Latex Depths

I was three minutes into breath hold when the water changed.

It wasn't a sound. It was a pressure shift, a new weight against the latex hood. The channel current pulled harder, like someone opened a door underwater. I cracked an eye against the mask seal. Nothing but green dark and the faint sway of kelp below.

I should have surfaced. The rule is always surface when something feels wrong. But the yacht was a hundred feet above me, and the hull's shadow had already passed. They'd be hauling anchor in twenty minutes. If I surfaced now, I'd have to tell Marcus I didn't get the package. And Marcus doesn't accept excuses.

So I stayed.

The latex suit hugged me like a second skin. I'd spent two hours zipping into it, checking the seals, making sure the blonde hair I'd bleached last week was tucked tight under the hood. Blonde was the job requirement. Blonde meant I could move through the marina without anyone remembering my face. Blonde meant I was interchangeable with a dozen other women who looked like models pretending to be divers.

I hated it. But the money was good.

The package was supposed to be strapped to a mooring chain at sixty feet. A waterproof bag, titanium zipper, contents unspecified. My job was simple: take it, surface behind the yacht's blind spot, swim to the Zodiac Marcus had stashed behind the jetty. No names. No questions. No looking inside.

I'd done this nine times before. Nine clean extractions. Nine perfect handoffs.

The tenth one wanted to kill me.

The mooring chain came into view through the silt. A thick rusted thing bolted to a concrete block. The bag was there, right where the coordinates said it would be. Black cylinder, about the size of my forearm. I grabbed it, clipped it to my belt, and turned to kick upward.

That's when I saw the face.

A woman. Same hood. Same mask. Same blonde hair tucked into the latex collar. She was ten feet away, hanging in the water like she'd been waiting. Her suit was identical to mine. Same brand, same seam pattern, same matte finish that barely caught light.

She held a knife.

Not threatening me with it. Just holding it. Like she'd forgotten it was in her hand. Her eyes through the mask were pale, almost colorless. Greenish gray. The kind of eyes that looked at you and through you at the same time.

I didn't move. Neither did she.

The breath was getting tight in my chest. Three minutes was my comfort zone. Four was pushing. I was somewhere past that now. The urge to breathe was a fist in my throat.

She raised her free hand. Pointed at the bag on my belt.

I shook my head. Slow. Clear.

She pointed again. More insistent. Then she tapped her own belt, where another bag hung. Same black cylinder. Same titanium zipper.

Two bags. Two women. One job.

Marcus hadn't told me about a partner. Marcus hadn't told me about competition either.

The knife twitched in her grip. A small adjustment, but I caught it. She was deciding. I could see it in the way her shoulders tensed, the way her fins shifted in the current. She was weighing options. Maybe she'd been told to take the bag from whoever got there first. Maybe she'd been told to take the bag and make sure nobody else took it.

I didn't wait to find out.

I kicked hard, angling away from her, toward the surface. The bag slapped against my thigh. My lungs were screaming now. The light above was pale and distant, like looking up through milk glass. I pulled for it. Arms over my head, legs driving, every muscle demanding air.

She was behind me. I felt the water move as she followed.

I broke the surface gasping, ripped the mask off, sucked air like it was the last oxygen on earth. The yacht was fifty yards away. No one on deck. The Zodiac was hidden behind the jetty, a hundred yards of open water between me and it.

The woman surfaced twenty feet away. She pulled her mask up, and I saw her face fully for the first time. She was younger than me. Maybe twenty-two. Her hair was the same shade of platinum, wet and plastered to her skull. Her lips were blue.

She didn't gasp. She didn't breathe hard. She just floated, watching me, the knife still in her hand.

"You took the wrong bag," she said.

Her voice was flat. No accent I could place. No anger either. Just a statement of fact.

"I took the bag at the coordinates," I said.

"The coordinates changed." She tilted her head. "Marcus didn't tell you."

It wasn't a question. She already knew the answer.

I looked down at the cylinder on my belt. The titanium zipper gleamed in the afternoon light. I could open it. I could check. But that was the rule I never broke. No looking inside. That was how you stayed clean. That was how you stayed alive.

"He told me," I said.

She smiled. It was a thin, cold thing. "No. He didn't."

She started swimming toward me. Slow. Easy. The knife still in her hand but held low, at her side, like she was just carrying it.

I had two choices. I could fight her. I could swim for the Zodiac. I could open the bag and find out what was worth sending two women to the same mooring chain.

But I knew, even then, that the bag wasn't the real problem.

The real problem was Marcus. Marcus, who'd told me the coordinates. Marcus, who'd told me the time. Marcus, who'd told me to dye my hair blonde and wear the exact same suit as the woman swimming toward me with a knife.

Marcus had set this up.

He'd sent two of us to the same spot, and he'd told each of us the other was the threat. That way, whoever came back with a bag would be the one who survived. The one who earned the next job.

I'd worked for Marcus for two years. I'd never trusted him. But I'd never thought he'd do this.

The woman stopped five feet away. She held out her hand, palm up. Not a threat. A request.

"Give me the bag," she said. "I won't hurt you."

I looked at her. At the blue lips. At the knife. At the bag on her belt, identical to mine.

"How do I know yours is the right one?"

"You don't." She shrugged. "But I'm the one who knows the new coordinates. I'm the one who knows where the handoff really is. Marcus told me you'd be here. He told me you'd have the decoy."

Decoy.

I felt something cold settle in my stomach. Not the water. Something deeper.

"He told you to take my bag," I said.

"He told me to take your bag and leave you here." She glanced at the yacht. "He said you wouldn't be a problem."

I laughed. It came out sharp and ugly.

"Marcus is an idiot."

She didn't disagree.

The water lapped between us. The yacht's engines rumbled to life somewhere behind me. The Zodiac waited. The bag on my belt felt heavier than it should.

I had a choice to make. And the worst part was, I didn't know if any of the options were real.