Doran was right—a break in the tube appeared. As Kane swam into open water, he glanced up where the hue transformed from deep indigo to vivid teal, finally leading to pale blue at the very top. His elation warred with panic. The goal was within view, but still so far away. As he clawed toward the sunbeams high above him, he created a mental game of it: everything would be fine if he could just touch the light.
The drag behind him increased suddenly, and he glanced down to find Cassia’s hand had slipped from the guard’s sleeve. She grabbed on to it again, only to slip once more. Kane tried to catch her eye, to tell her to let go, but she dodged his gaze. When his vision began to blur, he knew he was in trouble. He felt a tug at his shoulder and glanced at Doran, who pointed at the surface. Kane faced up and squinted at the captain swimming toward them with a metallic rope in one hand.
Through the haze of dizziness, Kane recognized the rope as the shuttle’s tow cable. If one of the crew could reach that cable, it would pull them all to the surface. But he was only seconds from blacking out. They needed to form a longer chain and send one of them to the top.
Continuing to kick upward, Kane pried Doran’s fingers from the guard’s shirt and pointed from the tow cable to Solara’s arm. Doran caught on quickly, and they created a human link with the guard at the bottom. Kane watched as Doran and Renny reached out to each other, and just as dark spots danced in his eyes, he saw their hands link.
At once, the drag eliminated, and then they were launching up through the water so fast he nearly lost his grip on the lifeline. But he held tight, and an instant later, his face met the blessed assault of two suns.
Kane sucked in a ragged lungful of oxygen before releasing Solara and dropping back into the water, where he bobbed to the surface again. Cassia appeared beside him, and while she caught her breath, he pulled the guard’s head into the light. The man began to stir, eyes closed as he choked on the water he’d inhaled. Kane rotated the guard to the side and hammered his back, one fierce pound after another.
The crew swam close to lend a hand, each supporting the man’s torso as he coughed and sputtered awake. No sooner had he opened his eyes than his chest lurched and he vomited all over the lot of them. For a moment, there was only stunned silence. Then peals of laughter broke out, chortles that were weak from exhaustion but filled with the purest kind of joy—that of being alive.
From her bench seat inside the hyperbaric pressure chamber, Cassia held an oxygen mask over her face and peeked at Kane sitting on the opposite bench. He pretended to sleep with his head tilted back, arms folded, and legs crossed at the ankles, but his shallow breathing gave him away.
She wished they could talk. She hadn’t thought anything could hurt worse than Kane’s words from last night, but to watch him nearly die had shaken her to the core. Her heart was bursting with all the things she needed to say to him. But that wasn’t a conversation to have in front of the crew, and at the moment Solara sat beside them trying to comfort Doran, who hated tight spaces and seemed to be fighting a panic attack with both eyes clenched shut.
“Just breathe,” Solara murmured to him, her voice muffled by the mask.
He fisted his T-shirt and caused more water to pool on the floor. There hadn’t been time to change out of wet clothes. The old-fashioned treatment for the bends—a side effect of diving deep and resurfacing too fast—worked best if administered quickly, so they’d kicked off their boots and taken whatever towels were tossed at them before crowding inside a small metal capsule resembling a submarine. As for the guard they’d rescued, he was in the infirmary having the water evaporated from his lungs.
Cassia felt a fullness in her eardrums, a sign that recompression had begun. She moved her lower jaw to clear her ears. Once they popped, she reached over and patted Doran’s knee. “Almost done.”
The treatment ended, and they ducked through the chamber door to find Renny on the other side, greeting them with a smile and a change of clothes from the ship. Cassia had never been so happy to see her boring canvas pants. Modesty forgotten, she stripped off her wet things and changed right there in the infirmary. The rest of the crew did the same.
“Where’s Belle?” she asked after zipping up. Arabelle had piloted the shuttle and pulled them from the ocean, so a hug was in order.
Concern flitted across Renny’s face. “She’s lying down in her bunk.”
“Another headache?”
He nodded while absently flexing his fingers. He did that sometimes when he was nervous and fighting the impulse to steal. “It’s worse this time. She can barely see.”
“Probably a heat migraine,” Cassia said. It could happen quickly under two suns, especially to a light-skinned redhead like Arabelle. “I’ll bet she was dehydrated, too.”