Violet's Watery Mystery

Well, that was a waste of time.

I pulled the sub up to the surface and sat there, staring off at the horizon. I didn’t want to go back in the water. Not yet. Not when I had something to think about. I wanted to stay right here, where I could just sit and stew in my own thoughts.

Ding-ding! The intercom beeped, interrupting my thoughts. “Violet? You up there? We need you back down here.” It was Rutti, from the control room. I couldn’t believe he was still waiting for me after all this time. He knew what I was doing out here, but he still waited for me. That man… *He* was amazing.

“Uh…yeah. Give me just one minute, Rutti!” I shouted back down through the hatch as I started up my equipment again and headed for the submerged ruins of an ancient aqueduct beneath the sea floor.

I landed with a splash in front of a wall of crumbling brickwork and began to investigate the area around it. It looked very much like most of the other ruins we’d found here over the past few months, but something about it seemed… different today.

I took out my camera and began to film my surroundings, narrating my findings as they came to mind. “This is another section of ancient aqueduct wall – we believe it dates back to somewhere between 300 CE and 600 CE based on recovered artifacts such as coins, pottery shards and other objects such as glassware or jewelry fragments found near its opening…”

As I moved further along the length of wall with my camera filming every step of the way, a startling sound suddenly reached my ears: *splash.*

I turned around quickly, startled by the noise and peered into the water in front of me from where it had come from… And that’s when I saw them – two people, floating on their backs in the water only 30 feet away from me!

“Hello? Who are you? What are you doing here?!” I called out at them instinctively through my diving mask. They didn’t respond; they just kept swimming toward me without even looking at me once! As they got closer to me, I realized they were both wearing long black cloaks or coats made entirely out of some sort of shiny material which reflected light almost like a mirror! Their faces were concealed by those hoods… But what really caught my attention were their eyes; they glowed bright white against the darkness of their skin… No – not their skin – it looked more like these men were wearing full-face helmets made out of black metal! Both men wore these helmets which covered their entire heads except for their eyes – which were glowing like searchlights… And as they swam closer to me, each grabbed one end of a long rope tied together in front of them with a grappling hook attached to one end – and then before I knew what was happening, they shot towards me on either side with their hooks at the ready!!

I immediately went underwater and began swimming away as fast as I could until I felt myself running into something solid behind me – concrete!! Oh no!! That must be some kind of hidden wall behind me that suddenly appeared out of nowhere!! How did these men get so close to me without my knowing?? What do they want?? Don’t they know who I am?? What have I done wrong?? Oh God!! Why did this happen?? Why do these horrible things keep happening to poor innocent people like us?!!