Free Hotel Megalodon: A Deep Sea Thriller by Rick Chesler

that their smiles were forced, their civility strained. A minor scuffle even broke out as a child threaded his way through the crowd and sprawled across a row of seats to save for the rest of his family. White diffused the situation by handing the displaced family a voucher good for a free meal at the hotel’s restaurant, while reminding them that the tram would be back in about ten minutes.
    Even with that, the latest arrivals were suitably impressed with the spectacle of it all. Walking around the grand lobby lit by shifting rays of sunlight filtered through the sapphire-hued lagoon, they stared in awe at the incredible view out the hotel’s acrylic walls. Uniformed servers offered the new guests complimentary beverages, while White chatted up the clients, introducing Coco as the marine biologist in residence. After about ten minutes of this, one of the hotel staff approached White and spoke softly to him for a few seconds, her expression serious. White turned to the guests he’d been speaking with and excused himself and Coco, imploring them to enjoy their stay.
    “What is it?” Coco asked as she and White followed the Fijian woman out of the lobby.
    White kept his voice low. “Train alarm. Apparently the tram stopped in the tunnel. We’ll find out more up here.”
    He nodded to a small room at the end of a hallway marked Employees Only. The staff woman led them inside and then left, closing the door behind them. The room was smaller than the walk-in closets of many of the hotel’s guests, and served as a “switching station” for the tram. The room’s only occupant besides White and Coco, a diminutive Indian man seated at a stool in front of a computer terminal of sorts, did not turn around to greet the newcomers as he hit buttons on a control panel. A battery of red LEDs blinked while an alarm buzzed.
    “Kamal, that alarm is not audible outside this room, correct?”
    “That is correct, sir. Only the fire alarms and flood alarms are audible throughout the hotel, sir, and those have not been activated.”
    “So what’s the problem with the train?”
    “I’m afraid the news is not good, Sir. The tram has been decoupled from the cable which means it has stopped about halfway up the tunnel on its way back up to the beach. Worse, I’m detecting an air pressure change in the tunnel, which means we likely have a leak.”
    “How about a video feed?”
    Kamal shook his head. “The project to set that up, sir, is still ongoing. As you recall in the last progress meeting, we were instructed not to fast track anything that wasn’t absolutely require—“
    “Okay, okay, I get it. So we can’t see what’s going on in there.”
    “We can send people on foot from Topside, sir.” Then he looked at Coco. “Or from the water via scuba or submersible.”
    “We can communicate with them, though, right? They can hear us through the PA system?”
    “Yes, that system is still functional. It’s one way though, so they can hear us, but we can’t hear them.”
    “Good enough. Let me say something.”
    He reached for a microphone on a stand and then spoke into it. “Attention guests in the train tunnel. This is James White speaking on behalf of everyone here at the Triton Undersea Resort. We are aware of your situation, and are sending people to you now in the tunnel. Please stay put until help arrives. It will be there momentarily.” He set the microphone back down.
    Kamal appeared concerned. “I would expect that at least some of them will try to walk out of the tunnel, sir. They were almost halfway to the beach.”
    White shrugged. “That’s fine if they do, but I still want them to know help is coming. Do we know who is on that tram?”
    “We have no way of tracking who boards the tram, sir, nor would we ordinarily be able to know how many riders are aboard. However, in this case, we know that the tram is at maximum capacity since there were more people waiting to get on than could board. So there are