From below, p.1
From Below, page 1
FROM BELOW
DARCY COATES
Copyright © 2022 by Darcy Coates
Cover design © 2022 by Sourcebooks
Cover design by Faceout Studio
Cover images © Eva Carollo Photography/Getty Images, Hoiseung Jung/EyeEm/Getty Images
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real persons, locations and events is purely coincidental.
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
1
The Gulf of Bothnia, forty-one miles off Sweden’s east coast
The morning of the first dive
The camera’s view blurred, then sharpened again to focus on a woman’s profile. Cove Waimarie bent over a table, a wash of wavy black hair hanging like a curtain over one side of her face as she scratched in a notebook with a thick lead pencil. Behind her, the lounge’s large plateglass windows filled the room with cool light. Foamy waves rose into view as the boat tilted.
“Hey there,” Roy said from behind the camera. “Guess what? We’re live.”
She lifted her head, a mischievous smile forming as one eyebrow quirked. “Got it running, huh?”
“For the moment at least.” He adjusted the camera, forcing the lens to refocus. Cove’s form bled into the searing light behind her before shifting back to reality. “Did you want to do an intro, or—?”
“The day I say no to that is the day you need to put me out of my misery.” Cove straightened and leaned one hip against the table, her feet crossing at the ankles. The ship rolled with every wave that passed underneath, but she showed no signs of losing her balance. Just like her outfit—white linen pants and a tan blouse that emphasized her warm complexion—the pose looked both comfortable and effortless.
“We’re moored in the Gulf of Bothnia between Sweden and Finland, a day’s travel from port. Somewhere in the water beneath us is a lost shipwreck that has both captivated and puzzled the world for decades. Why did it sail so far off course? What caused it to sink? Over the next few days, we intend to find our answers. How was that?”
The final question was directed at Roy, not the camera. He kept the bulky recorder propped on his shoulder but freed one hand to give her a thumbs-up. “Did you rehearse that, or does it just happen?”
“My father always told me to find a job that I love.” Her smile widened, shining white against bronze skin, her green eyes filled with laughter. “And I love talking, so here I am.”
“Well, there aren’t many jobs that involve watching movies all day, but I got the next best thing.” Roy flipped the camera and held it up to capture his face. The close quarters distorted his broad jaw and filled the lens with a view of thick, dark stubble. “Making movies.”
A man’s voice, dense with frustration, called from somewhere deeper in the lounge: “You’re a camera technician, not a director.”
“Ah, ah, ah.” The camera rotated again, its view rocking wildly across the metal floor and cracked paint before fixing on one of the darker corners of the space. A man lounged in a swivel chair, a circuit board held in one hand, screwdrivers and solders scattered on the table behind him. “That’s our ROV wrangler. He was supposed to drop his little robots into the water and guide them down with a joystick. But just like with my film equipment, his robots went on the fritz sometime between leaving port and mooring. However, unlike my film equipment, he’s been unable to bring them back online. Say hi to the camera, Sean.”
Sean, with his buzzed hair and gaunt, heavily creased face, only glared at Roy.
“Some people would say it’s a bad omen.” The camera turned to catch another, much younger man. He sat forward in his chair, legs flung out at uncoordinated angles, a mug clutched in thin hands. A batch of freckles—swelling thanks to the ocean’s inescapable sun—covered his pale skin. He seemed faintly shocked that the camera was facing him, like a child caught trying to take a chocolate from a box meant for the adults.
“Say hi,” Roy prompted.
“Hey.” A cautious smile formed. Unlike Cove, he had trouble making eye contact with the camera. “Um. I’m Aidan? I guess?”
“You guess?” Roy broke into heavy laughter. “If we’re talking bad omens, I’d say forgetting your name is high up on the list.”
“Sorry. I’m just saying.” Aidan became aggressively preoccupied with his feet, tilting them in and then out again, his knuckles flushing white against the steaming mug. “It’s kind of weird, right? The ROVs go out. The main camera and backup camera go out. Our navigation system glitched and sent us twenty miles off course…”
Cove crossed to Aidan’s side and pressed one hand onto his shoulder, her other tucked into her back pocket. “You know, I like to think of it as excellent luck.”
“Oh?” Roy lowered his stance to give the camera a better angle of Cove’s smiling eyes.
“Yeah. Before, our plan was to send the remotely operated vehicles down for the majority of the exploration. Now? We get to do it. We’re going to walk the Arcadia’s halls ourselves. That’s pretty lucky in my books.”
