Chapter 101: Chapter 45: Rolling in the deep

> “Disaster has struck. It seems to be a theme for this era or perhaps someone’s joke. The Foxhound has been sunk by the Hellgate, sending our Relic to the bottom of the river along with a bevy of other valuables Lord Theo had secured. And despite our abilities, we have no means of retrieving the cargo from the depths in this age.”

A surge of muscle memory flooded into my body as I snaked my way down the wreck reel that Beatrice had set the other day. Although I couldn’t remember the details of the bead Dalia had fed me after my insane training all-nighter, all of my limbs did, and it was as if I had been exploring sunken ships in the Caribbean and the Mediterranean for the better part of my life. Except here in the muck of the East River, all I could see was the line leading me down to the bottom. To where the Hell Gate had claimed its last victim.

The little diving drone circle around me as I descended, providing extra light and a bit of comfort that I wasn’t entirely alone. And of course, recording for posterity my potential horrible death-by-inexperienced-scuba. I tried not to think about the most likely outcome and instead just kept spiraling down.

At 50 feet, the temperature reading on the gauge on my wrist began to dip. Still, it was a far cry from the freezing swimming pool I had trained in, and I suspected Dalia had put me through the paces so that the actual dive would feel like a walk in the park. Or, more appropriately, a swim in a gentle pond.

“All good, Red?” crackled a voice in my ear.

“All good, over,” I said back at Ty.

“Good to hear. Air supply looking stable. See you at the bottom, over.”

“Fun times,” I said, but received no response.

The further down I dove, the more aware I was of how many more breaths were needed to fill my lungs. With barely anything to look at to distract me, it was like a tiny pebble in my head that kept gathering speed and strength as it rolled downhill. Thankfully, Beatrice interceded before I had a full-on freakout.

“Your heart rate is elevated a bit,” she said, interrupting the silence. “I’ll talk you the rest of the way there.”

“Copy,” I said, not wanting to waste extra breath with a longer response.

“You’re doing great,” she replied. “Honestly, I didn’t think you had this in you. The Jen I met that first day at BSG certainly wouldn’t have made it this far. But something inside of you has awakened. It’s taken you to heights and depths, across the country on a whim, and into and out of anomalous voids that shouldn’t exist. So just keep pulling yourself down, inch by inch, foot by foot. And go find that stupid sword.”

I did as she said, trying not to get emotional, as those were the nicest things Beatrice had ever said to me. Maybe later she would say it was all just a motivational tactic get me to the finish, but for the moment, I wanted to believe that she truly meant it. In any event, it did the trick, and I soon found myself reaching the bottom of the reel a minute ahead of schedule.

“Landed, over,” I said, and I turned my head slowly to survey the wrecked Foxhound. The reel had brought the drone and me to the stern of the ship, which was almost covered in yellow blooms of coral. Yet the vessel still seemed mostly intact, which was surprising, given the 150+ interceding years and the toxic cesspool that was the East River. I nodded to the drone’s camera, set my feet against the line, and pushed myself forward.

“Stay clear of the coral. It’s sharp, over,” said Ty.

“Copy, over,” I said.

The little robot whirred alongside me as I swam over the top deck, a small comfort in a place where comforts were glaringly absent. One of the masts was still in once piece and upright, a fact we had marveled at during the drone’s first reconnaissance trip. I reached it and, ignoring Ty’s advice, ran the rear of my gloved hand across the base, which, unlike the rest of the ship, was covered in a deep blue coral.

“Ow,” I said, pulling back to see that the polyp had made a sharp incision in the fabric.

“I told you, over,” said Ty, but I ignored her. Thankfully, the cut had not made it down to my skin, but now I had to contend with the added annoyance of the tepid water flowing into the glove.

“Lose it, over,” said Beatrice. “The water temperature is not that bad. You’ll be fine.”

“Copy,” I said, pulling the damaged glove free and adding it to the wooden graveyard below.

“No more stops,” Beatrice continued. “You gave back your extra time with this dalliance, over.”

“Understood, over,” I said. Fortunately, the aft cabin was not much farther and with a few more kicks, I had reached it. The drone caught up a minute later, slowed by the cable tethering it to the surface. It moved forward purposefully with its grabber claw outstretched and tapped the knobless door, which was also remarkably still in one piece and free of coral.

“Does it look solid to you?” asked Beatrice. “Hard to tell from the video, over.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Try pushing it in,” she said.

“Copy.”

