In the bright, mid-morning sun, Lucy tightened her dive weights around her trunk, shouldered her tank, inflated her BCU vest, and rolled backward into the water.

Turquoise ocean closed over her head.

She clamped the regulator with her teeth and held her mask in place with the palm of one hand. Her breathing whooshed in her ears, an astronaut entering a new world. Bubbles escaped to the shimmering surface.

Cash appeared over the end of the boat. He waved. Gracie stood behind him. She held the Sea Opal, looking not at Lucy’s departure, but staring, mesmerized, into the gemstone’s white depths.

A pang of separation affected Lucy.

Cash had convinced her that the risk of losing the Sea Opal beneath the waves overpowered her irrational need to keep it close to her heart. He was right. She’d immediately turned it over to Gracie for safe-keeping. Now that it was gone, though, she desperately wished it back.

Lucy rolled over. Somewhere in the depths below she expected to find Torun…

There he was, hanging out upside down and watching her.

She kicked. Her big plastic fins propelled her through the water. Keeping one eye on her altimeter and the other on her oxygen gauge, she swam down to his level.

The cocky warrior was grinning at her.

He seemed completely unaffected by the water, as though he had a secret, invisible oxygen tank.

Torun’s dark hair waved around his upside-down head. He swam naked. He’d shucked his Bermuda shorts and shirt on the deck before slipping beneath the waves and disappearing, causing them all consternation.

She flipped over, easily matching his position. She couldn’t duplicate his smile, though. If her lips curled, she’d lose the seal around her mask and regulator, and spring a leak.

He floated closer.

The dappled shadows made patterns on his face and body. Had parts of his body hardened into ridges, like fins?

Was he really a merman?

No. There had to be a trick. The world freediving record was seventeen minutes. Or was it more high tech? Tankless rebreathers that drew oxygen from the water were the stuff of science fiction, but LASIK had been sci-fi once too. There had to be a logical explanation.

She really should have taken him to get examined by a doctor.

He made a purring noise in his chest and gestured to the deep. Despite the lack of words, he seemed to ask if she was ready.

She grabbed her grease pencil and wrote on her wrist-sized white slate. “Let’s go.”

He kissed the patch of skin on her cheek, exposed between the rim of her mask and the edge of the regulator, and darted away.

Fast! Holy moly, he was like a missile.

She struggled to keep him in sight, pumping her fins hard and cursing her terrible shape. The guys she used to dive with would never have let her live this down. She gasped, using up her oxygen way too fast, and pushed herself harder.

Torun stopped, a dot in the distance, and returned to her side. He thrummed in apology and swam beside her.

This close, what could she see? He claimed to have gills on his back, but only tattoos and rippling muscles maneuvered him powerfully through the water. So what augmentation allowed him to swim so careless and free?

He kicked long, flat fins like her. Hers were magenta plastic, and his were the same bluish gold as his skin. His arms hung loosely at his sides, just like hers. He navigated with his head like she did. His muscles flexed like a taut rubber band, making him both compact and efficient.

She, on the other hand, flexed like her muscles needed to get reacquainted, making her uncoordinated and not so good.

His brows rose and he made a questioning purr.

She wrote on her tablet, “Feeling fine. You?”

He purred again, more decisive, and darted lower.

Shadows filtered through the blue depths, darkening as they descended, and bending shafts of sunlight in familiar refraction patterns. ROY G. BIV, the color spectrum, lost red and orange and yellow close to the surface, faded out green deeper down, and then only blue, indigo, and finally violet before the light disappeared completely into the black depths.

The mouth of the cave yawned in the laser-blue layer.

She recorded short videos. This deep, her phone couldn’t connect to a signal. They would post as soon as she ascended and her phone reacquired a signal.

How was her oxygen? Lucy checked her gauge. Probably she could only afford a few minutes inside the cave. Descending was the easy part. She had to save enough air to ascend safely. Pausing extra minutes to breathe out the nitrogen pooled in her joints avoided the bends.

The last thing she needed was to rise too fast to the surface. Popping a lung, or worse, as depth-compressed air suddenly super-expanded, would cost thousands for an emergency evacuation to a hyperbaric chamber. It could even cost her life.

She respected the water, as she told Torun. The same way a skydiver respected his parachute, a pilot respected his jet, a jockey respected his horse.

Lucy descended toward the cave entrance.

A strange bubble rose from the depths. It appeared gray, then violet, and now blue.

Torun paused.

The object rose past the cave entrance and kept rising. Its size grew massive as it closed on them. Eight legs uncurled and stretched taut. Two gigantic eyes rotated around its central, ball-shaped head.

