Chapter 6 - The compartment where Kane kept his truth
Kane liked ironies that made him feel poetic.
That was why he locked us in the maintenance void instead of shooting us outright.
He wanted terror to do the work for him.
The void beneath Deck Four was larger than I imagined from the outside—an improvised compartment between structural frames and pump access channels, half storage space, half coffin. Crates were lashed to one side. Cases of water to the other. Emergency lights stained everything in a weak red glow.
They shoved all four of us inside.
Then the hatch sealed.
For a moment, none of us spoke.
We listened.
Bolts sliding.
Footsteps above.
Then the deep metallic click of a flood control system engaging.
Alvarez went rigid.
“No.”
“What?” Bennett asked.
“They’re opening the ballast purge into the lower channel.”
Water hissed somewhere in the dark.
I understood immediately. Kane didn’t need gunfire. He needed an accident. A compromised compartment. A failed seal. Dead conspirators discovered too late.
Reed leaned against the wall, breathing through pain.
“Can you open it?”
“Not from this side fast enough.”
“How much time?”
Alvarez looked toward the first trickle sliding across the deck.
“Not enough.”
I forced my mind into order.
Panic is only useful if it sharpens you.
I scanned the compartment.
Storage braces. Tools. Pump lines. Access grille. One secondary drainage tunnel barely wide enough for a person in breathing gear.
Diver sized.
Kane had thrown the wrong woman into the wrong box.
Bennett looked at me. “Tell me you see something.”
“I do.”
Water reached our boots.
Reed laughed weakly. “That’s always reassuring when divers say it like they’re already somewhere else.”
I knelt by the drainage panel and tugged once. Corroded. Bolted.
Not impossible.
As Alvarez searched for a wrench, Reed reached into one of the opened cargo cases and pulled out a small oilskin pouch.
“I grabbed this during the transfer.”
Inside were printed payment records and a handwritten port schedule. On the back page, one name was circled twice.
Rear Admiral Warren Vale.
I stared.
“That’s fleet command.”
“That,” Reed said, “is why Kane wasn’t afraid of inspections.”
The water rose to mid-calf.
Bennett crossed herself once, quickly, like she was annoyed at herself for doing it.
Then Reed pulled one more thing from the pouch.
A signed memo.
Delay boarding audit. Security sensitivity. Clear via Kane.
Rear Admiral Vale’s initials at the bottom.
“Ward needs this,” I said.
“If we get out.”
“No,” I said. “When.”
Alvarez finally found the right tool. I drove it into the bolts with both hands until one sheared loose.
Water surged harder.
The panel gave two inches.
Then six.
Cold seawater blasted through with enough force to knock me sideways.
Beyond it ran a crawlspace barely wide enough to move through.
I looked at Reed.
“You first?”
He shook his head.
“You’re the diver.”
“Exactly.”
I pulled the pouch into my shirt, tightened the evidence strap across my chest, and looked back once at the others.
“If I don’t come back—”
Bennett cut me off.
“You don’t get to do martyr speeches, Cole.”
Fair enough.
May you like
So I took one breath.
And dove headfirst into the dark channel Kane had just tried to turn into my grave.
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