The Deep (23 page)

“I mean, just
different
. Something off in his eyes. His movements were weird, jerky, on the monitors. That is to say, before all the screens went blank. When we were topside, Westlake had a sense of what the ambrosia might be able to do . . . but he was skeptical. Once he got down, that changed. At his psych appointments—which were delivered remotely from a special room down here, every two days at the outset—it was all he’d talk about.
The miracle agent
, he called it. A kind of mania invaded him. And then he went AWOL. Stopped attending his psych appointments. Stopped being visible on the monitors. He just . . . poof. Vanished.”

Al shook her head. “And then you tell me Westlake was raving about holes in the station and other assorted bat-shittery. I’m not judging—I think I get it now. Luke, I need to ask: when you fell asleep down here, did you dream?”

Luke’s footsteps faltered. The phantom children raced overhead, their own footsteps keeping pace with the rapid beat of his heart.

“Did you?” she repeated.

“Yes,” he said finally. “A nightmare. The worst I can ever recall.”

Al nodded with a grim look of commiseration and of understanding. In the gloom, her teeth were gray: a row of tiny tombstones.

Luke told her about his dream. He trusted Al, and was emboldened by her forthrightness. He told her about Zach, the ambrosia, the eyes. He didn’t tell her what happened to his son that day in the park (which had been the reason the dream hadn’t just scared him—it
hurt
him, too), but it felt good,
necessary
, to disburden himself.

He kept the sleepwalking episode to himself. He needed her to trust him. She needed to trust that he had things on lockdown . . . because he
did
have things on lockdown, pretty much at least, and was going to keep it that way.

“I managed to catch a few minutes of shut-eye,” said Al. “I had a nightmare, same as you.”

She leaned against the tunnel. The wall seemed to belly inward around her body—opening up like a toothless mouth.

Stand up, quickly,
Luke wanted to say.
Get away from it.

But that would sound crazy. Like he didn’t have things on lockdown.

“I spent three years aboard the USS
Kingfisher,”
Al said. “A nuclear attack sub. We were on tactical maneuvers. Routine stuff. I was junior lieutenant, tactical armaments. We suffered an electrical malfunction. We lost power. Total blackness at three hundred feet underwater. Then we were hit with a power surge. One of the two main engines blew out. Exploded, more or less.”

Luke said, “God, I can barely imagine.”

“So when the engine blew, our team evacuated into the maneuvering room and locked the hatch. But there was this kid, Eldred Henke. Nineteen years old. He got trapped in the hallway. I tried to open the hatch, but the locks had engaged. The kid hammered his fists on the porthole until his knuckles broke. Another explosion rocked us as the turbine blew. The wall beside Eldred tore apart like a tin can. Bits of the superheated turbine, screws and rivets and what all, blew through the ripped steel and buried into him. He slammed into the far wall and reeled like a drunk. This thin metal rod was stuck through his throat. Bolts and whatever else had ripped his cheeks open. I could see inside his face, places
nobody ought to see. Next the hull caved and the sea rushed in. I saw it all. I was safe. The current carried him out lickety-split. The kid disappeared like he’d been sucked out of an airplane cruising at twenty-five thousand feet.”

Luke digested this, then said: “Al, there’s nothing you could have done. Surely you understand that.”

“No, I get that.”

“I mean, if I nailed myself to the wall every time I couldn’t save someone’s dog or cat—”

“I think this is a little different, Doc.”

“I’m just saying that guilt carves you up, right? Things happen sometimes and there’s no way to fix it—in the moment, or any time after. But no creature is more adept at putting themselves up on that cross than human beings.”

She nodded, accepting Luke’s logic. “The thing is, I used to dream about that kid. But those dreams weren’t so bad, because in them I wrenched the hatch open and yanked him through just before the sea poured in. Those dreams were bittersweet, sure, because some part of my subconscious knew there was a cream-colored headstone in a cemetery in Eldred’s hometown with his name etched on it.”

“But the dream you had down here wasn’t like that, was it?” Luke said. “The dream you had here was worse.”

She nodded reluctantly—her face looked softer and almost girlish in the queer light of the tunnel.

“
Much
worse,” she said.

