At six thousand deep-water lengths below the Southern Pelagic Sea, water ceased to behave like a liquid.
It pressed inward with the thickness of cold high-pressure grease. Every cubic inch of the ocean was charged with fifteen thousand pounds of relentless, omnidirectional force. One thousand and fifty sea-weights of water-pressure mass, the dead weight of ten miles of black sea bearing down upon a trench floor where sunlight had not pierced since the cooling of the earth’s crust.
An unaugmented mortal body plunged into this depth wouldn’t merely drown. The hollow cavities of the skull—the sinuses, the middle ears, the spongy matrix of the frontal bone—would collapse in three hundredths of a second with the bone-shaking crack of a cavalry pistol. The ribs would fold inward like a crushed birdcage, driving splintered bone through the ventricles before the nervous system could even register the sensation of cold.
Yet Ren Vale was breathing.
He drew a slow, deliberate draught through the vulcanized gum mouthpiece clenched between his back teeth. The copper drain tube line connected to Deep-Diver Ren’s chest pipe hub hissed softly in the dark, feeding his lungs a freezing, pressure-steadied mid-air of hyper-dense stone salt water. It tasted of crushed shale, iron salts, and ancient animal fat. But it filled his alveoli without a tremor.
