They tied the flipper to the dive line, to collect on the way back up. Then they continued their descent. 125 metres... 130... 135... 137... 138... 139... 140!
Odessa glanced at her dive watch. It read 141, oops. She inflated her BCD slightly to bring her back up. Beneath her the tunnel continued down. How much further did it go? Donny had said that it might be over 300 metres deep, more than twice their current depth. It was hard for Odessa to imagine.
She looked up but she could no longer see any daylight from above. They really were in the middle of somewhere neither man nor witch was supposed to be. Odessa thought of the surface. About the beers Chaser had probably stashed in the water to cool them down. She thought about how she always appreciated those things the most when she was furtherest away from them. Curiosity and a sense of adventure pulled her down, another kind of longing pulled her up. She enjoyed that, the thrill of desire for something, the hunger. But despite being only 140 metres away, it would take them hours to get back up there alive.
The first 100 metres were quick, mere minutes. They hung out at 42 metres long enough to check their air consumption. Up to 3 metres for a stop of 2 minutes, another 3, another 2 minutes. Every stop they stayed a little longer. At 21 metres they switched over from trimix to EAN50 and then at 9 metres to EAN80. The thing about decompressing was that the closer you got to the surface, the longer you had to wait. The bulk of their decompression time would be spent sitting merely single digit metres from the surface. So close and yet still so far.
As they waited in the water she looked around for Chaser and Hoots. Their dive line was still there, trailing off into a tunnel about 20 metres down. The plan had been for Chaser and Hoots to beat them to the surface, but it was possible, if they’d started late or broken things into two dives, that they would take longer. It was likely they would end up decompressing together.
But time ticked along. She waited and she watched, and there was still no sign of them. Had they spent ages mucking about at the surface?
The others were all watching where that dive line disappeared for any sign of them too.
‘Do you have a read on Chaser?’ Odessa thought to Triss.
‘No, nothing,’ Triss’s thoughts floated back and Odessa could hear the slight worry.
After 30 minutes of sitting merely 3 metres below the surface, they finally emerged from the water.
Odessa was surprised at how bright things were, when it had been so dark down in the hole. She relaxed when she saw Hoots, sitting in one of the lawn chairs, sipping on coffee. Odessa could smell it from here. But when she looked around for Chaser, there was no sign of him.
It was Nico that asked. “Where’s Chaser?”
Without skipping a beat, Hoots replied, “There was a tunnel he wanted to check out-”
“Of course there was.” Rhys gave a heavy sigh.
“How long have you been back up?” Odessa asked.
Hoots gave a soft, “Hmm,” and checked the time. “I guess about half an hour. We took a break in the middle. I get stiff joints from swimming sometimes.” She shook her hand.
She was met with several frowns in reply.
Triss, obviously worried Hoots might have the bends went into emergency response mode. “Stiff joints? What about the rest of your body? Any headaches? Dizziness? How’s your balance?”
Hoots waved her off. “Oh, honey, I didn’t go that deep. Honestly, I’m fine, this is normal for me. I’m just not as young as I used to be.”
Odessa wondered how old she was. It was a funny thing that Odessa found herself the most calm under dangerous situations but it made sense in a way. Chaser had once explained it was a product of her short lifespan. And it was true that whenever she wasn’t living life on the edge, she felt kind of panicky like she was wasting time. Humans only lived on average 80 years, 100 if they were lucky. Witches, by comparison could live a couple centuries and they were usually well into their hundreds before they even started looking old. Hoots could be over 200 years old for all she knew. Odessa wasn’t even 30 yet. She had a couple years left before that but every second she could feel the clock ticking closer and closer to her inevitable death, and not the kind of death she wanted, if such a thing existed. Why couldn’t she have been born a vampire? They lived multiple centuries, even longer than witches did.
She glanced over to where Nico was tidying away his gear. How long did chikari live for? Some people called them anti-vampires, with their need for sunlight to survive. Did they live just as long? Whatever it was, it was probably longer than humans did? The only advanced species that lived less than humans, were the werewolves, with an average lifespan of about 60 years.
