Atlantis Gold

Chapter 22

It reminded Hunt of swimming through one of the dry pyramids in Egypt. Narrow, constricting walls with a ceiling that would barely be head-high for most people if they were walking. First Hunt, then Maddy, and then Jayden swam through the claustrophobic passageway, constructed of the same gold tiles as the pyramid’s exterior. When Hunt neared the end of the passage, about the same time he could see that it opened up into a wider space, his air became harder to pull through the regulator.

He kicked faster, if for no other reason than to see one more thing — what lie beyond this tunnel — before he died. He knew now that he never would have made the edge of the blue hole, how futile it would have been to try to find a limestone tunnel that connected to the reef. But at least he would see the inside of an underwater pyramid. He thought about what pyramids were for — basically they were fancy tombs — but to have one underwater made little sense since it meant it would be wet inside, unless there was a section totally sealed off. But then again if it was totally sealed off, they would not be able to gain entrance.

These thoughts accompanied Hunt as he emerged from the hallway into a flooded chamber as his air became harder to pull, the air pressure needle now firmly in the red. He knew any second now Maddy and Jayden would have the same problem if they didn’t already. He felt so terrible that he let them both down, and even now, they still followed him.

He was surprised to find the room unadorned, except for the same gold tiles he’d seen everywhere else. It was more gold than he’d ever seen in his life. The room widened into a roughly square shape, and extended both above and below the level of the passageway from which they had just emerged.

Looking up, Hunt saw nothing interesting, only a vaulted ceiling with no openings or accessories. Turning his attention in the opposite direction, he eyed something that looked like it could be a door or portal of some sort, but he couldn’t be certain. With no time to waste, he swam down into the underwater room. Although there were no inscriptions or anything that could be interpreted as signage of any kind, Hunt felt a surge of adrenaline upon looking at the structure set into the floor.

It had to be a door!

A door to what, he had no idea, but it was something. But then he thought about it — once opened, even if it was dry beyond, the ocean water would rush inside, flooding whatever lay beyond. It would not be possible to close the door again against the raging flood, therefore whatever lay beyond would be submerged before long. With them inside.

He turned and looked back to see if Jayden and Maddy had followed him inside the room. And that’s when he saw it, something that made perfect sense to him in a flash of inspiration. Jayden and Maddy had already entered the flooded chamber and now hovered in the middle of the space, surveying it in all directions as Hunt had done.

But Hunt was focused on what lie just inside the entrance.

Up above the doorway was a massive stone slab. Actual limestone, not gold, supported on four cylindrical posts that jutted from the wall above the doorway exiting the passage. Hunt eyed the stone slab, then turned his gaze back to the construct on the floor that looked like a portal of some sort. Instantly it clicked into place for him: they were inside an airlock.

Hunt knew from his navy days that the way an airlock worked was to have a room with two airtight doors. You entered through one, flooding the room if it wasn’t already, such as with the wet room of a submarine. Then that door was sealed, preventing new water from entering when the second door was opened. Where are you right now? He asked himself. In a flooded room! What’s on either side of you? Two doors.

But as he gazed at first one, then the other, the problem became apparent. How to open the one in the floor and close the one at the entrance? Hunt opted to concentrate on the outer door first, since it would do no good to open the inner one first with the outer still open. He had to seal the airlock, and then open the inner door so that only the water trapped inside would flow through to the new area.

He saw Jayden looking at him and pointed to the stone slab above the entrance. Then he pointed sharply down, hoping that would get the message across. He saw his friend’s eyes brighten as he nodded and began to swim toward him. Hunt then turned and focused on the mechanism that was holding up the stone slab.

He could see that if the four circular rods were pushed in so that they were flush with the wall, the slab would fall into place, blocking the doorway and effectively sealing them in. But how to push in the rods? Hunt swam to them and shoved on one, not surprised at all when it wouldn’t budge. Of course it’s not that easy. Think, if you want to live! He glanced back down at the floor, dropping down through the water towards it as he did so.

The people who built this place, if they had wanted to use it as an airlock, wouldn’t have had dive masks, Hunt reasoned. So to be able to trigger the stone gate mechanism from inside meant that the trigger must be operational to someone who couldn’t see well. Hunt noticed the tiles on the floor, where the door would fall into place should the rods be withdrawn into the wall. Gold, like the rest of them, and unmarked. No press here to release gate, Hunt thought. What a surprise. But as he looked up at the rods, and back down at the tiles, he saw that each rod did in fact line up exactly with one of the gold floor tiles.

