In a pseudo moonlight cast by the blue emergency lighting, I realized Oceanus had inverted 180 degrees and that I was lying on the ceiling of the arboretum, a ravaged, upside-down inverted forest above me. Scrambling on all fours, I became entangled in vines as a loud buzzing filled the chamber. Looking down through a hole at the upper deck I could just make out the dark cluster of hives that occupied the entire domed ceiling.

The creaking of metal caused me to look up. Through the hole that had housed the spiral stairwell, anchored to the lower deck floor, was the remains of my cryogenic pod—only the base was never intended to support an inverted crypt. As I watched, the heavier back end of the half-ton assembly wrenched free, leading the front end to begin inching its way toward freedom—freedom being a free fall through the middle deck to the dome below and what easily sounded like a trillion bees.

Move! I climbed the branches of an inverted mango tree like a one-armed, wounded ape.

Seconds later, the cryogenic pod plummeted past me, crashing through an entanglement of thickly knotted branches before disappearing through the mid-deck ceiling.

Thankfully, the pod had struck a seven-foot-thick cushion of beehives, cushioning the aero gel dome—but agitating the nests!

If I needed additional motivation to move, the thought of being stung by several billion angry bees certainly did the trick. Dragging myself up through the stairwell hole, I climbed up into the lower deck, identified an exit, and climbed out into the inverted corridor.

I was in the docking area—perfect! Walking along a ceiling illuminated by flickering blue emergency lights, I located Docking Station Two … only the sub was gone.

So were the subs in stations one, three, and four.

That gave me hope that Andria and other members of the Omega crew had already abandoned ship—even as the revelation that I had been abandoned heated my insides like a blowtorch.

There was no time to dwell on either emotion as a powerful sea current caught Oceanus and the inverted habitat began rolling again.

I saw the crimson glow coming from inside the open egress chamber. Feeling like a hamster in a slow rolling wheel, I pushed my way inside the open watertight hatch.

Stepped through the rotating steel door frame into the tiled chamber.

Located a Steinke egress exposure suit from a pile and quickly adjusted the hood over my head.

Now get outside!

Tugging open the heavy interior pressurized door of the escape hatch using my only functioning arm, I sealed myself inside the topsy-turvy steel closet and stepped on the lever labeled EMERGENCY HATCH.

Seawater blasted sideways inside the rotating chamber. Seconds counted now as the flooded room rolled around me, the collapsing habitat God knows how far away from plunging into the sea canyon.