A fear of dark water

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Too deep.

Korn hit the Pharos One comms link again. He heard Wiegand’s voice but the transmission was breaking up. No crackle or hiss: the digital communications system had no degrees of function; the signal was either there or it was not. Wiegand’s anxiety came to Korn in severed syllables and silences. Shards of words. Sharp-edged.

Korn looked at the submersible’s depth meter. Oh Jesus, too deep, too deep. And still dropping. Dropping faster. Three thousand metres. Three thousand, two hundred. Three thousand, six hundred. No sense of falling, of descent. Just the relentless plunge of the reading on the depth meter.

Beneath him the trench. Around him the water: chill, dense, crushing. Black.

It was a different universe. A different reality.

Pharos One had travelled the shortest of distances. A journey of three and a half kilometres. On land, you could walk it comfortably in three-quarters of an hour. Yet Korn was now in a place as remote to mankind as space. As the moon.

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