by Chogan Swan
Then, her light flashed on a pale snout and dead black eyes plowing toward her like an oncoming train.
She ducked behind the bulk of the main hook, which was large enough to protect her entire body. The shark—a female great white almost 6 meters long—slowed, gliding past Ayleana then turning to come back at a different angle.
The apex predator was in no hurry. She'd doubtless trapped other warm-blooded prey in the depths countless times in her long life. Carcharodon carcharias was a long-lived species. This one was probably over 50 years old.
Ayleana fought for calm.
I'm not supposed to get into fights, dammit!
She'd already been under water almost 15 minutes. Going back up would take that long alone. The longest dive she had memory of from other branches was the equivalent of 35 minutes. It was a pity, but somehow she would have to kill or paralyze the shark then somehow get back to her DPV then get to the decompression chamber on El Salvador … somehow.
That's a lot of somehows..
Her odds of surviving didn't look good.
CHAPTER 17 – DEEP
The shark slid toward her, centered in the cone of light from her headlamp. At this close range, it didn't even need to see her. It could sense the electrical signals of her body: heartbeat firing off tiny pulses, muscles twitching…. All of which just sang, “Come eat me!” pulsing through the water.
Just a little closer.
As the shark passed, Ayleana slipped around the huge lifting hook and snagged the shark by its dorsal fin. The fin was almost too fat for her to get a grip, but the sandpapery texture let her hang on long enough to draw her kukri knife with her left hand and puncture the fin, leaving behind a through-and-through cut she could grasp
At the pricking of the 13-inch blade, the shark whipped about, jaws snapping.
The broad, torpedo-shaped body was easily two-meters-high—much too thick for Ayleana to get a solid grip with her legs. But she managed to squeeze the upper part of the tail between her springheels just enough to avoid its serrated teeth.
Failing to reach her prey, the shark thrashed her tail and dove, hurtling into the deep. The force of the water rushing across Ayleana’s body pushed at her like a giant hand.
She's killing me just by diving.
.
The shark was too big to consider using a paralyzing agent. Ayleana had no idea what compound would even affect the robust nervous system.
It would have to be the knife.
She needed oxygen and some way to disable the shark. Even if she abandoned it and it didn't turn to attack her, now—away from her DPR—it was too far to swim to the surface. Even inflating her personal lift bag would be too slow. At this depth, the bag would only provide her a lift speed of about two kilometers an hour. That would speed up as she got higher, but even then her total trip time to the surface would be at least 35 minutes, and the deeper she dived, the longer it would take.
Ayleana fought panic. With every second, the depth increased.
But there's oxygen here.
A glimmer of hope shone into her thoughts. She stabbed the heavy kukri knife deep into the shark's back—targeting a spot in front of her own face. Then she yanked it out, twisted the blade to a different angle and stabbed again in the same spot. She pushed her lips into the wound and sucked in mouthful after mouthful of the chill blood.
At the first taste, she could tell that she'd hit one of the arteries branching off the dorsal aorta. The blood was charged with oxygen that the shark had pulled from the water with its gills.
Ayleana didn't have gills, but she could process the oxygen from the blood even before it hit her stomach. It could buy her time while she worked on the problem of disabling the predator.
She clung to the shark like a remora and subsumed the cold blood as fast as her mouth could bring it in. Soon her energy level started to rise as the ATP continued sparking inside her. It wasn't like human blood. It didn't have the same explosion-of-fire feeling to it, but it was strong.
The shark was still diving. She had to hurry and disable it without cutting off her own oxygen supply. If she survived this, would she need to start all over on controlling the blood lust? She really had no choice now.
After moving the point of her knife toward the tail, she punched it deep, aiming toward the spinal column. The knife was 13-inches-long. The point was strong and designed to penetrate. The razor-sharp blade was made of immensely tough, high-carbon steel. The hilt slammed into the shark's body, and the massive tail thrashed as the shark reacted.
Ayleana, pulled the slicing edge to her, using the shark's own body as a brace. Then, she stabbed again in the same spot, driving the blade as well as her fist and half of her forearm into the wound. Again she pulled the edge to her, cutting deeper.
The water illuminated by her head light LED turned opaque as a torrent of arterial blood exploded from the wound.
Once again, she drove the knife in, this time aiming to carve a triangular slice out of the shark's side so it would bleed out faster. When Ayleana pulled the blade to her this time, a wedge of shark flesh detached from the body and floated away.
The amount of blood flowing to Ayleana's mouth dropped dramatically, and the shark went still as its heart pumped, emptying the oxygenated blood into the ocean rather than its muscles.
Ayleana took one more long pull of blood and kicked away. Working by feel, she snugged the cord of her personal lift bag to her wrist then loosed the bag from her belt. She pulled the inflate cord and watched in the light of her lamp as the bag began to fill … slowly. She let the bag raise her arm over her head and gave a few kicks to put distance between her and the shark….