They stripped out of their wetsuits but they kept their swimming togs on. It was still a few hours before they’d head back in. Odessa threw a large t-shirt over top of her swimsuit, one she didn’t mind getting wet or dirty. She didn’t bother with pants. Her t-shirt hung down on her to mid-thigh anyway.
“Should we go down after him do you think?” Rhys asked as he peered down into the water. He was obviously worried about Chaser.
“We need to off-gas,” Triss replied, but there was doubt in her voice.
Odessa shook her head. “He’s done this before. Once we lost him for a whole hour in a coastal cave. We got so worried we even got a search party to help look and when we finally found him he was looking at some crabs completely unaware of the ruckus he’d caused.”
Rhys nodded and then shook his head. “I wish he’d just follow the plan. He always causes trouble for everybody else.”
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Odessa looked at the pool where the dive line disappeared. Chaser was fine right? Hell, he’d even disappeared multiple times since they’d been here already. “I mean, I would feel better if we knew exactly where he was, but...” she trailed off, torn. It was classic Chaser behaviour.
Triss nodded decisively. “Well there’s no point risking others needlessly. We’ve just got back to the surface so it’s safest if we wait for him up here.”
There was a murmur or nods and then Nico got started on lunch, pan-toasted sandwiches with salami.
They ate and then they napped in the sun. An hour passed. Still no sign of Chaser.
“He might have found an air pocket,” suggested Hoots, when they started discussing going after him. “There are quite a few in there. Little caves above the water.”
“As long as they’re not filled with carbon-monoxide,” Odessa worried.
Rhys shook his head. “Chaser knows to be aware of that.”
“Oh, no,” said Hoots, “A lot of them actually come out of the hill in other places. You can look up and see the sky. He’d have plenty of air.”
“As long as he doesn’t lose track of how much he needs to get back,” said Triss.
Rhys shook his head, and replied confidently, “Nah, Chaser would never mess something like that up. He’s reckless but he’s not an idiot.”
“Well he’s only been down there an hour and a half and we haven’t fully off-gassed yet,” Nico added.
The others nodded, but the atmosphere was slowly getting tenser. A few minutes later, resting on her lawn chair, Hoots started snoring.
The more worried Triss got, the more restless she was and the more time she spent going over gear. Rhys too, liked to keep busy when he was stressed. Odessa understood that feeling. Nico, in contrast, seemed incredibly calm. She wondered how he did it. After walking around the grotto for a bit, even climbing up the large rock pile, Odessa eventually sat down next to him.
“How can you sit so still?” she asked. He was seated comfortably on the grass with his legs crossed and his eyes closed.
He smiled. “I’m an empath. If I can’t control my own emotions then what chance do I have controlling the emotions of others?”
“Hey, you know yesterday, when you made us feel calm..?”
He frowned. “Yeah, I’m sorry about that. I shouldn’t have done that without asking first.”
“No, it’s alright. I was just wondering though. I mean, you can make people feel anything right?”
He raised an eyebrow at her.
She blushed suddenly realising the other ways that could be interpreted. “Uh, I mean, like you could make people feel drunk for instance, right, without the whole hangover effects?”
He smiled. “Well first, extensive subjection to empath powers does have some after effects, and second while I can make anyone feel any emotion I am familiar with, whether through my own experiences or that of others, you do still have to be careful. It’s possible to get addicted to empathy if used too frequently. Or like yesterday, where I made you calm but the calmness takes away some awareness, makes you less alert, and thus a little less safe in some ways. It’s a balancing act.”
Odessa nodded.
Nico was silent for a moment and then he reached for his dive pad and started scrawling something on it. After a cautious glance around he handed it to her to read. It said,
‘Do you think there’s something off about Hoots?’
“What?” Odessa asked out loud.
But Nico quickly put a finger to his lips and then pointed to his ears.
Oh, right, Odessa had forgotten about Hoot’s really good hearing. She glanced over to where Hoots lay asleep and frowned. Did it matter if she could hear them if she was asleep anyway? Was Nico worried she wasn’t?
