A baritone thrumming reverberates throughout the cabin, growing louder as they descend deeper. Mick is about to say something when the Barnacle suddenly lurches forward, accelerating down the shaft.

“Hey, slow down—”

“It’s not me. We’re caught in some kind of current.” He can hear the panic in her voice. “External temperatures rising. Mick, I think we’re being sucked into a lava tube!”

He grips the ladder tighter as the deep pulsating sounds cause the glass instrument panels in front of him to resonate.

The minisub plunges, spinning blindly down the hole like a beetle being flushed down a drainage pipe.

“Mick!” Dominique screams as she loses control of the Barnacle. She squeezes her eyes shut and grips the seat’s shoulder harness as the power fails and they are blanketed in darkness.

She feels herself hyperventilating, waiting for the jolt that will cause the sub to lose integrity to the suffocating sea. Oh, Jesus, God, I’m going to die, help me, please—

Mick has locked his arms and legs around the ladder, his palms clenching the steel bars in a viselike grip. Don’t fight it, let it come. Let the madness end …

Intense vertigo as the minisub spins round and around as if caught in a giant washing machine.

A sonic boom—a bone-jarring jolt: Mick is sent flying blindly through the pitch, the Barnacle driven bow-first into an immovable, unseen force, the air exploding from his lungs as his face and chest slam blindly into a stack of computer consoles.

Chapter 17

Chapter 17

GULF OF MEXICO
7,168 FEET BELOW THE SURFACE

The incessant pounding in his head forces Mick to open his eyes.

Silence.

He is lying on his back, his legs propped in the air, his upper body entangled in a sizzling array of broken equipment. The cabin is humid and pitch-dark, save for the dull glow of an orange console flickering somewhere in the distance. Up is down, left is right, and a warm liquid is dripping down his throat, gagging him.

He rolls over painfully, spitting out a mouthful of blood, his head still spinning. Tracing the blood to his dripping nostrils, he pinches off the flow.

For a long moment he just sits there, balancing unsteadily on sharp fragments of shattered computer monitors and navigational equipment as he tries to remember his name and where he is.

The minisub. The burrow … Dominique!

“Dom?” He spits out more blood as he climbs over a pile of equipment blocking his path to the pilot’s chair. “Dom, can you hear me?”

He finds her unconscious, still strapped within the pilot’s chair, her chin on her chest. His heart pounds with fear as he carefully reclines the chair all the way back, supporting her bleeding head in his hand before allowing it to rest on the back of the seat. He checks her airway, detecting shallow breaths. He loosens the harness, then tends to the deep, bleeding gash on her forehead.