Part Two
The gentle roll of the ship on the light swell and reflected sunlight off the
water were spots of serenity in the commotion around Captain Grey as he and
Captain Sepia were getting ready to do some diving. ‘It’s nice to have fine
weather while we try to stop the Mysterons destroying this complex. Let’s hope
that we are able to cover everything. Doing a dive patrol is definitely not the
same as one on land. You can’t see as far for one thing,’ he thought.
He
couldn’t help but give a little grunt as he settled his air tanks on his back
and ran through an equipment test with a dive technician.
“Everything has come up green, Captain Grey,” the technician, Petty Officer
Turmen, stated. “If you would please take a couple breaths, I’ll do the finial
calibration of your dive comp. Then you’ll be good to go.”
With a nod, Grey complied as Turmen placed the computer’s sensor on the inside
of his wrist and adjusted its settings.
“There, all done, Captain,” Turmen said as he finished. “Now you’ll have an
accurate analysis of how your body’s coping with the dive.”
“Thank you, Petty Officer Turmen,” he replied. “See you when we return top
side.” Turning, he called to Sepia, “Ready to go?”
“S.I.G., Grey, all checked and A-okay,” answered Sepia.
“Good, see you in the water,” and with that, he secured his regulator and full
face mask before going over the ship’s side and down into the Atlantic Ocean’s
embrace.
He
took a moment to look at his surroundings, feeling at home. Even though they
were there because of a Mysteron threat, he missed it. Things were so different
underwater… Then, swiftly but carefully he and Sepia made their way to
the area they were to patrol.
The area had some of the robot garages, conveyor belts and a large number of
pipes. This lot isn’t going to be easy to check or patrol. Oh well, at least
I’m not going to be in any danger of being bored to tears,’ Grey thought.
Sepia’s voice came over the communication channel. “Man, Grey, how are we
going to tackle this? There’s so many places where the Mysterons could start to
bring about their threat.”
“You’re right Sepia. It’s not going to be easy. We’ll just have to keep our eyes
open, be our usual methodical selves and hope that the fates of the ocean favour
us.”
“Well I certainly hope that they do, we could use all the help we can get.”
Grey found himself nodding. He definitely agreed with his partner’s response.
“Here’s SS bay 3, time to start being meticulous.”
“S.I.G.,
Grey.”
He
swam closer to begin the scanning of SS Bay 3 using the latest piece of
equipment the personnel at SIRAD (Spectrum Intelligence’s Research and
Development Section) had come up with. Who knew that something
good would have come out from the loss of those Koala Base hovercrafts? Those
small bolts they had salvaged from the wrecks had resulted in a breakthrough in
finding if objects had been mysteronized. X-rays were all well and good for
living things, but this new detector would make their jobs a bit easier.
Appreciative, he began checking for any sign of Mysteron tampering. Thankfully,
they found none, so they moved onto the next area, where they came up with the
same result: no sign of Mysteron interference. In the next area, Grey noted that
there was quite a number of small pipes in close proximity to each other. It
wasn’t going to be easy to check among them – a very good place to set up some
type of disruption. “Sepia, the space between those pipes is too small for both
of us, so you stay out here. I’ll keep in constant contact, that way you should
know if I get into any trouble.”
“S.I.G., Grey, but you better be bloody careful in there.”
“I
will,” he replied as he entered the maze of pipes.
“Are you sure there’s not enough room for both of us?”
Sepia queried.
“Absolutely. There’s barely enough for me to be able to check them out,” he
answered as he carefully tested and scrutinized each pipe. “As it is, I can only
go forward, for there’s no way I can turn around.”
“Oh.”
He could hear the concern in Sepia’s voice; nevertheless, Sepia was a
professional and showed it when in continued by asking, “How does it look,
Grey? Any sign of Mysteron influence?”
“Spectrum is green, Sepia. So far, there’s been no sign of any sabotage or any
bombs.”
“Great, let’s hope it stays that way.”
“I
couldn’t agree more. I’m almost done, so I’ll be back with you soon.”
“S.I.G., Grey.”
