Augmented

Chapter 1

Pacific Ocean

Ten years from now…

Dr. Nicholay Panov nudged the joystick, engaging the sub’s thrusters to keep her leveled. He’d been descending through the murky depths of the Pacific for nearly an hour. His eagerness to reach the bottom was strong, verging on overwhelming. At least then they would know once and for all if Ben Fisher was crazy or whether there really was something strange down there.

An oceanographer with nearly fifty years of experience, Nic knew every trip to the bottom had a habit of revealing something we hadn’t known before. And it was just as true today as it had been in Robert Ballard’s day. Back in the 70s, Ballard—famous for locating the wreck of the Titanic—had discovered the existence of hydrothermal vents. Ostensibly they were little more than chimneys spewing out a rich cocktail of toxic chemicals. Impressive as that was, it hadn’t been the most interesting part. What had fascinated Ballard and company had less to do with the vent itself and more to do with the abundance of life the vent happened to be sustaining. In addition to shaping oceanography for decades, the discovery also gave scientists in far-off fields a new appreciation for the resiliency of life. If it could thrive at crushing depths once thought to be inhospitable, what then might be possible in the oceans of Europa or Enceladus?

“Nic, you’re fifteen hundred meters from the bottom.”

“Roger that,” he replied, checking his gauges.

This was the second descent they’d made in as many days. The first had been via an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) named Betsy, but she had suffered some mechanical malfunctions that had forced them to abort. And yet, as the wise old sages liked to say, with every failure came opportunity. The handful of grainy images the AUV had brought back had offered a tantalizing hint that something was down there. The other scientists on board were far less convinced. Ramon and Alfred, in particular, believed the darkened shape was nothing more than a trick of light and shadow, a point Nic had been forced to concede as a possibility. The lack of echo return by Betsy’s sophisticated radar systems only strengthened the opposition’s resolve. They had scanned the ocean floor every which way and had seen nothing.

But all of this was on Ben Fisher’s dime, a reality that helped in some small way to take the edge off whenever Nic caught himself worrying they might be barking up the wrong tree. Faced with the unknown, hadn’t Nic really been more interested in subverting his own expectations? A kind of buttress against the massive whopper of a disappointment that was surely on its way. That being said, if this was anything close to what Nic believed it was, then he was about to give Robert Ballard and his crew of superstars a real run for their money.

The sub began to shudder and Nic steadied himself as the claustrophobic vehicle listed from side to side. Several minutes passed before a call came down from the Archipelago.

“Hey, Nic, it’s Alfred. We’re seeing a rather large commotion on the water surface up here. It almost looks like the ocean is boiling. Are you seeing anything on your end?”

“Boiling?” Nic shot back in an almost accusing tone. “Nothing here.” His hands touched the sub’s cold metal sides as he leaned forward, peering out the tiny porthole before him. And that was when he saw it: a massive disturbance in the water around him.

Then, without a hint of warning, the sub’s nose jerked forward, seeming to fall through empty space. Had he somehow fallen into an enormous air pocket? Nic felt his insides rise into his throat as though he were in the front seat of a roller coaster careening out of control. The force of the sudden drop snapped the umbilical connecting it to the Archipelago mothership and in turn severed the sub’s power. The vehicle continued falling nose first before its abrupt impact back into the water. The force threw Nic forward, shattering his cheekbone as the side of his face struck the porthole.

Wounded and pitched at a forty-five-degree angle, the sub continued its descent. But the sudden, baffling drop had done more than just batter and bruise him. The severing of the umbilical meant Nic had to rely on the backup batteries. Sitting in near darkness, his lower lip pouring blood, Nic watched as a hairline fracture along the porthole began to spread.

“Please, God, no, not like this.” Growing up as a young man in Communist Bulgaria, religion had been seriously frowned upon. And yet, down here, all alone in the growing gloom, he saw no harm in appealing to a greater power, however slim the chances of its existence might be.

Then, all at once, the logical part of his brain came back online, neurons firing in a desperate attempt to save his hide from certain death. But any solution required some understanding of what had gotten him into this mess in the first place. Falling through empty space when you were nearly six thousand meters beneath the ocean’s surface didn’t make a lick of sense. That much was clear. More inexplicable still was the glowing blue light that was fast approaching.

He watched it, transfixed, until he realized the crack he’d seen earlier now ran the full length of the porthole window.

“Alfred,” Nic said, struggling against his agonizing injury. “Do you read me?”

The radio came back with a hiss of static.

Sinking to the bottom of the Pacific with no power, Nic was truly on his own.

The strange light drew closer.

When his final thoughts came, they were for his daughter, Sienna. And for the crew of the Archipelago. Had they made it to safety?

The hope had barely had time to crystallize in Nic’s mind when the porthole gave way, exposing him to the full force of nearly six hundred atmospheres.