Speaker 1: I'm a cave rescue diver. Most people hear that and
picture some Discovery Channel documentary dramatic music divers swimming gracefully
through crystal clear water. That's not what it's like, not
even close. What it's really like is crawling through a
stone throat that's barely wide enough for your body, hundreds
of feet underground, with water pressing on you from every angle.
The ceilings scrape the tank strapped to your back, The
rock squeezes your shoulders until they bruise, and if your
light dies, you can't even see your own hands in
front of your face. Just black, thick and total, the
kind of dark that makes you feel like you've already
been buried. We go in because people get stuck down there, amateurs,
weakend thrill seekers, sometimes tourists who thought a guided tour
meant they could just keep going once the rope ends.
If they're lucky, they panic and turn back early. If
they're unlucky, I get called in. I've had grown men
craw at my mask in blind terror, ripping out their
own regulators because they swore they were drowning, even while
they still had air. I've had to haul limp bodies
out by the harness, lips, blue lungs full, their faces
so swollen with water, it's like they were trying to
scream the whole time. I've even found one bloated and
wedged in a rock visure so tight it took two
hours just to free him, skin peeling under my gloves
as I pulled. That's the job, that's the reality. You
breathe slowly, you move slowly, and you pray that nothing
goes wrong, because in those passages, even the smallest mistake
can kill you. But all of that, the panic, the
core says, the claustrophobia feels like child's play compared to
what happened last night. The call came just after midnight.
A group of amateurs had gone missing in a limestone
system about thirty miles out of town, a place locals
already whispered about because people had a habit of vanishing there.
Some caves swallow you with depth. This one, they said,
moved you around. When we pulled up, the rangers were waiting.
They looked like they had already given up hope, having
seen too many unrecoverable missions in the area. One of
them an older guy with a face like dried leather.
Told me the cave was breathing. I laughed at first,
thinking he meant air vents or the usual weird acoustics
you get on the ground. But then he explained it
currents that shifted back and forth like time. It's sucking
you in then pushing you out. No river fed it,
no sea connected to it. The cave itself exhaled. I'd
never been to this particular system, but it was good
to know about the strange flow. We used the dealing
with anomalies, whether it was due to human failure or
natural phenomenon. But the thing that made me pause was
the distress call. They'd managed to patch it through to us. Static, heavy,
muffled by stone and water, but unmistakably human. Three static
voices crying, gasping, begging, then a fourth sharper, almost frantic.
I'll never forget the words, don't bring it back out
with you. At the time we thought they were delirious,
Now not so sure. Our crew was smaller that night.
That's how it usually is, less people, less risk. My
team lead, Commander Harris, had been in the game longer
than I'd been alive. He was a former military diver
with a thick neck and a square jaw. All bark,
but not as much bite unless you really screwed up.
He had the kind of calm then annoyed you because
it made you realize how rattled you were by comparison.
Then there was Leon. He was a good diver with
plenty of hours logged, but this was one of his
first real rescues, and that's a whole different world. Recreational
dives don't prepare you for dragging bodies out of cracks
or sharing air with someone coloring a mask off in
a blind panic. Leon kept fiddling with his weight belt
and asking for his tank to be adjusted higher or
lower every few minutes. He wouldn't admit it, but I
could see the nerves eating at him. For communication, we
used full face masks fitted with radios, something Leon was
still adjusting to after years diving with a standard regulator.
Each of us also carried a spare mask and an
octopus set up in case we found survivors or had
to share air with someone trying to claw their way
back to the surface. A couple meddics were on stand
by up top. They hovered near the gear crates, whispering
to each other and throwing us uneasy, looks like they
were hoping to never actually have to work. To night.
We gathered around Harris while he ran through the plan.
The entrance was tight, barely enough space for one diver
at a time, About forty meters in. It opened into
a submerged tunnel that twisted like a corkscrew before spilling
into a chamber. The locals it nicknamed the Maize that
where the missing group had last been heard. Stay in
the line, stay in your body, and keep an eye
in your oxygen and depth, Harris said, voice clipped like
it had given this speech a hundred times. If visibility drops,
stop and wait, don't wonder blind. If you lose the guideline,
call it and wheel a group. Leon nodded like he
was trying to drill it into his brain. We lowered
ourselves into the water. One second, the world is wide open,
sky trees voices from the surface, and the next it
shrinks to a tunnel of stone. During controlled descent, the
limestone swallowed me fast. My light barely cut ten feet
in front of me, just enough to paint jagged rock walls,
and the swirling cloud of silts stirred up by my fins.