I swam forward and pushed the door with my gloved hand, but nothing happened. A second push had a similar lack of success, and pushing with both hands didn’t do the trick either.

“Activating strength, over,” I said. I tapped the red button and took several deep breaths. A moment later, I felt the buff’s power flowing through my body, and I cautiously approached the wooden barrier again. Forming my gloved hand into a fist, I tried to smash through the door, but was defeated by the water’s resistance.

“You need speed, too,” said Beatrice. “Otherwise, it will be like slowly hitting a punching bag with a 100-pound weight. But only a little. And then after you break through, hit the blue immediately so your body can recover, over.”

I hit the green button as instructed, inhaled once, and waited for the world to slow around me. Except that 100 feet down in the muck with only the wooden door to look at it, I couldn’t even tell if it was working, until Beatrice tried to talk to me again and all I heard was gibberish.

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I ignored her, pulled my arm back one more time, and punched. And instead of the door smashing apart, I was knocked backward, as if there was an equal and opposite force behind it waiting for me.

“Shit,” I said, as I frantically pushed the blue button and inhaled.

“… unexpected,” said Ty, as the world returned to normal speed.

“Shit is right,” said Beatrice. “It must be hardened with alchemy.”

“That much I gathered,” I said. I glanced at my watch to see how much air I had left, and immediately realized what a mistake that was.

“Calm, Jen, calm,” said Beatrice. “You have plenty of time still. We’ll figure this out.”

The drone’s propeller kicked up and began inspecting the surrounding area. I swam out of the way to let it work, lest I get tangled in its cable. After a minute of exploring, its claw moved forward and grabbed something on the deck just outside the door.

“What are you doing up there?” I asked.

“Finding you your way in,” said Ty. “Look what our little friend discovered.”

I swam to the drone and looked at its now-outstretched “hand.” In it was a familiar looking token. It was not gold, like mine, for it had been on the bottom of the river for too long, but it still bore the Alerion sigil.

I stared at the token and then stared at the door, and sure enough, there was a circular-shaped slot in the center, the same as the one in my Guild office.

“How … what-” I said.

“No time for questions,” said Ty. “Just open it.”

I nodded and grabbed the token from the drone, swam all the way up to the slot, and placed the circular key inside.

Nothing happened.

“Huh, over,” said Ty. “Maybe it broke after-”

The door started retracting into the side of the cabin and when a large enough gap had appeared, I kicked myself through, until I was in a small chamber that extended only a foot beyond the door. I quickly scanned the far wall and found another sliding door, but with no second token to unlock it, I feared there would be no way to enter the cabin.

“What is this room, over?” I said.

“Dunno,” said Ty. “This isn’t in the plans. It just shows one large chamber.”

“Maybe you need to close the outer door, over,” said Beatrice.

“Copy,” I said. “I guess this is where I leave you.”

“Good luck, Jen, over,” said Beatrice.

I pushed the door with my naked hand and watched the drone disappear as it slid closed.

Again, nothing happened. But then something completely unexpected did. The grinding of metal on metal sounded all around me and I looked up to see the water level slowly dropping.

“The water is draining,” I said. “Holy shit!”

“No way!” said Ty. “It’s getting pumped out somehow.”

The small chamber continued to drain until I was forced to swim to the bottom, and when the water lowered to just below my knees, I set my feet onto the ground and stood. Finally, when the last of it was gone, I heard a loud hiss and the second door slid open.

“I’m walking—not swimming—into the captain’s cabin, over,” I said.

“A rudimentary airlock!” said Beatrice. “Unbelievable!”

“It must have been designed as a failsafe,” said Ty. “To preserve whatever was in here if the ship was lost.”

I entered the inner chamber to find something I was not expecting at 100 feet below the surface: a room filled only with air.

“The cabin seems to be watertight, over,” I said. “Maybe I can-”

“Do not take your mask off,” said Beatrice. “That air has been sitting there for over a hundred years. There’s no oxygen left, over.”

“How do you know that?” quipped Ty in my other ear.

“My past life as a chemical engineer,” said Beatrice. “Haven’t you ever heard of Henry’s Law?”

“Yeah!” said Ty. “I mean, no. Must have skipped that day last semester.”

“It’s like how oxygen gets into your blood,” said Beatrice. “And carbon dioxide comes out. All the oxygen escaped a long time ago. You take your mask off, Jen, and you’ll get a heaping breath of CO2.”

“OK, understood. Not taking my mask off, Professor, over.”