He
was pleased that he was able to see the last of the pipes; being in such a
confined space was no fun. Still, he had sixteen or so to check and the space
between them was no wider than the others. Luckily, so far there hadn’t been any
sign of the Mysterons. ‘I wonder how the others are doing?’
He
shivered as the temperature of the water around him seemed to drop. ‘The
weather must be changing, it’s affecting the currents,’ he mused, and as he
moved to check the next pipe, he realized that he was no longer hearing anything
from Sepia. ‘What’s going on? Is my radio dead or is something else is
happening?’
Troubled, he tried to contact Sepia, but received no answer. Then he tried
Scarlet (who was the field commander), only to get no reply from him. He tried
contacting each of the other captains and Cloudbase, to no avail; all he got was
a sound like waves on a sandy shore. Something odd was definitely going on.
The concern that Sepia might be in trouble warred with the knowledge that he had
to finish his checking of the pipes; he was aware however that it might just
turn out to be interference caused by the pipes. So with a kick of his fins, he
moved to the next one.
While he was drifting into an upright position, he got a fright when he felt
something wrap tight around one of his ankles. Startled, he looked down and saw
one of the biggest conger eels he had ever seen and even more were rising up
from below. All of them had wide open mouths and the one that had latched onto
him had moved so it could bite.
As
quick as he could, he grabbed his diving knife and slashed at it, scoring a
number of hits and making it let go. Freed, he swiftly swam up following the
pipes. He could feel the rapid beating of his heart, the quickening of his
breathing and was trembling a little. ‘Where in hell did they come from? And
why were there so many of them? Congers were normally solitary.’ The oddness
of their behaviour bothered him. It wasn’t right, yet… ‘Why would the
Mysterons replicate a whole lot of congers?’ He was baffled by the idea of
it. ‘How could that bring about their threat?’
Alarmed, he turned and looked back down to see where the congers had gone. There
were none in sight. ‘Where in hell did they go?’
Worried and puzzled he searched for them; even going back to where he first saw
them, there was no sign of them. Suddenly one of them seemed to appear out of
nowhere and tried to wind around his arm. Once again, he slashed at it with his
knife, only for it to vanish before his eyes. ‘What the…?’
He
surveyed the area around him. Slight stirrings of real unease began to make
themselves felt, as the openings between the pipes seemed to continually widen
and narrow as he looked at them. Then, a noise caused him to swiftly turn around
and what he saw made his heart quicken even more. Coming towards him was
a huge tiger shark, and what was really frightening was that the gaps between the
pipes had become wide enough for it to swim through. Was it hunting or just
being inquisitive? It didn’t take long to find out. As it sped up, it opened its
mouth and homed in on him.
Un-holstering his weapon, Grey took a shot at the shark, only to see the projectile
veer off its course and miss. To his shear disbelief, the shark was now
coming at him from another gap entirely! It was too much for his mind to
process. Instinct took over and he took off, swimming as fast as he could out of
the pipes, even though, far in the back of his mind, he knew that it was
useless. “S.I.R.! S.I.R.! This is Captain Grey,” he frantically stated through
his radio. “I am under attack from a shark. I repeat, I’m under attack from a
shark. Need immediate assistance!”
His call for help went unanswered.
The burst of speed that came from his alarm ran out and he knew that he had to
slow down. He also couldn’t help wondering why he hadn’t been bitten yet, for
there was no way he could outswim a shark. With that thought, he looked around.
There was no shark. There was no Sepia ether, nor could he see the pipes that he
had come from. In fact, he had no idea where he was. None of his surroundings
looked anything like the pictures and video they had been shown. ‘Where the
hell am I and why has no one responded to my call for help? Is my radio not
working?’ he wondered.
Worried, he did a diagnostic check on it and also on the rest of his equipment.
To his surprise, everything came up green, which added to his anxiety, because
if everything was okay with his equipment, then why wasn’t he getting through to
anyone on the radio? ‘It’s got to be Mysterons. They must be carrying out
their threat. But how? And what can I do? I don’t even know where I am.’
Once again, he tried to contact someone, anyone, but still got no answer, except
for that sound again, of waves on a sandy shore.
