And there, in the distance, he saw it: a sudden bloom of light beneath the water, followed by the muffled roar of an explosion. The sea convulsed as the blast rolled through it. A dull, thunderous crack reverberated across the reef, followed by a surge of bubbles and silt exploding upward in a blinding cloud.
Marcus’s body jolted from the shockwave, the force rattling through his ribs like a hammer blow. He twisted, vision swimming, his ears ringing with the underwater roar. The coral reef he’d been studying only moments earlier was obscured, shrouded in a storm of sand and debris. He struggled to orient himself, to comprehend what had just torn through the water.