What the hell?

Something had just moved in the corner of his vision, outside the small porthole.

A fish? No, there was something different about the view…

It hit like ice.

The lighting had changed!

He hadn’t moved the exterior spotlights, and the sub was stationary…

“Evenor!” he yelled into the radio. “Evenor, there’s another sub-”

A loud crackle in his headphones, then silence. All the indicator LEDs on the communications console flicked from green to red.

“Evenor! Do you copy? What’s happening?”

The answer came a moment later. Something hit the top of the hull with a dull clonk. A long object snaked down in front of the LIDAR turret.

The umbilical. Neatly severed.

And now more light flooded through the porthole as his unseen attacker closed in.

“Shit!” He grabbed the controls, bringing the motors to life and blasting the Atragon off the seabed in an explosive cloud of silt. “Hugo! I’m under attack! Get out of there!”

Something plowed into his vessel, slamming him sideways against the steel wall.

A harsh buzz in Chase’s ear made him wince. His suit relay passed it on to Kari, who gasped in surprise. “What was that?”

All the Evenor’s underwater feeds went blank simultaneously, some of the screens turning black, others bright blue with a “No Signal” warning.

“What was that?” Nina asked.

“That, Dr. Wilde,” said a new voice from behind her, “was the end of your expedition.”

Nina whirled. “You!”

Starkman stared coldly down at her, flanked by two of his wet-suited men. All three had their guns raised, covering the occupants of the room. “If you’d like to join the rest of the crew on the aft deck?”

Castille spun at the garbled shout in his headphones, to see a second sub bearing down on the Atragon!

Baillard’s vessel had just started to rise from the seabed as the intruder, a smaller conventional submersible with a thick steel cage around its bubble cockpit, rammed into its side. The Atragon was driven back down, almost disappearing inside a roiling cloud of silt.

“Merde!” he gasped, before recovering his composure. “Edward! Edward, can you hear me? Kari!”

There was no answer. The radio relay on the submersible was down, cutting him off from the other divers.

The attacker rose from the cloud and made a sharp turn, thrusters swiveling and pumping out swirling toroids of bubbles in their wake. Its spotlights picked out white and orange metal within the billowing sediment.

Castille thought it was going to ram the Atragon again, but instead it extended its manipulator arm. Something was clutched between the pincers, a blocky package that it placed almost delicately against the side of the command sphere…

Baillard knew something bad was about to happen as he saw the shadow of the other sub’s outstretched manipulator arm move across the porthole. A second later, something rasped against the pressure sphere.

The LIDAR was down-aside from the tiny portholes, he was blind. Pressing a palm against the deep cut on his temple and trying not to hyperventilate in fear, he worked the thruster controls.

Nothing happened. While he and Trulli had designed their subs to be sturdy, they hadn’t been intended to resist a deliberate attack, and the electrical control board was flashing multiple warning lights.

He quickly considered his options. He could either reset the affected circuits and try to restore thruster power-or just shut off the electromagnets holding the heavy steel ballast plates to the sub’s belly, an emergency system that would put him back on the surface in under three minutes.

Doing so would mean abandoning the three divers. But he couldn’t help them if he couldn’t see, and the other sub was still out there, its spotlights driving a menacing beam through the porthole as it moved around.

He made his decision, and pulled the red-painted lever beside his seat.

Castille watched in horror as the Atragon released its ballast slabs, which dropped like bombs onto the sea floor, kicking up another huge rolling wave of sediment. The dull boom of their impact was strong enough for him to feel through the water.

Freed of the weight, the submersible shot upwards, spotlights flickering. The fiber-optic line whipped upwards with it, snaking like a cracking whip.

“No!” he yelled helplessly.

As if hearing his shout, the enemy sub swiveled to face him, its banks of spotlights regarding him like glowing compound eyes. The manipulator arm reached back, expertly collecting something attached to a pannier on the steel sideframe before extending again.

Another package, larger than the first. Castille knew instinctively what it was. A bomb!

Baillard fought to restore power as the Atragon rose. Nothing he did seemed to improve matters-

He froze at an unexpected sound. The sub was creaking and groaning as it ascended, but those noises were so familiar that they barely registered. This was something else.

A rhythmic noise, mechanical, coming from the side of the sphere. Where the other sub’s arm had ground against it.

A ticking…

Baillard didn’t even have time to realize the full terror of the situation before the shaped charge exploded, ripping a foot-wide hole in the steel pressure sphere. A spear of water hit him with the force of a train, killing him instantly.

Even through his helmet and the thick stone walls of the temple, Chase heard the low rumble. “Shit!”

“What was that noise?” Kari asked.

“An explosion.”

“Are you sure?”

“Oh yeah,” he said. “Either someone dropped a thousand-pound bomb on the Evenor-or the sub just blew up.” He looked down at his suit. “Which means-oh shit, shit! Cut my coms line, quick!”

“But we’ll be cut off!”

“We’re already cut off! Do it!”

Kari put down the camera and clumsily hurried to him, taking her diver’s knife from her belt. The fiberoptic cable attached to the back of Chase’s suit was sheathed in protective plastic. She grabbed it and sawed away with the knife.

“Come on, come on!” Chase yelled.

“I’m trying!” The line finally sheared in two, a blue pinpoint of light shining from the stub still attached to Chase’s suit. A moment later, the rest of the cable was snatched from her gloved hand. It shot across the chamber before disappearing over the edge of the shaft. “What the hell just happened?”

“If the sub blew up, the ballast would’ve been dropped automatically when it lost power. That means the thing’s on its way to the surface like a fucking rocket-and it would have tried to take me with it.” He turned to face her. “Thanks. Sorry I shouted.”

“No need to apologize, given the circumstances!” She looked at the shaft. “If the sub’s been destroyed, what are we going to do?”

“Get the fuck out of here, for starters.” He moved back over to the shaft. “Hugo? Can you hear me? Hugo? Shit!”

“I’m still getting you on the radio,” said Kari.

“Yeah, but you’re standing five feet away in air, and he’s got to receive it through Christ knows how many feet of stone and water. Hugo!”