resistance, Rachel opened her mouth and grasped it between her teeth, but seemed not to breathe. Calmly, Miranda reached over and pressed the diaphragm on the front of the reg, forcing a burst of air into Rachel’s mouth. Rachel took a deep involuntary breath and began to hyperventilate. Miranda pressed against Rachel’s chest with her hand, urging her to slow down. They would share her air to the end. Miranda did not want to die alone. But she would prolong the process as long as possible. She would savour every last moment of consciousness.
Morgan swooped down on three portholes that had deliberately been scraped clean of algae from the inside. He tried to peer in but could see nothing. Grasping a steel flange with his fingertips, he pressed his flashlight against the glass to eliminate the reflection. He was sure there were human-shaped forms in the shadowy darkness. He banged on the window but there was no response. He turned and swam back to the breach in the hull, plunged into the depths of the ship, and was swallowed whole, with only the thread of his light beam to draw him through the bizarre angles of darkness.
Miranda drew in her last full breath and held it until her lungs burst and the residual air spewed out in a violent shudder. Her flashlight was on. She looked into Rachel’s mask, surprised to see fear in her final moment. She shone the light around their murky prison, calmly conscious of inscribing in her mind her final perceptions. Overhead, there was a pearly sheen where their exhaled air had gathered against the steel. She reached up and discovered she could break the surface and her fingers disappeared into a shallow pocket of air. She leaned down and drew Rachel toward her, then stretched upwards, kicking against the cuff around her ankle, forcing it to slide along the iron rail to gain a few inches of height.
Arching her neck, her face was less than a hand’s width away from the air. When she grasped to cup air with her hand, it slipped through her fingers. She needed to press into the pocket with her lips. Her mask hit steel, she tore it off and stretched again, until she could feel the flesh of her ankle break open against the restraining shackle. Still beyond reach. She dipped her fingertips into the eerily beautiful opalescence and pulled back to watch as it broke like shattered mercury. Her mind wavered; carbon dioxide tore into the walls of her lungs and trachea and larynx with innumerable edges; her chest and windpipe collapsed in a paroxysm of agony.
As her mask drifted away, Miranda felt the snorkel attached to its band brush against her leg. She grabbed down at it, but it slipped from her reach. Dropping her flashlight, she tore Rachel’s mask from her face and, after releasing the snorkel, let her mask drop as well. With a jarring heave she tried to twist the stiff plastic into a straight shaft. Briefly asphyxia took hold and her vision flashed black. She stopped, she clasped the snorkel with her manacled hand, reached out, groping, found Rachel’s knife, grasped the release, squeezed, turned the razor-sharp edge against the plastic, incised around the shaft a continuous line. The knife slipped from her fingers. Struggling to remain conscious, she twisted the snorkel with all her remaining strength. It refused, shivered, gave way, the valve end detached and slipped into the murk beneath them.
Miranda pressed the mouthpiece into her mouth and guided the sheared upper end into the pocket of air. She blew out, sucking residual air from cavities of pain to clear the shaft, and took in a slow, deep breath to replenish her screaming lungs.
She took another breath and another, then drew Rachel close, and bending away from her air supply, she pressed her lips over Rachel’s lips, forcing them open with her tongue, and blew air into Rachel’s mouth. Rachel coughed, regurgitating water into Miranda’s mouth. Miranda pulled back, and reached for another breath, then returned and blew more air into Rachel’s mouth. Her flashlight beamed from below in wavering swards above Alexander’s tethered corpse.
Morgan saw light flashing in fragments against the obscene tilt of the corridor walls. His heart racing, he surged ahead to the open door and swung into a stateroom, clattering his tank against the steel bulkhead, smashing his leg against the door frame. He doubled up in pain and lost equilibrium; he shone his light around, trying to orient himself to the bizarre angles of the room. Immediately ahead was the grotesquely contorted body of Alexander Pope. Above him, the beam shone through the swirling sediment and revealed a strange apparition of shadows and limbs.
As he rose up, he reached out and touched a leg. He recoiled as Miranda screamed into the water. He touched her again, this time not tentatively. He cast his light beam across his own face and then across hers. She had let the snorkel drop from her lips, which were open as she desperately mouthed the water. He released his mouthpiece from his own lips and thrust it between hers. She breathed deeply.
