The platform is stopped, hovering in place. Like a great spacecraft setting down on a barren planet, the rig settles into the bottom ooze. Flatbed releases its tow lines and heads back to its berth inside.

A photograph … actually a computer-composited down-looking scan from a towed LIDAR (laser imaging sonar) rig. It shows a faint, blurry outline of the Montana lying on her side on a ledge part-way down the canyon wall. There is no detail. A finger points to a flat ledge nearby. An "X" has been put on with a grease pencil.

Saxon is giving a briefing "This is us. We're just on the edge of the Cayman Trough. The Montana is here, on its side, 300 meters away and 70 meters below us. We think she slid down the wall, and lodged against this outcropping."

The rig crew is gathered around a worktable in the sub-bay.

The divers, Jack, John, Sonny, Eugene, Jammer, and the four SEALs have their dry-suits on. The pre-dive briefing. Ianto, Toshiko, and Owen will crew the submersibles. Davison is going around clipping DOSIMETER Badges on everybody.

"This tells us how much radiation we get?" Sonny asks.

Owen pulls back "Hey, whoah... I can't handle no radiation, man. Forget it! Include me out."

"Owen, you pussy." John laughs.

"What good's the money if your dick drops off in six months?" Owen asks.

Saxon is ignoring them as he continues to speak "We'll take reading as we go. If the reactor's breached or the warheads have released

radioactive debris, we'll back away. Simple."

"Okay... Owen's not going... Harris, you can run Little Geek." Jack pats the top of a small ROV, sitting next to its larger brother, Big Geek.

Owen immediately protests "No way! No way! He can't fly an ROV worth shit. I'll go. Shit!"

Saxon continues to say to all present "On the dive, you will do absolutely nothing without direct orders from me, and you will follow my instructions without discussion. Is this clear? Alright, I want everyone finished prep and ready to get wet in fifteen minutes."

The rig crew disperses, picking up helmets and diving gear. Some are studying the diagrams of the Montana's interior layout.

Jack takes Saxon aside as the others prepare. "Look, it's three AM. These guys are running on bad coffee and four hours sleep. You better start cutting them some slack."

"I can't afford slack, Harkness."

Jack warns "Hey, you come on my rig, you don't talk to me, you start ordering my guys around. It won't work. You gotta know how to handle these people... we have a certain way of doing things here."

"I'm not interested in your way of doing things. Just get your team ready to dive."

End of discussion. Saxon is walking away. Burning, Jack crosses to his gear locker. Picks up his helmet.

Eugene is suiting out next to him. "Hey, you know your hand is blue?"

"Shut up and get your gear on."

Nearby, Monk comes over to pick his helmet up off the worktable.

Owen points to the heavy equipment case that says F.B.S. DEEP SUIT/MARK IV. "I've been meaning to ask you what this thing is."

Monk opens the case and shows them an unfamiliar diving suit, what looks like a space helmet, and a large backpack. "Fluid breathing system. We just got them. We use it if we need to go really deep."

"How deep?"

"Deep." Monk shrugs "It's classified... you know. Anyway, you breathe liquid, so you can't be compressed. Pressure doesn't get to you."

John is grappling with the concept. "You're saying you get liquid in your lungs?"

"Oxygenated fluorocarbon emulsion." Monk take a clear plastic box full of O-rings off the shelf and dumps them out. He opens a valve on the backpack and allows some of the fluid inside it to drain into the box. Then he take Janet by the tail off Owen's shoulder.

"Hey!"

"Check this out." He drops Janet in the box and, before Owen can protest, closes the lid. Janet is forced under the surface. She struggled for a second, and bubbles come out of her mouth. Then she casually swims around in there, completely submerged... breathing liquid. John and the others stare into the box, amazed.

"See? She's diggin' it." Monk takes Janet out and holds her by the tail for a few seconds to drain her lungs. Then hands her back to Owen. The rat is annoyed, but otherwise alright.

"This is no bullshit hands down the goddamnedest thing I ever saw." John whispers like they are breaking the law even knowing.

Maybe they are.

.

.

.

Three sets of moving lights move outward from Torchwood. Cab One and Three, with Ianto and Owen at the controls respectively, and Toshiko in the Flatbed. Ianto is in the lead. He approaches the cliff-like drop-off and starts to descend "Com-check, everybody. Flatbed, you on line?"

"Ten-four, Ianto, read you loud and clear." Toshiko replies.

"Cab Three?" Ianto asks.

"Cab Three, check. Right behind you." Owen answers.

