"Eva, Eva, the glass is cracked. Please respond, now."
What was on the other side of the cracked glass clearly didn't use it's beauty to lure in prey. A bald scaly fish thing that looked barely human enough to be disturbing; its eyes were very forward facing and its mouth not dissimilar to a moray eel. Its mottled head was earless with only holes on the side of it's head and slits for a nose. The thing's body was spindly, with a good imitation of human ribs visible beneath it's chest where the torso turned to tail. And said tail was long, sharklike. As a whole it looked like a hideous thalassophobic chimera, and considering how it continued to pound at the windows, it didn't seem to be at all scared of light, unfortunately for us.
"Stay calm, what's the situation?" Eva crackled on the radio.
"It's cracked the window, no apparent water leakage yet but I don't think we'd get out of the water in time if it started to leak."
Eva's voice paused for a second before she responded.
"Is there any dampness on the inside of the glass?"
Lucy reached out and ran her finger over where the crack in the window continued to spider.
"No dampness, we're completely dry, for now." she responded.
"Okay good, they've only shattered the external layer. Hopefully the internal layer of glass will last until I can pull-"
"Eva, there's more!" Lucy shouted, cutting out boss off just before another blow came to the side of the ship. The vessel jolted as it began to move, very slightly.
"Abandon the mission, I'm pulling you up."
"But the ACD-" Lucy interjected before she herself was cut off.
"Damn the ACD, I can make another but your safety is paramount. I'm getting you out of here right no-"
Nobody had cut anybody off this time. Eva's radio had entirely fallen silent, and neither of us had the bravery to speak either. Another jolt attempted to lift us, but all of a sudden that had stopped too. And unmistakeably, we began to sink lower.
It had first seemed as though the ACD outside the window had been lowering and then rising in the water, but of course that was not the case. Both Lucy and I had prepared for the jolt but even still the force of the now detached pod we were in hitting the sea floor knocked us off our feet. It seemed that the pod had rolled and now the cracked window was directly above us, the cracks looking as threatening as ever. As I tried to raise myself to stand on what used to be the wall, the sounds of the ocean around began to feel threatening. I couldn't tell what was distorting metal, what was ocean sounds, and what was merfolk, planning to get their next feast.
"Lucy does the ACD still work?" I asked, my voice barely avoiding catching in my throat. Above us in the water, a light flickered off and the whir of approaching motors barely made its way into the pod.
"Seems so." Lucy replied, somber. There was no way for us to eject the suit anymore; any attempt would flood whoever was left inside. We were trapped inside of our research station.
Despite our best collective efforts, none of us could figure out an escape. It didn't seem worth thinking. Death seemed like pretty much the only option.
"This might be it." I finally resolved, not wanting to accept it but finding myself forced to.
"Shame. I had a lot I wanted to do with my life." Lucy replied, sounding more despondent than I'd ever heard her.
"What sort of things?" I asked, trying to lighten the conversation as much as I could.
"Does it matter now?"
"Better to talk about what we would have done than about what's presumably going to happen."
Lucy sighed and sat down beneath the pitch blackness of the window; I sat opposite, trying to breathe steadily.
"Well..." Lucy began, staring off at the wall. "Keep working for Eva, for a while at least. Ace my exams, take life sciences in university, maybe eventually move somewhere else and pursue something else to do with cryptozoology."
I nodded as I listened. I hadn't really considered the idea of Lucy retiring and moving away. I hadn't considered that a possibility for any of the team; the least myself.
"Well I've spilled, how about you, Michael?" Lucy responded, looking at me, and I had to put together an answer.
"I, well I doubt I'd ever have ended up leaving the Cryptotrappers since I'm pretty integral to the whole 'finding cryptids' aspect of the job."
I sighed and looked up at the cracked window, wondering how different my life would be right now if I didn't have that 'talent'. Since we had been left down here stranded, I'd had a sort of ringing sound in my ears that made it hard to think.
"Well, I'd probably have stayed a Cryptotrapper, put the effort in to become an expert on the subject like Eva. Probably do a bit of weight training but not an excessive amount since I'd presumably still have Sid and Randy around... I guess just take whatever comes."
I sat with Lucy in silence for a few moments more, before I asked a burning question I'd been thinking on.
"You have any idea why we aren't dead yet?"
"What was it you said about 'better to talk about what we would have done than about what's going to happen'?" Lucy snidely responded.
"No, but like, really. They put so much effort into getting us down here so why haven't they let the floodgates open, so to speak?"
Lucy sighed.
"We're going to asphyxiate whether we drown or not. Why give us any chance to fight back?" There was a moments pause before she followed up with, "At least that's what I'm hoping."
"Hoping?" I asked, chills running down my back.
"Well, despite everything, convergent evolution or whatever aside, these merfolk are a species of fish." Lucy spoke, quieter than she was. "There's this species of octopus, or maybe a few species, I don't really remember, but their survival and hunting tactics are to mimic other animals. So apparently scientists have found some forms that the octopus can become that nobody can tell what they are. And whatever they are, they terrify any fish that seem them. My concern is that there's something out there that's scared the merfolk off, and whatever it is- sorry can you hear that clicking sound because it's really throwing me off right now."
