See, you're not such a genius, you can be wrong. Now lighten up. As Lisa would say, enjoy the ride.

1,200 feet.

1,000 feet.

800 feet…

David's voice blared over the radio. "Dr. Wallace, you still with us?" Hank swung his camera around, but I pushed the lens away. "Dr. Wallace? Hello? Say something so we know you're alive."

"Fuck you."

600 feet… 520 feet… 440 feet…

The ocean melded from a deep purple into a royal blue as we passed the deepest depths a human had ever ventured on a single breath.

The second deepest point, only a few feet higher, had resulted in death.

365 feet…

Good… keep going, the water's weight subsiding every foot, the cracks slowing now.

310 feet.

I wiped away tears, my face breaking into a broad smile. Hank slapped me on the back and I giggled. Maybe we were going to make it.

"Control to Six, divers are in the water, standing by. Welcome back, team."

Lacombe winked at Hank. "Hey, Control, wait until you see what we've got on film."

Life is so fragile. One moment you're alive, the next, a semi-tractor trailer plows into you and it's all over, no warning, no final words or thoughts, everything gone.

At 233 feet, the bubble exploded inward, the Sargasso roaring through our sanctuary like a freight train, blinding us in its suffocating fury.

I saw the pilot's face explode like a ripe tomato as shards of acrylic glass riddled his harnessed body like machine gun fire. Hank appeared out of the corner of my eye, and then the Atlantic Ocean lifted me from my perch and bashed me sideways against the rear wall. Only the sudden change in pressure kept me conscious, squeezing my skull in its vise. Buried beneath this howling avalanche, I lashed out blindly in the darkness, my muscles lead, my hands groping… my mind recognizing the rear hatch even as it ordered my spent arms to turn its wheel.

I felt the surface ship's support cable snap beneath the weight of the sea. My hands held on desperately to the hatch as the freed submersible tumbled backward, falling once more toward the abyss.

The sudden loss of pressure tore at my eardrums.

And then, miraculously, the hatch yawned open.

My kids… I can't wait to hug them again …

Hank!

The left side of my brain screamed at me to get out, my chances of making it to the surface already less than 10 percent, but it was my right brain that took command, suddenly endowing me with the courage of Sir William Wallace himself.

I groped for Hank. Grabbed him from behind his shirt collar, then pushed his inert 195-pound body out the hatch, into the Sargasso's warm embrace.

A laborious twenty-five seconds had passed, and I was struggling to haul an unconscious man topside through 245 feet of water.

Get to the light …

I kicked and paddled, forcing myself into a cadence so as not to excessively burn away those precious molecules of air.