Matt shuddered; he wasn’t looking forward to the night dive for exactly all those reasons. But this dive…this was more like it. The water was a magnificent blue, like tinted glass, and so warm he was sure they didn’t really need their wetsuits. As he descended, he looked at his companions and smiled around his mouthpiece; the group stayed fairly close together – a school of oversized water mammals heading to the bottom to forage, clouds of bubbles streaming up behind them.

They neared the sand, and Matt spotted his first relic – a broken sphinx, probably weighing about two tons, and nearly perfectly formed. Andy swam in close to him and pointed at the stone lion creature, then gave Matt a thumbs up. Matt smiled; the geologist’s eyes were round with enthusiasm behind his goggles.

They headed on towards the island, and the sea floor started to resemble a building site or a disused quarry. Huge blocks, half-sunken columns, and giant slabs of coral-coated stone were all thrown together, all encrusted with algae, barnacles, and coral of all colors and ages. Then, looming up in the distance, a small broken mountain – the sunken Island of Pharos. To Matt, it looked like the carcass of some dead prehistoric creature curled up on the sand, the leviathan body all sharp angles and weird growths.

The group hovered in the water – the remains of the island were about several hundred feet around, and Mahmood had been right, it was broken into the three. Fish of varying sizes patrolled the deep cracks that dropped beyond the sun’s rays.

Adira swam on strongly and was first to the top, where she waited, floating above one deep rent. She pointed to Matt, and then to Hartogg and then into the other fissures: the meaning was clear – each take one and descend.

Thumbs up were returned, and then into the cracks each team descended.

Matt exhaled and, as the air left his lungs, his weight belt took him into the deep vent in the rock. It was wide enough for Andy to follow at his side, and the geologist nudged him, pointing out jutting edges and striations in the natural rock, and then making cracking apart motions with his hands. Matt nodded, getting it: the last earthquake must have been so huge it literally tore the island apart, and dragged the rest to the bottom as effectively as the kraken did ancient schooners.

As they dropped further, they both switched on wristband flashlights and pointed them downward. Matt was surprised and dismayed by how far their crack in the island descended, and as he kicked lower, he had to stop several times to repressurize his eardrums.

Close to the bottom now, the corals and sea grasses that relied on light had disappeared, and softer sponges dominated. Spiny crustaceans waved antennae from the rock ledges, and small fish darted in and out of Matt’s light beam. He heard his breathing loud in his ear, and the occasional clang from one of their tanks as they bumped into the ever-converging walls.