Down

by Ally Blue

  Mo opened his mouth—to scream, maybe, or to beg her to take him with her. He didn’t know which. Frigid salt water flowed into his throat, into his nose, filled his sinuses and stomach and lungs until he became a creature of saline and skin, drowning, disintegrating, all that made him Maximo Rees scattering into its component molecules and becoming food for the bottom-feeders.

  Let me in. The voice, Armin’s and yet not Armin’s, licked at Mo’s mind while it trembled on the edge of dissolution. Let me inside you, and I’ll fuck you so good you won’t know who you are anymore.

  The sensation of another consciousness winding eellike through his own tore a shout from the throat he no longer had.

  He woke drenched in sweat, tangled in the sheet, with his own cry ringing in his ears.

  He sat up, heart racing, trying to stare into every corner of the room at once. “Lights on.”

  The lights came up. For a single breath-freezing second, he thought he saw something thin and black whipping out of sight behind the dresser. He focused on the spot, where the sleeve of one of his shirts hung off the edge of the furniture.

  “Just a trick of the light,” he told himself. “It looked like it was moving when the lights came on. That’s all. Stop being a damn civvie.”

  He turned toward where Daisy’s terrarium sat on the floor. All he could see of her was half of one hairy black leg, ending in the pink foot that gave her species its name. He hadn’t seen much more than that since he’d retrieved her from Hannah’s quarters.

  He couldn’t pretend he liked spiders. Especially big, hairy ones. But Daisy couldn’t help what she was, and with Hannah gone, she would die unless someone stepped up to take care of her. Since Ryal would rather walk into the depths without a suit than even lay eyes on something with eight legs, Mo had volunteered.

  Right now, even arachnid company felt better than none.

  He eased back down under the covers. But he left the lights on low, and his sleep the remainder of that night was restless.

  He arrived at the go-cart bay four hours later, tired, grumpy, and out of sorts. He cut Jem off with a single pointed finger before she could say anything about taking him off duty again. “I’m fine to walk. I just didn’t sleep very well, that’s all. No big deal.”

  She pursed her lips and studied him with narrow-eyed suspicion for several seconds. “Okay. But I’ve got my eyes on you, Rees. You screw up today, you’re off duty for a week. Got it?”

  “Sure thing, Big Mama.” Ignoring her exasperated scowl, he strolled over to where Yvonne was just starting the tests on the scanner. “Hi, Yvie.”

  “Mo.” She cast him a frankly curious look. “How’re you doing? Better?”

  “I’m fine. Mama was just being extra careful.” He thumbed the terminal on the wall. “Computer. Maximo Rees, requesting preshift internal diagnostics on mining array scanner.”

  “Acknowledged, Mo. Beginning diagnostics.”

  Mo shot a dark look at Yvonne, who grinned. Not that he didn’t enjoy the deep, masculine growl she’d programmed into the computer, but for him, at least, sexy computer voices made it hard to concentrate on the job. And the last thing he needed was a distraction.

  Meanwhile, the sexy-growly voice was talking, not giving a shit about his inner angst because it was a fucking computer and computers were stupid. “Internal diagnostics finished. All systems go. In fact, I’d sure like to fuck that scanner like a bitch in heat.”

  Mo nearly bit his tongue. He blinked, his pulse rushing in his ears. “Um. What?”

  Yvonne frowned at him. “Computer says internals are a go. Externals too.” She switched off the crawler that inspected every inch of the scanner’s hull before and after each shift, pulled it off the scanner, and stuck it back in its wall niche. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  Mo glanced from Yvonne to the wall terminal, torn. He couldn’t have actually heard what he’d thought he had. Which meant he ought to step out of the walk. On the other hand, he knew—he knew—he was fine. He was sane. There wasn’t anything really wrong with him.

  After all, he knew what was real and what wasn’t. Right?

  Right.

  “Yeah, yeah. I’m fine. Just let my mind wander for a second.” He smiled, making it casual. “It won’t happen again. I swear.”

  Her expression was dubious, but she didn’t argue. “Help me load this in the go-cart.”

