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"Here," he finally says, before his head disappears below the water He bobs back up again, are"

Now co darkness

Kilorn reads the fear on , that’s all you have to do"

I can barely nod "Right" The moon pool is on the botto at all," Farley had said Well, it certainly looks like so at the black water below me "Kilorn, Maven will be so disappointed if the ocean kills me before he can"

To anyone else, the joke would be in poor taste But Kilorn chuckles lowly, his grin bright against the water "Well, as hs, "let’s try and avoid drowning, shall we?"

With a wink, he dives, end over end, and I grab hold

The salt stings ht angles through the water, breaking up the shadow cast by the dock above And Kilornthe side of the barracks The water-bent sunlight dapples his bare back, spotting hi when I can and not getting caught on anything This is not twenty-five feet, en deprivation sets in

I exhale slowly, letting the bubbles rise past my face, up to the surface Kilorn’s own breath streams past, the only testae, I feel hisus both beneath the hidden bunker Dimly, I wonder if the moon pool has a door, and if it’ll be closed What a joke that would be

Before I knohat’s happening, Kilorn bursts up and through so ulp it down in deep, greedy gasps

Already sitting on the edge of the pool, his legs dangling in the water, Kilorn grins atnets," he says with a shake of the head "That was barely a bath compared to what Old Cully used to make me do"

"You really kno to cutmyself up and into the Colonel’s chahts, and offensively well organized Old equip dust, while a desk runs the length of the left Stacks of files and papers crowd the surface in neat rows, do the space At first I don’t even see a bed, but it’s there, a narrow bunk that rolls out from beneath the desk Clearly the Colonel doesn’t sleep much

Kilorn was always a slave to his curiosity, and now is no different He drips his way over to the desk, ready to explore

"Don’t touch anything," I hiss at his "Get one drop on those papers and he’ll know so his hand back "You should see this," he says, his tone sharp