The air in my tank tastes like old pennies and dry rot. It is thin. It is cold. Every time I take a breath, the regulator makes a wet, clicking sound. Click. Hiss. Click. Hiss. It sounds like a clock. It is the only clock I have left. I am Wren, and I am three hundred meters under the waves. The water up there is blue and bright. The water down here is black. It is the kind of black that feels heavy on your skin. It wants to push its way into my eyes and my mouth.
I am hiding inside a sunken ship called the *Astra*. My friends are dead. Leo is gone. Jax is gone. I heard them die through my headset. There was a loud bang from the surface. Then there was the sound of rushing water and screaming. Then there was silence. A long, cold silence that made my stomach turn into a knot. I called for them. I begged them to answer. But the radio just hissed at me. My crew was murdered by something fast and silent. Now, I am alone in the dark with a secret that is going to get me killed too.
I found the box an hour ago. It was not supposed to be here. This ship was just an old freighter. It was supposed to be full of rusted pipes and soggy wood. But in the middle of the hull, I found a room. It was a pressurized pod. It was bone dry inside. It was filled with rows of black towers. They were blinking. Little green lights. Little red lights. Thousands of them. It was a server farm. A secret brain hidden in a grave.
My hands were shaking as I plugged my tablet into the main port. I just wanted to see what was worth hiding at the bottom of the world. I saw files. I saw names of presidents and kings. Then I saw the video. It was a man standing on a balcony. He was a good man. Everyone loved him. In the video, his head just snapped back. There was a red mist. He fell. The camera zoomed out. I saw the face of the man who pulled the trigger. He was the man who is supposed to be the hero of our country.
The file finished downloading to my suit’s hard drive just as the first explosion rocked the ship. That was when Leo and Jax stopped talking. That was when my world ended.
I am sitting in the corner of the server room now. I turned off my lights. I don’t want them to see me. My chest feels like it is being squeezed by a giant hand. My eyes are stinging from the salt and the sweat. I am holding a small plastic dinosaur. It was Leo’s. He gave it to me for luck before we dove. It is a bright yellow T-Rex. Its tail is broken. I keep rubbing the jagged plastic with my thumb. It is the only thing that feels real.
A low hum vibrates through the metal walls. It is not a whale. It is not the sea. It is an engine. A high tech engine. A second sub is docking with the *Astra*.
The killers are here.
They didn’t come to save me. They came to finish the job. They think I am just a girl in a suit. They think I am a loose end. My heart is a hammer. It is beating so hard against my ribs that it hurts. Thump. Thump. Thump. I can feel the blood pulsing in my ears. It sounds like heavy boots on a wooden floor.
I hear a metallic clack. The outer hatch is opening.
I have eight percent oxygen left. The gauge on my wrist is glowing a soft, ghostly blue. Eight percent is not enough to get to the surface. It is barely enough to say a prayer. But I am not praying. I am thinking about the video. I am thinking about the red mist.
I see a beam of light cut through the doorway. It is a sharp, white light. It moves across the server towers. It reflects off the glass of my helmet for a split second. I pull my knees to my chest. I try to be small. I try to be nothing. The light moves away.
“Target not in the pod,” a voice says. It is a man’s voice. It sounds hollow and metallic inside his own helmet. “The servers are still running. She downloaded the file.”
“Find her,” a second voice says. This one is cold. It has no feeling at all. “We cannot leave this wreck until the drive is destroyed. And the girl.”
I bite my lip so hard I taste blood. The salt makes it sting. I want to scream. I want to tell them that I have a mother. I want to tell them that Jax had a dog named Buster who is waiting for him by the door. I want to tell them that we were just looking for scrap. But my voice is stuck in my throat. It feels like a dry stone.
The light comes back. It is closer now. I can hear the clink of their gear. They are moving through the room. They are slow. They are careful. They know I have nowhere to go.
I look at the yellow dinosaur in my hand. Leo loved this stupid thing. He said it was a survivor. He said dinosaurs were tough. I grip it tight. I feel a spark of something hot in my belly. It is not fear. It is anger. It is a deep, burning fire. They killed my friends. They killed a good man on a balcony. They think they can just erase us.
I look at the server towers. I see the thick power cables running along the floor. They are hooked into a massive battery pack. If I pull those cables, the room will go dark. Truly dark.
I wait. I count my heartbeats. One. Two. Three.
The light is ten feet away. I can see the shadow of the man. He is big. He is holding a speargun. Not for fish. For me.
“Wren?” the cold voice calls out. “We know you are here. Just give us the drive. We can make this quick. We can give you air.”
He is lying. I know he is lying. The way he says my name makes my skin crawl. It sounds like a snake sliding over dead leaves.
