Chapter 3: The Price of Air

The needle on Leo's air gauge trembled at 800 PSI, and the sight of it cut through the hypnotic calm like a blade of ice. The thrumming that had been lulling him deeper suddenly transformed from a lullaby into a death knell. Eight hundred PSI. In open water, that would be a leisurely ascent. Down here, in this impossible void with the Squeeze somewhere impossibly far above, it was a death sentence.

"Dave!" Leo's shout tore from his regulator in a stream of precious bubbles. The distant light below pulsed once, as if acknowledging his call, but continued its lazy descent into the fathomless dark. "DAVE!"

The panic hit him like a physical blow, shattering the strange peace that had been clouding his judgment. What the hell was he doing? Following a light deeper into an unmapped cave system, burning through his air supply like a rookie on his first dive. This wasn't exploration—it was suicide.

Leo kicked hard, angling upward toward where he thought the Squeeze might be. But the water resisted him, that strange thickness he'd noticed before now feeling like swimming through molasses. Each stroke forward seemed to carry him only inches, while the current—that inexorable downward pull—fought against every movement.

Thrum.

The pulse was angry now, Leo was certain of it. The rhythmic heartbeat that had seemed so welcoming before had shifted into something predatory, urgent. The water around him began to move, subtle currents that seemed designed to turn him around, to drag him back toward the depths where Dave's light continued its impossible dance.

700 PSI.

Leo's breathing was too fast, burning through his remaining air with each panicked inhalation. He forced himself to slow down, to adopt the controlled rhythm that had been drilled into him through hundreds of training dives. But his heart was hammering against his ribs, and the darkness pressed in from all sides like a living thing.

The beam of his primary light swept frantically through the void, searching for any sign of the passage that had brought him here. But there was nothing—just endless black water and the growing certainty that he was about to die in this impossible place.

Thrum.

The pulse hit him so hard this time that his vision went white around the edges. The sound wasn't just in the water anymore—it was inside his head, reverberating through his skull like the toll of some cosmic bell. And with it came images, flashes of memory that weren't his own.

Dave, swimming through this same darkness months ago, his face radiant with discovery behind his mask. Dave, deeper than any human should go, his body beginning to change in ways that defied anatomy. Dave, no longer quite human, becoming something else, something that belonged to the abyss.

The visions shattered as Leo's depth gauge spun wildly, the numbers flickering between readings that made no sense. Forty feet, two hundred feet, negative thirty feet—as if the very concept of depth had no meaning in this place.

600 PSI.

Leo aimed for what he hoped was up and kicked with everything he had. His fins carved through the resistant water, his muscles burning with the effort. Behind him, the thrumming grew louder, more insistent, and he could swear he felt something vast shifting in the depths below. Something that had been sleeping was waking up, and it was not pleased with his attempt to leave.

The current seized him then, not the gentle pull he'd experienced before, but a violent undertow that tried to drag him back down into the waiting dark. Leo fought against it, his lungs working overtime as his regulator struggled to deliver air from his rapidly depleting tank. Each breath was a conscious effort now, the familiar easy flow of compressed air becoming a desperate struggle.

Thrum.

The pulse was so powerful it felt like being inside a church bell as it rang. Leo's vision blurred, his inner ear sending conflicting signals that made the already disorienting void spin around him. But through it all, he kept swimming upward, following the slight temperature gradient that might—might—lead to the surface.

500 PSI.

His backup light flickered on automatically as his primary beam began to dim. The LED cast wild shadows as his hands shook with the effort of swimming against the impossible current. And then, impossibly, he saw it—a narrow band of slightly lighter water above him. The Squeeze.

Leo had never been so happy to see a restriction in his life. The narrow throat of limestone that had seemed so threatening on the way down now looked like salvation itself. He angled toward it, his fins finding purchase against the rock walls as the current tried one last time to pull him back into the abyss.

THRUM.

The pulse hit him like a physical blow, and this time it brought pain—searing, white-hot agony that lanced through his skull like a lightning bolt. The water around him began to glow with a sick violet light that seemed to emanate from nowhere and everywhere at once. In that horrible illumination, Leo caught a glimpse of what lay in the depths below.

It wasn't a cave. It wasn't a geological formation at all.

It was alive.

The walls, the water, the very space itself pulsed with malevolent intelligence. And rising from the depths, no longer pretending to be Dave, something vast and impossible reached toward him with appendages that weren't quite tentacles, weren't quite arms, but were definitely reaching, definitely hungry.

400 PSI.

Leo squeezed into the restriction with the desperation of a drowning man reaching for air. The limestone walls scraped against his tank, his wetsuit, his exposed skin, but he welcomed the pain. It was real, physical, normal—everything this place was not.

Behind him, the thrumming reached a crescendo that seemed to shake the very bedrock. The violet light flared brighter, and Leo felt something brush against his fins—something that definitely wasn't rock or water or anything that should exist in the natural world.

His regulator was working harder now, pulling the last dregs of compressed air from his tank. Each breath was a conscious effort, and he could taste the metallic tang that meant his air supply was nearly exhausted. But the restriction was narrowing, closing around him like a birth canal, and somewhere ahead lay normal water, normal cave, normal world.

300 PSI.

The walls of the Squeeze pressed in from all sides, and for one terrifying moment Leo thought he was stuck. His tank had wedged against an outcropping, his body twisted at an impossible angle. Behind him, something that might once have been Dave's voice whispered through the water, speaking words in a language that predated human speech.

Leo twisted, pulled, fought against the rock that wanted to hold him forever. His backup light flickered and died, leaving him in absolute darkness. Only the faint green glow of his instruments remained, and even that was fading as his air supply reached critical levels.

And then, with a grinding screech of metal against stone, he broke free.

The normal cave system opened around him like paradise. His primary light, somehow still functioning despite everything, illuminated familiar limestone walls and formations. The water here felt thin, almost gaseous after the thick soup of the abyss. Leo kicked toward the surface with the last of his strength, his empty tank a dead weight on his back.

200 PSI.

The main chamber appeared above him, and through it, the blessed sight of filtered sunlight streaming down from the cave mouth. Leo's lungs burned as he fought the urge to bolt for the surface. Even now, even with his air nearly gone and something unspeakable behind him in the depths, he forced himself to ascend slowly, to avoid the bends that could kill him just as surely as drowning.

100 PSI.

His regulator gave its final breath as Leo broke the surface of Lake Cavendish. The afternoon sun had never looked so beautiful, the ordinary blue sky so magnificent. He floated on his back, gasping the sweet air, his body shaking with exhaustion and shock.

But even as he swam toward shore, even as safety beckoned from the familiar world above, Leo could feel it behind him—the presence in the depths, the thing that wore Dave's face and called with Dave's voice. It was still down there, in that impossible space between spaces, and it was waiting.

Thrum.

The pulse followed him even to the surface, a faint vibration that seemed to come from the lake itself. And Leo knew, with the terrible certainty of a man who had seen too much, that this wasn't over.

The Squeeze had let him go. But it hadn't forgotten him.

And somewhere in the depths of Lake Cavendish, something that had once been his mentor was learning patience from masters far older than human civilization.

The abyss would wait. It had all the time in the world.