Dark Cove

Instagram DM — Monday, 10:14 PM

Paul: Saw your video. You hold your breath for four minutes twelve seconds — no tank, no movement. That's not human.

Iryna: Been out of signal all day. You messaged at ten. Just got back up.

Paul: Up from where?

Iryna: Dark Cove. North Sea. If you want to dive with me this Saturday, I'll take you. Bring a thick wetsuit — November water bites.

Paul: I'm a marine biologist. I have the gear. Saturday, I'll be there.

Tuesday — Wednesday

Paul: Spent two hours going through your profile this morning. The night dive video from August. The current pushes you and you don't move.

Paul: How do you hold still in a current like that?

Iryna: the water doesn't push me

Iryna: I push the water

Wednesday, 2:14 AM

Paul: Couldn't sleep. Went through your last eighty posts. In two years, you're not out of the water in a single photo.

Iryna: No one's around to take pictures of me on land.

Paul: Do you live alone at the cove?

Iryna: I live in the water, Paul

Iryna: the cove is just what's above

Paul: Found you in a 2019 article. A biologist from Kiel University said she saw a freediver surface without a tank at forty meters in the Flensburg Fjord. The physical description matches you.

Iryna: go to sleep, biologist

Paul: Not going to be able to.

Saturday, 9:08 AM — heading to Dark Cove

Paul: I'm on the A7, leaving Hamburg. Four and a half hours.

Iryna: Bring the 7mm suit. The 5mm won't handle the November thermocline.

Paul: Are you already in the water?

Iryna: yeah, pretty much always in the water :)