I reach out. My fingers find the heavy rubber of the power line. I take a deep breath. The air is so thin now. I feel dizzy. The edges of my vision are turning gray. I have five percent left.
I pull.
The cables snap out of the wall with a shower of blue sparks. The green and red lights die. The room is plunged into a darkness so thick it feels like velvet.
“Hey!” the man yells.
His flashlight swings wildly. I am already moving. I know this room. I mapped it for three hours before I came inside. I crawl under the main desk. I feel the cold metal against my back. I move like a shadow.
The light passes over me. It misses.
“She’s moving!”
I find the emergency air vent. It is a small hole in the floor. It leads to the ballast tanks. It is a tight fit. It is a pipe for water, not for people. But I am small.
I slide into the pipe. The metal is freezing. It scrapes against my suit. I hear a loud *ping*. A spear hits the desk right where my head was a second ago.
I scramble down the pipe. It is wet. There is still an inch of stagnant water at the bottom. It smells like rot. I don’t care. I push myself forward with my elbows. My lungs are sobbing. I need air. I need it so bad.
I reach the end of the pipe. I am in the belly of the ship now. It is a maze of rusted beams and falling wires. I find a small pocket of air trapped against the ceiling. I tilt my head back. I lift my visor just an inch.
The air is foul. It is heavy with the smell of oil and dead fish. But it is air. I gulp it down. I cough. I try to be quiet, but the sound echoes in the metal ribs of the ship.
A light shines down the pipe behind me.
“I see her,” the voice says.
I close my visor. My gauge says three percent.
I am trapped. There is no way out. The ship is a cage. The ocean is the lock.
I look at the drive on my wrist. The video is there. The truth is there. If I die, the truth dies with me. If I stay here, they will find me. If I swim for it, my lungs will burst.
I see a shape in the water near me. It is a heavy air tank. It is one of ours. It must have fallen from the surface when the ship was hit. I grab it. I check the valve. It is full.
I have a chance. A small, stupid chance.
I look at the yellow dinosaur. I wedge it into a crack in the wall. “Stay here, Leo,” I whisper. “Watch the light for me.”
I don’t go for the surface. I don’t run away.
I swim back toward the pipe.
The killers are coming through the narrow space. They think I am scared. They think I am a rabbit.
I am not a rabbit.
I wait by the opening of the pipe. I hold the heavy air tank like a club. The first light appears. The man’s helmet pops out of the hole. He is looking forward. He doesn’t see me off to the side.
I swing.
The tank hits his helmet with a deafening *thud*. The glass cracks. A spiderweb of white lines appears on his face. He screams, but it is muffled by the water rushing into his mask. He paws at his throat. He drops his light.
I grab the light. I grab his speargun.
The second man is still in the pipe. He is shouting. He is trying to push his way past his dying friend.
I point the speargun into the dark hole.
“This is for Jax,” I say.
I pull the trigger.
The recoil kicks my arm back. There is a grunt. Then, the sound of bubbles.
I don’t wait to see if he is dead. I grab the extra air tank and I swim. I swim through the guts of the *Astra*. I swim through the black water. My heart is screaming. My legs are burning.
I find the hole in the hull. I see the dark shape of their sub. It is attached to the ship like a parasite.
I don’t go to the sub. I go to the anchor line.
I start to climb.
The water gets lighter. The black turns to gray. The gray turns to green. The green turns to blue.
My ears are popping. The pain is like needles being driven into my brain. My skin feels like it is boiling. I know I am going up too fast. I know the “bends” will hurt me. But I don’t stop.
I burst through the surface.
The sun is so bright it feels like a physical punch. I gasp. The air is sweet. It is the best thing I have ever tasted.
I see a boat. It is not our boat. Our boat is a charred wreck floating a mile away. This boat is sleek. It is white. It has men with guns on the deck.
They see me. They point their rifles.
I hold up the drive on my wrist. I scream with every bit of breath I have left.
“I ALREADY SENT IT!” I lie. “IT’S LIVE! THE WHOLE WORLD SAW THE VIDEO!”
The men pause. They look at each other. They look at their phones. They are confused.
I swim toward a piece of floating wood from our old boat. I hide behind it. I am shaking. I am crying.
I didn’t send it. There was no signal at the bottom. But they don’t know that.
I reach into my pocket. I realize I left the dinosaur behind. I left Leo’s luck in the dark.
But as I look at the men on the boat, I see them lowering their guns. They are talking into their radios. They look scared.
I look down into the deep blue water. Somewhere down there, in the dark, the lights are off. The killers are trapped. And the truth is waiting to be told.
I am Wren. I am a survivor. And I am going to make them pay for Leo. I am going to make them pay for Jax.
I just need to keep breathing.
Click. Hiss. Click. Hiss.
The clock is still ticking. But this time, it’s for them.