The ceiling pressed low enough that my helmets scraped once twice,
the sound grating in my ears. My tank banged against
the rock when I turned too sharply. Every clang was
a reminder that there wasn't a centimeter of space to waste.
I slowed my breathing, long, careful intakes. If you let
your pulse spike down here, you'll empty your tank in
half the time. I counted the bubbles as they rose,
each silver sphere flashing against my light before vanishing into
the dark above. The guidelines stretched their head taut and
reassuring under my gloved fingers. Leon was behind me, Harris
bringing up the rear. We moved like a chain, slow, steady, deliberate.
The entrance funneled down until there's barely enough space for
me to slide through, a slit of rock, sharp and unwelcoming,
just wide enough for my shoulders if I turned sideways.
I pushed in and immediately felt the cave close around me.
Stone pressed on both sides of my chest, the ceiling
scraping the tank so hard it rang in my ears.
My knees dragged my belly ground against the floor. There
was no room for my arms to move, just one
hand forward, then the other, pulling myself along the guideline.
Halfway through, my thin caught a sharp tug stopped me cold.
I tried to kick gently, but it only wedged deeper.
For a moment, I was pinned. My whole body jerked,
and the tank banged against the ceiling. That's when the
panic tried to rise. The thought hit hard and fast.
If I get stuck here, I'll die here. No room
to turn, no space to back out, just stone pressing
from every direction and a tank slowly running dry. I
forced myself to exhale, slow controlled. My chest shrank just
enough to wriggle forward, scraping raw skin against the limestone.
My movement caused the silt out. My light vanished in
a choking brown cloud, and the squeeze turned into a
blind coffin no up or down, just black water and
rock crushing in. My heartbeat filled the mask, and in
that dark, with my body locked tight, something touched me,
a smooth drag across my shoulders. It wasn't rock. Something moved.
For a second I thought Leon had caught up, reaching
out to steady himself, but Leon was thirty feet behind me.
Harris was farther still, no one else could have been there.
The squeeze spat me out into a chamber big enough
that I could finally stretch my arms without scraping bone.
My light cut across black water and pale stone, the
air above just out of reach, trapped in small pockets
that clung to the ceiling. For a moment, I let
myself breathe deeper, grateful for the space. My shoulders ached
from grinding through the tunnel, and my mask hissed like
it was mocking the relief. I swept my beam across
the chamber, tracing the walls. That's when I saw them. Gouges,
long curved lines carved deep into the limestone. I thought
they were natural striations, erosion maybe, but the edges were
too smooth. They looked fresh, marks you'd expect from metal
dragged hard against stone. Harris, Leon, I've got marks down here,
I said into the colms, my voice tinny in my
own ears static swallowed the channel for a moment before
Harris's voice came back, calm as ever, copy that could
be old, keep moving, stay sharp. I wanted to believe him,
but the gouges looked too clean. I tried to reason
it out. Maybe old dive gear had scraped against the walls,
a careless fin, a tank valve banging around, But we
were too far in. Recreational divers never made it this deep.
You don't get gouges like that in a place only
rescue teams ever reach. I drifted closer, my fingers brushing
the nearest mark, who was wide enough to fit my
thumb inside the stone, cool and strangely polished to the edges.
Then I heard something knock. A sound was sharp, deliberate,
like stone on stone. It echoed across the chamber in
a hollow rhythm, knock, knock, knock. I froze my light,
cut circles through the water, searching for Harris or Leon.
The line was still tor to my hand, no sign
of movement behind me. The knocking came again, slow even.
It took me a moment to realize the sound wasn't
coming from the walls at all. He was coming from
beneath me. I followed the line deeper into the chamber,
the beam of my light cutting narrow cones into the dark.
The water was cold here, still and heavy, where the
cave itself was holding its breath. Then I saw him,
the first of the missing group. He was jammed half
into efesion in the wall, body twisted unnaturally, helmet angled sideways,
as though he tried to force himself into a gap
too small to escape through. I drifted closer, careful not
to stir the silt, and the details hit me all
at once. His mask was flooded, his eyes stared white,
and swollen, lips peeled back over his teeth. But it
was a suit that froze me. Deep scratches tore across
the neoprene, dozens long raging grooves that cut all the
way through the fabric underneath. His helmet, too, was scoured
with the same marks carved across the visor in jagged arcs.