The dream had the same setup, she told Luke. Eldred was trapped behind the hatch. Al was torqueing the hatch-wheel—and same as in real life, it wasn’t budging. Then the turbine blew and that shower of superheated rubble hit the kid. Except in the dream, Alice noticed something else. There was . . .
stuff
 . . . mixed in with the rubble. A glittering patina in the air.

“The ambrosia,” Luke said softly. “That’s it, isn’t it?”

“Ding ding ding. Give the man a prize,” Al said.

Alice dreamed it in down to the tiniest detail—every pore on the
kid’s face. He started to shriek. Why? Because of the bits of metal spiked in his flesh or the ambrosia? She could hear him screaming through the hatch. Fluttery, boyish screams.

“Which is impossible, right?” she said. “Those hatches are soundproof.”

“You don’t have to tell me any more,” Luke said.

“Don’t I?” Alice said wretchedly.

Next, the dream got real funny. Not ha-ha funny. Funny-awful. Eldred’s skin . . . it
healed.
Or only sort of. The metal was pushed out of it, the wounds shrinking, then disappearing altogether. He stayed that way for a heartbeat, his skin flawless, then the wounds opened up again, even though there was no cause for it. It was like watching his face get torn open by invisible surgeons with terrible intentions.

“Or like watching the most awful movie,” Alice said, “rewinding it and playing it again.”

Next the sea rushed in and carried Eldred down. And Alice
knew
the kid would keep suffering . . . but he’d never quite die. He’d keep falling into the dark but he’d live on—and in an agony like no human has ever known.

“The worst part is this,” she said. “Before Eldred’s sucked out, as his body’s swirling out that rip in the sub, he catches my eye. And he says—and I hear this clearly:
You did this to me. This is your fault, Alice Sykes. Goddamn you to hell.
”

She leaned forward miserably, cradling her skull in her palms. LB padded over and settled her head on Al’s knee.

“This station,” Luke said. “I don’t know what’s going on. It’s in the air, in the metal. Alice, it’s the most awful place I’ve ever set foot inside.”

“Clearly you’ve never felt the need to take a piss at a dog-racing track,” Al said with forced levity.

Luke smiled, appreciating her efforts. “There’s two possibilities,” he said. “One, something unexplainable is happening down here. Or two, and by far and away the more reasonable possibility—”

“Is that we’re going a bit batty,” said Al. “Jesus, Luke, we just showed up. This is a cup of coffee compared to the hitches I’ve pulled.”

“This isn’t a sub. It’s a different animal entirely, isn’t it?”

Alice ran her hand over her stubbled skull. “I’m inclined to agree with you. Bad enough to make Dr. Toy flip his lid. And Dr. Westlake, God rest his soul.”

With strange serenity, the two of them sat with the fact that they could be sunk neck deep into a case of the sea-sillies—or were perhaps even coming down with the preliminary manifestations of the ’Gets. It made more sense to believe they were going crazy or falling prey to the ’Gets than to believe that . . . well, any other logic was not logic at all. It was total insanity.

“Your brother could be suffering, too,” said Al. “He may just wear it differently.”

Dr. Toy’s words floated through Luke’s mind:
You are not who you are
.

9.

THEY REACHED THE
CHALLENGER.

Al said: “Stay here. Keep an eye out for Dr. Toy or your brother. Although I don’t think you’ll see them. I’ll try to get a signal up to the
Hesperus
. I’m not ready to pack up shop down here yet—too much on the line for that.”

Luke grudgingly nodded. He’d already come 8,008 miles—the last eight miles straight down—and he didn’t want to leave quite yet, either. He could withstand the pressure a bit longer, couldn’t he?

Al opened the hatch and slipped through. The hatch closed and locked.

Luke crouched beside LB. She chuffed, a doggy hack, and gave him a look that said:
What are we doing here, boss?

“Stuck in a holding pattern, girl.”

Somewhat stunningly, Luke didn’t find it at all weird that he’d be talking to a dog. LB could well be the sanest creature down here. She set a foreleg on Luke’s knee and rested her head on his thigh.

“It’s okay,” he said. The reassurance felt cold.

A faint humming filled his ears. The feverish drone of flies hovering over a heap of shit was the revolting mental image that hum kindled. He didn’t hear it so much as feel it—the hum radiated from his bones.

