Perfect Gravity (Wanted and Wired #2)(70)
Actually, he thought about that a little too much, the idea of dressing her. And undressing her first. Out in the cold winter night.
Or no, he’d have to haul her back into the warmed-up car, somehow keep the cat distracted, strip her down, reverse-peel the smartsuit up her body, and the whole time manage somehow not to say fuck it to this whole mission and just cover every inch of her skin with kisses instead.
And then she’d snapped out of it. She’d stripped down fast, almost too fast for him to see. Not that he wasn’t peeking. Not that he wasn’t wishing. Not that he hadn’t spotted her nipples perked up like goddamn mountain peaks, chilled candies just waiting for a tongue to swirl ’em.
Way too soon, she was looking let’s-do-this serious, snapping their tanks into D-rings, pulling on a BCD, tucking their dry clothes into the back seat. All business, all badass. Thank God she knew what she was doing and all, but he couldn’t help thinking sort of wistfully about the warm car and a quick fuck. Or a long one. He wouldn’t mind taking his time.
She would mind, though. Focused. She was focused as a space telescope, pinpoint and true. Brain on, now. Get yo shit together.
He skimmed through the data streams coming in from Yoink, relayed in her familiar not-quite-language. Mostly they consisted of blip coordinates and a rundown of the animals who’d be looking out for him down there in the ocean.
He and Angela tethered themselves to each other, attached dive lights to their gloves, did a quick buddy check, and laid a line out from the car, still with its headlights on, in case the visibility was so bad they had to walk it back. And then they dove.
Or, without a boat to dive from, they ended up mostly butt-scooting from the water line right up to where the land gave out. The BCDs were weighted, so when they moved off the broken bridge, they tucked right into the ocean, into darkness broken only by their dive lights.
Murk was a mercy, shrouding the ruins beneath them as they moved, the rotting, swaying shells of buildings or cars or trees. Or people.
Of course, he knew all that was down there. Close by. Ghosts watching them pass.
The water pressed in, burying them alive. Some folk had described night diving to him once as akin to floating in space. Well, he’d done the latter, more than a few times, off the Chiba Station, and it was nothing like this.
The ocean black was impenetrable, a tomb with ancient, unbreathable air. The actual air, the stuff he could inhale safely, came through his regulator, scrubbed and scented but just enough not-right to remind him he wasn’t supposed to be here. He wasn’t aquatic. He was as much an intruder as the person in the submarine, and the ocean didn’t want either of them.
He and Angela headed in the direction of the sea monster/blob/submarine, and it wasn’t long before they could make out its strobe.
Turned out the sub floated near the surface, only partially submerged. There was probably some nautical term for the way it sat in the water, but Kellen didn’t know. Looked like a sub in a movie, and there were handholds up the side. He climbed.
There were no rails atop the sail, and even though he couldn’t see the main body of the craft to check for viewing ports, the anechoic plating indicated this wasn’t a typical disaster-porn shallow-depth sightseeing boat. This one was military or had been in a previous life. Strange. But the relayed messages from the sea critters repeated that the sub wasn’t armed. How they could tell, he did not know, but animals had better senses than people gave them credit for. Especially when it came to things that could kill them.
Kellen shone his dive light on the top hatch and had just about figured out how to open it when it did so on its own, releasing the seal with a short hiss. Inviting golden light bathed the inside of the sub. ’Course, almost any indoors would be warmer than the chill November sea. He had to keep in mind that sunshine color and cozy-making heaters didn’t mean this place was safe. In this case, it meant anything but.
He unhooked the dive tether and headed down first. He didn’t wait for Angela to take the lead, because he knew she would, and damn it, he hadn’t been just flapping his jaws when he swore he wanted her safe. He was relieved when she didn’t argue these small gestures, like going first into possible danger. She left him his pride, at least. He couldn’t hope for her to recognize that it was more than pride that made him want to be her shield against the world. That it was, in fact, love.
At the bottom of the ladder, he looked around for hatch controls. Apparently there weren’t any, or he didn’t need them in any case, because the hatch closed itself, slowly, deliberately, as soon as Angela was clear of the ladder. A light embedded in the wall shifted from red to green, indicating that the seals were set.
There was an exit seal down here as well, and he was just starting to get nervous it wasn’t going to open after all when little doors in the wall opened and spigots protruded. He had just enough time to close his mouth before the detox spray pelted him. It smelled like gardenia and vinegar. He looked over at Angela, hoping she hadn’t taken one of those sprays directly in the face, and she half shrugged.
“Standard protocol,” she said. “Most of the world is water, and most of the water lately is contaminated. Believe me, I’ve been in worse detoxes.”
Sometimes he forgot how much she’d seen, how hooked into the world she’d become. And then other times reminders hit him smack over the head, unlooked for and raw.
The lower seal undid itself and rolled back, revealing a twisty passage heading forward from the sail. Kellen doffed his BCD and tank, clipped his mask to a D-ring, and stowed the lot at the bottom of the stairs. Angela did the same, though she also unclipped her dry bag and brought it along.