Prologue

Anju swam in circles. As anxiety crept into her very being, and adrenaline pumped through her veins, blood rushed to her face. Would she be able to find them in time? She had let them go on this excavation in her place. Guilt weighed on her shoulders like a heavy blanket. It clouded her vision, and clogged her throat. She wanted to wail, to cry, to claw at herself, anything to make that lump in her throat and the pressure in her chest go away. But she couldn’t give up hope, not now. Not when two lives depended on her.

How could she abandon them? She couldn’t. This was what she was trained for. But all those years of training didn’t prepare her for this grief. They never prepared her for the anguish of having to save someone she loved and cared for.

She cut through the waters, her form agile and moulded in a way that years of rigorous training would be. She dodged jagged edges of rubble and pushed away debris.

She dove deeper, thinking that the weights would have sunk them further into the depths of the ocean. Schools of fish swam past her, seemingly repelled by some force.

The further she went, the more she realised something was wrong.

Her earlier discoveries, at least, had some plausible answers—who knew what humans were capable of? But this made no sense. She pulled back a curtain of seaweed, behind which there were supposed to be hordes of fish.

Instead, there was nothing but vast strands of kelp. Where vibrant life was meant to flourish, she found only a desert of green.

Anju felt a finger of ice run down her spine. There was something going on, something that was setting the entire ecosystem off. She checked her watch.

Ten minutes left.

She and the rest of the rescue team had only ten minutes to find the missing people.

Otherwise they’d be lost to the waves of the ocean for good.