Aidan couldn’t quite meet her gaze, but he couldn’t hide a grin either. “Yeah, okay, that’s pretty neat.”
“As for the equipment malfunctions, Devereaux thinks we likely experienced a solar flare that damaged the more delicate equipment. The diving suit gear all seems to still be in good shape, and it sounds like Roy here saved at least one of the main cameras, so as far as I’m concerned, we’re barely impacted.”
Something clattered behind them. The camera turned just in time to catch a circuit coming to a halt on the desk where Sean had thrown it. The room was silent for a second, then Cove’s voice returned, strong and encouraging. “Our dive isn’t scheduled for another hour, and I’ve gone over the equipment so many times that my eyes have started to cross. Now might be a good time to introduce the team. What do you think?”
Roy adjusted the camera on his shoulder as he swiveled back to her. “Let’s go for it. Speed run?”
“Speed run it is.” Cove clapped both of Aidan’s shoulders as she leaned close to him, tangling her hair into his. “You met Aidan. He’s basically holding this whole show together.”
His grin was growing more flustered. “I’m…I’m the uh…the assistant.”
“He’s modest.” Cove shrugged. “He does everything from prepping food to assisting the rest of us with our work. And he’s heading down to the ocean floor with us. Give him a few more years, and he’ll be managing his own chartered adventures. Now, we have Roy. Camera, audio, lights, all the important stuff.”
Still behind the camera, Roy whooped.
“Hell yeah,” Cove called back. “We have some really neat gadgets for this trip. Because of the depth, we’ll have limited time inside the Arcadia, so we want to make the most of it. Roy’s ensuring none of the cool stuff fails on us. Next up, Hestie, who is somehow able to read at a time like this.”
The camera moved to catch the opposite side of the lounge, where a thin, wiry woman sat with a paperback clasped in her lap. Her pale hair was aggressively, furiously curly, to the point where she used multiple scrunchies to keep it contained in a ponytail. Frizzy strands still spilled free, framing her face and pale-blue eyes. She smiled at the camera, showing large buck teeth but, like Aidan, struggled to make eye contact with the lens. “I’m a bit queasy.” Her voice was soft, and Roy moved close to capture it better. “Just trying to keep my mind off it.”
Cove made a sympathetic noise. “The first time my father took me onto a boat, I spent the whole time returning the seafood I’d eaten for lunch back into the ocean. Keep the ginger close and let me know if I can hold your hair back, okay?”
“Oh, I’m not… It’s just nerves.” Hestie cleared her throat, gaze flitting across the floor as she tried to find something to settle on. “Yeah. Thanks.”
“Hestie’s our marine biologist. She is the expert on the ocean in general and especially this region. We’ll be going to her to identify every fish and sea sponge we spot.”
The large teeth flashed back into view as she smiled, pleased. “Degree in biochemistry and microbiology, PhD in marine biology, postdoc in coral-plasticine interactions. Honestly, I’m just happy to be paid for something that relates to my career.”
Aidan piped up. “I’m just glad to be paid period.”
Both Cove and Roy laughed, Roy slapping the nearby wall for emphasis.
“All thanks goes to Vivitech Productions for that,” Cove added. “Their sponsorship means the world. Not only do we get to explore this magnificent location, but we get to share it with everyone else too, thanks to this documentary.”
“Thank heaven we still have the cameras,” Roy said.
“Speaking of technical equipment, we can’t forget Sean—” Cove’s voice cut off as the camera turned. Sean was out of his chair and shoving through the lounge’s door to disappear into the hallways below. A woman, climbing the stairs to reach the lounge, pressed close to the wall to avoid being shoved.
Roy made a noise that was halfway between a scoff and a laugh. “He’s just salty because he thought his ROVs would be the star of the show, and now they’re bricked and he has nothing to do.”
“He’ll have plenty on his plate,” Cove said, her voice still warm. “We all will. Our dive window is limited, so it’s going to be a hectic few days. We haven’t introduced Devereaux yet, but I think we’ll save him for later and cut straight to Vanna, our diving specialist. How are we looking?”
Vanna, entering to take Sean’s place, carried a dry suit draped over her forearm. Dark, heavy-lidded eyes scanned the occupants. She was a few years older than Cove, crease lines forming around her lips and between her eyebrows, and her short-cropped hair was swept back from large eyes and a broad jaw. She failed to return any of the smiles directed at her. “We should begin preparing.”
