[Original Novel] Pressure: First Encounter, Part 15 (the finale!)

^{source
Previous parts:} 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14

There was as strange sense of peace and acceptance she felt while drifting off. Death was kinder than she’d imagined. Leo’s shouts were muffled and increasingly distant. For a while she hung motionless and numb in the black expanse. Then suddenly, light and sound exploded into being around her. “Angie. Angie, come back to me.”

She looked up expecting Leo, still shaking her on the floor of the airlock. Instead it was Eliot looming over her with an oxygen mask. She made weak noises, barely audible but which Eliot correctly interpreted as “How are we alive?” With help, she sat up and examined her surroundings. Overhead, a panoramic glass dome.

Below her, what she quickly recognized as the floor of the observation bubble. The hatch was securely shut, and before she could ask, Eliot confirmed that they were already nearly a mile above the Argyro and still rising. “L...Leo?” she managed. Eliot’s smile faded.

“I don’t know. I assume he set out after Nate. With the power out, the relays won’t work. They’ll have the onboard compass, but no other means of navigation or comms. It’s just the two of them down there, in the darkness, heading for the Belusarius. For their sake, I hope Leo gets there first.”

She drew the transparent plastic mouthpiece to her face again and inhaled eagerly. “I thought maybe I’d lost you, yenno. You were out cold for a while there, pulse was so faint I couldn’t tell if I was imagining it. I thought you’d really left me alone.”

She let the mask fall away. Tears began to well up in her eyes, and when he lifted her closer it was all the invitation she needed to kiss him. The tension built up over the last few hours before their escape poured out from her body, replaced with euphoric relief.

She cried, helpless to stop, holding fast to Eliot as if even now there was some chance he could slip away. They made it. She remembered Leo, for a split second, and felt a tinge of regret that they’d left him down there with Nate. Survivor’s guilt. Except he was still alive, she reminded herself. There was still a chance. Then the realization struck her; they were rapidly heading for the surface. Her stomach shrunk.

“Eliot, nothing’s changed, has it? How can we simply surface like this?” He put a finger to her lips with one hand, and caressed her cheek with the other. “I don’t know. With both suits gone and the sub too small for both of us, there was only one thing left. I had to act, and then think about it on the way up.

Best I could figure is to surface, and then ride it out as long as the oxygen lasts. This cupola doubles as a lifeboat, there’s maybe two, two and a half weeks of provisions. How long did it take us to acclimate? Attune, whatever. A week? The effect should wear off before we’re picked up. I had to take the chance.

If I thought you’d be fine in the sub, I’d have sent you off by yourself. But I couldn’t go alone. Not if it meant leaving you behind. Angie, I...” He looked so embarrassed, she laughed in spite of everything. “I love you too, Eliot.” This time the embrace was stronger. Their lips lingered. Her hands ran up his neck, then through his hair.

“Remember the box forts? The ones we had when we were kids.” Eliot looked lost in thought for a moment. “From the ride down to the station. That conversation stuck with me for some reason. What I didn’t tell you then is that it was a hard habit to break. I was building those silly forts well into my twenties. Even had boys in them sometimes, that’s what this reminds me of.”

Eliot glanced around the cupola interior. “Haha, oh yeah. And you pretended it was a submarine, I take it.” Eliot smiled at her expectantly. She waited for him to remember that hers was a spaceship. Ready to laugh about it, again. That’s when the intercom crackled to life. “A--gie---...w-y...-tach the...-opla.....aught up with Leo, Na-....sarius.”

Outside, a dim green laser flickered against the cupola’s photoreceptor, then went dark for the last time. Angie, still smiling, stared at the intercom for a few seconds while it registered. “That....sounded like...” she fell silent. Then slowly turned to see Eliot hunched over, faced away from her. The room seemed to slowly contract.

Her glance moved upward, to Eliot’s reflection in the dome. The reflection of a pale, huddled nude figure. Nearly human, but not quite. She tried to cry, but found that no sound would come from her throat as in one smooth motion she drew the pistol from her pocket, aimed at the dome, and fired.

“Unidentified sub, this is the Belusarius docking authority. Please respond.” A bright green laser pierced the darkness outside the porthole, returning vague position and orientation data for what soon resolved itself as the distant black outline of an exoskeleton.

“Do you think his comms are broken?” One man, wiry and balding, leaned against the transmission console as his partner struggled to provoke a response from the approaching diver. “What do we do? Handbook says don’t let him in without the codes.”

The balding man shifted his weight, and set to rubbing his temples. “Yeah, I know....but if he’s not transmitting back, he could be hurt.” They didn’t get much chance to deliberate as soon the suited figure stood right outside the lock.

The man at the console leaned back and exchanged a worried look with the second fellow, who had already begun prepping the harness used to suit up and desuit divers. “Fine. But this is going on record as your call. I took the heat that time you spilled the dessicant.”

Bald man shrugged, then quickly wheeled the harness down the hallway to the interior airlock door. The suit was already inside the lock, which drained noisily for a few minutes, then spent a few more equalizing.

The interior hatch was easily twice his size and groaned as it swung open. It was a two man job to help the unexpected visitor out of the lock and into the desuiting harness. “Where’d you come from, fella? This suit’s not one of ours.”

The bald man ran a dirty cloth over the viewing dome and peered inside. “You look like hell. How long were you out there? Hang tight, we’ll get you out of this thing.” The moment the seal broke, a foul odor escaped from the suit and both men covered their mouths and noses.

“Christ, what is that? Smells like someone died in there.” The filthy, haggard man freed his arms from the suit’s upper half, then stepped out onto the metal grate. “The fresh water shower is over there by the tools. There’s some gear in there right now. We were washing it, but you need it more. After you’re done, head for the-”

he stopped mid sentence and took a step back. His friend back at the console turned just in time to see the visitor withdraw a rifle and pair of clips from inside the suit. “May God forgive me for what I am about to do.”

---

^{The End.}