Elias Thorne sat in a seat that smelled like old sweat and sour coffee. He was four miles under the ocean. The metal walls of the suit were only two inches thick. Outside, the water wanted to turn him into a wet red smudge. He could feel the weight of the sea pressing in from every side. It was a heavy, cold hand pushing against the glass.
He was a disgraced man. A year ago, he had messed up a weld on a deep-sea pipe. Three men died because of his shaky hands. Now, he was the only one left who knew how to pilot the Mule. The Mule was an experimental mining mech: a clunky, rusted beast of a machine. It was never meant to go this deep. But 500 people were trapped in the Knox mining station after the earthquake hit. They were running out of air. Elias had the coordinates to their air pocket on a small hard drive. If he didn’t reach the signal relay at the top of the trench in an hour, those 500 people would just be ghosts in the dark.
The oxygen gauge on the dash flickered. It showed fifty-nine minutes.
A low groan vibrated through the metal floor. It wasn’t the engine. It was the trench. The earth was moving again. Elias gripped the control sticks. His palms were slick with sweat. He wiped them on his greasy jumpsuit. He was terrified. Every time the metal creaked, his heart skipped a beat. He felt like he was sitting inside a soda can that a giant was about to stomp on.
“Don’t do this to me,” Elias whispered. His voice was scratchy. “Not today, Mule. Just give me one hour.”
He pushed the sticks forward. The mech took a heavy, clanking step. The floodlights cut through the black water: showing clouds of silt and dead fish. Then the world tilted.
A massive rock fall came out of the dark. A slab of stone the size of a garage slammed into the Mule’s right shoulder. The suit spun. Elias screamed as his head hit the glass. The cabin lights went red. A high, thin whistling sound started near his left ear.
It was a leak.
It was a tiny spray of water: thin as a needle. But at this depth, that water was like a laser. If it hit him, it would cut right through his skin. He grabbed a piece of emergency putty and shoved it into the hole. The water stung his hand like a wasp. His fingers went numb from the cold. He pounded the putty flat until the whistling stopped.
He looked at the clock. Forty-five minutes.
“Elias? Do you copy?” A voice came through the radio. It was Lana. She was the head of the rescue team up top. Her voice was full of static and fear.
“I’m moving,” Elias said. He gasped for air. The air was getting thick. It tasted like pennies. “The trench is closing, Lana. I had a slide. The right leg is locking up.”
“You have to make it to the ledge,” Lana said. “If you don’t get those coordinates to the relay, we won’t know where to drill. We’ll be digging up corpses.”
Elias didn’t answer. He couldn’t. He was staring at the pressure gauge. The needle was vibrating in the red zone. The suit was groaning. It was a long, slow sound: like a giant door opening on rusty hinges.
He forced the mech to climb. The trench walls were jagged and sharp. He used the mechanical claws to pull the heavy frame up the side of the cliff. Every time he moved, the metal screamed. He felt the suit bending. The space around his legs was getting smaller. The floor was warping upward.
Thirty minutes left.
Suddenly, the ground beneath the mech’s feet vanished. Another quake hit. The trench wall shivered and cracked. Elias felt a sickening drop in his stomach. The Mule fell backward into the black. He tumbled through the water: hitting rocks and ledges. The glass in front of his face spider-webbed. A long crack appeared right between his eyes.
He hit a ledge and stopped. He was upside down. The red lights were flashing faster now. The oxygen alarm started to beep. It was a sharp, annoying sound that made his skin crawl.
“Twenty minutes,” he choked out.
He looked at the crack in the glass. A single drop of water beaded on the inside. Then another. The pressure was winning. He could feel it in his teeth. His ears were popping and his head felt like it was in a vice.
He struggled with the controls. The right arm of the mech was pinned under a boulder. He tried to pull it free, but the gears just ground together. The sound was like teeth breaking in a mouth.
“I’m stuck,” he told the radio.
“Elias, listen to me,” Lana said. Her voice broke. “You’re almost there. The relay is only fifty feet above you. You have to get out of the suit.”
“If I open the hatch, the water will crush me,” Elias said. He was shaking. He wanted to cry, but his eyes were too dry. “I’ll be flat as a pancake before I can even swim.”
“Use the emergency eject,” Lana said. “It’ll shoot you up like a cork. You might get the bends. Your lungs might burst. But you’ll have ten seconds to hit the upload button on the relay.”
Elias looked at the hard drive. He looked at the crack in the glass. The crack was growing. It looked like a map of a broken heart.
He reached for the eject lever. It was painted bright yellow, but the paint was peeling. He was so scared his legs felt like jelly. He didn’t want to die in the dark. He didn’t want the water to take him.
Ten minutes left.
The suit gave a final, massive moan. The metal ceiling of the cabin began to bow downward. It was inches from his head now. He could smell the electrical fire starting in the dash.
He grabbed the hard drive and shoved it into the slot on his chest plate. He gripped the lever.
“Lana?” he said.
“I’m here, Elias.”
“Tell them I’m sorry. About last year. Tell them I tried.”
“Tell them yourself,” she whispered.
He pulled the lever.
There was a sound like a bomb going off. The glass shattered. For a split second, Elias felt the coldest thing he had ever known. The water hit him like a freight train. It slammed into his chest and shoved the air out of his throat.
The seat fired. He was a bullet of flesh and bone shooting through the dark. His ears screamed. His vision went white.
He hit the ledge near the relay. His hands were fumbling. He couldn’t see. His lungs felt like they were filled with broken glass. He felt the relay box under his fingers. It was cold and smooth.
He shoved the hard drive into the port.
The light on the relay turned green.
Elias Thorne lay on the sand of the ledge. He was four miles down. His suit was gone. His air was gone. He looked up, but there was no sun. There was only the heavy, black weight of the ocean.
He closed his eyes. He heard a faint sound in the water. It was a long way off. It sounded like a drill.
He hoped they were fast. He hoped they were faster than the dark.