“Err, I...” she looked around for something to write on.
Nico handed her the dive pad.
Odessa scrawled, ‘She’s old?’ She shrugged.
Nico rolled his eyes and shook his head. Then he took the dive pad and wrote back, ‘She feels off.’
Odessa frowned, then laughed, then frowned again. Then she took off the mindwalking charm that she’d hung around her neck and held it out for Nico.
His frown deepened. He took it to study it closer.
Suddenly a loud voice in her head bellowed, ‘WHERE DID YOU GET THIS?’
Odessa winced. ‘Ow! Not so loud!’
A softer voice penetrated her thoughts, ‘Sorry, I’m not very good at mindwalking. Haven’t had a lot of practice. Wow, this is weird. I haven’t actually done this before. Wow! I can read all your thoughts.’
Odessa snatched it out of his hand much to his surprise.
A moment later another voice, Triss’s voice, said, ‘Nico, what are you doing?’
‘Odessa had a mindwalking infusement. We were just talking’
‘What?’
Odessa could hear her confusion.
‘It’s Bob’s, I think,’ Odessa explained. ‘I don’t know. I found it on the ground. He must have dropped it before he and Donny were teleported.’ But then her thoughts roamed to Donny’s camera and how he’d left that behind too.
Across the camp, she could see that Triss had stopped moving gear about, and was standing frozen with a concerned look on her face. She put down her air tank and then joined them near the water’s edge.
“Do they have a phone you can call them on?” she asked.
Nico put his finger to his lips.
Triss frowned at him.
Nico must have thought his answer to Triss, because despite Odessa not hearing anything, Triss turned and looked at the sleeping Hoots. Then she shook her head.
“She’s old and harmless.”
“What’s going on?” Rhys had approached, obviously wondering why they were all gathered.
“Odessa’s worried about Donny and Bob,” Triss explained. Then back to Odessa she said, “So, can you phone them?”
Odessa nodded. “Yeah, I tried that, but we don’t have reception. Not even on top of the big rock.”
“We got the satellite though,” Rhys said, with a glance at the car.
Odessa considered it. It wasn’t like it took that long to set up, and they should be within range. She knew the location of all three satellites in the sky. They were supposed to be geosynchronous in theory but Odessa had definitely noticed some variability with them, and of course you needed a pretty good line of sight. The top of the rock should work if down here didn’t though.
She helped Rhys set it up. Nico and Triss watched curiously.
“I’ve never actually seen a satellite computer in real life,” Triss remarked.
“Yeah,” Rhys grinned. “Bob got us this, some under the table deal on some malfunctioning equipment, which Odessa got working again.”
“Well, me and my old flatmate,” Odessa explained. “And it was literally just a dodgy wire. That, and I hit it in the right place a few times.” She grinned. Then she remembered why they were setting it up and her expression got serious again. “We got a connection?” Odessa asked Rhys.
“Hang on.” He fiddled with the angle of the dish.
“I think it’s more this way.” Odessa reached down to help adjust it.
He was still frowning as he looked at the screen.
“Shall I try from on top of the rock?” Odessa suggested.
Rhys nodded.
“Great.” She picked up the dish and handed it to a surprised Nico. “You carry this up behind me. Don’t drop it.”
Triss followed along as well, waiting to help in case anyone slipped or dropped anything, but they made it to the top of the rock mound unhindered.
“Wow,” Triss remarked. “Nice view.” From up here the rocky jungle sloped steeply downward towards the town of Riftgate, nestled among the trees only a few kilometres away. They could see points in the rocks where the water resurfaced and spilled out, filling cracks and canyons in the landscape.
“Got it!” Odessa exclaimed as the familiar indication that they had reception appeared on her screen. “Now I just dial Bob’s number.” Normally Odessa never remembered phone numbers but Bob had one of those fancy numbers that spelt something. He’d paid extra for it, thinking it a funny joke, but it was also very useful. It was the only number Odessa knew by heart, other than the one to order pizza. She dialed it and waited.
From somewhere down at camp, a distinct ringing sound could be heard.