At thirty-five hundred deep-water lengths beneath the sea, the concept of falling lost its meaning.
There was no rush of wind, no sensation of speed, no passing horizon to mark their descent. In the utter, choking ink of the Hadal Rift, where deep water pressure climbed past seven hundred and fifty sea-weights, motion was measured solely by the painful, incremental tightening of the ocean’s grip.
Four thousand deep-water lengths down.
Eleven thousand pounds upon every square inch of flesh.
Under that monstrous load, water was tightly packed into a dense, thick, sticky gel that resisted every movement like cold motor oil. The cold was a dead, motionless 1.1 degrees. Sound traveled with terrifying smooth speed. Five times faster than through air, carrying every tiny creak of the vulcanized harness straps and every metal clink of the bronze carabiners directly into the bones of Ren Vale’s skull.
They were falling through open water, three miles out from the upright dark rock cliffs of the Mariana deep gap. The shelf was gone. The stone-hard summoners were gone. There was only the upright drop, propelled by three hundred pounds of pig-iron ballast anchored to Deep-Diver Ren’s dorsal spine.
Through the gum mouthpiece clenched between his jaws, Ren breathed the cold, rotten-egg stone salt water delivered by the backup copper drain tube. His lungs, warped and rewritten by the divergence, drank the high-pressure fluid without pause. Yet his nerves were singing like plucked wire.
