The Deep

1.

THE EVENING DARK hung against a paling sky. Alice had left Luke to his own devices while she made the final preparations for their descent.

It seemed absurd: less than an hour from now, Luke would be inside a cramped sub, free-falling eight miles down through the Pacific. But then, was it absurd? The circumstances of his life made him the perfect candidate, if you looked closely.

Luke was a divorced veterinarian. He spayed calicos and repaired budgies’ split beaks. He still lived in the modest home he and his wife once shared with their son, not far from the university campus. On quiet Saturdays in September he could hear the roar from Kinnick Stadium.

His son, Zachary Henry Nelson, had vanished seven years ago. He had never been found. His bedroom was unchanged: the baseball motif wallpaper, dusty toys shoved underneath the bed. All waiting for him when he got back.

Luke’s life had stopped, fundamentally stopped, on a cool autumn evening seven years ago. As pitiful as it may be, he had no reason not to be here, accepting the task set before him. It gave his life a small but vital sense of purpose.

He sat on the edge of the Hesperus, his feet dipped in the sea. The water held cascading shades: a pure aquamarine deepening to more enveloping blues. A school of orange-and-pearl fish made lively darts at an algae-slick chain. The fish had curved, sickle-shaped jaws. They looked predatory, like midget piranhas.

Those fish would’ve scared Zach. There was a time in the boy’s life when he’d been scared of everything. Luke recalled how, at five, Zach (like many five-year-olds) had become convinced that a monster lurked in his closet. Luke reacted by flinging Zach’s closet door open and rattling the coat hangers.

“See, Zachy? No monster. You’re perfectly safe, I promise. Monsters aren’t real. They’re just figments of your imagination.”

Zach looked even more petrified. “Fig Men?”

Luke nearly burst out laughing. He pictured these bloated, misshapen, fruitlike creatures, the Fig Men, massing in his son’s closet.

“Not Fig Men, Zach, figments. Figments aren’t real. Your mind is making them up, that’s all. No Fig Men. No monsters.”

But that night, Zach crept into their room and curled up on the floor.

“What are you doing here, buddy?”

“The Fig Men are in my closet,” Zach whispered.

Luke got up and marched his son back to his bedroom.

“There is no monster, Zach. No Fig Men. Didn’t I show you that?”

“That was in the daytime,” Zach said with bone-deep worry. “Monsters hide from grown-ups in the day. It’s night now.”

But Luke was adamant. “I’ll leave the hall light burning, buddy. That’s the best I can do. You’ve got to sleep in your own bed, okay?”

Zach pulled the covers up to his throat and nodded wretchedly.

Back in bed, Abby said: “You’re not being fair, Luke. Zach’s allowed to be scared. He’s a kid. There shouldn’t be a penalty in this house for being scared.”

Luke knew she was right. Your child doesn’t owe you loyalty or obedience. You owe your child love and understanding, owe it unconditionally, and if you love them strongly enough, eventually that love may be returned. Luke’s own mother had never seen it that way. She thought Luke and Clay owed her love regardless of how she treated them.

Luke got out of bed and grabbed his toolbox. He returned to Zach’s room and pointed at the closet.

“So this is where the Fig Men are lurking?”

Zach nodded forlornly. Luke cracked the toolbox and pulled out a stud finder. He ran it over the closet walls and made a few exploratory taps with his knuckles.

“There are traces of ectoplasm,” he said in the tone of a veteran contractor. “That’s monster slime, in layman’s terms. What do these suckers look like?”

Zach said: “Old, all wrinkly, like they’ve lived a million years.”

The short hairs stood up on the back of Luke’s neck. Something about the way his son said that one word, old, was chilling. Luke didn’t feel like laughing this time. The Fig Men—these twisted, ancient, calculating little devils hunched in the dark closet, peering at his son through the slats with cruel avidity—had taken on a sinister shape in his mind.

Luke gripped his chin, putting on a good show. “The Fig Men. I’ve never heard of them specifically, but harmless monsters do infest closets and crawl spaces. They usually like sweet stuff—you haven’t been keeping anything tasty in your closet, have you?”

“That’s where I put my Halloween candy.”

“Well, that’ll give you a Fig Man problem. Now, I’m sure they’re not dangerous—just gross. But if you let a few hang around they’ll call their buddies and before long you’ve got an infestation on your hands.”

“I don’t want that, Daddy.”

“I’ve got good news and bad news,” said Luke. “What do you want first?”

Zach said: “Good.”

“Good news is I can get rid of the Fig Men.”

Luke rooted through his toolbox for a pouch of fine red powder.

“This is cardamom; it’s made from the crushed shells of stag beetles. It’s used in monster containment spells.”

Luke laid down a line of powder in the shape of a keyhole.

“Now this,” he said, “is the trap. The Fig Men will wander up this path, which gets narrower and narrower until—bang-o!—they get stuck. The circle closes and the Fig Men will starve overnight. They’ll turn black and hard as a rock. Now the bad news, Zach. You have to pull one hair out of your head, and that’ll hurt a bit.”

“Why?”

“Fig Man bait.”

Zach plucked a strand of hair. Luke laid it in the middle of the trap.

“You know what’d help? Something sweet. Why don’t you and Mom go downstairs and grab a few chocolate chips.”

