I was called out on an emergency dive on the 12th of April 2013. Back then I usually did forensic and rescue dives, but this was something different entirely. Usually when I get called out, time is a definite and measurable factor. For example; someone could be in mortal danger, or there is a time-sensitive object that needs to be retrieved. This time, the objective wasn’t clear.
My first impression was that this was something catastrophic. I was called up in the middle of the night with no warning, and there was talk of a measurable ”geological event”. I wasn’t briefed, and every person involved just stone-walled me with a barrage of ”I don’t know”s. I knew pretty much anyone who worked on my level state-wide, but these people were just grey-faced anonymous nobodies.
They drove me all the way to Greenbrier Valley, WV. Just imagine this middle-of-nowhere dirt road covered by government-issued vehicles. Off the top of my head, I registered people from the USACE (United States Army Corps of Engineers), the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency), the USGS (United States Geological Survey) and the WVDNR (West Virginia Division of Natural Resources). Those were just the ones I recognized, but at least half of the vehicles were unmarked or straight up lies. I swear, one of them claimed to be a goddamn catering business.
I was pushed through a crowd of people. Some were screaming at their phones; others were screaming at one another. There was this one red-faced middle-aged man almost crying with frustration at a young woman. He kept waving his papers at her, and all she did was nod and smile. Somewhere along the line people started asking me questions.
“What’s the ETA on your prep?”
“Did you bring your own gear?”
“Are you signed in? Where’s the sign-in?!”
There were other people I’d worked with on-site. There was Garrett, who’d just turned 44, and Nora. I’d worked with Nora on a couple of rescue dives, but nothing on this scale. There were a few faces in the crowd that I vaguely recognized, but Garrett and Nora stood out; they were already suiting up. They were preparing for a cold dive and checking their equipment.
I had some papers shoved in my hands. As I signed in, I could see a bubble of people forming around one of the USACE representatives and an older woman in a professional pantsuit.
“You got 12 hours,” said the woman in the pantsuit. “Not a second longer. This is private property.”
“We can stall,” said the representative. “We can drag you through the courts.”
“Go ahead. I’m sure the judge is eager to hear you explain your sudden interest in our property.”
“We don’t have to explain shit, you fucking vulture.”
“In 12 hours, you will be considered trespassers. We will bring in private security, and you’ll be escorted off the premise.”
The woman in the pantsuit took a step forward, stabbing at the USACE representative with a stack of papers.
“Our congressman is eager to have you defunded, you fucking dolt.”
As the conversation died down, the representative was left seething in the dirt. She was fuming, and no one dared approach her. After a few seconds, she stormed off.
“Fucking hatchetmen,” someone in the crowd whispered as the woman in the pantsuit walked off. “Goddamn war criminals.”
Garrett waved me over, and I sat down on a log next to him. I started to dress down.
“Someone needs to talk to me,” I said. “Someone tell me what’s going on.”
“Earthquake,” said Nora. “Not a big one, but… yeah.”
“What the fuck does this have to do with an earthquake?”
“It’s the lake,” said Garrett. “You’ll see.”
Still putting on my gear, we were pushed forward. They took me by the arm and forced me on, drowning me in questions along the way.
When we finally stepped through a forest clearing, what was supposed to be a small lake opened up to us. Except it wasn’t a lake anymore. The water had been drained, leaving only a bed of dirt behind. Hundreds of seagulls picking at dying fish in a cacophony of screeches. Men in hazmat suits were trying to chase them off, but only ended up slipping back and forth in the mud.
In the middle of the drained lake was a hole, about 6 by 4 feet. It was the only space that still retained water. There were tables set up around it, along with security tape and red flags. About a dozen people spread out around a dozen laptops, making calculations, and checking measurements.
An anonymous woman popped up next to us, pushing us forward. I could sense the warmth of the sun on the horizon, about an hour from dawn.
“We’re doing a blind dive,” she said. “We need you to be in constant communication with us about anything you see. You’ll be going in within the hour.”
“We’re not doing that,” said Garrett. “There’s no emergency here. There’s no-“
Suddenly, Garret came tumbling into the mud. The woman had pushed him.
“You’re doing this,” she snarled. “You’re fucking doing this.”
“We’re not doing shit until we get-“
“You see that?!” she interrupted Garrett, pointing to the army of vehicles. “That right there is a sworn fucking oath that I will burn your goddamn life to the ground, you cocky fuck! Now you do this, or you’ll never touch a fucking glass of water again!”
