It could have been twenty feet away or fifty. Whatever it was, it dwarfed the shoals that scattered nervously around him. Marcus adjusted his buoyancy and edged forward, each kick deliberate, testing. The shape remained still, vast and silent, suspended as if carved into the water itself.
He found himself whispering inside his mask, as though speaking the words aloud could anchor his courage: “If it was a predator, it would’ve come at me by now.” The space between them shrank. Details began to sharpen — the pale underbelly, the powerful lines of the body, the glint of an eye catching what little light filtered down this far. Marcus’s chest tightened.