And all the other sharks coming to see what's bloody.
How far down could she be? A regular diver's depth gauge was useless at this depth. Nobody had thought they'd be diving so deep. She considered the variables as she rose, but her brain was soon starving for oxygen and she couldn't even guess. She was almost sure she hadn't descended more than 2 kilometers, but it was probably deeper than any diving elephant seal had ever gone.
She started shutting down her body for hibernation, letting the cold take her. The location wafer in her harness pocket might not have survived the crushing pressure. She hoped someone would find her in time … if her body ever made it to the surface. Other sharks could always come along. If that happened, she hoped they would be more interested in following the trail of blood back down to the shark rather than up to the residue that still clung to her.
CHAPTER 18 – SEARCH
Kaitlin gripped the steering wheel of Remora III, the third of the ship's four boats, and scanned the waves for the DPV she knew was ascending from the emergency dive.
Fifteen minutes earlier in the video feed from one of the ROVs, she had watched in horror as a huge great white had trapped Ayleana against the main lifting hook. When Ayleana grabbed the shark as it passed her hiding place, Kaitlin had almost felt as though she herself was drowning as she watched the shark carry Ayleana into the dark.
Kaitlin glanced to starboard where Caly held station in Remora II. For once, Caly’s mouth lacked its easy smile. Her eyes were grim, but she held the wheel of the sleek launch with the confidence of someone who'd lived on boats almost all her life, keeping station near El Salvador with gentle nudges to the throttle.
Accustomed to learning everything fast, Kaitlin still wished she'd had more time to learn boat handling. The intensive instruction and practice that had filled her last seven days had been helpful, but she knew she was still a rank novice. At least the chop wasn't bad today.
She was managing to hold station a bit further away from the ship, but the task took most of her attention. And, actually, she was grateful for that.
Edward's calm voice had kept everyone acting in coordination after HumanaH had disengaged from that role to prepare the rescue attempt. Now, his voice came over the headset. “DPV 2 will surface in about 30 seconds. Symbiana, you now have channel six c
leared for the rescue operation. Good luck to us all.”
Kaitlin didn’t know why Edward sometimes called HumanaH ‘Symbiana’, but the slip didn’t seem to bother the elder nii. Nor had Ayleana’s eliminating the final sound in her name.
A heavy thump from the deck of Calypso's boat announced HumanaH's arrival.
“Copy that, Edward.” she said, her voice over the headset showing no sign of just having jumped from the ship's deck to the boat seven meters below. “The camera drones on the shallow-water remote confirm that DPV 2 is piloted by its designated operator. Boats two and three are proceeding to the estimated pickup point.”
Calypso turned the Remora 2 south and pulled away from the El Salvador , accelerating smoothly. Kaitlin followed in her wake, letting the R2 smooth the way.
“DPV 2 spotted,” HumanaH said, her voice sounding inside Kaitlin's head almost like her own thoughts. Calypso veered to starboard and cut her engines. Kaitlin cut across the wake to bracket the place where ShwydH had just surfaced. Kaitlin idled the motor, watching Calypso sidle the R2 alongside where Shwyd clung to the DPV, taking long slow breaths.
∆ ∆ ∆
The light wavering from the ocean surface above had been tormenting ShwydH for so long he could hardly believe he had finally reached it. Now, fire seemed to shred his lungs with every breath, but he knew better than to stop breathing. He continued, focusing on tracking down the tiny pockets of nitrogen gas that had escaped into his body, forcing the gas through micro-rupture paths he'd made to the nearest convenient exit points as he clung to the DPV bobbing on the waves.
In some other reality, he felt strong hands grab his arms and lift him like a child's stuffed animal to dump him on a hard, smooth surface. Somehow, a trickle of human blood formed in the back of his throat and he swallowed reflexively. The fire as his body subsumed it burned its way down his throat and formed an oven inside him. Automatic healing processes targeted vital areas of his body first as more blood followed the first mouthful. He closed his lips, feeling a tube, and took control of the flow.
“Not too fast,” HumanaH's voice rattled on his bone-conducting wafer. It sounded far away and faint.
He directed healing to his auditory system, and other sounds began to filter through. He'd waited too long before starting his ascent. Trying to pursue a shark to the bottom of the ocean was perhaps the stupidest thing he could remember doing.
No perhaps about it.
He could feel the bag of blood, still warm and resting on his chest. Obviously, it had been collected from more than a dozen volunteers on the ship.
I didn't even need to ask.
Somehow, the thought weighed on him.
I owe them, now.
He opened his eyes and looked into HumanaH's
“Can you hear me?” she said as she toweled him dry.
A little, he signaled with finger and thumb close together. If breathing hurt this bad, he hated to imagine what it would feel like to try to speak.