  She didn’t need any help, since the scanner had hovering capability, but Mo did as she asked. Together, they guided the equipment into the go-cart. The rest of the team followed soon after, and their shift began.

  The next ten hours passed without anything remarkable happening. The occasional odd things Mo might’ve seen—a fish with teeth too long or metallic, the rare octopus with too many arms or hooks in its suckers, the strange whips flailing out of the Pipe vents for the space of a breath before vanishing again—could easily be explained by the weird shifting of the walker lights combined with an imagination stirred by real-life terrors. Mo couldn’t pretend the whole ugly business with Hannah hadn’t affected him.

  He ignored the uneasy churning in his gut that told him this wasn’t over. That whatever had happened to Hannah would happen to others.

  They were all back in the go-cart and three-quarters of the way back to the pod when Dr. Youssouf herself contacted them on the coms.

  Jem answered, darting a wide-eyed sidelong glance at Mo. “Knang here. What’s up?”

  The pod director’s voice was clipped. “We have an unauthorized exit from the go-cart bay. Someone’s taken a suit and gone walking.”

  “Who?”

  “We don’t know. Whoever it is didn’t identify themselves, and we’re not sure yet who’s missing. But we’ve got everybody trying to figure it out. In the meantime, I need you to find ’em.”

  Jem nodded, looking as stunned as Mo felt. “Where are they headed?”

  A pause followed. Mo wondered if the heaviness he sensed was real, or his imagination.

  “Richards Deep.” Youssouf sighed. “I don’t think I need to tell you what’ll happen if a person gets lost in the Deep, even in a suit. I’m sending you the tracking feed from the walker. I’m going to contact the other go-carts as well, but you’re the closest, so you’re our best chance to get them back. Good luck.”

  “Roger that. Thanks. Go-cart One out.” Jem cut the connection. She peered at the tracker readout, her face grim. “Well. Whoever it is, they’re not far from here. I’m heading that way. Shouldn’t take more than five minutes.”

  Mo unbuckled and rose from his seat. “I’ll get ready to walk.”

  “Take Yvie or Rashmi. I don’t want anyone going after this person alone.”

  Mo didn’t argue. He hated to drag anyone else into potential danger with him, but Jem was right. Anyone who would take a walker and run off to Richards Deep without go-cart backup—hell, without even telling anyone—was unpredictable. They had to assume he or she could turn violent.

  Mo and Yvonne were in their walkers and ready to fill the helmets with Mist when Jem called in from the cab. “We have a visual on our target. I’m gonna try to cut ’em off. Y’all get ready.”

  “Roger that, Big Mama.” Yvonne raised her eyebrows as she and Mo both picked up their helmets. “Show’s on.”

  “Yep.” Mo put on his helmet, sealed it, and hooked up to the Mist tank. He breathed slow and deep as the heavy gas filled his lungs. Watched Yvonne do the same. “Walker One, testing coms to Walker Two and go-cart. Come in.”

  “Walker Two here. Getting you loud and clear, Mo.”

  “Go-cart. You’re both coming in great for me.”

  Mo nodded. “Walker One. I’m hearing both of you, no problem. Jem, give us the word as soon as you stop. I’m gonna go ahead and pressurize so we’ll be ready.”

  “Will do. It won’t be long.”

  Dread curled in Mo’s gut. Christ, there were so many ways this could go badly.

  He shoved his fears to the back of his mi
nd. “Computer. Pressurize chamber.”

  A few seconds later, Jem’s voice overrode the computer telling them the chamber was sealed and pressurized. “We’re here, kids. Feeding coordinates to your walkers now.”

  A translucent virtual map of the seabed popped up on Mo’s faceplate, with a bright little blip representing their stray. He grinned. Jem had stopped the go-cart practically on top of their mystery walker.

  “Computer,” he said, “uncover the pool.”

  “Anything you say, you sexy piece of man.”

  Mo pressed his lips together and cast a glance at Yvonne. If she’d heard the same unprecedented declaration from the computer, she was hiding it really damn well.

  She didn’t hear it. Because the computer didn’t say it. You’re hearing things again.

