Down

by Ally Blue

  “It hasn’t been written up. We have nothing to write about, really.” Armin rolled onto his side and propped his head up on one hand, peering at him with solemn black eyes. “We got a brief look at an object that looked very much like this one on a poor-quality video from another research facility. That’s the only information we have, and all we’re able to get. I wish I could tell you more, but there’s really nothing to tell.”

  Mo’s sensible side told him to leave well enough alone. Armin had already told him more than he’d expected. He should keep quiet and be grateful. Unsurprisingly, the lifelong inquisitiveness that had driven him to turn over rocks, break into condemned buildings, and explore new places—that had, in fact, led him to the deepest ocean—stomped his sensible side flat and prodded him to keep digging.

  He stroked his fingertips along the line of Armin’s neck idly, picking at Armin’s words in his head. “You’re thinking it’s not a coincidence, huh? The same sort of rock in two places.”

  “I don’t see how it can be.” Armin lifted his shoulder in a half shrug. “But who knows? The video clip we saw was extremely bad quality. It’s possible they aren’t the same at all.”

  “Is there anything I can do to help you figure it out? Because I will, if I can.” Partly to satisfy his own curiosity, of course, but also because he hated seeing that torn, uncertain look on Armin’s face. If he could help fix it, he would.

  Armin smiled, his eyes full of a soft light that made Mo feel hot and tight inside. “I believe you would, if there was anything you could do. But there isn’t.” He touched Mo’s cheek, a bare brush of his fingertips. “I wanted to tell you, that’s all. Talking about it with you makes me feel lighter. Helps me work it all out in my head. And I believe I can trust you to keep what I say to yourself.”

  Mo’s heart thumped hard against his sternum. “Of course you can trust me.” He scooted closer, threaded a hand into Armin’s hair and kissed him, soft and slow. “Stay with me tonight?”

  Armin answered by resting his head on Mo’s chest and tucking his arm around Mo’s middle. Mo shut his eyes and let the rise and fall of Armin’s ribs beneath his hand soothe him to sleep.

  When Mo woke who knew how many hours later, he felt the presence before seeing it. Frozen, afraid and excited, his lover sleeping beside him, he stared wide-eyed into the soft, sweet darkness. He counted twelve heartbeats whooshing in his ears. Then he saw it—a denser blackness slithering through the dark, huge and sinuous, unseen hide rasping impossible whispers against the air as if the room’s atmosphere had turned solid.

  Terror and anticipation bubbled up to clog Mo’s throat. He couldn’t speak, or scream, or fucking breathe, could only watch as the thing rose to the ceiling, expanded to the walls, pushed into the corners to swallow up the furniture and extinguish the tiny red light indicating the locked door. The faint blur of Armin’s foot vanished into the tarry sludge.

  The sight broke Mo’s paralysis. He sat up, unsure if he wanted to stop the thing or find out what it was.

  Only it wasn’t there anymore.

  Confused, relieved, and a little bit disappointed, he turned to Armin.

  Eyes gone a deep, bottomless black from lid to lid stared back at him. Armin grinned wide, showing gleaming rows of silver needle teeth, and Mo screamed.

  The scream yanked Armin from a dream of seductive horror into disorienting darkness. An amorphous shape loomed beside him. For one heart-stopping second, he thought the already half-forgotten visions from his nightmare had followed him to the waking world. Then Mo’s familiar voice called up the lights, and the universe snapped into its proper alignment.

  One look at the half-panicked, half-yearning gleam in Mo’s eyes drove the last of the dream shadows from Armin’s mind. He sat up and laid a hand on Mo’s arm. His skin was hot and damp with sweat. “Mo? What’s wrong?”

  Mo searched his face, as if afraid of what he might see, then shook his head. “Nothing. Just a . . . a weird dream.” He rubbed both hands over his face. “Christ. Sorry I woke you.”

  “It’s all right.” Armin tucked his legs beneath him and caressed Mo’s tight shoulders. “Would it help if you told me about it?”

  Mo barked out a laugh. “I don’t think so. Thanks anyway.”