Nora helped Garrett up, and we hurried down to the hole. I could barely hear anything over the feasting seagulls. I was thankful for the rubber mask keeping me from the smell of dead fish.
Two men tried their best to prep the basics, but we had nothing. There was basically no dive plan. No idea about the temperature, the stability, the currents, nothing. These people were completely clueless. The only thing they could answer was the size of what we were getting into.
The small quake had revealed a sprawling cave system, which the lake water had drained into.
Roughly 350 feet wide, and 700 feet deep.
All underground.
I tried my best to wrap my head round it. We tested our co-linked masks and settled on individual tracking lines. We’d be diving for 20 minutes, then set aside 25 for resurfacing and depressurizing. We would be having air tanks on rotation and constant contact with those up at the control. At the slightest sight of trouble, we’d bail, no questions asked. There was no way we’d go in blind for any longer than that. We agreed on resurfacing if there was a comms malfunction, even though we all knew hand signals by heart. This couldn’t go wrong, on any level.
We were still setting up when we were given hand chisels and self-sealing bags.
“We want samples of everything,” they told us. “Everything.”
Let’s try to put this into perspective. At this point, we barely knew anything. An earthquake had revealed a cave system on some kind of company property. The size and depth of this was unfathomable. In 12 hours, we would be kicked off the site; possibly so they could perform their own tests. This cave system had been completely isolated, possibly for tens of thousands of years. Maybe hundreds. Someone even kept throwing around the term “karoo ice age”, but that seemed improbable. This place would either be a unique resource, or a complete waste of time.
We were at least one to two hours in on the countdown when we first dipped our toes in the water. It was much colder than anticipated. As I sat on the edge, dangling my feet in the murky water, one of the on-site technicians double-checked my air tanks.
“Exciting, isn’t it?” he smiled. “I’m jealous.”
“How come?”
“You get to explore!” he chuckled. “An actual space that no human eyes have ever seen before!”
“That’s not always a good thing,” nodded Nora. “And there’s plenty of that on the ocean floor.”
We took that first plunge.
I could barely see anything because of the mud and the reeds, so we just went straight down. The water got colder with every foot, and little dust particles whizzing past me made it feel like driving through a rainstorm. As we got further down, this sense of unease settled in my chest. I’d never been so ill-prepared for a dive, and this was beyond anything I’d ever experienced. There’s a reason why people are advised to stay out of underwater caves.
This was, in more ways than one, uncharted waters.
We went down about 25 feet, where we finally hit rock bottom. The cave wall was rough and sharp, with some kind of thin crystal layer. Salt, I figured. Nora got a sample as anonymous voices buzzed in our ears. I could barely make out half of it.
“Go deeper,” a voice came through. “There’s nothing up there.”
We mapped out three different tunnels leading further down. The first one we checked turned out to be so thin my equipment risked snagging on the walls. We backed out and tried another tunnel until we found one large enough for us to comfortable move through. Still, it was more crawling than swimming.
“Turtle One, we’re getting seismic,” a voice came through. “Please respond.”
“Standby, equalizing.”
I could feel the mechanism from the camera on my shoulder whirring. Garrett came through on the local channel.
“No way the signal sticks,” he sighed. “Fucking granite and quartz. This is pointless.”
“Resurface in ten,” I said. “Check for samples in the cracks.”
The tunnel lead us to a small cave. The water was less murky, but the space was only about 15 by 20 feet, and at most 6 feet high. It was enough for us to regroup, check our tethers, and take a few samples. Nora found some kind of transparent goo lining a crack in the wall, while Garrett tried to chisel off a piece of the granite. I thought I saw something shimmering, but it was just the light from my camera reflecting off a piece of quartz. I grabbed it though, I couldn’t come up empty-handed.
Once our time was up, we came back up for air. We were slow and methodical, but we were getting results. There was no way we’d reach the bottom in 12 hours, but we figured we could get something interesting, given enough dives.
When we came back up, there was at least 50 people standing in a circle to look at us. Men in hazmat suits brought coolers for us to put the samples in, and two technicians were working on a hookah air hose system. We took a short break to wait for them to finish it, change up our air tanks, and plan our second dive.
This time, we could go deeper. The air hoses could reach 60 feet, but they were already working on an extension. Still, Garrett insisted on refreshing our air tanks as well; just in case.
