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I can't possibly make it in time...
I'm swimming as hard as I can, slightly weighed down by my jumpsuit, but the woman up ahead is faster. She seems unaffected by her similar bulky attire, and there's no way I can catch up. I just want to warn her…
The shark is far faster than she is.
Ignoring me completely, the bus-sized killing machine closes on the woman with calm, silent pushes from its powerful tail.
At the last moment, the woman dives and twists, reaching back and getting a miraculous grip on the monster's lower jaw. Her fingers press against the side of the outermost row of teeth, grasping the thing's stiff lip. She barely manages to push her body down and to the side of the yawning cavern that would have enveloped her. The beast makes a lazy attempt to shake her off, but it clearly isn't too concerned.
Then the woman strikes back.
One punch after another connects with the shark's big, pointed snout. Despite the water slowing those punches, blood soon billows from each impact. I would hate to get punched by this woman, but the shark still doesn't seem too worried.
The monster casually continues to dive. Perhaps it knows enough to understand that even such capable prey as this can't breathe underwater. It dives deep, and I try to follow. Through the astonishingly clear water, I easily see the ocean floor perhaps a hundred feet below. Despite the captivating sight of that woman clinging to the monster's face and pounding away, I still notice a tremendous shape on the ocean floor.
A huge submarine, covered in barnacles, seaweed, and even coral in places, lies silent and dead, unmistakable in its vastness, especially the finned superstructure.
The shark sees it too, and it stops. The woman senses the change, and pauses her frantic but powerful struggle. For the first time showing real emotion, the shark suddenly shakes the woman off, turns, and swims past me at high speed.
Though her lungs must be as close to bursting as mine, she and I both hesitate for a moment. Something about the huge downed vessel below us seems wrong. It is clearly a modern design, vast, complex, and advanced. How could it have been sunken long enough to be so encrusted with coral? The living rock has grown up heavily around either side of the massive cylindrical vessel, holding it in place.
Then, an opening appears atop the superstructure. A tremendous gush of air erupts from the tower, so great that both of us are engulfed despite not having been directly over the boat. We are thrown toward the surface, and for a moment I even get to fill my lungs.
Then the flow reverses and intensifies. Both of us are sucked into the mysterious wreck.
I awaken as dim lights flicker on in a cold, metallic room. I don't know how much time has passed. It must have been more than a few minutes, for both of our dark gray jumpsuits are only somewhat damp. The woman turns to me, but before she can speak, we hear echoing screams.
The door isn't locked. I turn the heavy crank and heave to slide it sideways into the wall. I see bodies strewn about the adjoining room. They aren't skeletal or decayed, they died recently. One woman is quite old, and one boy can't be more than seventeen. All wear civilian clothes.
Up ahead, a vile, glistening thing, maybe three feet tall, vaguely insectoid, and quick, scuttles under a table.
Clutter and wreckage litter the room, with enough heaped around the table to obstruct my view of the creature.
"We have to kill it!"
My head snaps up. With the dead civilians and this monster in the room, I hadn't noticed a man still alive and on his feet. Bearded, but not old, he wears jeans and a plaid shirt, and carries a baseball bat.
I try to think clearly despite the chaos and the many disturbing sights. "Kill it? Wait! Did this thing kill those people?"
The hideous creature tries to bolt, and I kick at a large crumpled filing cabinet, knocking it into the freakish thing. This prevents it from quickly returning to its hiding place under the table. Instead, it dashes back the other way. I don't get a clear view, it's too low to the ground with the table between me and the man, but it must have tried to dodge to one side.
The man's baseball bat descends again and again, with speed and power that suggests he has done this before. The terrible shrieks grow weaker, quickly.
Before I can examine the body of the monster, or any of the people it killed, I hear the shark-punching woman call for help in another room. She must have dashed out the side door without me noticing her. Mr. Bat and I run toward the sound of her voice.
This room is even more debris-strewn than the other, but at least I don't see more bodies.
The woman and a young man in a lab coat are kicking and shoving at a huge, tangled mass of trash and wreckage. Something behind it is struggling, overpowering them, and the heap slowly slides into the room. I catch a glimpse of a doorway, which this messy pile may have been meant to block.
"Help us!" the woman roars. After seeing what she did to the shark, I'm deeply worried about what may be on the other side of the barricade, managing to overpower both her and a man together.
With the four of us, we turn the tide, straining against the snarling, grunting, scrabbling thing on the other side. "This is the biggest one," the man in the lab coat says. "He's always the most trouble."