Snapping my senses back to the room, I began to focus on whatever sound she was hearing. And there it was; a repetitive clicking sound, one that sounded just like-
"Like someone typing, right?" I asked, as she nodded and turned her own ear to the sound. It seemed to be coming from behind one of the panels on the wall, one that seemed easy to remove. At risk of flooding the sunken vessel, I gripped the panel by the sides and pulled. And there was certainly something behind it.
"Lucy, can you direct that ACD over here? I need that torchlight." I ordered.
"You got it." Lucy responded, manoeuvring the small machine to provide me the light I needed. And to my delight, our original hypothesis was correct.
'EXO. LUCY. ARE EITHER OF YOU ALIVE.'
Below the unlit screen lay a single button, alongside a translation sheet for morse code. I was prepared to give it a crack, but I wasn't certain it would come out perfectly. Still, a few minutes later and my response was completely typed out.
'ALIVE. TRAPPED. HOW LONG BEEN HERE?'
Jubilations were had at that moment but this slow form of communication was hardly a guaranteed ticket out. We both watched with baited breath as Eva's next message came through.
'TWO HOURS. ONE LEFT.'
I typed my next message slowly in, daring to get hopeful.
'ESCAPE PLAN? BUTTON?'
As Eva replied, my heart sank, and judging by her expression in the harsh light, so did Lucy's
'NO ESCAPE PLAN. REGRET.'
As I looked into Lucy's eyes, she refused to meet mine. She seemed to be breathing deeply, as though trying to calm her way down, or talk through tears. After a few seconds, she finally looked up and met my eyes.
"I have a plan."
"You have a plan?" I asked, having no idea myself how we could get out of here.
"I have a plan but I don't know if it will work. Plus, we're going to need Eva back at the lab for it to work."
I began to type out the message, pausing at appropriate points for Lucy to explain further.
'HAVE PLAN. NEED YOU AT LAB.'
"My plan is to flood the pod."
"What?"
"Just type it."
'WE WILL FLOOD POD'
"And then we use the Displacers to send ourselves back to the lab."
"Got it."
'THEN USE DISPLACERS TO LAB'
"And then we need someone to open the tank from the outside."
'NEED TANK OPENED FROM OUTSIDE.'
As the message sent, Lucy ushered me into the suit so I could open the escape hatch and flood the pod. As water began to rise inside, messages from Eva flashed up, quicker than they had ever come before.
'NO'
'TOO DANGEROUS'
'NOT MADE FOR HUMANS'
'COULD FLOOD LUNGS'
'DONT YOU DARE'
As the water began to rise, Lucy brought her fist to the window, as the window gave and water flooded in quicker than before. Fear began to run through me, not for myself but for her.
"Lucy, why did you make me open the hatch?" I asked her, my voice shaking. She smiled at me as she began to put the Displacers into position.
"So you couldn't push me inside the suit instead."
As the water rose above her chest, Lucy sent off her last message to Eva.
'ONLY CHANCE. GO.'
As the water finally rose above her head, her elegant hair floating like kelp in the water, she placed the last of the Displacers into position and the world faded to white.
I arrived in pitch blackness; at first I thought I may have gone blind. But I figured then it was more likely that there would be no light in the tank. This also meant that I had no way of seeing if Lucy was okay. All I could do was try and pay attention to the sounds around me. The creaking sounds of the water's pressure on the suit as I could only imagine what Lucy must be feeling. And there was the sound of a sort of clanging from outside, dimmed by the water. Light flooded my eyes as the blurry shape of somebody wrenched the tank open, reaching into the water and wrenching the unmoving form of Lucy from the water. There was a ladder that allowed me to pull myself out of the water, and I climbed from the suit to find Sid doing his best to perform chest compressions.
"Come on, Lucy, don't leave us now." he mumbled, as Lucy seemed to have turned somewhat blue already. Eva quickly rushed into the room, panicking.
"Sid, how is she?" Eva asked, looking at risk of collapsing herself from the stress.
"She's not breathing, I'm doing what I can. Where's Randy?" Sid interrogated, continuing compressions.
"He's getting an ambulance here as quickly as possible, no questions asked." Eva answered, as she looked for something she could do to help. A splutter of water erupted from Lucy's mouth and she began to gasp, her lungs still full of fluid.
"Take your time, it's okay." Eva reassured, looking on the verge of tears. Randy finally rushed into the room himself.
"It'll be here in twenty minutes." Randy informed, as I finally breathed for what felt like the first time in minutes.
The sounds of ambulance came quickly and we carefully moved her outside as it pulled up. They loaded her into the back, as Eva and I had the chance now to talk.
"If you want to leave after this, I can't blame you." Eva began, as I cut her off before she could continue.
"This wasn't your fault, you know." I reassured her. "We all thought we could handle a mission like this."
"I should have given you a backup return circuit, I should have hooked something up, there was just so much stuff down there and I didn't even think about it. I'm so sorry this has happened."
"Eva, it was your precautions that saved us. Without your backup communication we would have both died."
I didn't know how long Lucy would be in hospital for; over the weekend at least. I'd just have to return to work on Monday to see what my next mission would be.