I've seen panic divers claw themselves bloody trying to escape.
I've even seen the desperate scrape off fingernails on stone
where someone tried to wedge themselves free. But these weren't
frantic scratchings. They were too deep, like he'd been seized
and dragged backward into the dark. I swallowed hard and
forced myself to work. You don't think down here, you
just act command. I've got one body, I said into
the calm's voice flat static rasped back. Then Harris's voice
cut through, low and measured copy. Secure him if you
can otherwise, mark and move survivors. First, I pulled the
body bag from my pack and slid it open, fingers
numb inside my gloves. As I maneuvered him out of
the feisure. He was limp heavy, one arm floating grotesquely
behind him, like he was waving. That's when I felt it,
a sudden, sharp tug at my fin hard enough to
yank me half around. My lights. Swung wildly across the chamber,
hoping he was leon, not in control of his strength
because of his nerves, but catching only stone and black water.
No one was there, just silt stirred up from movement.
I left the body for the rear to handle. Being lead,
I was the one who had to push forward and
scout head. The chamber funneled upward into a narrow shaft,
and I followed the guideline until my light caught the
silver shimmer of air above. I rose carefully, breaking the
surface with a hollow splash. The space was barely big
enough to fit me, a bubble chamber no more than
four feet across jagged limestone, pressing in from all sides.
The air was foul, sharp with minerals, sour, with a
stench of rot and stagnant water. My headlamp haloed the
low ceiling in a dull set circle, illuminating beads of
condensation that trembled with every ripple I made. I hit
the perch valve on my mask and let the stream
of bubbles spill into the chamber. The sound echoed in
the cramp pocket like a sigh. My lungs burned from
the squeeze. I let the stale air fill them again,
slow and deliberate, before biting the mouthpiece back in. That's
when I heard it breathing, Not mine, not the steady
hiss of my tank, but the ragged drawer of lungs
straining for air, soft wet, coming from the dark corner
of the bubble, where my light couldn't quite reach. Hello.
My voices muffled through the mask. I lifted the lampire
being trembling against the rock. For a moment, I swore
I saw it, a thin bloom of fog on the
stone wall, like someone else had exhaled just ahead of me,
A human breath frosting the rock in the stale chamber air,
I shifted, heart hammering. Survivors sometimes wedged themselves into pockets
like this. I'd seen it before, Clinging to the last
gasp of oxygen, half dead but alive enough to save.
I leaned closer, straining to hear, hoping it was just
another lost explorer. But the breathing didn't ender me. It
only grew fainter. Moving away, I followed the line down
from the bubble chamber. The passage widened again, and this
time my light struck something huddled against the rock movement.
I kicked closer, breath catching when I saw the pale skin.
The mask pulled half way off, like wheat in the current.
Not another body, this time a man alive. He was
wedged onto a little ledge just beneath a larger air pocket,
his head bobbing weakly in and out of the surface.
His lips were blue, his face chalk white. He trembled
so violently I thought he might shake himself off the ledge,
but his eyes were open, wild, staring right at me.
Relief hit me so hard and almost buckled my knees.
This was it, This was the breath I'd heard the
fog and the rock. I'd found him. He was the
reason I'd come down here. I lifted my lampire, signaling,
trying to coax him forward. He flinched away from the light,
pressing back against the stone. His teeth chattered so hard
they made a dull, clicking sound against this mass. I
surfaced beside him, mask off. You're right, I said, trying
to sound calm. I've got you, We're getting you out.
He shook his head furiously, eyes rolling, his lips moved
at first too soft for me to hear over the dripping.
Then I caught his words. It followed us in his
voice was a rasp, broken and wet. It doesn't let go,
don't take me back out. A shiver ran through me,
half hypothermic, I told myself, delirious, that's what happens when
you're starved of warmth and oxygen. The brain eats itself.
You can't take their words at face value. But the
way he stared at the black water below us, the
way his hands scrambled against the rock, as if bracing
against the current only he could feel it was too
much like the scratches I'd seen on the body, too
much like the shape I'd glimpsed, slipping into the dark.