  For reasons Armin couldn’t pinpoint, Mo’s reaction felt like more than a desire to not relive a nightmare. He decided not to push the issue. After all, he had no real reason to doubt Mo, and no right to demand explanations.

  He lay back again when Mo did and settled into his embrace. He said nothing when Mo dimmed the lights instead of turning them off. He understood the need to keep the sinister darkness at bay.

  When Armin arrived at the lab the next morning, Hannah and Mandala were in the middle of a heated argument.

  “I know what I saw.” Hannah’s cheeks were pink and her stance tense with indignation. “If you don’t trust me on a microscanner, maybe you ought to bring down someone from upside.”

  Mandala sighed, as if they’d already gone through this multiple times. “It isn’t that I don’t trust you. But anyone can make a mistake. All I’m saying is that you made a mistake.”

  “So, anyone but you can make a mistake. I see.”

  “That is not what I said.” Mandala rubbed her forehead. “I do wish you’d be reasonable.”

  Hannah opened her mouth. Armin cut her off before she could say anything else. “Would one of you care to tell me what this is about?”

  “There are microbes in the rock.” Hannah’s expression was fierce with excitement. “Bacteria. Live bacteria.”

  “There are not,” Mandala said before he could recover from his shock sufficiently to answer. “Where do you suppose bacteria would have found nutrients they could use at seven thousand plus meters underwater when that rock was nowhere near a vent or any other source of energy?”

  She was right, of course—she was one of the world’s leading microbiologists, which was one reason she was here—but he had to ask. “Did you check to be sure?”

  Mandala shot him a withering look. “Of course I checked. I found no microbes of any sort, living or dead, bacteria or otherwise. Neil gave it a look too, as a double check.” She gestured toward Neil, who was fiddling with one of the microscanners. “He also found nothing.”

  “Well, that’s it, then.” Armin studied Hannah’s increasingly red face and confused, angry eyes with concern. “Mandala’s right, Hannah. Anyone can be mistaken about something like this. We all have been at one time or another. It’s certainly nothing to be ashamed of.”

  She scowled, her usually sweet expression turning thunderous. “Fine. I have other duties I can be taking care of, if that’s all right with you, Doctor?”

  Armin studied Hannah’s tight mouth, fiercely furrowed brow, and the gaze burning a hole through the lab floor. He hadn’t known her for long, but he’d already learned enough to know that this—the argument, the childish reaction to being wrong, all of it—was utterly unlike her. Unease pooled in his belly.

  He nodded, pretending a nonchalance he didn’t feel. “Of course. I don’t want to keep you from any of your other duties. And you must know that no one here on BT3 is in any way substandard.”

  Hannah ignored him and stalked out the door in a near-visible cloud of fury.

  Neil watched her go with a frown. “Why’s she so upset? What did we do?”

  “Obviously she was embarrassed about being wrong, that’s all. She’ll be fine.” Mandala crossed the lab to her scanner station and settled on her rolling stool.

  The lab door slid open, and Carlo hurried in. “Sorry I’m late. I overslept.”

  Everyone turned to stare at him. Armin had known the man for nineteen years, and had never once known him to be late.

  Naturally, it was Neil who broke the uncomfortable silence with a laugh. “Hell, Carlo, I was starting to think you were a robot or something. Good to know you’re as human as the rest of us.” He clapped Carlo on the shoulder, either unaware of Carlo�
�s glare or ignoring it. “You missed the excitement. Hannah thought she saw bacteria on the scans of the rock, but none of the rest of us saw anything, and she got all upset and stomped out when Armin told her she must’ve made a mistake.”

  Carlo stroked his chin. “Are you sure she did make a mistake?”

  Mandala answered without looking up from her workstation. “Yes. Neil and I both checked behind her to be certain. We found nothing.”

  “Hm.” His features set in a thoughtful frown, Carlo crossed to the vault holding the object they’d brought in the day before. He pressed a palm flat on the door, as if he could feel the force of the thing through the metal. “I wonder . . .”

  The dreamy lilt to Carlo’s voice plucked the alarm threads in Armin’s mind. He cast a glance around the lab. Neil had gone back to his work, typing with his index fingers as he tended to do. Mandala was massaging her temple and fiddling with the flat-screen controls. Ashlyn was absorbed in studying the electromagnetic waveforms from the object on her workstation in the corner.

