Chapter 1: The Gospel of the Squeeze

The water was a cathedral of green silence, thirty feet beneath Lake Cavendish's deceptively placid surface. Leo Vance adjusted his mask and checked his air gauge—2,800 PSI, plenty for what should have been a routine training dive. Above him, the afternoon sun filtered down in dancing columns of light that would soon give way to absolute darkness.

"You ready for this, kid?" Dave Miller's voice crackled through the comm system, distorted by the water but carrying that familiar edge of excitement that always made Leo's pulse quicken. At twenty-eight, Leo was hardly a kid, but Dave had been calling him that since their first dive two years ago. Coming from a legend like Dave, it felt more like an honor than an insult.

"Born ready," Leo replied, his own voice steady despite the anticipation coursing through his veins. This wasn't just any cave dive—Dave had been hinting for months about a "special place," somewhere the diving community whispered about in hushed tones. The kind of site that separated the weekend warriors from the true believers.

Dave's weathered face split into that familiar grin behind his mask, the expression that had launched a thousand dangerous adventures. At forty-seven, he moved through the water with an almost supernatural grace, his lean frame cutting through the liquid darkness like he'd been born to it. Which, in a way, he had been. Dave Miller was cave diving royalty in these parts, a man who'd mapped more underwater systems than anyone else in the state. When Dave Miller offered to show you something special, you didn't ask questions—you just followed.

They descended toward the mouth of Cavendish Cave, a narrow opening in the limestone that yawned like a hungry throat. Leo had dived it before, but never past the main chamber. According to the maps, the system dead-ended about three hundred feet in. According to Dave, the maps were wrong.

"The thing about caves," Dave's voice drifted through the comm as they approached the entrance, "is that they keep secrets. The rock doesn't give up its mysteries to just anyone. You have to earn them."

The familiar ritual of cave diving took over—checking lights, securing lines, running through emergency procedures one last time. Leo clipped his backup lights to his harness and tested his primary beam. The LED cut through the water like a sword, illuminating the cave mouth in stark detail. Silt particles danced in the beam like underwater snow.

They entered single file, Dave leading as always. The cave mouth was wide enough for two divers, but protocol was protocol. Leo's breathing was steady, controlled—the meditation of compressed air that kept panic at bay. The walls closed in gradually, limestone worn smooth by millennia of water flow. Fish scattered from their lights, silver flashes in the artificial day they carried with them.

The main chamber opened up around them, a cavern the size of a small church. Leo had been here a dozen times, but it never lost its majesty. Stalactites hung like frozen waterfalls, and their lights revealed formations that looked almost organic, as if the cave itself were alive and breathing.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" Dave's voice held an almost religious reverence. "But this is just the foyer, Leo. The real show is deeper."

They swam toward the back of the chamber, where Leo knew the cave system terminated. But Dave didn't stop at the familiar wall of limestone. Instead, he angled downward, toward what looked like solid rock.

"Dave, that's a dead end," Leo said, but his mentor was already disappearing into what Leo had sworn was solid wall.

Following, Leo discovered the optical illusion—a narrow passage, almost vertical, hidden by the angle of approach. It was barely wide enough for a single diver, the kind of restriction that made cave diving one of the most dangerous sports on earth. One wrong move, one moment of panic, and the rock would hold you forever.

"This is it," Dave's voice was thick with excitement. "The Squeeze."

Even the name sent a chill down Leo's spine. He'd heard whispers of it in dive shops, fragments of conversations that died when outsiders approached. The Squeeze was legend, myth, the kind of place that might not even exist. And yet here it was, a throat of stone leading into the unknown.

"Dave, I don't know about this. This isn't on any map—"

"Maps are for tourists," Dave interrupted. "This is for us. For the believers."

There was something in his mentor's voice that Leo had never heard before—a fervor that bordered on obsession. But this was Dave Miller, the man who'd taught him everything about cave diving, who'd never led him astray. If Dave said it was safe, it was safe.

They squeezed through the restriction one at a time, Leo's tank scraping against limestone. The passage seemed to go on forever, a birth canal of rock that pressed in from all sides. His breathing stayed steady, but his heart rate climbed. This was technical diving at its most extreme—no room for error, no space for panic.

Then the passage opened up.

Leo emerged into a chamber that defied belief. His light beam disappeared into absolute darkness, unable to find the far walls. The water here felt different—thicker somehow, with a current that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. But it was the silence that unsettled him most. In the main chamber, you could hear the subtle sounds of the cave system—the whisper of water movement, the distant echo of your own breathing. Here, there was nothing. It was as if sound itself had been swallowed.

"My God," Leo whispered.

"Exactly," Dave replied, and there was something almost evangelical in his tone. "This is what I wanted to show you, Leo. This is what it's all about. The real dive, the true experience. Everything else is just practice."

Dave was swimming ahead, his light a distant star in the overwhelming darkness. Leo followed, mesmerized despite his growing unease. The chamber seemed to go on forever, defying every principle of cave formation he'd ever learned. Caves like this shouldn't exist—couldn't exist. The geology was all wrong.

"Dave, how deep does this go?"

But Dave wasn't listening. He was swimming with purpose now, heading toward something Leo couldn't see. His light beam was growing smaller, more distant.

"Dave!"

No response. Just the terrible silence and the strange, thick water that seemed to resist movement while simultaneously pulling him forward with an inexorable current.

Leo checked his air gauge—2,100 PSI. Still good, but he'd used more than expected fighting the current. A warning bell sounded in his mind, the voice of every instructor he'd ever had: never follow another diver into the unknown. Always maintain contact. Always have an exit plan.

But this was Dave. And Dave was disappearing into the darkness ahead.

Leo kicked harder, fighting the strange current, chasing the diminishing glow of his mentor's light. The darkness pressed in around him like a living thing, and for the first time in his diving career, Leo felt truly alone in the water.

The current grew stronger, and ahead of him, Dave's light vanished entirely—not gradually, but all at once, as if swallowed by something hungry in the depths.

"Dave!" Leo's shout echoed strangely in the water, the sound seeming to bend and twist before fading into nothing.

He was alone now in the Cathedral of Silence, with only his light to hold back the absolute darkness and a terrible choice ahead: follow his mentor into the unknown depths, or abandon him to whatever waited in the hungry dark below.

The current pulled at him, insistent as gravity, and in the distance—impossibly far down—Leo thought he saw a faint glow. Dave's light, or something else entirely.

Loyalty won over survival. Leo angled downward and let the current take him, following his mentor into the heart of the abyss.

The Squeeze had claimed another believer.