The Year I Stopped Being His novel Chapter 219

Garrison stood frozen at the edge of the ice hole, staring down at the violently churning, muddy water.

He was completely powerless. He stood there, rooted to the spot, looking like a tree struck by lightning—still standing, but entirely hollowed out inside.

He didn't know how much time had passed. It could have been five minutes, eight minutes, or an eternity.

The numbers on the tablet were still flashing wildly. Heart rate: one hundred and forty-five. Blood oxygen: eighty-two. Temperature: ninety-five point nine. Then, without warning, a voice broke through the horrific static on the comms, raspy and fractured, like someone speaking through a concrete wall—

"I'm... okay... The current... passed..."

It was Sloane.

The collective tension on the ice vanished in an instant.

Garrison's knees gave out for a fraction of a second, but he managed to catch himself.

"Sloane! Sloane, can you hear me?" Josh threw himself toward the hole, his voice shaking with desperation.

"...I can hear you... There's still... static..."

The professor scrambled up from the sonar and rushed to the edge. "Sloane, your vitals are critical. Your oxygen has bottomed out. You cannot proceed. Abort the dive immediately."

"But... the current passed. I'm already at... twenty-one hundred feet. I can... keep going a little further."

"Sloane, do not push it!" Josh yelled, his voice cracking into a desperate plea.

"Yeah, Sloane, stop being stubborn! Get back up here! There could be another current waiting!" Diego yelled.

"I'm fine." Sloane's voice came through the comms, quiet, punctuated by ragged, heavy breaths, yet utterly unyielding. "Didn't the professor say... The White Microbe usually clusters... near thermal vents? If I drop another few hundred feet, there should be a vent... Let me... get a sample... then I'll come back..."

Hearing those words, a terrifying, infernal rage ignited in Garrison's chest!

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