Stranded By The Highlander: A Scottish Time Travel Romance-Highlander Forever Book 2

by Preston, Rebecca

  Not that there wasn’t air down here. They each had a full tank, and the training that meant they’d make the absolute most of it. James usually operated by the rule of thirds — when your tank reached two-thirds capacity, it was time to turn around and head back. One third of the air for the trip down, one third for the trip back, and one third for emergencies — like if one of your buddies needed to share your air. Thankfully, the stringent safety protocols followed by the school meant Nancy had never been in that situation… but nevertheless, it paid to be prepared.

  The deeper you dove, the more quickly you’d consume air — so Nancy, who loved being under for as long as possible, was thrilled to see that the cave system was reasonably shallow. It extended horizontally, rather than vertically, which meant that they could spend a good chunk of time exploring before they’d need to turn around and head back for the surface to change tanks. They’d brought enough equipment for three or four dives, depending on how they went for time.

  Hannah was in charge of maintaining the guideline, making sure it didn’t snag on anything or fall into any traps. James had claimed the role of photographer — it made sense, Nancy thought with amusement, what with his obsession with lighting. He was photographing the initial cavern they had swum into, and she added her own light to his, making sure that the photos would be clear. They’d start sketching out a map when they got back to the surface. For now, it was wonderful just to be exploring.

  Nancy checked her air — only a tenth down. Heaps of time left. She grinned under her mask, scanning the cave, then signaling to James and Hannah that they should move on to the next area. She could see a passage in the north wall of the initial cave space that looked promising — even bigger than the section they were in. A little part of her had never given up on the idea of finding some strange creature that nobody had seen before… not just a new species of fish or plant life, as some of her colleagues had successfully discovered on some of their cave-diving missions, but honest-to-God cryptozoological specimens. Her hopes weren’t high, of course, and she wouldn’t mention them to James — he teased her enough as it is — but still, that was part of the buzz of each new cave that she explored, that maybe there’d be a mermaid or a monster waiting for her around the bend. Hannah knew how much she liked being the first one into a space — the woman handed her the guideline, giving her a wink behind her mask.

  Nancy didn’t notice, as she swam through the entrance to the next cave with the guideline safely held in her gloved hand, that the rocks above the passageway weren’t as secure-looking as the others. And by the time she felt the frantic yanking on the safety line — Hannah, behind her, who’d seen something she hadn’t — it was too late. Halfway into the new cave, Nancy turned, her eyes widening behind her mask as she realized that the movement of the water stirred up by her passage had triggered a partial collapse in the rocks above the passageway.

  Nancy had trained for this. She didn’t scream, as the rocks fell — just flipped her body around and made sure that she swam beyond where the rocks were falling. A cave-in was one thing — getting your body stuck under the rocks was quite another. Before the rocks had even settled, she was running calculations in her head, scanning the space she was in. No time to panic about being separated from her group, about being trapped in an underwater cave with no clear route to the surface… the only thing she had time for was solving the problem. It was a lot of rocks, that was for sure — maybe more than ten minutes’ work to clear them, which mean that air supplies would be running low. But at least the cave-in had stopped there. She could tell her companions on the other side were safe — the guideline moved in her hand, a sign that Hannah was tugging on it from the other side.

  The best-case scenario, Nancy decided, would be to find air down here. It wasn’t unusual to find pockets of air trapped in cave systems like this, and if she could surface and breathe that air instead of what was in her tanks, she’d have that much more of a chance of survival. On the other side, she knew James and Hannah would be doing everything they could to get her out. She just had to trust them, do what she could to look after herself, and hope that one day soon, this would all be an exciting story she could tell her students.

  Nancy yanked the line a few times, grateful that the rocks hadn’t prevented the give-and-take on the line that was allowing her to communicate with her fellows on the other side of the cave-in. Then she started scanning the inside of the cave she was in, her light dancing off the walls of the space. Despite the situation she was stuck in, she wasn’t immune to the fact that she was in a previously unexplored space… a cave nobody had ever been in before. And that nobody ever would be in again, if I die here, she scolded herself. Look for air, not mermaids, you idiot. Bringing the guideline with her — the others would understand from its movement that she was pressing on in search of natural air to breathe to save her tank — Nancy started swimming on, moving cautiously through the branching network of caves. It would be no good at all to get lost… but it also wouldn’t be good to panic and drown. She consciously slowed her breathing to conserve the air she had, telling herself to remember her training. A panicky diver could go through all her oxygen in a couple of minutes. But Nancy wasn’t a panicky diver. She’d trained for this. She could regulate her heartbeat at will, keep her body in an efficient, low-oxygen state for as long as she needed to.

  Nancy frowned, narrowing her eyes a little as her light glanced off something strange. Was that a reflection? Some kind of iridescent plant? Strange… it was almost as though there was a light ahead of her in this cave. She swam a little further, surprised to find herself in an even bigger cave than the one previous — it seemed that this network of caves got bigger the deeper they entered, which was fascinating, given the structure of the rocks around it. She focused on what she knew of the geography of the area, trying to compare the maps of the mountains that surrounded the quarry to her understanding of her current position. Could there be another way out, a way to open water on the other side of the cave?

