Changeling
gathered in front of the structure. Further away rose the rocky ridge of the Cerro Colorado, and somewhere up there, Professor was probably trying to figure out what had happened to them.
    “Rafi!” She spun around in the water, calling out and searching for him, but there was no sign of the young intern.
    She rotated forward and thrust her head once more beneath the water. Nothing moved in the blurry foreground. Rafi was still in the tunnel.
    She kicked hard, clawing back into the depths. A brown smudge of disturbed silt marked the spot where she had broken through the kelp. Reaching it was a Sisyphusian struggle against buoyancy but she did not give up. After what seemed an eternity, she caught hold of the seaweed and pulled herself into the concealed opening.
    Rafi floated motionless, fifty feet away. Jade did not hesitate to swim toward him. That he had drowned was plainly obvious, but that did not mean he was beyond resuscitation. Regardless, she was not going to leave him behind.
    As soon as she reached him, she grasped his head in her hands and pulled his face close, pressing her lips to his, exhaling a breath into his mouth. She hoped that would be enough to bring him back, but the air simply bubbled back out, pooling on the ceiling of the tunnel like droplets of quicksilver.
    She let go of his head and grabbed the back of his shirt collar instead, dragging him along as she began kicking back toward the mouth of the tunnel. His dead weight slowed her down and before she could reach that intermediate goal, the primal urge to breathe seized her once more, tearing at her lungs like a desperate animal caught in a snare. She fought back, using every trick she knew to fool her nervous system, blundered through the mass of kelp blocking the tunnel and clawed her way back to the surface.
    As soon as she broke through, she exhaled another rescue breath into Rafi’s mouth, then rolled him over and commenced a one-handed backstroke toward shore. The incoming tide which had nearly killed her in the tunnel now worked in her favor, supplying added impetus to her efforts. Lazy swells propelled her ever closer, but in the sheltered bay on the eastern shore of the peninsula there were no breakers to carry them into shore. She kept swimming until, at long last, she felt the coarse sand bumping against her knees.
    Her arrival went unnoticed by the crowd gathered in front of the museum more than five hundred yards away. She tried to call for help but her croaked supplication was barely loud enough for her to hear it over the low murmur of the sea, so she abandoned the effort and turned her full attention to Rafi, dragging him up above the tide line. As soon as there was relatively solid ground beneath her, she started chest compressions.
    The next few minutes were a blur. Over the years, she had taken more first-aid and lifeguard classes than she could count but this was the first time she had ever put what she had been taught to use in a real world situation. She had no idea if she was doing it right. What was the ratio of rescue breaths to compressions? Was his airway clear?
    She readjusted his head, tilting his chin up, and tried another breath. She felt it go in and then suddenly Rafi convulsed, vomiting a geyser of lukewarm water into her face. She flinched back in surprise and then sagged in relief as Rafi began coughing and retching, and most importantly, breathing again.
    Exhaustion crashed over her but she knew her task was not yet finished. She knelt beside him and rolled him onto his side. “I’m going for help. You’re going to be okay.”
    Though still coughing violently, Rafi nodded and she saw the gratitude in his eyes. She stood, fought through the momentary dizziness and lurched toward the museum, waving her arms and shouting as she ran.
    Her efforts finally yielded the desired results. Someone noticed her, and then one by one, heads began to turn and the bubble burst. She recognized many of the faces rushing toward

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