The Deep

by Nick Cutter

  “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.

  “Let me see what you’ve done,” Luke said.

  Her pinkie was bent at an unnatural angle, her middle finger snapped amidships. The dent in the back of her hand was a clear indication that some of the bones of her palm had been crushed. Her hand looked as if it had been compacted—as if something had set its considerable weight against the hatch and shoved with merciless pressure.

  “There goes my juggling career,” Al said, her face greasy with shock.

  Luke saw the dislodged air canister. He’d watched Al wedge it in. Its metal was dimpled where she’d rocked the hatch shut against it, pinning the canister firmly in place. Still, it had popped out. Had the tunnel heaved slightly—a sensation unfelt by Luke—to knock it loose?

  Or had somebody jarred it free?

  “Where’s a first-aid kit?” he asked.

  “Should . . . should be one in the communications room.”

  Luke helped her up. Al was running on shock and adrenaline at the moment; before long the pain would set in.

  “Come on,” she grunted.

  She stumbled from the storage area and stopped at another hatch set in the tunnel wall, about fifty yards shy of the crawl-through chute.

  “You’re gonna have to open it, Doc. Can’t manage right this second.”

  Luke cranked the wheel. The hatch opened into a tight passageway. He followed Al in, LB following them. The tunnel was strung with hatchways—four, by Luke’s count. He figured this was a central hub, branching out to other sections of the Trieste.

  A red X had been slashed across the porthole window of one hatch. Luke remembered reading about when the Black Plague swept across Europe, red X’s had appeared on doors of houses—this place is infected, steer clear.

  After a dogleg, they reached the communications ro
om.

  Al said: “What in fucking blue hell happened here?”

  The room was tiny. The overhead lights were smashed, but enough light leaked through from the tunnel to see by. A bank of monitors occupied one wall, labeled Lab N, Lab W, Pure, Sleep, and so on.

  “Looks like someone didn’t want to be watched,” said Luke.

  Nine of the ten monitors had been shattered. It looked like an act committed in a violent frenzy. Glass was scattered on the floor. Luke shooed LB away, fearing she’d get a shard in her paw.

  The final monitor—marked Pure—was unbroken, but dead and gray; Luke walked over to it; his swollen reflection played over the screen’s convex surface.

  “The comm link’s busted,” Al said. “Fuck me, Freddy.”

  She pointed to the snapped and skinned remains of the sea-to-surface radio. The receiver was broken neatly in half, the wires stripped out.

  Luke said, “You think this was done recently?”

  “I can’t tell. Whoever did it . . . I mean, they were fucking anal about it. Dr. Toy’s the strongest candidate for this shit. Or maybe Westlake, before he surfaced? Your brother, even?”

  Luke pictured Clayton wielding a bone mallet, destroying the monitors in a state of controlled wrath. The steely calm in his eyes as he methodically stripped the wires from the receiver, stranding everybody down here so that he could study in peace.

  “Yes,” Luke whispered. “It’s conceivable.”

  Conceivable, if insane. If Clayton or Toy didn’t want to be in contact with topside operations, okay, don’t answer their calls—there was no need to destroy their only link to the surface. What if an emergency arose?

  Lucas, nobody is coming to get you.

  Shut up, Mom, Luke thought, bristling at the sound of her voice in his head. Shut the hell up. Who asked you, anyway? If I wanted your opinion, I’d visit your grave site.

  Al winced, cradling her mangled hand to her chest.

  “Hey, let’s get your hand looked at,” Luke said, figuring it was best to keep busy.

  Good idea, Lucas, said Bethany Ronnicks. As they say, idle hands are the devil’s workshop.

  The first-aid kit was clipped to the wall. Luke opened it and snapped on a pair of surgical gloves.

  “Lay your hand on the console,” he said. “I’m going to splint your fingers, then tape them together. Fair warning, though: this’ll hurt like hell.”

  Al nodded wryly. “Vicodin, Vicodin, my kingdom for a Vicodin.”

  Al yelped when Luke set her pinkie bones. He did it as quickly as he could, but still, he could feel the broken edges of bone grinding.

  “Sorry. I’ve done this before, but to cats or dogs.”

  “You’re . . . eeeyyyash!” Al hissed through gritted teeth. “Yup, yup, you’re doing a bang-up job. Keep going.”

  Luke cut a length of splint tape and wrapped it around her pinkie. The ring finger was only badly swollen; Luke taped those two fingers together.

  “Your middle finger got it the worst. It’s broken down near the knuckle.”

  “Does that mean I won’t be able to flip the bird anymore?”

  “Depending on how it heals, you may not be able to bend it at all. So you might always be flipping the bird. Hold on—this is gonna hurt like a fuckofabitch.”

  Al picked up the broken receiver and jammed it between her teeth.

  Luke had to pop the finger up to set the bone. It took three hard tugs. On the third, Al’s jaw clenched so hard that the black plastic cracked between her canines.

  Luke tore open a roll of gauze to wrap Al’s hand, in hopes of keeping all the little nicks free from infection.

  “You’re good to go.”

  The lone monitor fired to life. Their heads jerked in unison.

  The monitor was labeled Pure. The O2 purification chamber.

  “Do you see that?” Al whispered.

  The camera angle offered a long view of the chamber: light pulsed at the entrance, but trailed to shadows at the far end. Luke squinted.

  Nothing definite. Slow, insistent, rhythmical—movement that reminded Luke of kelp strands drifting in a night tide.