"What's you depth, Cab Three?"

"1840... 50... 60... 70..." Owen counts.

"Going over the wall." Ianto reports "Coming to bearing 065. Everybody stay tight and in sight."

"Starting out descent." Toshiko speaks "Divers, how're you doing?"

Eight divers ride the back of Flatbed like itinerant workers on the way to the fields. Jack and his civilian crew, John, Eugene, and Jammer... sit across from the SEALs. They are in their gear and breathing from umbilical hooked in Flatbed's low-pressure manifold.

"Okay so far." Jack reports back calmly.

"How deep's the drop-off here?" Jammer asks.

"This here's the bottomless pit, baby." John crows excitedly "Two and a half miles straight down."

"Knock off the chatter." Saxon barks "Cab One, you getting anything?"

Ianto consults his array of instruments.

"Cab One, do you see it yet?" Saxon insists on a response and Ianto rolls his eyes.

Ianto finally responds "The magnetometer is pegged. Side-scan is showing a big return, but I don't see anything yet. Are you sure you got the depth right on this?"

Jack's filtered voice comes through the coms "You should be almost to it, ace."

Ianto turns the submersible and...The spotlight flares back from the great brass screw of the Montana. It dwarfs Cab One.

"Uh, yeah, roger that... uh, found it."

Cab One manoeuvres along the flank of the enormous sub, while Flatbed and Cab Three move above it. Davison take readings with a hand-held neutron counter.

"Cab One, radiation readings?" Saxon barks.

"Neutron counter's not showing very much" Ianto replies, cutting off the 'say please' prompt at the rudeness. A Grunt. They are rude.

"Davison, anything?" Saxon barks again.

"Negative. Nominal."

Saxon orders "Just continue forward along the hull."

"Copy that, continuing forward. You just want me to get shots of everything, right?" Ianto is polite, even if he isn't.

"Roger, document as much as you can, but keep moving. We're on a tight timeline… please" Saxon's response is a little more polite, as if he can hear the unspoken reprimand.

"Copy that."

The great black hull of the Montana recedes into the darkness beyond the puny beams of their lights. It seems bigger than the Titanic and just as eerie in its final resting place. On it side, the sub's top deck becomes a wall along which the tiny submersibles are moving. Ahead, in the lights, is a white painted circle.

"That's the midship hatch." Saxon says suddenly "You see it, Cab Three?"

"Roger, I see it." Owen replies.

"Just get around so your lights are on the hatch." Jack asks.

"Check." Owen nods "Then I just hang with these guys, right?"

Saxon replies instead of Jack "Right."

"How do you want me?" Toshiko asks.

"Just hold above it." Saxon is polite again, then says "Alright, A team."

Davison, Schoenick, and Monk unhook their short whip-umbilicals from the central manifold and roll off the side of Flatbed. They manoeuvre down toward the sub's hatch. Owen guides Cab Three in closer to the hatch area.

Owen turns to Perry back in the lockout chamber, ready to launch Little Geek. The ROV has a handheld neutron-counter gripped in its manipulator arm.

"Stand by on the ROV." Monk says.

"Perry, stand by on the ROV." Owen says then says to Little Geek "Sorry about this, little buddy. Better you than me, know what I mean?"

Owen nods and Perry drops Little Geek through the hatch into the water and feeds out a length of tether. Owen picks up the control box and watches the video screen, guiding the ROV toward the Montana's hatch.

The three SEALs have unlatched the deck cover and revealed the hatch. They open the out hatch and Monk swims down into to narrow escape trunk. He bangs on the inner hatch with a wrench, listening carefully with his helmet pressed against it. "It's flooded. Alright, I'm opening her up."

Straining hard in the confined space, he get the lower hatch open, then swims backs out immediately. He gestures to Owen, via Little Geek's vision, and Owen flies the ROV into the hatch.

Meanwhile Cab One and Flatbed have proceeded forward along the hull. Beyond Ianto's front port, the great hatches of the Trident missile tubes roll toward us in procession. Several of the hatch covers have been forced partway open by the warping of the hull.

"Radiation is nominal. The warheads must still be intact" Saxon says, reading something off screen.

"How many are there?" Ianto asks.

"24 Trident missiles. Eight MIRVs per missile." Saxon replies.

"That's 192 warheads... And how powerful are they?" Ianto asks with a look of shock.

Schoenick replies with vigour "Your MIRV is a tactical nuke, 50 kilotons nominal yield. Say ten times Hiroshima."