As we hooked up the air hoses, the stiff chemical air from our tanks was exchanged with this musky forest breeze, stinking of dead fish and mud. There was also a little whiff of diesel from one of the on-site generators. As we dove back into the murky waters, we headed straight for the tunnels. This time we were going deeper. Past the reeds, past the mud.
We mapped out three more tunnels going further and further down. We moved carefully, our new air hoses working as tethers. But it didn’t take long for us to reach the limit. Nora called it in.
“Surface control, we need a longer line.”
No response.
We waited for a moment, but there was nothing on the other end. Timewise, it was probably around the break of dawn. Just like Garrett’d said, we’d gone too deep to hold a solid signal.
“I can go up and relay,” said Garrett. “Or we could just tug and hope for the best.”
“I’m not tugging on an air hose,” chuckled Nora. “Th-s -s –d en–gh.”
“What?
“You h—-ng thi-?”
Little bursts of static. The camera on my shoulder whirred like crazy. Nora gave me the hand signal for resurfacing and took point. Garrett and I followed. Time to bail.
There was a deep rumbling sound coming from beneath. It felt like the ground itself was trying to start a diesel motor; cycles of rumbling, making cracks in the walls. Something big was happening, and we had to get out now. I could feel my breath shortening as my body realized that air was no longer a certainty.
The moment Nora got through the first tunnel, I saw the rock wall shift. Solid knife-sharp granite moved with the ease of a child smacking a balloon. To the sound of a deafening thunderstorm, the tunnel collapsed above us, the air hoses got cut, and Nora’s foot was crushed into a pulp. Together they sprayed air and bone fragments into the water, as the sound of our collapsing world got loud enough to rattle my bones.
Parts of a blood-curdling screech came through our comms as the water started to move.
We were being sucked down.
I protected my head as I was tossed around the tunnels, further and further down. My air tank clinked against the wall. I instinctively gasped for air, but I could feel water rushing into my mask. There was no air supply on the other end; the hose was cut clean.
The walls rushed past me. I slammed my shoulder, my knee, my thigh, my shoulder. At one point, I smacked the back of my head, and I could feel my body temperature shift. It was a wound, but not a deep one. Somewhere in the chaos, I felt the camera on my shoulder come loose, and I got into a roll. I spun out of control and lost all sense of distance. It wasn’t just a few seconds of suction either, it was a significant amount of time.
My world spun and bashed me into the rocks over, and over, and over. I could feel blood leaving my body, and I was getting cold. Colder and colder, but I couldn’t tell if it was blood loss or the water. The word “disoriented” doesn’t begin to describe it.
At some point, it just stopped.
I was floating in this endless pool of darkness. A black, bottomless ocean. I couldn’t tell what was up and what was down anymore. I tried to move upwards, but it didn’t feel right. Not only did my arm refuse to move, but there was too much resistance. It took me a few seconds to realize I was trying to swim downwards; I was upside down.
There was water pooling in my mask. I could feel it just under my mouth. I could see little air bubbles popping, and I had to spit to keep my mouth clear.
It had a strange sugary taste, mixed with iron. But most of it was blood.
Something grabbed me.
My first instinct was to fight, but I couldn’t. I’d strained my arm, and my left foot was dislocated. I was shivering, and I could see a long gash across my thigh. That was just at the limit of what my mask light could pick up. I couldn’t even see my feet.
Garrett came into focus. He made a hand movement that I didn’t recognize. A closed fist, with fingers pushing outwards. A push. An exhale?
Right.
I exhaled, hard, pushing out the water in my mask. The next second, Garrett connected my air tank to my mask.
For a moment, we just looked at one another. He had a bad cut just above his right eye, and it was bleeding into his mask. Our comms were dead, we had to rely on hand signals. Garrett put a hand on my cheek and checked my mask for cracks. It seemed okay. He gave me the signal for ‘Okay?’ and I responded in kind. I was not okay, but I was well enough to move; if a bit slower.
We moved carefully and calmly. There was no way to tell how far down we were, and we had to be careful to preserve our air. At most, we had a little less than an hour of air if we could keep steady. Probably a lot less though.
Garrett and I held hands, slowly going upwards. It felt right. I was oriented.
We kept moving, but it felt like we hadn’t moved at all. The water was still black, and nothing changed. But at one point, Garrett suddenly stopped. I moved up next to him and followed his eyes. He looked upwards.
Little shimmers in the water.
Fish?