  That would certainly be helpful now… though she didn’t like the idea of leaving Hannah and James on the other side of that cave-in, worried that she’d drowned in there once they ran out of air and were forced to the surface. She trusted them, though. They’d look after themselves — they were seasoned divers, too, and wouldn’t do anything reckless, even if they thought they were saving her life. James had a few sad stories like that… he’d lost a friend, once, on an ocean dive, a friend who had neglected the two-thirds rule in the interests of pursuing a particular species of fish. James had waited for him, furiously beckoning for him to come back, to resurface, knowing how much air he had and how much he was risking by staying down… but when James had a third of a tank of air left, he knew that he faced a choice between heading for the surface alone… or staying with his friend and drowning along with him.

  He had surfaced, full of anger and grief. His friend hadn’t. They had recovered his body not long after, still down among the fish he’d been so determined to find.

  Stop thinking about drowning, Nancy, she instructed herself stridently. Curious about what she could see ahead of her, she switched her handheld light off — and to her surprise, realized that it wasn’t the only light source in the cave. Sure enough, up ahead was a light… a clear, white light, glowing strangely through the water. What on Earth could that be? She’d seen phosphorescent species of fish — this was too still to be one of those. It looked for all the world like the light at the top of a lighthouse, beckoning her onwards. She hesitated, a little unsure — but there was nowhere else to go, no other passages that branched off the cave she was in. So she swam on, toward the light.

  Then — without warning, and to her great shock — the light expanded, engulfing her.

  Chapter 3

  Nancy almost yelled — only the discipline of training stopped her from opening her mouth and wasting air. A grim certainty solidified as she looked down at her body, completely engulfed in the lig
ht that she’d seen up ahead. She was hallucinating. She felt strangely lucid, given the strength of the hallucination, but nevertheless… that must have been the case. Could there be something wrong with her air supply, some kind of contamination? She’d heard that nitrogen sickness could make divers get giddy and delirious, almost like being drunk — there were horror stories of unwary divers making reckless decisions after diving too deep. But she didn’t feel drunk, or reckless. She felt like herself, just surrounded by blinding white light.

  The hallucination continued. The light resolved itself a little as her eyes began to focus… it looked for all the world as though she were in some strange, white space, almost like a room with white walls, though she couldn’t for the life of her identify where the walls began and the space ended. She was suspended in the middle of the space, still floating, still suspended in the water… but it didn’t look like water anymore. It looked like light, holding her up, encasing her drysuit and her masked face. But beyond the mask, she could see figures, now… strange figures, tall and elegant, seemingly composed of the same kind of light that she’d been following.

  What was happening? What were these strange visions she was seeing? Nancy had been on hundreds of dives in her time and had a few near-misses and close calls when it came to problems with air, but this was next level. Was this — a shock of fear punched through her stomach — was this a sign that she was running out of air, that she was drowning, that her oxygen-starved brain was throwing up bizarre hallucinations to ease her to her final resting place? Surely not. That couldn’t be the case… she still had more than two-thirds of a tank left, last time she’d checked. Confused, she looked down at her tank. Just as she’d thought — just under the two-thirds mark. Time to turn around, Nancy, she told herself with a rueful little smile. There was a chance she was going to die here, she knew that.

  Why didn’t she feel frightened? Even under her discipline, there had been a rising feeling of panic, of fear that she was holding down… but somehow, right now, she couldn’t find it. It was almost as though the figures composed of light that she was hallucinating were… protecting her, somehow. They made her feel safe. That …. that probably wasn’t a good sign, now she thought about it.

  And add to the list of bad signs… it felt like these strange creatures, these dozen or so tall, elongated, vaguely humanoid shapes, were trying to communicate with her. She could sense feelings from them, almost… a sensation of curiosity, of interest in who she was and what she was doing there. Well, fair enough, she thought with a burst of unusual and nearly-hysterical laughter (which she firmly suppressed.) She, too, wanted to know what she was doing here! And where ‘here’ was, for that matter. Surrounded by light, even though she was still swimming she got the strangest feeling that she wasn’t in the cave she’d been in before. Had they drawn her in further, somehow, lured her into the depths of the cave? Had she actually found the mermaids she’d been looking for all her life? Well, at least she’d drown happy…

  The curiosity kept prodding at her, like it was a physical force that could brush against her body. She focused on it, at a loss for what else to do… and realized with some interest that the curiosity seemed to be focused on her equipment. Whatever that meant. What did it mean, to dream about strange, glowing creatures that were interested in your air tank? Her mother had always been interested in dream analysis, but Nancy had never had much time for that. Besides, low-oxygen hallucinations (if that was what this was) probably had a different rulebook entirely to your standard dreams. It’s my air tank! It’s two-thirds full and falling fast, she wanted to tell them. Help a girl out? How do I get out of here and back into the land of the air-breathing things?