I could tell myself he was raving, but I couldn't
leave him there to die. I bowled the octopus and
spare mask and handed it to him. His hands trembled
so badly. I had heard just the straps myself tightening
them against his skull. His eyes darted everywhere, never meeting mine,
fixed always on the water behind me. Breathe steady. I said,
we're going back. Follow me. The moment I eased him
into the water, he tried to twist away, kicking weakly
toward the ledge, as if he'd rather starve in that
pocket than leave it. I had to grab his harness
and yank him along the guideline, forcing him forward. He
threshed once twice. Then his limbs altered too weak. His
movements turned sluggish, exhausted, and at last he floated behind me,
tethered to my grip like a dead weight. I kept
us moving hand over hand on the line, one slow
kick at a time. My breathing sounded too loud in
the mask. Every hissed and exhale, bouncing in my skull.
The survivor's regulator rattled in his teeth. I wanted to
believe were alone, that I got him out of the
worst of it. Then something hit me, not hard, but
a long smooth brush across my side, glancing my tank
and sliding along the survivor tethered to me. It felt rubbery,
like the drag of a thick rope pulled across flesh.
I whipped my light around, beam, cutting through the MRK Leon.
My voice cracked across the combs. Harris, you back here.
No answer, no flash of a lamp, just the black
water behind me, empty except the faint shimmer of the line.
I held the survivor tighter, pulling him close. He was
shaking so violently he felt like he might tear himself free.
His eyes were wide, white, glaring in the dark. Mask.
Bubble was erupting from his mouthpiece, and sharp bursts. There
was no current that was something alive. We moved slowly,
following the guideline, our only salvation. Then the water around
us irerupted. A surge of silk poured upward, as if
something had raked its hands through the floor of the chamber.
My beam vanished in a storm of brown and black visibility,
collapsing to nothing. The survivor thrashed instantly, wrenching his head
side aside. One trembling hand shot up to his mask,
nails raking against the glass as he clawed to pull
it off. I grabbed his rest and pinned it down,
shaking my head hard, forcing my lamp into his face
so he could see me. His pupils were blown wide,
white foam bubbling at the corners of his mouthpiece. I
dragged him forward, dragging myself forward, each motion blind. My
hand clung to the guideline as if it were the
last solid thing in the world. And then light caught motion.
For just a second, my beams sliced through the silt
and revealed something sliding across the rock, slick, pale, the
shape of a limb, bending wrong, gone again. Before my
mind could give it a name, I swung my light
the other way, another glimpse, farther off, something gliding fast,
skimming the wall, just out of reach, too big to
be a fish, too fast to be a diver. My
chest seized. My brain wanted to call it a trick
of the silt, a hallucination born of panic, But the
survivor's muffled scream vibrated through the water, and I knew
he'd seen it too. It wasn't just following us, it
was circling us. We pushed forward, hand over hand along
the guideline. The survivor sagged heavy in my grip. He
wasn't helping any more, just dead weight, dragged behind me,
shuddering with every breath. That's when my beam caught the
white shimmer of another mask ahead. Relief searched through me
so sharp it hurt Leon. He must have come in
after me, ready to hauld the first body back. While
Harris stayed at the end entrance, his silhouette hovered by
the line, one hand braced against the rock, as if
waiting Leon. My voice cracked across the colms, raw with adrenaline.
I've got one alive, no answer, static. I poured closer,
heart pounding, until my light fell full on his face,
and the relief snapped like brittle glass. Leon floated there
in the line of my beam, mask, half flooded, eyes, clouded, mouth,
beast slipping from his lips. His suit was raked with
the same gouge as I'd seen on the first body,
long tearing scratches that cut deep across his chest and arms.
He looked fresher, not yet swollen, like it had only
just happened. It was reminiscent of the state I found
the first survivor, only more raw. The survivor saw him too,
the moment his gaze landed on Leon's body, he booked
hard against me, thrashing so violently the spare mask nearly
tore free. I clamped down with one hand, cursing into
my combs, and then knock. The sound rolled through the chamber,
sharp and hollow, beating against the stone, knock, knock, knock,
each one in perfect rhythm with my pulse. The survivor
lost it. He clawed at me, his scream bubbling from
the mask in a high pitched wine that stabbed through
the water. His panic was like blood in the water.
It drew attention. The darkness moved. Something slick and pale
surged past, fast enough that the water shifted around us.
