The Ocean Dark

80

What frightened Tori the most were the side tunnels, most of them too narrow for a person to fit through. Some were actually fissures, cleaved into the walls as though some giant axe blade had split the black, glassy rock. The darkness inside those clefts was absolute — a blackness unlike anything she had ever seen, like holes in the fabric of the world. From some of them she could hear a trickle of water, and in others a louder shushing ebb and flow. The tide was rising. Would water eventually come up through those holes and fissures, just as it would from the cave mouth they had left behind some long, tense minutes ago? She thought it would.

For now, though, there were only the sounds and, from some, the breath of steam — a hot mist that made the tunnel like a sauna. The volcano beneath them might be dormant — at least according to Dr. Ridge it was — but down in its heart, a furnace still burned.

The tunnel had widened as they moved deeper into it, enough so that they could walk two by two, although the craggy ceiling remained so low that they could only move in a crouch. Shuffling along, backs bent, had not slowed them at first, but Tori had felt them all slowing down as the discomfort of that hunched progress grew. Lieutenant Commander Sykes led the way with a Maglite, strobing the tunnel ahead, the barrel of his pistol pointed at every sharp edge and turn. Behind him ambled Alena and Dr. Ridge. Ridge had another flashlight, its powerful beam illuminating Sykes as much as it did any of the tunnel. He tried to insist that Alena allow him to help her, but the woman refused. She confessed to having cracked ribs, and she walked as gingerly as their need for speed would allow, one hand pressed to her side, but she never complained and never slowed.

Tough as nails, Tori thought, with deep admiration, as she and Josh followed behind the two scientists.

The other three sailors — Charlie, Mays, and Garbarino — brought up the rear, their own Maglite beams bouncing around Tori and Josh, illuminating bits of tunnel wall or ceiling for an instant before moving on. She took comfort in those lights, and in having those sailors behind her, and Sykes up front. It didn’t make her safe — none of them were safe — but the illusion pleased her.

Josh stumbled and fell to his knees beside her, swearing in a low voice, and the three sailors came to a halt, shining their lights on him. In that brightness, the pain etched on his face was terrible to see. Small beads of sweat had formed on his forehead.

“You okay?” she asked.

His chuckle held a grim irony. “Not even close. Doc Dolan gave me a couple of extra Vicodin for the road.” Josh looked up, his smile a grimace. “I took them early, spoiling myself. Half an hour before the cave-in. They aren’t doing shit.”

Then a terrible thought hit him. Tori watched it reach his eyes. “Or maybe they are. I don’t even want to think about that.”

She understood. If the Vicodin were working and he was in this kind of pain, how much worse would it be when the drugs wore off?

Tori put a hand on his shoulder. Making love to him in her quarters on board the Antoinette seemed to have happened in another life, so distant now, but still the contact felt electric. Down here in the dark, with the promise of death all around them, that seemed far more important to her than the fact that he’d hidden his true identity from her.

“Come on. Up,” she said, slipping a hand under his right arm and helping him to his feet.

Josh drew a sharp breath through his teeth.

“You gonna make it, Agent Hart?” asked one of the sailors. Mays, she thought, but their faces were hard to make out in the darkness behind their Maglite beams.

“So far, so good,” Josh replied. Exhaling, he started walking again, and they began to catch up to Sykes, Alena, and Ridge.

“Poor baby,” Tori said, softly so only he would hear.

Josh actually laughed, then grunted with pain. The laugh had hurt him, but she only felt a little sorry.

“You must be loving this,” he replied.

“Trying to find a way out of a tunnel before something kills me? Not really.”

“I meant seeing me in pain.”

Without thinking, Tori settled in closer to him, let him put some of his weight on her. His legs were fine, but pain, shock, and blood loss were taking some of the fight out of him.

“It has its charms, I admit.” But she couldn’t keep up the facade, or the humor. “That’s a lie. I never wanted you to be hurt.”

“Never?”

Apparently, Josh hadn’t lost his sense of humor, even if hers had deserted her. Maybe it was all that was keeping him going.

“Well, maybe for a while,” she admitted. “But right now I just want to be able to stand up straight. And daylight would be nice.”

“Yeah,” Josh agreed. “It would.”

They fell silent after that, moving together through the tunnel as it narrowed and then widened again, the beams from the sailors’ flashlights bouncing all around them. More and more often, she heard Josh hiss through his teeth, trying to bite back his pain, and when the lights passed him, she could see the struggle on his face.

Tori realized that it might well be up to her to save his life, and the thought staggered her. Somehow the world had inverted. It felt like discovering an entirely new Tori … one that she had never known existed.

A powerful new sense of purpose filled her as she studied the crevices in the walls and the tunnel that Sykes, up ahead, led them all through. Survival had always seemed like a matter of luck or fate to her, but now she saw it differently. Survival, Tori realized at last, came from determination. It came not from hiding, but from acting.

They passed a crevice that slashed down through the tunnel wall and into the floor. From below she heard the ebb and flow of the tide — like the ocean breathing, in and out — but she felt sure something splashed down there as well. Something waiting.

“Mr. Sykes, we’ve got to pick up the pace,” she said, calling forward to him. “The tunnel’s not taking us any higher. If we don’t find somewhere we can go up instead of just across, the water will be on us before we know it.”

“I’m going as fast as I can,” the lieutenant commander called back.

But Dr. Boudreau glanced over her shoulder at Tori, and then turned forward again, picking up her pace despite the way she clutched at her cracked ribs.

“No, you’re not,” Alena said. “She’s right. You’re matching my speed, taking it easy on me. And we can’t afford that.”

Sykes said nothing, but the pace did pick up.

“Thanks a lot,” Josh complained.

But Tori knew he realized they had no choice, that someone had to say it.

“You’re welcome.”