Hunt swam down to the tiles, moving to the leftmost one. After getting a glimpse up of the rod supporting the door to make sure it lined up, he then slammed his fist into the tile.

Nothing happened.

He wasn’t sure what he expected — if it would click or move somehow, but he tried a couple of more times, with varying degrees of pressure, and still nothing happened.

Then his flashlight winked out. He banged it on the tile, hoping it would flicker back to life, but no such luck. He dropped his main light and activated his mini backup light that he’d had to rely on earlier. The three of them now worked in near darkness, three pinpoints of light their only illumination.

Jayden swam up and put his face close to Hunt’s, a what now expression plain to see. Hunt showed him the tiles that lined up with the rods above. Jayden swam to the next one over, and Hunt tried pressing on the same one again. Both of them pushed on the tiles at once, and still nothing happened.

But it gave Hunt an idea. What if all four tiles had to be pressed simultaneously? He turned and saw Maddy swimming very fast over to him, giving him the OUT OF AIR signal as she swam, moving her finger in a slashing motion across her throat. Her tank had run dry. In anticipation of her reaching him, Hunt found his octopus and handed her the emergency mouthpiece. His air was already hard to pull, and he knew that now with two persons breathing off of it that they would have only a few breaths each. Hopefully Jayden had a little more, but he knew they had very little time left, regardless.

Hunt got Jayden’s attention and pointed to Maddy, then pointed to one of the tiles. They were spaced just close enough together that he could press on one while Maddy reached over and pressed the adjacent one. But that still left two more, meaning Jayden would have to somehow be able to push on two of them at once. Hunt was glad to see his old navy buddy comprehend the problem immediately, and swim into position between the two tiles. He stripped off one of his fins and placed that foot on the last tile in the row, while the fingers of his left hand barely reached the other tile. It would have to do.

Hunt and Maddy got into position on their respective two tiles. He knew they wouldn’t be able to hold the position for long, not to mention they were almost out of air anyway, so there was no time for any kind of coordinated countdown. It would either work or it wouldn’t. He looked over at Jayden and nodded.

All three of them pressed down on the tiles at once, with Jayden stepping on one with his foot. This time Hunt could tell something was happening. The tile beneath his hand depressed into the floor about an inch, and he felt the grinding of stone on stone somewhere from deep within the walls. Then he remembered what was poised above them.

Move!

Hunt yanked Maddy back by the arm, while grunting loudly to alert Jayden. He felt the pressure wave of water as the stone block above their heads began to fall as its support rods were withdrawn. Jayden’s legs were already in the clear, but his chest and head was still in the impact zone. Fortunately, he had been on his back to be able to reach both tiles, so he saw what was happening without Hunt’s warning. He pushed off the floor with his left hand, the one deepest in the impact zone, and did a slow-motion roll out onto the chamber floor.

The stone block slid straight down into place as it had been designed, not more than a single millimeter away from the pinky finger of Jayden’s left hand. A small cloud of silt billowed up, displaced by the falling block, which made a dull thud that all of the divers could feel in their bones.

But it was done, it had worked! The room was now sealed off. What’s more, Hunt thought, now allowing himself to feel the faintest tinge of optimism for the first time since they began their descent from the blocked opening far above, he now knew that there was something to this. Someone had engineered this room! It could really be an airlock, and an airlock meant the one thing that was now more important to any of them than they could eve have imagined: air.

He whirled around to look at what he thought of as the other piece of the puzzle, the inner door that was set into the floor. Immediately he felt resistance; he forgot that Maddy was tethered to him by way of his second regulator. She was out of air! They had to hurry. His own air was about to run out at any second.

He tugged on Maddy’s arm and moved toward the other door. Jayden was already moving toward it. The three of them aimed their dim keychain-sized flashlights at the mechanical contraption that now represented their only hope of continuing existence.

This one was a circular limestone lid of some sort sticking up out of the gold tiled floor. Hunt could only pray that it opened up into a space that was now dry and large enough to accommodate the water from this single chamber, which would flow down into it. But that point was moot if they couldn’t figure out how to open it in the first place. Already, Jayden was trying in vain to brute force turn the stone wheel with both hands, feet planted firmly on the floor. But that had zero effect on the mute stone. Hunt took a closer look at the mechanism.