A
feeling of dread insidiously wormed its way into his mind and he started to
become very uneasy as he took in his surroundings. There was nothing he
recognized and what’s more, the visibility had become a lot worse. He decided to
swim towards what looked like one of the conveyor belts, hoping that he would be
able to get his bearings once there or that, at least, it could lead him to
somewhere he knew.
Arriving at it, he saw three odd little caves nearby and to his
surprise, a gigantic crab (almost half his size) came out of one of them and
headed towards him. He reached for his weapon and discharged a number of rounds;
all of them hit, but they didn’t stop it. ‘How in hell did it become so big?
And how am I going to stop it if shooting it doesn’t work? I don’t want to fight
it face to claw!’ Grey thought desperately.
He
was about to retreat when he felt something wrap around one of his arms and when
he turned to see what it was, he was struck by a paralysing fear. What he saw
could not be real; it was something out of a children’s fairy tale, a
nightmarish one. The creature had the head and torso of a man, but where the
legs should have been, there were octopus tentacles. His terror increased when
he saw that there were two of them and peaked as the other one grabbed his other
arm.
Once again, instinct kicked in and the flight response gave him more strength to
try desperately to get away from them. It was no good; they just wrapped more
tentacles around his arms and legs. “This is Captain Grey, S.I.R.!
I am under attack from unknown assailants,” he called over the radio, with
little hope that he would be heard. “Is there anyone who can hear me? I need
urgent assistance. I repeat, I need urgent assistance!”
Like before, there was no reply. It was just him and his two assailants floating beside him.
‘What’s going to happen now? What do they want of me? What are they going to do
to me?’
His thoughts ran around and around as the creepiness of his situation dawned on
him. They hung motionless, for how long Grey didn’t know, before his captors
began to pull him upwards. Where were they taking him? Were they going to
surface?
A
bit of hope flared up with that thought. ‘Maybe the others on the support
ship will see me and come to my rescue?’ But then he wondered, ‘Why are
they heading for the surface? Surely they know that we have people up there?
Maybe they need to breath air?’
Well, whatever their reason was, he knew that he had to escape, so he started to
twist violently, trying to break free from the hold of his captors and get
access to his backup knife, since his main one and his gun had been taken by his
captors and he had no idea of where they were now.
He
was unsuccessful and only ended up tiring himself. All the while, he and the two cecaelia came closer to the surface. Momentarily, he paused in his struggle to
rethink his options and as he did so, he noticed just how cold the sea was.
‘How can that be? We’re in the tropics!’
He
was so preoccupied by that fact that their arrival into the open air caught him
by surprise. Shocked, he looked around and realized that he had no idea where
they were. There was nothing around that he could recognize, not even the face
of the cliff that was in front of them. It wasn’t a very high cliff, in fact he
could clearly see creatures on top of it and at the sight of them, he felt his
mouth go dry with fear, for although they looked slightly man-shaped, they were
not human. There were more creatures like the ones beside him. There were others
that were covered in scales and had fins on their arms, legs and heads; they
also had gills. Others were a hideous combination of lobster legs and the upper
part of a man. And then there were the ones that just looked like huge sea
cucumbers with human faces.
As
he and the two cecaelia floated in the water, two of the fish-like men started
to come down some steps that he hadn’t spotted in the cliff. While they made
their way down, he discerned something that lifted his spirits. ‘I hope that
they mean for me to go up. There’s no way the three of us can fit together on
those steps, which means my captors are going to have to release me.
That’s when I’ll escape.’
However, things didn’t happen how he thought. His captors did pass him to the
two new captors but their tentacles didn’t release him. Instead, they detached
from the cecaelia’s bodies and stayed fastened around his arms and legs. The
sight of that happening pushed his feeling of fear into full-blown terror and he
found himself starting to hyperventilate and shake as he was taken up the steps.
Arriving at the top, two of the other entities came toward him and removed his
mask and regulator, replacing it with something else that covered his nose and
mouth. This was way too much for his already stressed mind to take and as his
hyperventilation increased, he began to feel light-headed and unable to resist
being forced to lay down.
Everything became black, before he reached the ground. Any comments? Send an
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