Ryan Lockwood - Below

Val.

Sturman’s heart swelled. Her dark hair flowed around her head, and her eyes met his. She squinted against the brightness of his beam and raised a hand to shield her eyes, and he turned the light away as he grabbed her hand. After nobody else appeared, he understood that she was alone.

The tether at his waist began to tighten. He had allowed nearly all seventy-five feet of the tether to trail him down, wanting to make sure there was enough line to reach Val, and it had been just enough. Until now. He was literally at the end of his rope.

He gestured with his thumb toward the surface. She nodded, but didn’t move. She was looking past him, hesitating. Sturman had spent enough time in the mute diving world to recognize what people were thinking based on their expressions. She didn’t want to leave the seiner, even though it was sinking. A loud crack resounded from above, and the vessel shuddered.

He jerked another “thumbs-up” in front of her mask. She nodded and slowly emerged from the safety of the hatchway. Sturman squeezed her hand tighter and looked around. He could see the shoal huddled in the darker water, hundreds of squid still darting past at the fringes of the bright light. He added air to his BC and began to kick upward along the length of the boom, dragging Val with him at first until she committed to their ascent and began to rise faster than him, unburdened by the shark suit. He paused, hearing the rumble of a motor—another vessel had to be approaching.

Then the first one attacked.

The squid slammed into Sturman’s side. He managed to keep hold of Val’s hand, but dropped his dive light with the impact. He pulled her down in front of him and wrapped his armored body around her as more squid joined in the assault. Then they were sinking, as their attackers maneuvered them toward the deep, away from the bright lights above. He forced himself to ignore the squeezing and pulling as the lights faded in intensity and other squid moved in.

A fast-moving one appeared in front of them, filling Sturman’s field of view, and hurled its body into Val. He grabbed the mantle of the animal and pushed his thumb into one of its large eyes. The badly scarred creature maintained its grip for several seconds as he crushed the black orb deep into its socket. It finally relented and shot away in a cloud of ink. He could hear the eerie sound of their beaks scratching across the steel armor encasing his sides and legs. There was another booming crack from above. Maria would go under soon. The lights would short out, and without them…

His heavy armor would not allow him to make an emergency ascent. But Val had a chance to escape before the shoal fully closed on them.

Sturman pulled her body against him in the increasing darkness and reached for her waist. In the fading glow of Maria ’s lights, he looked into her eyes for an instant and wondered if she knew what he felt for her as he searched her belly for the clip on her weight belt. The plastic clip popped open under his fingers.

As the heavy belt slithered off her body and sank past her fins, he pushed her outstretched hands away as she reached for him, terror in her eyes. She accelerated away from him, unable to fight the powerful lift created by the air in her vest and lungs and wet suit. She was still looking down at him when her silhouette shrank into the bright lights above, and then Sturman was alone in the gloom. He reached for his dive knife. Let them come, then.

He felt the press of the closing shoal and swung the blade at his attackers, the tether around his waist tightening as the squid enveloped his body and dragged him deeper.

Val watched Sturman disappear below her, helplessness overtaking her fear as she accelerated up toward the surface. Then the terror returned as she felt something touch her head and slowly wrap around her shoulders. She screamed into her regulator and thrashed her arms at the unseen attacker, but her hands met only folds and piles of rough narrow strands. The seining net. She had risen into it, and now it was preventing her from surfacing.

Even with the lights from above closer now, Val couldn’t see exactly what was happening. Her view was obstructed by the dark mass of the net intermixed with the blinding glare of the lights. She knew that she was close to the surface because the lights were brighter and she could hear the waves above and feel the swells moving the seawater around her. The shoal should be upon her now, but it was not.

It was the net. Although it kept her from surfacing, clumped around her upper body and scuba tank, it appeared to be protecting her as well. Maybe it was the light, but more likely they were unable to detect her in the net or were unwilling to enter its confining folds.

She thought of Sturman, down there in the blackness with the shoal upon him, but pushed the image from her mind. She couldn’t help him unless she could get to the surface and find a way to help from there. At least he had a tether. With enough air and the shark suit protecting him, there was a chance.

She forced herself to calm down and carefully sorted through the folds of netting around her, trying to push it past her so she could maneuver around it and surface. She was close to Maria. She could board the vessel from the stern.

As she felt her way through the netting in the darkness, she sensed a gradual change in the fistfuls of loose strands. They were growing tighter. Moments later, they began to tow her away from the lights on the boat above. Away from the surface.

The seiner was finally going down, and taking her with it.

Unable to resist the pull of eighty tons of steel, Val fought the hundreds of strands pressing against her head and shoulders as the Centaur began the long descent to the bottom of the ocean.

The one-eyed female darted between two of her sisters for a better grip on the immobilized prey. She powered her way through the smooth, wriggling bodies of the other squid and again found purchase on the creature’s body. Wrapping her sinuous arms tightly around it, her beak again met the pliable yet dense outer shell. She scraped against the rough surface, which gleamed in the light like the scales of fish, and sensed the soft flesh underneath.

Around her the shoal was now busily feeding on itself as wounded members pulled away from the struggling prey, which still fought furiously but was gradually slowing. Yielding. The female sensed a growing weakness.

Another large squid jostled against her and she lost her grip on the prey. As she sought another opening, she watched a vulnerable member of her shoal pulse through the water past her, already wounded by the silvery creature. Her heavily scarred sister darted out of the darkness and attacked the wounded animal, wrapping her arms around its middle. The one-eyed female’s focus shifted back to the prey. Although the injured in her shoal would make an easier meal, she had become focused on this alien thing.

She would feed on it. This armored thing that would not be brought down, that was somehow suspended from above.

Her aggression spiked and she closed on the prey again. She fired her whips and their tiny teeth tore at a fin on one of her sisters. The other female quickly yielded and darted away from her.

For an instant the one-eyed female saw the thing’s gleaming armor part under the tugging of her hungry brothers and sisters, exposing a pale, smooth surface beneath. She oriented her tentacles toward the prey and hurtled forward, forcing her arms into the opening before the outer armor could close over it.

This time her beak found what it was seeking.

She sensed a renewed energy in the creature as her massive beak dug eagerly into warm flesh and blood. The rough edges of her maw scraped alongside the prey’s protective bone but continued to dig into the writhing flesh. The taste of blood excited her.