A school of dozens of little fish. They were about four inches long and azure blue. They were completely eyeless with their entire face covered in a thick octopus-like beak. They avoided us to the best of their ability, shooting past at an amazing speed. Still, they were close enough for Garrett to poke them if he wanted to. He didn’t, and neither did I. Whatever these were, they were native to the area; they could be venomous. Garrett tightened his grip on my hand, and we kept moving upwards.
After ten minutes of going in a straight line, we came to a full stop. A solid rock ceiling. Just a wall, without the hint of an opening or tunnel. It occurred to me that we might’ve come down horizontally through a side passage. If that was the case, we were doing the human equivalent of a fly buzzing against a window, trying to get out.
We looked around, but the ceiling was almost completely flat. There was no telling where we ought to go. Still, I had to try and keep calm. Panicking would just kill us faster. But even with this seemingly endlessly large space, I’d never felt so trapped in my entire life. I held my breath, trying to slow the shivers.
Garrett reached for his chisel. Poking at the wall, he managed to dislodge a few kernels of granite. He stared at them, looking for any sign of movement. Apart from sinking, they were slightly drifting to our left.
Of course. There was a current!
I was simultaneously trying to ignore how much time had passed, and at the same time counting the seconds. Garrett’s diving watch was busted, and mine hadn’t been properly reset before the second dive. It was still on time for our first. This was exactly the kind of shit I’d wanted to avoid, but we’d been so stressed to get back in.
At one point, the ceiling started to curve. And there, finally, was an opening. It seemed to lead upwards. We followed it, squeezing through a tight space where I had to exhale to pass through. Shimmying forward, breathlessly, inch by inch. Tons of unstable rock pressing on my aching chest.
Then, we broke through the surface.
Just like that.
We weren’t topside, this was an air pocket. It was large enough to fit us both, as long as we squatted a bit. There was a tunnel leading us further, but we decided to catch our breaths. I was the first to shut off my air and clean out my mask, but Garrett was quick to follow. Finally, we could speak freely. Stale, sugary sweet air filled our lungs. I coughed, making my ribs ache even more.
“The, uh… the lake water,” gasped Garrett. “It hadn’t settled. With the, uh… the temperature shift, from the… uh… the sunrise. That… that heated it. Got it moving.”
“So where… how deep?”
“Least, uh… least 300 feet. At least. And that’s just… that’s just straight down.”
“Nora. Did you-“
“No,” said Garrett, shaking his head. “It closed. She might be trapped up there, but at least she won’t drown.”
I nodded, gently massaging my foot. I was gonna have to pop it back into place, but just touching my skin sent bolts of pain up my shinbone.
“You could wait,” he said. “You’re hurt.”
“I’m not dying here.”
“Good.”
We caught our breaths and checked our equipment. We had about three quarters of our tanks left, so we were doing pretty good. We had some cuts and bruises, some that might need stitching. Nothing urgent, but it might get bad if left untreated. Who knew what kind of bacteria was down there. I couldn’t stop shivering, and Garrett was getting worried. He kept asking if I was sleepy. Honestly? I could feel it. There was something there. Eyelids growing heavy as my lungs strained against my ribs.
We got back down under water, our equipment clean and secured. The tunnels were slowly widening, allowing us to crawl forward. There were a few intersections, and we did our best to map where we’d gone. I had some remaining scraps from the ripped air hose that we pushed into cracks in the wall, sort of marking our path like breadcrumbs. At the very least, we could get back to the air pocket if necessary.
We went down a few tunnels, only to be met with a series of dead ends. It was a goddamn labyrinth, and my heart sank with every stop. When we finally found a path going forward, we had a difficult choice to make. We could circle back and regroup or push forward and save some time. Every minute moving backwards would be a loss, but every minute forward could be a death sentence. Garrett squeezed my hand, looking for some kind of guidance.
I signed ‘forward’.
The tunnel opened into a vertical shaft, going straight up. I could feel a slight rush of water, gently pushing us back down. It was only for a moment, but it made me realize that the current was getting stronger.
Suddenly, the water started to shimmer. Hundreds of azure-colored fish rushed past us, down into the depths of the tunnels. Maybe they followed the current. Either way, they had to come from somewhere, so we pushed forward. Garrett squeezed my hand in celebration.
There was another set of tunnels in the ceiling, branching into several paths. They all looked deep enough to lead somewhere, so we just picked one at random. I couldn’t mark our path any further, I had nothing left to leave behind.
We kept going upwards until Garrett suddenly stopped. There was something shimmering in the tunnel ahead. Some kind of gemstone, or quartz. They reflected the lights of our masks. Another dead end.
