A buoyant fiberglass suitcase whacked me in the faceplate—an inflatable life raft! Gripping the handle with my left hand, I held on fast as Oceanus reached the canyon ledge, teetering on the precipice …

The green light flickered on.

With an explosion of bubbles the escape hatch popped open, the sudden pressure differential snapping the rusted hinges, sucking me and the fifty-five pound raft into the rumbling dark blue depths. For fifteen long seconds I was propelled horizontally through the water like a torpedo until my senses reoriented and I realized I was actually rising, being dragged to the surface by the buoyant case.

Looking down, I caught sight of the massive algae-infested sphere as it disappeared into the shadows of the trench.

“Andria!” The desperate prayers of a hypocrite accompanied me through curtains of azure light … and then the ocean belched me topside.

Blue sky, violet-tinged gray clouds.

A slanted horizon of water, viewed from a summit impossibly high—suddenly dropping a stomach-churning twelve stories into a walled valley of sea.

Dizzy, disoriented, and very queasy, I worked furiously at the latches of the suitcase as the valley rose beneath me, the swell levitating me high atop its mountainous back.

Popping the final latch, I yanked on the cord.

An explosion of compressed air blasted me sideways down the steep slope of the undulating wave. For a terrifying moment I was dragged underwater, dropping with the weight of the sea, unsure of where the raft had gone or for that matter which direction was up.

My head cleared the wild surface. The raft was nowhere in sight.

A swell rose beneath me so rapidly it caused me to puke what little food I had consumed. Floating on a two hundred foot crest, I gazed down upon the surrounding valleys of water and spotted the inflated orange island floating eighty yards away … rising on another swell, the distance increasing rapidly.

Plunging down my own mountain of ocean, I swam for it with one arm, my legs scissor-kicking me into a sidestroke, causing Yoni’s shoes to slip off my feet. Slowed by the egress suit, I paused to strip the hooded apparatus from my head and shoulders as the sea dropped beneath me again.

With my energy draining rapidly in the cold ocean, I launched into a furious sidestroke, swimming as hard as I could for as long as I could in the direction of the raft until I felt the ocean levitating beneath me once more. Righting myself, I searched the roiling surface … and finally spotted the four-man life raft floating upright less than fifty feet away, its tented shelter catching the wind like a sail.