The survivor jerked, suddenly, ranked half out of my grip,
Bubbles exploding from his mouthpiece as his body snapped tart
in the current of something pulling. I lunged, grabbing his harness,
fingers slipping on the wet nylon. My lamp cut wild
arcs through the silt, catching only fragments, a curve of flesh,
an armlike shape, bending wrong, long fingers brushing stone as
it circled back. The knocks kept coming louder, closer, hammering
in my chest until I couldn't tell if it was
the cave or my own heart about to burst. We
had to move. I kept one hand locked on the
guideline and the other gripping the survivor's harness. He fought
me at first, kicking, thrashing, just enough to stir the
water into choking clouds of silt. My light cut through
nothing but mud, brown haze. Every beam swallowed whole. We
moved blind, one hand, one rope, A thin nylon line
was all that tethered us to the world outside the cave.
I forced myself not to think about what would happen
if I lost it. The survivor clawed at me again,
half pulling free. His eyes were wide, pupils brown, every
muscle in his body trembling. Then slowly the fight left him.
His limbs sagged, his kicks softened. By the time I
felt the current shift around us, guiding us toward the
wider entrance shaft, he was limp in my grip, dead weight,
trailing in the gloom. Relief punched through me. When my
head lamp finally caught the shimmer of daylight filtering down,
we were almost out, almost safe. I hauled him along long,
screaming for open air. The line pulled taut toward the exit.
My fingers clung to it like a life line. Then
I glanced back. The silt was still thick behind us,
but it wasn't brown anymore. It was red. A cloud
of blood hung in the air, thick and roiling, and
at the center of it, the survivor's body dangled slack
in my grip. His chest and arms were shredded, carved
into ribbons, limbs, missing chunks, or gone entirely, like he'd
been dragged through a man's size blender. For a second,
shock froze me. I had been so focused on getting out,
I hadn't even felt him go. The red cloud shifted, suddenly,
rolling outward, as if stirred by something huge. A slick,
pale mass twisted inside the crimson haze, too fast to
catch more than a glimpse. It wheeled sharply, then shot
back into the cave with a force that made the
water around me heave, skimming the edge of the daylight,
slipping back into the cold darkness of the cave gone.
All I had left was the survivor's ruined body in
my hands and the blood cloud blooming like a warning.
My instincts screamed to kick hard, to bolt for the surface,
but I couldn't. Faster. Scents killed divers as surely as
anything in that cave, lungs, overexpand blood foams. The bends
hit you before you even break daylight, so I forced
myself to slow down, eyes focused upward. Looking back would
only be a reminder. My hands clamped around the survivor's
shredded harness. I began the climb, inch by inch, breath
by breath. The dead weight dragged behind me, body torn
to ribbons, limp as a doll. His head lolled, bubbles
dribbling from the regulator as if he were still breathing.
My light caught flashes of him with every kick, shredded
near green, pale skinned through the ribs, blood still feathering
into the water like smoke. Every pause felt like a punishment.
I counted the seconds, listening to the pounding in my ears,
and stared into the black below, half expecting another pale
limb to surge out of it. Only when the depth
gage finally crept into the green did I allow myself
to ascend the last stretch. The lights of command glimmered above,
blurry through the water, close enough to touch. I hold
the ruined body with me, lungs aching and prayed. Nothing
followed us the rest of the way. I broke the surface,
screaming into the colms, not calm procedure. Everything at once,
Leon was gone, The survivor was torn apart, another was
already dead. Something in the cave was moving. By the
time Command drags me onto the bank, I was still
spitting water, slipping blood from my dive suit. Medicks tried
to hold the survivor's remains away, but there wasn't much
left to take. The higher ups didn't believe the details,
not the hand I saw in the dark, not the
knocks that taunted me, or the pale shapes circling us
in the silt. But they didn't have to. The blood
cloud and the bodies told their own story. That cave
was a death trap. By morning, the order came down
to seal the entrance Every connected shaft in that limestone
system was marked for closure. Too dangerous, they said, too unstable.
I didn't argue the part. I can't explain the part
no one talks about. It's Harris. He followed me in
after Leon, but never came back out. No body or signal,
just gone swallowed whole. Officially, they've got him listed as MIA. Unofficially,
I know better. I still work and gave rescue. It's
all I know. But things changed after that night. In
the future, if I see deep gouges carved into the walls,
if I hear currents shift without reason and knocking, I
can't explain. I won't push forward, I won't call for
back up. I'll call it in as a lost cause
and pray in the dark that the ones inside can
find their own way out