When we know we've pushed the thing into the other room, there is a mad dash. This random heap can't fit through the gap, and we need to close the door. The other three shove from one side, pushing most of the stuff clear, and I slide the door shut. The metallic clang brings me immense relief. Half a second later, a heavy crash sounds as the thing smashes against the far side.
"I sealed all the other doors!" A newcomer, a middle-aged woman in a dress, trots into the room. "We did it again! Well done everyone! And it looks like we have visitors!"
The lights double in brightness. Four more people enter the room. To my shock and confusion, I recognize three of them. They were lying dead less than two minutes ago. But now their wounds are gone, and they laugh as they join in the celebration. The teenager high-fives the man in the lab coat. The man with the baseball bat nods to the shark-punching woman in admiration. "Welcome to the crew."
I exchange glances with the woman I arrived with. I know the three people I saw before had been dead. This can't be a prank. But everything is too surreal. I don't immediately ask any questions. The woman and I let ourselves be led to the room with the table, and there is no sign of the hideous thing that suffered death by baseball bat. We share a simple meal, with nothing very significant being exchanged. There are introductions, with some talk of where some of these people had come from, but not yet any discussion of how they got here. Then the lights dim abruptly, I hear grinding gears as every door on the ship opens, and the six residents rise.
"Let's get to it," the old woman says. "It should be way easier with eight of us."
I shudder at the thought of another attack, but when everyone scatters I follow the man in the lab coat. We reach a room with flashing dials and gauges registering in the red. Following the man's frantic instructions, I assist him in getting some critical system or other back on line. We hear hoots of triumph from somewhere, and the sounds of exertion somewhere else. After not too long, the lights come back up and the man smiles. "Nice. None of the crises involved direct attacks this time. And we finished quick. A couple of us may be able to afford a nap. I wish it was my turn."
Over the next few hours, I begin to see a pattern. An average of twenty minutes apart, five to ten simultaneous semi-random disasters strike this vessel. They range from mechanical failures, to minor hull breaches, to poison gas, to attacks by one or more hideous creatures. Occasionally, one or two people inexplicably drop dead the moment the alarms sound. I manage to slip through several hours of systematic mayhem without getting seriously hurt, but during this time everyone else dies at least once. After all the events of a given set are resolved, the dead recover immediately with no lasting effects. They don't even display emotional trauma despite possessing clear memories of how they died. Finally, when we're all gathered for another meal, I just come right out and ask.
The man in plaid answers patiently, with a knowing smile. "This is the Magellan Candidate Selection Site. All the others washed out and went back to their normal lives, but we were selected for the final round. We're doing well too."
"You seriously didn't know that?" the teenager says, exasperated. "How did you even get here?"
The Magellan? I've heard of this, and excitement starts to grow in me as the group energetically discusses the Magellan Initiative. Under construction in orbit right now, that ship will be the first manned interstellar craft, aiming to reach another star. The project and its support facilities have drawn a big chunk of the world economy for years. I hadn't known anything about the selection process though. This controlled environment can restore the candidates from any injury incurred during testing, technology I'd never guessed existed.
What led my colleague and I to stumble upon this advanced training facility? I try to think back. Nothing in my short-term memory reaches before that moment in the sea, in the presence of the huge shark. Maybe the two of us were intended to reach this place, but our memories of how we got here were suppressed? If the proctors could heal even the dead, memory manipulation might be laughably easy for them.
"Finding time to sleep is rough," the kid admits, after the group has discussed their hopes for the voyage. "We try to let one or two of us sleep each night, but with fewer of us at work we suffer more deaths. We usually have two or three catastrophe sessions per hour so..." He shrugs it off. "You get used to it quick. If we're selected, the Magellan will be able to revive us from pretty much anything, and quicker than this test site can. We just need to maintain and defend the ship."
My associate and I give each other a long look. Such a site as this must be very heavily monitored, and in the last several hours no one has suggested that we two don't belong. This lends credence to my theory that we were sent here deliberately. I ponder the idea of days or months down here. Frequent desperate testing sessions, the certainty of many bloody deaths, and little sleep...
Then my mind turns to the prospect of traveling with these fascinating people on the first manned mission outside the Solar system.
The lights dim. Hideous snarling and the sound of rupturing pipes reach us from distant parts of the ship. A series of alarms go off in a cacophonous cascade.
My associate nods, cracking her knuckles and flexing a bicep. I smile, hefting a broken length of pipe and snatching up a set of tools. "Let's do this."
Author's Note: I didn't consciously make this story up. It is one of many dreams I have had over the years with a sufficiently cohesive narrative to be worth writing out. I hope you enjoyed it. Reviews are always welcome.