The crushing pressure of the station sucked to him like a second skin. It entered his clothes, stabbing through the material; he felt as if he were wrapped in bands of sinew while a huge muscle contracted, splitting his every vein—

LB licked his cheek. The tang of her breath was bracing.

The hatch opened and Al reappeared.

“There’s no power.”

A storm of busted glass blew through Luke’s chest.
“What?”

“No power, Luke. Nada. The
Challenger
’s out of juice.”

“How the hell did that happen?”

“No idea. I didn’t leave the fucking headlights on, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Luke flinched at the tone of her voice.

“There was plenty of juice when I left her. Now I can’t even get a charge off the glow plugs. I couldn’t stay inside too long—it’s pitch-dark and freezing cold. But that’s not all. I found something on the Edison.”

“What’s that?”

“A stock ticker. Last-ditch communication method. It runs off a pair of nine-volt batteries. If the power goes, it’ll still feed communiqués through.”

She handed him a ribbon of paper, same as the stuff that used to fall during a ticker-tape parade. Luke read the words on it in a gathering swell of dread:

CURRENT RING REAPPEARED 8:51 A.M. SEVERE/DEADLY ASCENSION RISK

“It hardly matters,” said Alice. “The
Challenger
’s kaput. I sent a message back through the Edison, but they won’t be able to do anything until the ring clears. It’s as powerful as a tornado, and it’ll make mincemeat out of any vessel they send down.”

“How long will that take?”

“How long will the rain fall? How long will the wind blow? It’s nature, Doc. It doesn’t operate on a clock.”

“You said the last current ring was in place for . . . ?”

“About two weeks.”

Two . . .
weeks
. The thought of spending that much time inside the guts of the
Trieste
 . . . No. It was unthinkable.

Luke opened his mouth to ask the question—
Are you saying there’s no way to get off this station?
—but Al’s expression answered it well enough.

“Can we route electricity from someplace else to power up the
Challenger
? I mean, in case the ring clears? Do we have a portable generator?”

Al considered it. “We do have a genny, yeah, and it could work. Draw off the main power source, but we couldn’t overdo it—a blowout could black out the whole station, and then we’re royally screwed.”

The
Trieste
in total darkness. Christ. Luke couldn’t even contemplate it.

“If we fed enough juice into the
Challenger
, we could make a low-power ascent,” she said. “Providing the current ring clears, or even slackens a little. We’d need enough juice to run the oxygen pumps, a few key utilities. We could surface fifty miles from the
Hesperus
, we could run into the trench wall, or steer right into the ring. Or . . .”

“Or what?”

“Well, I could steer us through the heart of the ring. The water is calmest there, but it’s an eye-of-the-needle maneuver.”

“But you could do it?”

Al actually smiled. “Believe it or not, I’ve done crazier things.”

“I believe it, Al. So let’s find that fucking generator.”

“Okay. But we need to head to the communications room first. Maybe I can get in proper contact with the
Hesperus
from there.”

They backtracked toward the wedged-open door. Luke glanced over his shoulder, certain he’d heard something—a rustling like a giant moth flapping its wings.

But there was nothing. Was there . . . ?

A gelatinous shimmer along the ceiling—a glittery snail trail that, even as Luke watched, dimmed to nothingness.

We’re trapped
, he thought.
Bugs in a kill jar.

“Come on, girl,” he said to the dog. LB needed no prodding—she was already at his side.

10.

THE HATCH WAS CLOSING
as they rounded the gooseneck.

Luke heard the canister pop from where it’d been wedged with a chilling
tink
. Al had already broken into a run. Luke could see the lip of light beyond the hatch thinning by heart-stopping degrees.

Alice dove like an outfielder laying out to catch a long fly ball. She struck the hatch with a muffled thump and let out a strangled squawk. When Luke reached her, he saw that she’d managed to jam her left hand between the frame and the hatch door.

“Push it open.” Al’s voice was calm but her face was white. “
Quick
.”

Luke rocked the hatch open a few inches; its weight was immense, as though something was pushing from the other side. Al snatched her hand out and cradled it to her chest. Luke assessed the damage. There were twenty-seven bones in the human hand. It looked as if Al had broken more than a few of them.