"Jesus Christ..." Ianto gasps "this is World War Three in a can."

"Let's knock off the chatter, please." Saxon orders… politely. He seems to be getting it.

LITTLE GEEK'S CAMERA ON VIDEO SCREEN.

Passing through a hatch, into a large grotto filled with pipes and machinery.

The engine room.

"Getting a reading?" Monk asks.

"It's twitching but it's below the line you said was safe." Owen assures him.

Monk moves into the opening. "Alright. Let's get in there."

Davison and Schoenick follow him through the escape trunk, into the dark corridor beyond.

Out of the darkness ahead emerges the trailing edge of the sail, big as a five-story building. Far below her, Flatbed moves along the edge of the ledge which supports the vast sub. Its lights, and Ianto's strobes, reveal the tremendous damage to the forward section as they pass the sail. The torn and twisted hull looms above Flatbed as it sets down.

Saxon indicated an enormous rent where the bow section is almost torn away from the rest of the hull "We'll go in through that large breach."

"Let's go, guys." Jack's team leaves Flatbed, swimming forward. The opening is a black mouth in their lights. Saxon moves inside. Jack attaches one end of an orange nylon line to a piece of pipe and moves into the wreck behind him.

"Take it slow, stay on the line, and stay in sight. Watch for hatches that could close on you, or any loose equipment that could fall." Jack is in charge here.

Jammer, John, Eugene, and Sonny follow him inside.

They find themselves in the forward berthing compartment with its rows of bunks. The room is twisted and dishevelled, with bedding hanging from the bunks like the lolling tongues of dead dogs.

Papers float in gentle eddying currents, letters, pages from paperback novels, photos of girlfriends. Jack pays out the line and follows Saxon forward. As they pass sealed doors, Saxon pounds with a tool, listening. All flooded.

.

.

Monk leads his team along a corridor, following Little Geek's tether. Through a hatch into the engine room. Their lights play over flooded machinery.

.

.

From the berthing Saxon's team swims up a companionway towards the attack centre. He pulls at a buckled watertight door.

"It's jammed. Give me a hand."

Jammer and Jack squeeze in around Saxon. Together they wrench the door open on its squealing hinges. It gives way suddenly, flying open. The suction pulls something through. It slams Jack's shoulder. He turns. A FACE...RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIM! He jerks back, gasping.

Face to face with Barnes, the sonarman. The ensign seems unmarked, merely dismayed at his own mortality, judging from his wide eyes and mouth. Saxon reaches past Jack and pushes the ensign's body out of the way.

"Alright, let's keep moving. We knew we were going to see this." Saxon tries to sound controlled but that rattled him too.

They enter the control room. Their lights play over the high-tech wreckage. Floating debris and bodies make shifting shadows on the walls as they swirl in the currents. A languid, weightless waltz. They move through the carnage. Their lights pick out tableaux... the planesman still strapped in his chair, someone jammed into the ceiling pipes, hanging down. Dead faces, pale in the lights. Still. We see only glimpses.

Saxon locates the captain's body and rolls it over. Removes the missile arming key which hangs on a chain around the dead man's neck. Moves on. All business. Jack turns back to his guys. Checking them. He notices Jammer is breathing so rapidly he's fogging his helmet. John, Eugene, and Sonny aren't much better. A wave a panic seems imminent.

"How you guys doing?" Jack asks.

"I'm alright, I'm dealing." Sonny shrugs.

"Triple time sounds like a lotta money, Jack. It ain't. I'm sorry..." John admits.

"We're here now." Jack agrees "Let's get her done."

We see Jack working, calming them, talking them through it. He's sweating rivers in his helmet, not looking too steady. His projection of calm to the others is his own salvation.

Saxon pauses in the doorway to the communications room. "This part I do alone. Harkness, take you men and continue aft. Split up into two teams of two. Let's get moving... we head back in fourteen minutes."

Jack leads his team into a narrow corridor.

They search the rooms along the corridor with their lights until they come to a vertical hatch, open. a pit of darkness below.

Jack turns to address his men "Okay, Gennie Johnny, Sonny. You guys stay on this deck. Hook you line onto mine. Any problem, you tug my line. Two pulls. Jammer, you're with me."

Jack drops down through the hatch to the level below, followed by Jammer, who barely fits through. John hooks his safety line onto Jack's with a carabineer and move along the corridor with the others.

Ianto circles the hull, documenting, photographing. His strobes sear the darkness, give glimpses of the dead leviathan's form as his tiny submersible circles it like a bee.