  Armin suppressed a sigh. He stared at the holo of the rock inside the vault, letting the image jump and blur as his mind wandered up through the endless black of the ocean above—back to the Peregrine where he’d first seen the strange sonar signature and realized what it could mean, further back to the Antarctic Ocean and the events that still haunted him. Maybe the past few weeks had made him paranoid. He thought that was understandable, all things considered, but he needed to get a grip on it if he wanted this mission to succeed.

  Giving himself a mental shake, he blinked and turned to Carlo, just in time to watch the other man press his thumb to the security panel and open the vault.

  Armin frowned. “Carlo, what are you doing?”

  “Wait. But I heard . . .” Carlo cast a puzzled look at the rest of the group, who had all abandoned their stations in favor of eyeing him with caution. “I thought I heard a voice. From inside the vault.”

  “Who did you think was in there?” Ashlyn’s voice was calm and without inflection, her expression blank, but Carlo’s face flushed red anyway.

  He glowered at her, his tone becoming aggressive. “I know it wasn’t the rock, all right? It’s just a rock.”

  She raised her hands. “I never implied that you thought otherwise, Doctor.”

  “Not in words, Doctor, but I think we all got your meaning.” Carlo cast her one more vicious glare before turning to Armin with uncertainty stamped all over his features. “I thought someone had gotten stuck in there somehow. I never would’ve opened the vault otherwise. We agreed.”

  They had, mostly because no one was certain of the object’s exact nature. That being the case, it seemed prudent to limit their physical contact with it. Armin peered into his friend’s troubled eyes. Carlo hearing voices from the vault was worrisome. Even more worrisome, however, was the transparent fact that he wasn’t sure of his own experience—whether he’d truly heard it or not, where it had come from, why it had happened. Carlo was a practical, grounded man. It was a job requirement for being a scientist. If he believed for a moment that he’d actually heard voices from the vault, even after seeing it was empty, then he couldn’t be here working on this project.

  Edging around the spot where Carlo still stood as if his feet had sprouted roots, Armin shut the vault and keyed in the security code. “Carlo, why don’t you go back to your quarters and lie down? Take the rest of the day off. Tomorrow as well, if you need to.”

  Carlo spun and pinned Armin with a wild, wide-eyed stare. “Why?”

  Armin didn’t want to say it. Not in front of everyone else, even though they were all scientists and they had to know that Carlo couldn’t work if he was hearing things. He shook his head. “Please, Carlo.”

  For a moment, he didn’t think Carlo would do it. He breathed in. Out. Steeled himself for what would likely be an ugly confrontation.

  Finally, Carlo let out a deep sigh and scrubbed both hands over his face. “You’re right. I’m feeling a bit under the weather.” He dropped his hands and peered at the floor as if he expected it to do something interesting. “I might join you all for dinner later.”

  “Please do. I’d like to know you’re all right.” Armin touched Carlo’s hand. His skin felt cold.

  Carlo flashed a faint smile, turned, and walked out the door. The silence echoed in his wake.

  “Well. Losing two in ten minutes.” Mandala arched one neatly groomed eyebrow. “I must say, we’re off to an excellent start.”

  Neil snorted. Ashlyn remained silent. Armin pressed his fingertips to his right temple, where a thin pain had begun to throb. “Let’s get back to work. I can handle Carlo’s workload for today.”

  No one argued with him, thank God. He needed some space and quiet to think. To try to figure out what in the seven hells was going on, and what to do about it.

  Mo didn’t see any bugs in the go-cart bay airlock when he arrived for his shift. Instead, the Mist compressor grew a crown of long, whipping antennae for the fraction of a second before he could focus on it.

  He shut his eyes tight and counted to five before opening them again. The compressor sat there as plain and free of abnormal appendages as it had always been.

  Well, of course it did. Mining equipment didn’t suddenly sprout insect parts. He’d imagined it, just like he’d imagined the bugs he thought he’d seen yesterday. He blamed lack of sleep. If he’d gotten eight hours of shut-eye in the last couple of nights put together, he’d eat his fucking walker, helmet and all. Which was weird and annoying, because great sex usually put him in an impenetrable O-coma for at least six hours. And just to make it all perfect, his scant sleep had been broken up by freaky-ass dreams that planted disturbing images in the back corners of his mind where he couldn’t quite see them.