  And to her surprise, the creatures seemed to hear that thought — or respond to it, at any rate. One of them lifted its long, sinuous arm (was it an arm? It was in the place an arm should go, but when she looked for a hand or fingers, all she could see was light) and pointed in a direction to her left. She found herself possessed with the urge to follow that direction, to see where the strange creature was pointing her, and almost without her control, she paddled her fins and flipped herself around, swimming away from the group of creatures. For the life of her, she couldn’t shake the idea that they’d all drawn together and were watching her swim away — but she didn’t dare look back over her shoulders. On the edge of her hearing, she could have sworn there were voices, speaking some sinuous and unfamiliar language. She really was losing it.

  As the light faded, she checked her air tanks. Half full, now… a definite sign she should be surfacing, in any other situation. Real worry was beginning to plague her now. Was this seriously how she was going to die? Twenty-one years old, in the prime of her life, in the depth of some stupid cave in North Carolina that hadn’t even had any cool fish in it? Half a tank of air or not, she was clearly starting to lose it, if that strange hallucination had been anything to go by. She was swimming back into the dark now, not trusting herself to look over her shoulder at where the shining figures had been. Instead, she just swam forward, with some determination. She was in a much larger cave, now, by the looks of it — she turned her torch on again, looking around her with some surprise to discover a distinct lack of cave walls.

  Where on Earth am I? Is this still the cave system? It didn’t look like it. In fact, she’d swear — if she didn’t know any better — that she was back in open water. Is that possible? Could she have somehow gotten turned around and found a way back out into the quarry? Surely James would have noticed if there had been another exit to the cave… but then again, he hadn’t said anything about having done a complete circuit of the quarry. It would’ve taken a while, after all, and he’d only been there with a class, not doing proper recon for a deep dive. She must have gotten turned around somehow inside the cave, then found an exit that led back out into the water of the quarry.

  Strange, though, she thought, looking around. It seems deeper than the quarry had when we’d been swimming down into the cave. Is it possible that I’ve found a deeper section of the flooded quarry? Perhaps there’d been a deeper excavation a little further beyond where the cave entrance had been. But she couldn’t remember diving very deeply… not inside the cave, at any rate. And when she looked up toward the surface, it seemed at least twenty meters above her, if not more. And the water was cold… icy cold. Even through her drysuit, which usually kept her warm in even the cooler waters of North Carolina, she could feel a chill eating its way toward her bones. What could explain that? Some kind of natural spring, or something? She’d swum through patches of warmer than usual water, but never isolated cold patches like this…

  Frowning a little behind her mask, but at least grateful to have found herself back in open water, Nancy looked down at her hand… and then gasped in dismay. Though her hand was still clenched in the ‘okay’ gesture, to her acute shock and concern, the guideline was no longer in it. She spun around in the water, using her light to search for the rope… and found nothing. When had she dropped it? In the middle of her hallucination, perhaps, when she was distracted by those shining figures? Surely not… surely, she couldn’t have been so stupid, couldn’t have made such a rookie mistake as to forget her guideline. Now James and Hannah are going to be really worried, she thought, scowling — and fair enough, too. James was going to give her the tongue-lashing of a lifetime, and so was Hannah. She’d deserve it, too.

  Well, if she was at just over half a tank, they’d be heading back up to the surface soon. She’d head back and meet them… get ready to face the music. But Nancy was troubled, as she shone the light behind her. Sure enough, there was a rocky formation — but for the life of her, she couldn’t figure out where she’d emerged from. The cave mouth must have been there somewhere, right? Why couldn’t she see it? Silt, probably… the water was murky. Had she stirred up silt with her fins? She must have stirred up quite a lot, for visibility to be this low. Oh, well. Nothing for it but to ascend.

  She moved slowly, mor
e out of habit than anything, swimming forward and maintaining a very shallow diagonal rise as she did. The oldest mistake in the book — and one of the deadliest — was to swim straight up toward the sky. That was a good way to get decompression sickness … if you were lucky. The unlucky option was death. Nancy hadn’t known anyone who’d died of the bends, but she’d known a few divers who had horror stories about having to spend a day in a compression tank in the hospital, letting their bodies slowly return to a normal level of pressure. This dive hadn’t been deep enough to worry too much about that — at extreme depths, some divers even took different combinations of gases down to compensate for the pressure — but still, better safe than sorry.

  She peered up toward the sky, frowning still. How had she gotten so deep in the water so quickly? Was it possible that she was in a completely different part of the mountain — a new body of water entirely? No — that wasn’t possible, there weren’t any around the quarry. She had to be in the quarry… it just must feel a lot bigger than it looked on the map, that was all. She shook off her concerns, focused on getting to the surface. Out of habit, she took a brief pause in her ascent, treading water as she peered around the cold, cloudy water of the quarry lake. It was a little clearer up here, at least, free of the silt she’d stirred up with her fins… but why was it still so dark? By her estimation, it couldn’t be more than twenty-five minutes since they’d first gotten into the water… unless she’d lost time during that hallucination about the shining figures, of course. But if that was the case, why was her tank still consistent with only a little bit of time having passed? At any rate, it should still be daylight. But if she didn’t know any better, she’d have sworn that it was nighttime from the sky she could just make out above her…