Working from a plastic card, Saxon spins the dial on the wall safe and opens it. He removes several plastic binders... the code books. He also grabs handfuls of classified documents and orders, and a set of missile arming keys, all which he places in a pouch at his waist.

Jack leads Jammer through a long, claustrophobically narrow corridor, tapping on the walls and hatches periodically. After he taps, he waits a few moments. There are no answering taps. They open doors and shine their lights into the rooms. There are bodies, but they seem anonymous. Crumpled shapes in khaki or blue. They undog and open a hatch. Beyond it is the largest chamber of the sub, the...

The missile compartment is the large gallery a hundred and twenty feet long and forty feet high, with two rows of vertical launch tubes, 24 in all. The chamber is divided into three levels by a floor of open steel grillwork.

"Where are we?" Jammer asks.

"Missile compartment. Those are the launch tubes." Jack answers.

They sweep their lights around the chamber. Jammer turns... his beam illuminating a body just beyond the door. A coveralled seaman turning slowly in the eddying current. Small albino crabs crawl slowly over the man's face. One scuttles out of his gaping mouth.

"Lord Almighty." Jammer splutters with shock.

"Hey, you okay?" Jack goes to him. Gets up close to his face. Sees that he's not. That he's hyperventilating. Fighting nausea. Jack grabs him by the shoulders. "Deep and slow, big guy. Deep and slow. Just breathe easy."

"I... they're all dead, Jack. They're all dead." Jammer is panicking "I thought... some of them... you know..."

"I'm taking you back out."

"No! I'm okay now. I just don't... I can't go any further in."

Jack sees that the big diver's breathing has stabilized. He looks at his watch. Checker Jammer's pressure gauges.

"Okay, Jammer. No problem. You stay right here. I have to go there to the end... you'll see my lights. We'll stay in voice contact. Just hold onto the rope. Five more minutes. Okay?"

"Yeah, okay. Okay."

He moves off through the centre aisle of the gallery swimming between the huge cylinders. He pays out the lifeline as he goes.

.

.

Saxon is working rapidly and efficiently, moving from one rack of electronics gear to the next, setting thermite grenades at vital points. As the thermite ignites, it generates an intense arc-bright light and tremendous heat. The circuit chasses melt. Saxon works calmly in the infernal glare.

.

.

Jack negotiates his way through the tangle of wreckage near the far end of the missile compartment. He goes down a stairwell to the lower level. A HUNDRED FEET AWAY, Jammer loses sight of Jack's dive-lights. He starts to get nervous. Suddenly his own lights begin to DIM, flickering lower and lower.

They become little orange candles, the filament barely glowing. The darkness closes in.

"Jack? JACK?! You readin' me? JACK?!"

Jack, at the same moment, is fiddling with the connector cables on his helmet lights, which are dimming and flickering. He hears nothing from his helmet transceiver.

Jammer, smacks the side of his helmet. Shakes the transceiver on his belt.

Nothing... just static. Then even the static dies. Panic time.

He grabs the safety line and pulls twice. Hard. It is snagged on a sharp metal edge ten feet from him. He pulls twice more, harder, hauling the thing. The line severs. Jammer stared at the frayed and floating toward him. His eyes bug. He looks all around in the darkness. Can't see Jack.

Can't decide what to do. We can see hysteria revving up inside him like a flywheel.

Then he becomes aware of a faint radiance flickering over the walls. It is a cold and ethereal light, unlike the warm-white of their dive lights.

It grows brighter. He turns slowly toward it.

The glow is moving beneath the steel grill of the deck, sending shafts of cold light flickering upward hypnotically, coming toward him.

"Jack? Is that you?"

Jammer is shielding his eyes, staring into the radiant source. Guess what, Jammer? It's not Jack. In the brightest centre of the glow,

something is moving, a figure casting strange inhuman shadow across the walls.

Jammer blinks against the glare, his face registering total, outright astonishment melting into terror.

The glare pulses subtly, hypnotically. The shifting shadow falls across Jammer. He finally snaps out of his fixity... Screaming and gulping air he spins away and starts clawing hand over hand through the treacherous wreckage.

His harness catches on a twisted pipe.

He struggles, totally out of control... the big man reduced to a blind panic.

Jammer heaves forward with all his adrenalized strength.

He tears free of the entangling debris. Launches like a torpedo... slamming his backpack full force into the top sill of the hatchway.

His tri-mix regulator takes the full brunt of the impact.