A circular wheel with smooth sides, made of limestone, with no apparent handles or levers, of any kind. Hunt leaned in over the top of the device and shined his feeble light on it. He took a hand and brushed off a fine layer of sediment, which temporarily clouded the water, but cleared a few seconds later. When he looked again at the top of the wheel, he was able to discern something he hadn’t seen before: a hexagonal shape comprised of six very thin grooves cut into the limestone.

He felt a surge of elation followed by a jolt of sheer panic as he went to pull his next breath and found nothing there. His tank had run completely dry! Sure enough, he felt Maddy’s fist pound into his shoulder in a silent, primal cry for help. She, of course, was now out of air, too. Hunt pulled on Jayden’s calf. When his friend turned around he gave him the out of air signal, feeling a deep pang of sadness as he registered the look of shock, surprise and understanding in Jayden’s eyes. They weren’t going to make it. It was amazing they’d gotten this far, really.

Jayden swam over and gave his emergency second regulator to Maddy first, who took one breath and then passed it to Hunt, who gulped a quick one and passed it back to her. He could see her crying behind her mask. With all three of them breathing off of one very low tank, and Jayden exerting himself, they were probably down to mere seconds of air supply remaining. They would perish down here in this strange monument beneath the sea.

But Hunt wasn’t about to give up. He turned back to the hexagon carved into the circular stone top. Think, think, think! On the plane ride to the Bahamas, he had read in his research that six was a sacred number of Atlantis. That bolstered his thought that this place had been designed carefully, and might possibly be connected with the fabled lost city. But it sure didn’t help his real situation right now. What could it mean that there was a hexagonal pattern in the stone, from a mechanical standpoint?

He was out of breath now and turned to Jayden for another. But his friend shook his head and gave the out of air signal.

They were done.

He heard Maddy start to scream into her regulator. Any second now she would spit it out and breathe in water and it would all be over. With nothing left to try, Hunt turned back to what he hoped was in fact a door mechanism. Jayden had tried to turn it. He now took both hands and pressed down firmly in the middle of the hexagonal section in the middle of the cylinder.

To his great surprise, he felt the now familiar grinding of stone on stone as the entire hexagonal piece slid down within the circular stone. Jayden heard it and swam over. Hunt pushed again and the hexagonal stone moved again. Jayden saw what was happening and added his hands and arm strength to Hunt’s, using his last remaining ounce of strength to hopefully accomplish something useful. The hex piece moved faster now, receding deep into the circular stone until they had to reach in almost up to their shoulders to push it. Then Jayden, already not wearing one fin, shoved Hunt out of the way and stood on top of the recessed section. He hopped up and down on it, and Hunt heard the grinding of stone inch by inch with each jump.

His lungs were afire, and he knew he had a few more seconds left before his body would involuntarily betray him and cause him to spit out his mouthpiece and breathe in water. Meanwhile Jayden kept stepping down on the hexagonal block, grunting with exertion on each kick.

Maddy came over and clutched at Hunt, getting in his face, staring at him with wide-panic eyes to let him know she was about to succumb, when Jayden let out an ooomhp, and Hunt heard a last grating of limestone before he began to feel an enormous suction.

Jayden had pushed the hexagonal piece all the way through the circular door stone, and now all of the water in the room was pouring out through the new opening…which could mean only one thing.

There was an air space on the other side, below! If there wasn’t, then the water couldn’t rush in.

As Hunt watched, mystified, surprised and relieved all at the same time, Jayden slipped through the hexagonal opening like a kid down one of the water slides at the Atlantis resort, dropping rapidly out of sight. Hunt grabbed Maddy and positioned her feet first over the hole, but the force of the water grew stronger as it began to drain faster, and she ended up with one leg in and one leg out. He unhooked her right leg, bent at the knee, from the rim of the opening, and then she went sliding down the chute.

Even though they had now opened a portal that led to somewhere with air, Hunt still couldn’t breath yet, he was still underwater. He could feel his lungs start to convulse, and knew that he had arrived at the outer limit of biological tolerance for his body without oxygen.

With his last ounce of controllable energy, Hunt dove headfirst into the hexagonal hole after Maddy and Jayden.