  A red warning light began to flash on the console.

  Two words were stamped below the warning light.

  The first was Oxy.

  The second, Low.

  “Oh, good Christ,” Al said as she sprinted out of the room.

  11.

  LUKE CAUGHT UP WITH HER in the passageway. She stood before one of the four hatches leading to unknown areas of the Trieste.

  “This is the one. Can you open it?” she said.

  “What’s happening?”

  “You saw the light, right? We’re losing oxygen. The system monitors the amount of CO2; when the concentrations get too high, it gives a warning.”

  “That’s it? A little light flashing in some room?”

  “Usually there’d be an alarm. But the system could be screwy. The door, Doc. Hurry.”

  Luke threw his weight against the wheel. The hatch cracked open with a tortured squeal. The tunnel beyond was narrower than anything Luke had seen so far. A weak welter of light spread across the ceiling, as if sickly fireflies were trapped inside it.

  “Leave the dog, Doc. It’s safer right here.”

  Luke agreed. “Stay, girl.”

  LB regarded Luke worriedly—afraid he’d leave, the way everyone else had.

  “I’ll be back. I promise.”

  The dog didn’t seem very reassured, but obediently stood her ground.

  THEY STEPPED into the tight passageway.

  Luke shut the hatch behind him, and his ears popped. He immediately became aware of the oxygen quality: stale and cool, not unlike the ancient air in a subterranean cave.

  They inched through the diseased trickle of light. The walls hugged their bodies lovingly; the metal seemed to breathe as they moved forward.

  “How far do we go?” he asked.

  Al grunted. “I dunno. I’ve never been in here.”

  Luke could barely see his fingers in front of his face. The walls brushed his hips; the passage was tapering ahead of them but also, as he sensed it, behind them. He could almost hear the tunnel issuing sly snaps and crunches as it crimped, the steel folding like onionskin.

  The air tasted horrible. Not just stale—infused with the taste of dead things. They could’ve been in the mouth of some enormous monster, picking their way along teeth hung with rotted meat. Adrenaline twined up from Luke’s feet; it crawled into his chest and forced his breath out in harsh, plosive pops.

  “Fuckin’—what the . . . ?” Al said.

  “What is it?” said Luke.

  “Dead end.”

  Spiders crawled over the dome of his skull as a skittish panic rushed over him—an unaccountable fear that reminded him of being a child in Iowa, walking down a lonely country road at night as headlights bloomed over the curve of the earth behind him, conjuring an uneasiness that would linger until the car had passed, the red embers of its taillights dimming around a curve.

  “It’s not a cave-in,” Al said. “The wall is sheer.” Her feet shuffled. “There’s space at the bottom. Back up, will you?”

  The walls pushed at Luke’s spine—an adoring suction like the mouth of a hungry lover. He managed to clear enough space for Al to get down on all fours.

  “There’s something down here,” Al said, knocking her fist around. “Same as a crawl-through, really, but it feels even smaller . . . an access chute, I’d say. Could be that the air passes through a series of filters or what-the-fuck above the chute. I don’t remember the schematics.”

  “Can we get through it?”

  “We’ll have to wriggle—and pray there’s no grate at the other end—but yeah . . . it’s doable. It’s the only way into the purification room.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yeah. That I do remember from the schematics.”

  “And there’s absolutely no other . . . ?”

  “Doc, he
y. Not trying to be an asshole here, but this is it. No alternative.”

  “Okay.” Luke vented a shaky breath. “Fine. Fine.”

  “I’d let you stay here, but I may need help,” she said. “My hand’s fucked.”

  Luke exhaled heavily. “Go on. I’ll follow.”

  Al’s body bumped into the tube. Her elbows and knees made no noise at all—it was as if she were crawling through a hole carved into a mountainside.

  “You coming, Luke?”

  He knelt. His knees and feet were pressed tightly together, the knobs of his anklebones touching. It felt as though the tunnel behind him was no longer an O, but had been crimped into a V: a pair of jaws closing by degrees, forcing him forward if he didn’t want to be crushed.

  The air changed once again as he entered the chute: heavier, sickeningly moist. He worked his way forward on his belly, bucking his hips in a clumsy humping motion.

  “Dig those moves,” he said, hoping the sound of his voice might drive away the onrushing panic. “Liquid hips, baby, liquid hips.”

  The tube reduced his voice to a hysterical warble. After a few feet, his arms were pinned to his sides. He could barely move them, other than to spider-crawl his fingers along the inside of the chute. How the hell was Al managing to do the same with her broken mitt? She was smaller than Luke, more nimble. The tube was coated in a thin layer of oil, but instead of making it easier to move—as it did in the crawl-through chute—it had the opposite effect: Luke felt like an insect gummed on a strip of flypaper.

  “Al? Hey, Al?”

  When the reply finally arrived, it held a funny echo:

  “Luke . . . uke . . . uke . . .”

  He wriggled forward, his breath coming in hot gasps. He adopted a peristaltic wave, the way a maggot gets around: toes, then calves, then thighs, then ass, then hips; this movement netted a few inches at a go. Al grunted in exertion somewhere ahead. The chute tightened as Luke forged deeper into it. His nose raked the metal, which was pebbled with rough bumps—Luke envisioned a huge greasy tongue covered with diseased nodules.

  It’s okay, okayokayokay. Even the voice in his head sounded hysterical now. Al’s made it through; you can bet she’s already waiting in the purification room. You just need to get a few more feet and you’ll be there, too.