  Stupid nightmares. He forced a smile for Yvonne and Rashmi, who had their heads together as they murmured over the scanner. Yvonne frowned. Rashmi eyed him with concern stamped all over his face.

  Mo pressed his lips together to keep his irritation from spilling out. They were his coworkers and friends. If the situation were reversed, he would have been worried about them, too.

  Jem stuck her head out the open door of the go-cart. “Rees! You gonna stand there all day with your thumb up your ass, or you coming along with the rest of us?”

  He took a look at Jem’s sour expression and sighed. So it was gonna be one of those days. “Keep your pants on, Big Mama. I’m coming.”

  “Glory hallelujah.” She ducked back inside.

  He rolled his eyes and turned to uncouple the cart from the Mist compressor.

  Something twisted at the edge of his vision. Black, dense, wriggling like a tongue.

  He spun, his pulse knotted in his throat. The thing was gone.

  Because it was never there, said the sensible part of his brain. But his heart still raced, and his mouth was drier than the desert where he’d been born.

  Dom slapped his shoulder, making him jump. “You done there, brother?”

  “Almost.” Mo finished the uncoupling process, thumbed the control panel, and watched the hose shrivel and reel itself into the wall. “Okay. All set.”

  He followed Dom into the cart. Yvonne and Rashmi came behind with the scanner.

  As the go-cart’s computer shut the hatch behind them, the dark shape vibrated in the shrinking space between the two metal slabs.

  He fought the instinct to lunge for the porthole and peer out the scratched GlasSteel. He stopped himself, not because he was afraid he wouldn’t see anything but because he feared he would.

  Shaking off the crawling sensation as best he could, he put his back to the hatch and the porthole and strode into the cab. He had work to do.

  The thing in the tail of his eye followed him as he and Yvonne checked the mineral collection arrays that squatted around each vent like huge metal spiders. It squirmed and fluttered on the fringe of his sight, beyond the reach of his helmet light or the flood lamp attached to the scanner. />
  By the time he and Yvonne got to the Pipes—the last vent, named for its impressive mineral formations—Mo was wound as tight as an overtuned guitar string by the constant movement that vanished whenever he tried to look at it. The shape whipped an amorphous pseudopod almost within range of his vision, and he stumbled. “Fucking shit.”

  Yvonne peered at him across the rounded bulk of the scanner, her face all planes and angles in the glow of her helmet light. “Okay there, Mo?”

  “Yeah. Just tripped, that’s all.”

  She cast him a narrow-eyed, sure you did look. Mo ignored her and concentrated his full attention on the scanner readout. She could be suspicious of his uncharacteristic clumsiness all she wanted. No way was he telling her he was seeing things. Later, after they were safely back in the pod, maybe he’d talk to Jem. Or at least mention it to Armin. Right now, he was keeping it to himself.

  Hell, maybe he ought to get his eyes checked. The damn wiggly thing had stuck with him all day. Hallucinations didn’t do that. Did they?

  His com crackled, and Marcell’s voice shouted in his ear, high and breathless with excitement. “Mermaid fish! ’Bout five meters east-northeast of the Pipes. Cams, folks, let’s go!”

  All the miners had standing orders from the biologists to drop everything and start filming if they spotted a mermaid. No getting close, no interacting. Just video. It was the one thing the two factions never argued about. Everybody on BT3 wanted to be the one to get vid of the rare, elusive creatures.

  Mo lifted his head and swiveled as fast as possible in the walker, the squiggling shape in his eye forgotten for the moment in a rush of excitement. “Walker One. Camera on standby.”

  “Acknowledged, Mo,” said the walker’s computer. “I will record on your mark.”

  “Thanks.” Answering the computer had become a habit over the years, but it still didn’t feel quite natural. That’s what happened when you spent your teen years cobbling together communications equipment from parts older than your great-grandparents. In the postblackout years, they’d been lucky the computers had worked. Forget talking back.