Irkalla by John Triptych

Author:John Triptych [Triptych, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: John Triptych
Published: 2019-10-16T00:00:00+00:00

23

THE FLOODED TUNNEL they had ventured into proved to be so wide that they both swam alongside of each other. Jason marveled at the fact that there didn’t seem to be any natural obstacles as they covered a length of approximately thirty meters before the curvature up ahead obscured their forward vision, making him wonder what they were heading into.

He turned to look at his wife as they neared the bend up ahead. “Was that Manny’s knife you found?”

Penny shrugged. As cave divers, neither one of them carried a conventional diver’s knife, preferring line cutters instead. “I don’t know.”

Jason continued to wonder as he stared at the smooth calcite deposits along the tube-like walls of the passageway. This place feels... artificial somehow.

His eyes opened wide the moment they rounded the curve. Up ahead the tunnel continued, but there seemed to be a manmade structure in the foreground. Penny also gave her husband a look of shock as they both got closer.

A solid steel frame had been constructed around the circumference of the once natural passageway. Looking up, Jason could see a set of recessed steel bars nearly ten centimeters thick that had been pulled back, allowing the artificial part of the channel to blend in with the cave tunnel they had just been through.

Penny turned to look at him, and their eyes met. “Looks like a sluicegate.”

He shook his head slowly. “Who would build something like that here?”

Penny shrugged a second time. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

“Let’s keep going. Maybe Manny swam in here and they rescued him.”

Penny flashed him the okay sign.

The current seemed to have increased, and they both kept low while moving forward. The once flowing natural walls of hardened calcite now gave way to smooth, squared concrete as they made it into another juncture.

Jason had been diligently laying down the guideline sine the moment they entered the tunnel, but he wondered if it was of any use since there were now multiple red arrows that had been painted along the walls, evidently leading them somewhere. Tying off the string, he reattached the spool to his belt.

When Penny pointed up, Jason’s eyes became like saucers once more as he could see that the squared undersea passageway had embedded artificial lights, illuminating the entire area. What is this place? It feels like the whole thing is some sort of giant aquarium.

Turning off their helmet-mounted flashlights, they swam onwards. The sunken canal’s endpoint was in view, and Jason could see nothing but clear, scintillating blue up ahead. By now they both used power kicks to swim faster as their heightened curiosity could no longer be denied.

The end of the passageway led into a massive square room stretching dozens of meters across in all directions. Looking down, Jason could see the murky bottom of the flooded area at forty meters below him. Up above, huge circles of light shone down on them, illuminating the water’s rippling surface.

There’s a way out up above, he thought.

Penny pointed towards the opposite end of the place.

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