It was a mammoth octopus.

Awe suffused her. Watching the gentle giant move was like seeing the sun rise for the first time. Its sheer girth was a mountain vista so gorgeous they made it into desktop wallpaper.

She fumbled for her cell phone and started recording.

It floated directly in front of them. Its eyes traveled around and around its head. Curious? It seemed to be waiting for something.

Torun tapped his heart.

Yes, she was so thrilled her heart was about to explode. Lucy took one hand off the camera and tapped her chest. Her heart was beating a thousand per minute.

He made a fist and cupped it in his other hand.

Huh? A fist?

She let go of the camera, which was attached to her wrist by a strong strap, and drew a question mark on her tablet.

He frowned and frisked her, diving into pockets and checking her gear.

What was he looking for? She offered him her altimeter, her undersea knife, her flashlight, and her spare grease pencil. The octopus watched them curiously. Torun shook his head and drew a black circle on her tablet. He tapped it.

Yes, the cave was beneath them. Its entrance looked just like the circle.

His brows drew down in frustration.

The behemoth floated closer.

She grabbed her camera again, mentally composing her Facebook Live commentary to overlay after the video posted. Look at those curling tentacles! Perhaps this cave was its territory. Octopi were territorial, and she wanted to respect it.

The gigantic octopus floated so close she could reach out and touch it.

Then, it touched her.

No way.

Gigantic tentacles curled around her body, stroking her skin thoughtfully. It regarded her with first one giant eye, and then the other.

Hello, National Geographic!

She held herself completely still. Yes, it could crush her like an elephant stomping on a grasshopper. But, she felt unnaturally calm. This giant octopus’s magnificence and gentle intelligence impressed her. It was almost like she could hear it telling her not to fear. That she was safe.

Its arms tapered to tips the size of her fist. One tickled her bare cheek, where minutes ago, Torun had kissed her. A white sucker lightly suctioned her skin and released.

She would call this octopus Mr. Huggles.

Torun made a loud thrumming noise and darted forward. He pushed the tentacles off her and raised a fist.

Mr. Huggles snagged his ankle and swung him away.

Torun flew through the water and knocked into the cave wall. He floated, stunned, and then rubbed his head.

Uh oh.

She kicked toward Torun. Was he okay?

The octopus moved into her way, blocking her path.

Again, she didn’t feel afraid. She stroked its slick, rubbery tentacles. The ultimate neoprene, it was perfectly suited for underwater. Arms wrapped around her, tangling her in a gentle, undulating hug.

Wow.

She didn’t expect the octopus to understand written English, but all the same, she wrote on the tablet. “Sorry, I need to check on him.”

The octopus watched her writing. One curious arm curled around her grease pencil and carried it away. Another tentacle tugged on her tablet, and a third stroked her hair.

Safe. Curious. Safe.

Torun shook his head, kicked over to them, and hummed loud and deep as a bellow.

The octopus twitched. Mr. Huggles caressed her, but surreptitious, like a dog who knew it was disobeying its owner to eat the steak on the table.

Torun bellowed again and gestured for it to get lost.

The octopus released her and scooted into the depths. Several tentacles curled apologetically in Torun’s direction. One clutched her grease pencil.

Amazing!

She turned the cell phone camera on herself. A bug-eyed selfie showed her hair in disarray. What would the girls think of that? She made the A-OK gesture and stopped the recording. It saved to her internal memory and turned off.

Torun smoothed her hair. Worried lines ringed his eyes. He checked her over, but she was fine. The only injury was sucker marks, red impressions, on his ankle. She touched him to make sure he was alright.

Hey. His fins were not only flesh tone. They were so smooth and form-fitting that they seemed to actually grow from his skin.

Her hard, plastic fins were ridged. His fins were more like frog’s feet, with the toes elongated and skin spread out between them in an accordion.

This was … still advanced diving technology?

What the hell was Torun? A CIA tribesman with secret military undersea augmentations?

Her brain struggled.

Maybe she was narced. She’d passed into the depths where her tank’s pressure-condensed gasses acted like a drug and even experienced divers made idiot mistakes.

Or maybe her once-in-a-lifetime encounter with the world’s friendliest gigantic octopus made her thoughts swim wild. If the oceans could hide an octopus so big, why not a merman or five?

Her mysterious could-be merman beckoned her into the cave.

Well, she was here, wasn’t she? Maybe her brain was playing tricks on her. Maybe she wanted his merman story to be true so badly she tricked herself into seeing things that couldn’t be believed.

Lucy clicked on her undersea flashlight. Time to find out where this new adventure led.