Or eyes?
These… nightmare orbs. Predatory and unfeeling.
An unthinking creature, incapable of seeing me as a person.
For that one second, I was nothing but meat.
It came out of the dark. It had these long bone-like arms, like a rubbery spider monkey needle-sharp teeth, made for stripping flesh from bone. It didn’t swim; it crawled along the rocky walls. It was fast. Fast enough to catch little azure fish.
It was large, but that didn’t slow it down. It could barely squeeze through the tunnel, while Garrett and I could move freely.
We were never meant to meet that thing. Never. To this day, I can’t look down dark corridors. I can imagine those arms reaching out for me.
I ignored every safety precaution I’d ever known. I rushed. I huffed. I screamed. I crawled, kicked, and forced myself back down as fast as humanly possible. I didn’t care about the searing pain in my foot, I just had to keep going. All I could feel was the water moving behind me, as every sudden movement transferred into waves pushing against my aching limbs.
But I didn’t care. At that moment, I didn’t care about anything but getting away.
At the mouth of the tunnel I turned around for a brief second; only to see Garrett’s wide eyes staring back at me. In that moment, I could tell what he was thinking. He realized that he was about to die.
Long fingers wrapped around him as his right arm was ripped from the socket. I could feel the snap reverberating through the tunnel.
Vibrations from his death screams reached me, but all I could hear was my own panicked breathing.
I remember flashes of shimmering azure as I fled down tunnel, after tunnel, after tunnel. Didn’t see a single marker. Every bump of the foot made my eyes tear up, and I could feel a sore starting to build around the edge of my nose from the crying.
There was another air pocket, but I just kept pushing forward. I had no idea where I was, but I could just feel those dark eyes looking for me. Arms reaching for me.
The air in my tank started to feel strange. Warm. Panicked, I kept going forward. When I finally came to another air pocket, I tore my mask off and shut the air tank. Everything tasted blood and salt, and I couldn’t stop crying. It was just this small space, just big enough for my head to fit if I tilted it right.
The light on my mask was dying. It had started to flicker. If I held it at the right angle, it was fine, but it was just a matter of time.
I stayed there for at least ten minutes, just trying to breathe. I was lost and cold. There was no telling how long I’d been down there. I couldn’t even tell how much air I had left in the tank, but it wasn’t much. If I wanted to move, I had to ration it. But I couldn’t move without it, there was no way I’d be lucky to find another air pocket within… what, a minute of free diving?
But I couldn’t stay there. I didn’t trust a single person up there. There were no rescue parties coming down here anytime soon. Even if they wanted to, could they? And even without a predator stalking these tunnels, I was going to freeze to death. And I was still bleeding.
Wait. Bleeding.
Shit!
My pulse rose as I felt something shift. A pressure in the tunnel underneath. There was no way I could move fast enough, I just had to hope against hope it wouldn’t find me. Maybe it didn’t hunt like a shark. I held my breath and felt strokes of movement in the water. It was moving this way.
I closed my eyes so hard my head started to spin. Tears trickled out of my eyes, making little plopping noises as they hit the surface of the water. It was barely audible, but to me it felt like hammer blows.
The strokes stopped. It was close.
I carefully opened my eyes to look down; but everything was dark.
My mask light had given up.
Moments later, the strokes continued past me. Maybe it wasn’t used to hunting humans.
Or maybe it was taking its prey back to the nest.
When I could no longer feel the strokes, I exhaled; coughing violently. My mouth tasted blood. There was no choice left; I had to keep going with what little I had.
I secured my mask and let my hands rest in the water for a moment. Just floating around in that little space was unlike anything I’d ever experienced before. It was such an alien, primal feeling. I’d been in trouble before, but nothing like that. Nothing even remotely like that.
I slowed my breathing and took the plunge.
To my surprise, there was one strange sensation I hadn’t noticed. When the lights were off, it was easier to sense the current. Maybe it was a “rely on other senses” kind of thing, but it was much clearer. Even in the dark, I could feel the right way for me to go. A circulation of some kind, coming from above.
As I came to a branching tunnel, it was a bit harder to tell where I was supposed to go. I decided to just keep going up, so I did. The current was getting stronger, and all of a sudden, I breached into another air pocket. But I could hear something; a metallic clinking.
It didn’t take me long to find it.
Garrett’s air tank.
On one hand, I was incredibly lucky.