Oh, my goodness, my goodness, he thought. He reached around for his octopus regulator and exchanged it with hers. She took another deep breath and then thrust the mouthpiece out toward Rachel. Morgan grabbed it and forced it between Rachel’s lips. There was an interminable pause, then Rachel breathed on her own.
Morgan twisted slowly about and surveyed the situation. His air supply would not sustain all three for very long. Miranda was shaking from the cold but reached for his arm and gave it a tight squeeze through the wetsuit, then made the gesture of pushing him away, but without letting go. He shone his light in the water between them so that they could make eye contact. She rolled her eyes, motioning him to go up. She took the mouthpiece and handed it to Rachel, then, turning back to Morgan, she smiled and blew him an absurd underwater kiss, and gave an abrupt gesture with a jerk of her head. There was no doubt: she wanted him to leave them and save himself. Since he had found her, he understood what was happening. He must — he was here. He was her witness. She felt a great surge of warmth. She was ready.
Morgan wasn’t. He released his grip from their convoluted embrace and, handing off his mouthpiece to Miranda, he sank down to examine the handcuffs around the women’s ankles. He made a futile attempt to break them free and felt in the darkness where blood from torn flesh seeped through Miranda’s wetsuit, warming his hand as he touched her, making him suddenly realize how achingly numb his fingers were, how close to being useless.
He drifted up, took back his reg, and handing Miranda his flashlight he squirmed around to release her gear. She and Rachel were jammed so closely together, and his icy fingers were so clumsy, he could only manage to remove her tank from the back of her BCD, which, when he released it, tumbled with an echoing clang against the steel walls and floor. He struggled to keep her from drifting upward and grasped one of her hands — the other was clutching his flashlight — and pushed it violently against his own chest straps. His fingers flashed white.
She understood, and while Rachel took her turn breathing, Miranda thrust her own fingers between her teeth and, pulling to and fro, peeled off her glove, then reached down and released Morgan’s straps. She grasped at his closest hand to warm it. He pulled away, but briefly pumped it against her breast in affirmation. When he dropped his mouthpiece and pulled the octopus mouthpiece away from her, leaving them all without air while he squirmed out of his gear, she was startled, confused, but trusting. Once freed, he handed her the primary mouthpiece and, taking a deep breath from the octopus, he gave it to her for Rachel, then holding on to Miranda with one hand and clasping his gear awkwardly between his knees, he detached his tank and regulator, took another breath from the mouthpiece she held to his lips, then swung around and secured his tank against the back of her BCD. He adjusted her gear and swung around to face her. She seemed overweighted from his heavier tank but when she moved to release her weight belt, he signalled negative and gave her BCD inflator a couple of bursts to increase her buoyancy. He took another long, deep breath from the proffered reg, while clasping her bared hand for a moment in his icy grasp. The gnawing pain reassured him; the pressure of his touch made her feel like a woman blessed.
Morgan let go, intending on searching for the discarded masks in the murk swirling beneath them, and plummeted into the bulkhead below, careening against planes of steel coated with algae, thickly studded with zebra mussels, until he tumbled into Alexander Pope’s hovering corpse.
They needed masks and light. If somehow he could free them, it would be difficult to get out if they could see clearly, impossible if they couldn’t. He pulled the mask off the corpse and, reaching around blindly, he discovered one of the other masks tangled in the dead man’s floating limbs. Sliding sideways he grabbed at Miranda’s errant flashlight and looped the lanyard around his wrist. He pushed away with oxygen deprivation tearing at his lungs, and kicked upwards but was pinioned against the steel. His weights! His fingers refused to close around his weight-belt release. Grasping at Miranda and Rachel, he hauled himself upward hand over hand until he reached the air that Miranda held out for him. He drew in a deep breath and could taste her blood, or his own, in the mouthpiece. With a single tug she released his weights. The reverberations as they crashed against steel sent shivers of loneliness through both of them.
Once the masks were secure, Miranda blew hers clear of water. Rachel left hers flooded but continued regular breathing, holding the octopus mouthpiece between clenched teeth. Morgan secured Miranda’s flashlight around her wrist, took two deep breaths from the principal reg, then pressed the mouthpiece firmly between her lips, and with a quick parting squeeze on her arm he swam down and over to the door, swimming fiercely but