  It wasn’t a comforting thought, especially now. Since they had an urgent job to do, though, he kept his experience—and his worries about what it meant—to himself and followed Yvonne into the moon pool.

  He spotted the runaway immediately. Whoever the person was, they acted like someone on a vital errand that happened to involve traipsing off to a spot some eight thousand meters below the ocean’s surface. The man or woman in the walker strode along in the muck of the seabed as though nothing else mattered, cutting around the go-cart like it was no more than an obstacle in the path.

  Mo rested a hand on the stun stick every miner kept on their belt just in case, ever since one miner had lost it underwater five years ago and killed his entire team by smashing their faceplates with a rock pick. “Yvie, you flank them to the right. I’ll go left. We’ll try talking first, obviously, but if that doesn’t work I’ll use the stunner.”

  Yvonne nodded, her face ghostly in her helmet light. “Got it.” She veered toward the right, her long legs closing in fast on the quarry.

  He angled to the left, breaking into an awkward jog. As he drew closer, he noticed that the person’s helmet light wasn’t on. Neither were the wrist lights. Meaning that up until now, with the arrival of the go-cart, the escapee had been walking in utter darkness.

  The thought chilled Mo even more than the idea of running off alone in a walker in the first place. Not so much because of what might be lurking there in the unending blackness, but because it was such a strange thing to do. Downright alien to usual human behavior.

  He didn’t like where that line of thought led him.

  Yvonne caught up to the figure first. Her reaction was very quiet over the com. “Oh my God.”

  Adrenaline kicked Mo’s pulse into high gear. “Yvie? What’s wrong?” He started running faster, trying to get to her as quickly as possible without using too much Mist, since neither of them had topped up.

  She didn’t answer. A few meters away, she reached toward the still-moving figure. “Doctor? This is Yvonne Liss. I’m one of the miners. Could you stop and talk to me for a minute?”

  Mo’s heart lurched. Which doctor? Was it Poole? Or one of the upside team?

  Please don’t be Armin. Maybe it was selfish, but he wanted Armin whole and safe even if it put someone else in that walker right now.

  He was almost there. Almost within reach of the doctor in the walker. With no more than a couple of meters to go, the figure—still silent in the darkened suit—swung and knocked Yvonne out of the way. She fell to the seafloor, sending up a cloud of silt.

  She waved Mo away before he could ask. “I’m fine. Just catch him. Something’s very wrong.”

  Mo didn’t take the time to ask any of the questions chasing each other around his brain. He lunged for the man, caught his arm, and whirled him around.

  Carlo Libra’s face stared back at him in the reflected glow from Mo’s helmet light. But something wasn’t right. Something was missing.

  Humanity, Mo realized, with a sickening roll of his stomach. The indefinable spark that made a person human.

  Christ.

  “Dr. Libra. It’s Mo. Remember me? We walked together. Remember?” He tried on a smile for size.

  Dr. Libra’s expression remained blank as a mask. But for a fraction of a second, his dark eyes flashed a deep blackish-blue, like the lights of some creature of the abyss, and Mo tasted bile in the back of his throat.

  The doctor tried to hit Mo like he had Yvonne. Mo was ready for him, and blocked the blow. “Dr. Libra. Carlo. Come on. Let’s go back to the pod, okay?”

  By that time, Yvonne was up and closing in from the back. Dr. Libra seemed to realize he was outnumbered. He shook off Mo’s grip and sidestepped out of their reach, baring his teeth in a snarl.

  Long, sharp, metal teeth.

  Staring into Carlo Libra’s black-light eyes, Mo’s world ground to a halt around him. For the first time in his life, he didn’t know what was real and what wasn’t. For all he knew, whatever had made Dr. Libra steal a walker and try to go into Richards Deep was taking over his body as well as his mind. Changing him.

  “What’s happening?” Mo’s voice emerged in a Mist-choked whisper. He wondered who he was asking.

  A low, gurgling chuckle came over the com. From Dr. Libra’s walker? Mo couldn’t tell, and that terrified him.

  “Wonderful things are happening.” The voice was Dr. Libra’s, but not. Sort of like the Armin-but-not-Armin voice Mo had heard before. “You’ll see.”

