James Axler: Dectra Chain

Out of the corner of his eye he spotted Donfil, brandishing his new blaster, the incoming waves hardly reaching to his knees as he picked his way toward the staircase with the ungainly delicacy of a feeding stork.

Ryan clutched Krysty by the hand and they battled together across the corridor, joined by J.B. just before they reached the line of steps. The sea had already reached their waists.

"Jammed solid!" J.B. yelled. "Couldn't shift it an inch."

"Best hope we can open those doors at the top. Or we're in the deepest shit."

"Unless the waters stop rising."

The doors proved immovably locked. As the seven huddled wetly together on the narrow landing, all they could do was watch the dull gray waters rise inexorably higher toward them.

Higher and higher.

Despite their immediate danger, Ryan kept trying to remember whether he'd closed the doors that led through to the main gateway control room. If he hadn't, then there wasn't a scintilla of doubt that the whole place was now at least ten feet underwater, for the corridor had been fairly level. All the electrical equipment would be fused into a barren silence, and they would have no hope of ever using the mat-trans again.

But as the sea kept insistently and steadily rising, he became more occupied with the threat of the dreadful death that confronted them.

The gap in the doors didn't just allow a ceaseless torrent to flood into the passage — it also allowed life to come in from the deep waters beyond the buried entrance.

Jak had been sitting on one of the steps near the top with his booted feet dabbling in the bubbling water when something like a snake, whip-thin, darted from the darkness and attached itself to his arm. It wound itself around, tiny head with needled teeth striking blindly toward the boy's face. Before anyone else could make a move, the teenager drew one of his concealed throwing knives, slashing with the honed edge, and cut the creature's head from its flailing body. Its grip weakened immediately, and it fell back into the seething torrent. Its light green corpse sank slowly until it vanished into the murk.

"Best keep clear," Ryan advised.

"Long as we can," Donfil replied, standing on the top step, looking doubtfully down as the water lapped at his bare feet. His head was bowed to avoid touching the oppressive metal ceiling with its fan of strip lights.

"How long?" Jak asked J.B., who'd been obviously taking a count of the speed of the rising waters with his chron.

"One step in thirty-eight seconds. Step, near as I can figure it, is 7 1/2 inches. That's one inch every 5.06 recurring seconds."

"How many inches to gone before we get sinked?" Lori asked, still clutching Doc around his waist.

"I vanish at around another seventy inches. You make it another four inches. Means you get nearly a half minute over me. Donfil, there, could last clear until the water reaches the ceiling."

"Bastard way to go," Jak said. "Like rat in trap."

Ryan leaned against the unbudgeable doors, feeling the seawater rising over his ankles. The kid was right about that. If he could have picked the manner of his passing, then Ryan would have gone down in a firefight, taking as many to hell with him. Not like this.

Doc cleared his throat. The landing was relatively quiet, the noise of the rushing water drowned by its own depth. The surface rose calmly and inexorably toward them. "A man could choose a good deal worse company in which to greet his Maker," he said.

"If only I'd kept some ex-plas. A high-ex gren. Least we could have had an ace on the line. This way, we got nothing."

The water was above Ryan's knees.

He was conscious of the increased air pressure, squeezing at his ears, as the space became ever more constricted.

"Wouldn't mind it if you gave me a last kiss, lover," Krysty said quietly. "Sorry we gotta end like this."

"Me too," He hugged her tightly.

The water was touching his belt. One hand around the girl, he automatically held his G-12 above the sea with his other hand.

"Ears hurt," Lori moaned.

"Of course!" Doc shouted, his voice sounding peculiarly dead and flat in the waterbound space.

"What?" Ryan asked, hoping there weren't any more of the venomous sea snakes seething around his submerged groin.

"Her ears hurt because of the air pressure. We've got a chance, friends. Chance of time, at least. Unless we're way, way deep, hundreds of feet, this air'll save us. These doors here are sealed tighter than a nun's… Pardon me. But the air can't get out. So it holds the water off. Hurts our ears. Keep swallowing hard, chickadee. But the water'll soon stop rising here."

"Better be quick," Jak panted, nearly six inches shorter than even J.B.

"You can ride my shoulders, Eyes of Wolf," the shaman offered.

"Shouldn't be necessary," the old man said, clapping his gnarled hands together.

"But it won't get us out, Doc," Ryan said, suddenly aware that the rise of the sea had definitely slowed.

"It'll give us time to think of a way."

The water stopped rising just above Ryan's waist. As an experiment he dipped his head below the surface, straining his hearing to try to catch the sound of the sea gushing through the gap, twenty feet or so below them. But there was silence, which was broken only by the surging noise of his own blood pumping through his head.

Doc kept mumbling to himself, trying to work out some hideously complex sum in his head, linking the pressure of the air around them with how deep the sea might be outside.

"Hundred and forty-six miles," he concluded. "Damnation and perdition! That can't be right. No. Can't be too much deeper outside than in. If this is high tide, then we do have some small hope of escape when it falls again. Particularly if we are anywhere near the northeast coast. The tides there are exceedingly large. The Bay of Fundy… born on Monday, christened on Tuesday and… What was I saying?"

The old man's voice faded away.

The coldness was chilling, cutting through to the bone. Ryan made everyone keep moving, stamping their feet and slapping hands, fighting off the insidious enemy.

Once he felt something move close by his legs, swirling past him, grazing his pants. Something that felt a whole lot too large for his peace of mind. At his warning, everyone who carried a knife drew it, and they moved even closer together on the cramped, narrow landing. It was a sign that the doors of the redoubt must have opened wider than he'd thought.

The creature didn't come back.

"It's going down," Donfil said.

Ryan hadn't noticed any sign of the water level dropping, but he didn't propose to argue with the seven-foot-tall Apache.

"Yes," Krysty agreed after a couple of minutes. "He's right."

Three hours passed before the water dropped enough for them to be able to see the gap in the jammed doors. From above, it looked to be about fifteen inches wide — just enough for them all to be able to squeeze through. But they still had no idea what was on the other side. The sea was out there; that was all they knew.

The redoubt could be on some uninhabited island, miles from land. The doors might open at the foot of unscalable cliffs. Ryan knew that their chances of getting out of this mess alive weren't much better than even.

"Light's fading out there," Jak Lauren observed some time later, his red eyes being more sensitive than anyone else's to such changes. "Must be night starting."

The water at the foot of the stairs was barely a foot deep. Ryan was conscious of the risk that they might miss the turning of the tide and leave it too late to make their move. But he still hesitated at leading his six companions out into the unknown and threatening darkness.