“I love your timing. We were just about climbing the walls up here.” Cove pushed away from the desk she’d been resting against. Hestie took a short, rasping breath as she put her book down and joined Aidan in trailing behind the camera as the crew followed Vanna into the deeper parts of the ship.
Outside, the ocean swelled, heavy with dark promises.
2
Cove kept her feet light as she descended the narrow stairwell. The metal slat steps clattered under their shoes and the scratched, white-paint-covered walls seemed to squeeze inward, as though wanting to crush her.
She’d never gotten around to introducing herself to the camera, but that was fine; they’d need to record a separate segment later, maybe even back at the studio, that would serve as the film’s introduction. Cove wasn’t exactly a foreign face for documentary enthusiasts either, though she was still waiting on her chance to break into mainstream recognition and cement her place in the world as a conservationist and educator.
The company sponsoring them, Vivitech, had a reputation for short projects and cutthroat budgets, but they still had the capability to create an award-worthy documentary…as long as they were given the material to work with.
Who knew? Maybe this documentary would be the one. That all depended on what they found waiting for them on the gulf’s floor. Something visually stunning, Cove hoped. Even better would be clues to what happened in the ship’s final few days. Everyone, herself included, was desperately curious to know how an ocean liner could vanish so thoroughly on what was supposed to be a routine voyage. And Cove, more than the others, needed the expedition to be a success.
They turned a corner, passing the mess hall, and descended a second flight into the storage area where their dive suits were kept.
She’d spent much of her life diving, mostly at warm-water reefs, but this was her first venture into the deep ocean. She was qualified. Barely. Just like most of her team.
It was common practice in the genre of documentaries she hosted to overstate a situation’s danger. Pretty woman in peril was a motif the studios liked, even when it was rarely true. Cove had stood within twenty feet of wild lions as she elaborated on the ferocious crushing power of their jaws—failing to mention that those lions were safari regulars that had grown up comfortable and lazy around humans. She’d hiked mountains in blizzards, speaking in a rushed whisper to her handheld camera about the early signs of hypothermia, even though a tour guide and her crew were off to one side and a helicopter was on standby to carry her back to her hotel for the night. She wasn’t the only host to do it either. They were all competing to make their situations seem the most hazardous, the most adventurous, to remind those at home that there was still plenty of adrenaline to be found out in the wild, even though half the time “the wild” was twenty meters off a paved road.
Cove thought this might be the first time in her career that she wouldn’t have to exaggerate the risk. Mountain climbing and wild animals and swamp waters were dangerous, yes, but deep-sea diving was an entirely different field. It wasn’t even uncommon to hear of divers with a lifetime of experience perishing in familiar waters.
And she and her crew weren’t just diving to the ocean floor. They were going inside a wreck. Cove knew what that meant, even if the bouncy lilt in her steps maintained that everything was fine. Going inside the wreck meant poor visibility. Narrow passageways. No one to help if they became trapped.
They had an experienced diving instructor—Vanna—but Cove still wasn’t sure what to make of her. She usually found it easy to read other people and easy to make them like her. Vanna was a no-go on both. She’d barely said a word since they’d cast off from shore, and that was two days ago.
They reached the landing, and Cove swung around to face Roy’s camera. Eyes bright, smile warm, keeping her face at its best angle. “Through here’s our storage room. We keep our diving equipment locked up tight when it’s not in use. Check it out.”
She stepped back so Roy could move the camera through the narrow metal door. Where they were, on the ship’s lowest floor, was already technically underwater. The metal hull groaned as the vessel tilted. There was a strange, echoey hollowness to that level, and Cove couldn’t help but feel that the ocean was already trying to suck them under.
“We have our food and fuel and spare bedding here too,” she said, running her hands along the shelves as she approached the racks at the rear wall, “but we keep the good stuff over here.”
The ship was technically larger than seven people needed, but the storage area still felt cramped and full of clutter. Roy, tall and broad shouldered, was struggling to fit between the shelves without ruining the shot.
Vanna already waited by the diving suits. They had five in total. Two of their crew—Devereaux and Sean—didn’t have deep-sea diving certification. Those courses, required for anyone who wanted to go below what was considered the safe limit for recreational diving, weren’t common.
Cove loved the ocean, but a tight work schedule meant she could rarely make more than five or six dives a year. This would be her first unsupervised dive at those depths.
She was pretty sure she could say the same for Hestie Modise. The wild-haired marine biologist had spent substantial time in the ocean as part of her degree, but her dive log suggested she rarely dipped under the water when it wasn’t professionally necessary. Cove supposed it was possible to love the ocean but not love being in the ocean.