  Before Mo could say a word—before he could act in any way, he told himself over and over afterward—the doctor unsealed his helmet and took it off.

  All Mo could think was, He can’t do that, as the tremendous weight of the ocean crushed Carlo Libra’s skull like a paper shell.

  “Dr. Carlo Libra is still not in his quarters.” The auto-port informed Armin of this as though it were utterly unimportant. “Do you wish to leave him a message, Dr. Armin Savage-Hall?”

  He closed his eyes and rested his forehead on the cool metal-plastic hybrid that comprised most of the walls in this place. Carlo had contacted him early that morning to say he was still feeling too ill to work, so naturally Armin had come to look in on him after finishing up in the lab. That was ninety minutes ago. Only Carlo hadn’t been there. Nor was he anywhere else in the pod, at least not that Armin could find. Which raised the question, where exactly was he?

  “No message. Wait, yes. I would like to leave a message.” He opened his eyes again, turned, and leaned his back against the door. “Tell Dr. Libra to contact me on my personal com link immediately. Send the message as a priority, all right?”

  “Yes, Dr. Armin Savage-Hall.” The auto-port blinked amber once, twice, then blinked green. “Message sent. Can I be of further assistance?”

  He considered asking to be let into Carlo’s quarters, but that seemed like a step too far toward paranoia. “No. Thank you.”

  “You are welcome, Dr. Armin Savage-Hall.”

  Good Lord, that got old quickly. He walked away, trying to think of something he might’ve missed in his search for his friend, but nothing came to mind. At this point he didn’t know what to do, other than go to BT3’s director, Dr. Youssouf, and report Carlo missing—as impossible as that sounded on its surface. She knew this pod better than anyone. If there was a place on it that a sick man might hide and not be found, she could tell him what that place might be.

  Mo would know, said the seductive voice in his head, the one that remembered too well the warm, silky touch of Mo’s tongue on his skin.

  He pressed his lips together and shook his head. No. He wouldn’t ask Mo—even if he was back from his shift yet, which he very well might not be. Mo would only penetrate him with that stormy stare that saw far too much and demand knowledge for knowledge. What was Armin’s game? What did he know or suspect? Mo would give up the secret corners of the pod, but only for Armin’s blackest, most horrific beliefs regarding what they’d brought up from the deep. And he wasn’t ready to share.

  He was almost to Youssouf’s office when he nearly ran into the woman herself hurrying down the hall with an air of urgency. She almost passed him by without speaking, then s
topped in midstep, recognition flowing over her face. “Dr. Savage-Hall.” She took his arm and pulled him along with her. “I have some bad news.”

  Apprehension churned in his stomach. He ignored it. “It’ll have to wait, Doctor. I’m sorry. But, you see, Dr. Libra is missing. I went to see him this evening after I finished in the lab, and—”

  She stopped. “Doctor. Armin. Please listen to me.” She laid a hand on his arm and gazed up at him with that awful sympathetic look, and he knew.

  He swallowed the acid rising in his throat. “What’s happened?”

  “Someone took a walker a couple of hours ago and headed for Richards Deep.” She sighed, her ageless face showing every one of her sixty-eight years for a moment. “Jemima Knang’s mining team found him. It was Carlo Libra . . .”

  “And?”

  “And he removed his helmet. They weren’t able to stop him.”

  He knew exactly what the force of over seven thousand meters of water did to the human body. He felt his own shoulders bow under the imagined weight of it. “God.”

  “They brought him back.” She gave his arm a pat, then dropped her hand. “I’m heading there now. You’re welcome to come if you like, but you know it’s not going to be pretty.”

  “I know.” He drew a deep, trembling breath. Blew it out. His chest felt heavy and tight. “I’ll come.”

  She nodded, sharp and approving, then continued her journey down the hall. Armin followed in silence, his heart cold and all the fight drained out of him.

  They arrived at the go-cart bay ahead of the mining team. The airlock was still closed and sealed. Youssouf sat on one of the benches along the wall and stared straight ahead, her hands folded in her lap, while Armin paced with his fingers laced behind his back so he wouldn’t bite what was left of his fingernails.