The room was pitch-black, save for my headlamp, and I turned slowly in a semicircle to see what other secrets were hiding down here. To my left was a small bookcase, and for a moment, I grew excited at the prospect of recovering another set of alchemic records, but sadly, it was completely empty. The right side yielded a painting of the Foxhound in its former glory. I walked toward it and ran my bare fingers along the canvas, hoping to maybe find a cache of Dragon’s blood hidden within, but the surface felt dull and flat, almost as if someone had screen printed the picture on.

I followed the wall with my light to the back of the room, where I was greeted with an eerie sight: a carbon copy of the desk from my Guild office. I relayed my discovery to my support team, but was met only with skepticism.

“Don’t think they’re the same,” said Ty. “My mom always said she wished that Grandma Thera had spent more than 10 minutes furnishing headquarters.”

“If you say so,” I said. “But why does it feel like there’s something you’re not telling me?”

“What do you mean, over,” said Ty.

“This wasn’t just some transport-for-hire,” I said. “This was a bona-fide Guild member.”

“An interesting theory,” said Ty. “But for a later time. You need to keep moving. No telling how long that magic airlock is going to hold up, especially after all these years.”

“Fine, over.”

The desk’s top two drawers were completely empty, but as I was closing the third one, I heard a rattling noise, as if something was rolling around inside. I inspected it again, but felt and saw nothing. That was, until I ran my bare hand one final time along the bottom and finally found what I was looking for: a small indentation that would have gone unnoticed if I hadn’t torn my glove in the first place. I pushed down on it and the front popped up to reveal the source of the noise: a large-ish silver bead.

I picked it up, expecting it to be just another piece of electrum, but it was noticeably heavier, with intricate lines circumscribing its surface, and it felt ice cold.

“I think…”

I stopped myself before I finished uttering the thought. Something still didn’t feel right and this hidden trinket was perhaps at the center of it. So I tucked it away in one of the wetsuit’s many pockets for further study outside the purview of certain companions at the surface.

“…that I need to keep searching the room, over.”

“Agreed,” said Ty.

I peered awkwardly under the desk, trying to avoid tipping over, but found the space underneath completely empty. The same was true of the rest of the cabin, and I felt my pulse begin to quicken as the futility of this entire ordeal crystallized inside my head.

“There’s nothing here!” I said. “Where’s Curtana?”

“Are you sure?” asked Ty. “It has to be down there. Keep looking, over.”

“I’ve looked,” I said. “Another five minutes isn’t going to change anything except the amount of air I have left.”

“But you haven’t,” said Beatrice. “Walk along that wall again. Does it go straight from back to front?”

I quickly traversed the edge of the room and reported back that it did.

“The plans show an inset space,” said Ty.

“The painting,” said Beatrice.

“What about it?” I asked.

“Take it down.”

“Fine, over.”

I walked over to the painting and tried to remove it from whatever hanging mechanism had kept it there for over a century, but found it surprisingly stuck to the wall.

“Too heavy,” I said. “Won’t come off, over.”

“Then it’s a good thing you’re hauling those extra tanks on your back,” said Ty.

“Copy,” I said, hitting the red button again and inhaling a larger dose of strength than before. I counted to five, grabbed an end of the painting with each hand, and pulled.

I don’t know if it was the increased strength hit or the lack of resistance thanks to the lack of water, but the next thing I knew, I was on the ground, the painting on top of me, and staring up at an alcove in the cabin wall, inside of which was a long wooden box with an ornate handle and hinges on its side.

I struggled to get back to my feet, but found that the blowback from the strength buff made every movement seem like I was trapped in hardening concrete. Somehow, I forced my hand forward a few inches, pushed the blue vitality button with one final burst of energy, and gulped the next breath of air as if it was my last.

“What happened, over?” said Beatrice.

“Pulled too hard,” I said as I got to my feet. “But I think I found it, over!”

“Well done, well done!” said Ty. “Now let’s blow this thing and go home!”

I walked to the wall, grabbed the handle on the box with my bare hand, and removed it from its hiding place. Which is right before I noticed a trickle of water seeping down the back of the alcove.

“Umm,” I said. “I think we have a problem, ove-”

The East River smashed through the cabin’s wall like a boxer landing a body blow, knocking me off balance. Before I could regain my footing, the ceiling of the cabin gave way as well, sending wood and water crashing down on top of me, and the last thing I remembered before blacking out was the frantic voices from the surface screaming in my ears.