The metal grating of the cellar deck groaned under their boots as the sea fell away.
Julian Vance led the way up the companionway ladder, his boots ringing on the wet iron rungs. Behind him came Lin Mei, clutching her syntax notebook inside her canvas coat, followed closely by Dr. Victor Corvo and Mac Cole.
They pushed through the heavy weather hatch and stepped out onto the eastern catwalk of Blackwater Rig Twelve.
The Atlantic wind hit them like a slap of ice water. But it wasn’t the spray that stopped Julian in his tracks.
It was the sea itself.
The bay was disappearing before their eyes.
“Look at that,” Mac whispered, coming up alongside the railing. His scarred hand gripped the cold galvanized pipe, his brass prosthetic forearm clicking in the gale. “Just look at that damn hole.”
Four hundred feet below the rig, where the severed twenty-four-inch riser pipe met the ocean floor, an abyssal maelstrom was spinning in the dark.