“We need to get downwind so we can catch her scent when she surfaces. Kaitlin and I will head northeast. You and Calypso head southeast. Keep drinking and healing your body, but leave the blood in the red cooler for Ayleana when we find her. There’s a path of action she could have taken to survive. I know she'll see it in time, but we need to find her as soon as possible. I'll be in radio contact with Caly. Just make sure your sense of smell is working at top form.”
ShwydH nodded—understanding the plan, but not how Ayleana could possibly survive so long without air.
HumanaH covered his body with a reflective tarp, tucking it under his shoulders. He hadn't noticed how cold he was until she'd blocked the wind. Then, HumanaH disappeared from view, her form replaced by clouds scudding across the sky. He felt the boat accelerate. In a moment, its nose came up, and Calypso had them skipping over the ocean like a spinning stone.
The blood—that he doled out in careful sips now—rolled over his pains and the damage to his body like an incoming tide. As his body knit together, he focused on questing for Ayleana's scent and wondered if it would carry the taint of death with it when it came … if it came….
∆ ∆ ∆
She dreamed of movement … her legs dragged up and down, bunching then extending; arms flapped, jerking from dorsal to caudal in frantic spasms; her ribs expanded and relaxed like billows in a forge.
But it was fire that awakened her. Liquid fire pooled in her throat, and she swallowed. Fire gathered low in her belly and spread out through her body.
Life betrays death.
“Aylie, you have to start your heart,” a far-off, muffled voice was shouting.
She thought the voice might have been shouting the same thing for some time. Thumping continued on her chest, and lips settled on hers. Air forced its way into her lungs. As the air made its way out again, some of it trickled through her nose and sent a message to her brain.
Danger! Too close!
Using the rest of the air, she screamed and pushed at the weight on her, but met resistance as hands grabbed her arms. A thump pulsed in her chest as though someone had punched her from the inside. Her chest thumped again, and—this time on her own—she pulled air—damp, cool, salty—into her lungs,.
“Yes, Aylie, fight. That's it. Fight me!”
Instead of striking out or pushing away again, she pulled her enemy closer.
Life.
Her enemy's neck sealed against her mouth.
“Take it! Drink!” the sound of her enemy's voice vibrated against her mouth. And she bit down, pulling life into her.
Her enemy's voice vibrated in her mouth again.
“Caly, slide the tip of the bag in her mouth again, right at the corner. Squeeze it. I'm going to force her jaws open before she gets too strong.”
More life, cooler and different, flooded into her mouth, more than she could take in. Her enemy tore away as her mouth relaxed for an instant. She clutched at her enemy to hold him harmless, but focused now on the cooler life still pouring into her mouth.
Strength flowed into her and through her. Encouraging sounds and comforting caresses from her enemy, quieted her desperation, and her thoughts began to fall in order.
The Valishnu.
The shark.
The descending struggle.
The alien taste of shark's blood.
The blood in the water.
The lift bag.
She stopped drinking and opened her eyes. Already close to her enemy's ear, she whispered, “I guess I owe you one.”
Her enemy whispered back. “Aylie, all my life choices are now governed by the leash that holds me. But—as much as it's possible for me—I have always been your friend. Though you despise me now, my life would be darker without you. What I know of friendship says debt does not apply.”
“If you call me Aylie again, I'm going to start calling you Shwydie.”
“I think I can live with that … Aylie.”
She lay back and closed her eyes. Four strong hands moved her to a cushion and covered her with a blanket.
Surely, his voice hadn't caught at the end.
Perhaps it was time to bury some of the past.
CHAPTER 19 – RECOMBINANT II
Una stopped at the door of the gym for a few moments, just to assess all the different pieces of the activity spinning through it. Tables and chairs were going up at one end of the room while two other tables—already set up—were heaping higher with food as kitchen staff filed past.
Driving piano music thundered from where Tiana sat at a concert grand, playing (of all things) Wipeout, an instrumental piece of surf music from the 60s. Jonah accompanied her, using the side of the piano as a conga drum.
Marian and the Rodriguez sisters covered the martial arts area with a high-energy dance that had Marian gliding around the mat, arms extended as though for balance, while the sisters dove and somersaulted just behind her wherever she led them.
Marian's surfing. They're the waves.
Each ti
me the song reached the end of the repeating theme, Marian would stage a spectacular tumbling wipeout—she'd clearly had gymnastics classes—and the waves crashed around her like breaking foam, until they all leaped up to start a new circuit.
The coordination of the elements of the dance was breathtaking.
Marlee, her father Brian, and Jonah's cousin, Jerry along with his wife, Wendy watched the girls from the side of the mat, laughing and clapping while they mugged along with a dance Una identified as The Swim.
Una would have loved to join the dance—Riniana Tiana's child personality was practically begging her—but she couldn't risk betraying knowledge of post-20s American culture,
