feet through the rungs of the ladder, holding on for dear life, and tried again, this time with both hands.
Nothing happened.
“No!” I shouted at the lever. “Open up, you stupid thing! Open!” I banged on it with my hands. “Open! Don’t you see, you’re the only way out!”
My words echoed up and down the elevator shaft, and I clamped my mouth shut, embarrassed. I was screaming at a piece of metal. First Howard, now inanimate objects? How low was I going to sink today?
“Do you want me to try?” Eric asked from beneath my feet.
I rested my forehead against the lever in despair. “Sure. Why not?”
It moved beneath my brow. The doors slid open. I nearly fell off the ladder in surprise.
“Hey!” Eric called out happily. “You did it!”
No, I most certainly hadn’t. I’d barely touched it this last time. Had I loosened it with all the banging? I touched the lever softly, but it seemed as firmly stuck in the open position as it had been in the closed position before.
Eric shoved on my legs. “Move. Let’s go.”
Right. Escape. I wedged myself between the two doors, in case they decided to shut as mysteriously as they’d opened, and held my hand out to Eric. “Come on.”<
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That’s when the doors started to push back together. Hard. I braced my feet and hands against one side and wedged my back against the other. “Hurry!” I screamed. “I can’t keep it open!”
Eric looked panicked. “How? You’re blocking the door!”
I shifted my feet to leave him a little space. “Crawl under my legs.” The doors pressed against me. “Quick. I can’t hold it much longer.”
He scrambled underneath me as I locked my legs and arms, trying to keep the elevator doors apart. They were going to slam on me the second I tried to move. I would have to jump.
Eric hugged me around the stomach. “I’ll pull. Count of three.”
“One,” we said together. “Two. Three!”
I jumped and Eric tugged and we both went sprawling across the silent hallway of level six. The doors slammed behind us.
“Phew,” I said, and let my head fall back.
“Yeah,” Eric agreed. “Can we just stay here for a minute?”
I wanted nothing more, but we had to think about Savannah and the Nolands. I sat up and rubbed the sore spot on my butt where I’d fallen to the linoleum floor.
Level six looked like a dry version of the hall we’d just left, but it was lit by those same orange and red emergency lights. And unlike the hall where the movie theater and the astronaut training room were, this one didn’t smell like mold. There was a stale, dusty scent in the air, more like an attic or a box you haven’t opened in a while.
Eric stood up and tried the elevator buttons, but nothing happened. The water below had probably shorted out the whole system.
“I figured,” he said, though he sounded bummed. That would probably be too easy, right? An elevator right there to take us to the surface.
Well, easy, after almost getting drowned a few times.
We walked down the hall, lined with doors that seemed to be bedrooms, kitchens, and living spaces, until we reached the end, where on the final door was painted four letters in bright red stencil: Comm.
We’d found it.
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