On the other hand, that thing was close. Really close.
I still had a little juice left in my tank, so I hobbled forward. This air pocket was large, more like a cavern. Ankle-deep water forcing me to walk and actually feel my body weight. I’ve never felt so heavy in all my life, and the equipment didn’t help.
I was so tired. I could easily have lied down and just… died. Or slept. Whatever came first.
Instead I pushed on with an extra tank in hand.
I kept going further and further up. I started to hold my breath for as long as I could, using only what little air I had when absolutely necessary. I could feel more of those little fishing rushing past me; sometimes with me, sometimes towards me. It dawned on me that they might be fleeing a pursuing predator, and that I was an idiot for not following them. Then again, they might just be following the current. There was no way to tell.
I must’ve flailed around through caves, passages and tunnels for hours. Using every air pocket I could find, and eventually just ditching my tank. All I had left was what scraps remained in Garrett’s tank.
Every feet started to feel like a death sentence, like I was digging my own grave. Maybe if we’d just stayed put in the first place, someone would’ve found us. Maybe being proactive was the wrong move.
I was going upwards when I felt the air in Garrett’s tank start to go bad. When I managed to breach into yet another air pocket, I just threw it aside. This was it. This was the end of the line.
The tank clanged against the sides of the cave, and somewhere further in, I heard a noise. A little gasp.
Something had heard me.
I stuck myself to the wall as I heard large wet feet slapping against the cave floor. It had this strange frog-like breath, like air pushing against a membrane.
Hnnng. Hnnng. Hnnng.
I was standing in a painful angle, putting all my weight on my healthy foot. It had stopped. It listened.
Blood, dripping from my arm, plopped against the water.
Luckily, it didn’t hear me, or care. Instead, I heard a bone snap like a carrot. Then, the sound of gnawing, and eager suckling.
I must’ve stood there, paralyzed, for at least half an hour. Then I heard it go down a side tunnel, and disappear into the deep. This was my shot.
I hobbled away, only to step on something.
A partly devoured foot.
From that point on, it was just… systematic and careful plunges. Follow the current for thirty seconds. If I couldn’t feel a way forward, I turned back, caught my breath, and tried a different path. I was holding my breath so much that my chest had started to ache more than my foot. Still, I was making progress.
Finally, I came to this large vertical chute. I felt a rush going upwards. There had to be something.
Anything.
I held my breath for as long as I could, waiting for the surface, the air pocket.
But this time, there was nothing.
Dead end.
I just slammed into a smooth surface, knocking myself over the head. A part of me wanted to scream so bad that air pushed out of my lungs. I could feel a cramp in my leg. Pain, as my body retched and turned.
But the surface was smooth. Unnaturally so. Almost metallic.
I pounded it with my fist. It was thin, but heavy. Definitely metallic. But with every pounding fist, I could feel something else move.
Something was coming up from below.
It found me.
It started with a tickle against my good leg. These little fingers tenderly wrapping themselves around my ankle, ready to pull me down. I didn’t let it. I kicked, crawled, pushed myself upwards, and pounded the metal. A cramp in my arm forced me to scream.
Something grabbed me from below, pulling me down at least four feet before I managed to kick myself lose. Gaining momentum, I flung myself upward. Again crashing into the metal surface.
But this time, it buckled. Just an inch, but it buckled.
Suddenly, there was light.
Air.
And whatever reached for me recoiled in fear.
Four men had moved what looked like a makeshift manhole cover out of the way, and they pulled me up. I didn’t even notice I was breathing.
I just forced air into my lungs so I could keep screaming.
And screaming.
And screaming.
…
Turns out, Nora made it to the surface. She’d lost a foot, but she’d made it. She’d been airlifted out, and the entry was sealed. They’d tried to get another diving team, but there was no one else around. If they’d had more time, they’d have flown out another crew of four from Minnesota.
I was down there for a total of 9 hours and 37 minutes.
I had to sign a contract not to speak about this for ten years. That time is up, and now I’m telling you what I know. Garrett died down there, and Nora was permanently maimed. I like to consider myself lucky, but I didn’t come out of this unscathed either. I don’t want to go into detail, but there are wounds that isn’t as easily seen as a missing foot.
That space was bought by this investment company called Hatchet. I’m pretty sure they’re still operating there today. I’ve seen the chain-linked fences, and the warning signs. Not to mention the armed guards.
I’ve since moved on from diving. I can barely swim in a pool anymore.
And honestly?
I’m fine with that.