While they were downstairs, Luke hustled into his bedroom and grabbed two small chunks of obsidian he’d picked up during a trip to Hawaii years ago. He set them in the middle of the ring and shut the closet.

When Zach returned, Luke strung the chocolate chips along the edge of the closet door.

“The sweetness will draw those Fig Men out of hiding. Now Zach, the trap is set. But if you open the closet the spell will be broken. So you must not open it until tomorrow morning. Promise?”

“I promise.”

“Cross your heart and hope to die?”

“Stick a needle in my eye,” Zach said solemnly.

“Do you want to sleep in our bed tonight?”

Zach shook his head. “I’m okay now.”

Back in the bedroom, Abby kissed him with uncommon ardor. Luke enjoyed a deep dreamless sleep, feeling very much like a minor superhero. The next morning, Zach flung the closet open.

“The trap worked!” he cried.

He raced into their bedroom clutching the blackened, calcified Fig Men.

“It’s a cocoon,” Luke said. “Except these ones are hard—a prison. The Fig Men will never be able to escape. Put them on display as a warning to any other monster that might wander along. It’s not every day that you can hold a monster in your palm.”

Zach set them on his nightstand. They were still there, in the room Luke had left untouched since the day his son had gone missing—

A shadow fell over Luke’s shoulder, snapping him back to reality. The minipiranhas scattered, zipping under the Hesperus in a silvery flashing of scales.

“You about ready?” Al asked.

Spider legs scuttled up the lining of Luke’s stomach.

2.

CHALLENGER 5 WAS SUSPENDED from a miniature sky crane. Its hatch hung open like a hungry mouth.

Luke carried only a duffel bag with a change of clothes and a cable knit sweater. Plus a toiletry kit with a toothbrush, toothpaste, a stick of deodorant.

Where will I spit my toothpaste? he wondered. There couldn’t be a drainage system. No conventional toilets, either—one flush and the pressure would probably cave in the Trieste.

I’ll swallow my toothpaste, he thought. And pee in a bottle.

“I’ll get in first and take the cockpit. You’ll sit a little lower.” Al smiled. “It’s a good news, bad news scenario. Good news is, you get the better view. Bad news is, your head’s going to be parallel with my behind.”

Luke grinned despite the quivers that kept rippling through his belly. Al ducked through the hatch. Luke realized for the first time that the vessel was designed to dive vertically: they’d be arrowing straight down into the black.

Luke ducked and stuck his head inside the sub. The sight reminded him of the cockpit of a commercial jetliner, only much more cramped.

“Hop in,” Al said from inside, already flicking switches. “You’ll have to tuck your knees, and be careful not to touch anything unless I ask you to.”

The webbing of Luke’s seat sagged like a hammock; Luke sank into it so deeply that his chin nearly touched his knees. Instrumentation panels sat a few inches off each shoulder, their uncomfortable electrical warmth bathing his face. His body tightened instinctually, his muscles and posture contracting; it felt a little like being trapped at the bottom of a village well, except there wasn’t even a view of the sky. Al sat a few feet above with her back to Luke. She craned her head down.

“Comfy, uh? Wish I could let you pop an Ambien and sleep through the descent, but that shit does a number on your blood—added pressure, yeah?”

Luke had never considered how it might feel to be buried alive in a buzzing, blinking, high-tech coffin, but he had a good sense of it now.

The hatch closed with a satisfying thunk—the sound of a luxury car door slamming shut. A gassy hiss was followed by a volley of pressurized tinks!

Al said: “It’s a high-pressure vacuum, drawing out every bit of excess air. Then the seal will engage.”

A workman appeared in the porthole window. Luke couldn’t hear anything outside now. The sub must be noise-proof. The man’s hands clutched one of those high-tech caulking guns; a puffy crust of foam began to encircle the window.

“They’re foaming the seals,” said Al. “The entire vessel will get a coating, except for the bank of high-intensity spotlights running down each side. You okay?”

“Yeah,” Luke said. “Just… this is really happening.”

“Try to relax. I’m kicking on the air recycler.”

Cool air pumped around Luke’s feet from pinhole vents. It had the same chemical tang that puffed from the vault containing Westlake. Luke was worried that his lungs would lock up, refusing to inhale the foul stuff.

The crane lifted the sub and pinioned it over the water.

“Buckle up,” Al said. “The crane operator’s got a heavy hand.”

As soon as Luke’s belt clicked, they dropped. His stomach leapt as it would on a roller coaster. They hammered the sea’s surface. Water climbed the porthole. Luke’s breath came in shallow gulps.

Breathe, he chided himself. You’re safe, totally safe.

His final surface sight was of a new moon hovering in its eastern orbit: a waxen ball whose light plated the slack darkness of the sea.

Then they slipped under and were gone.

3.

AL FLICKED SWITCHES and twisted knobs. Her hand entered Luke’s peripheral vision, toggling a joystick near his ear.

“This tub’s got three motors, but they’re strictly for stabilization and maneuvering,” she said. “We’re carrying three thousand pounds of lead weights. We just drop. When we want to surface, we’ll start shedding those lead plates bit by bit.”

“How fast are we falling?”

“About thirteen hundred meters per hour. I’ll increase that as the currents subside. Once we enter the Mariana Trench, three miles down, there’s no current at all. Then we’ll go faster—the proverbial hot knife through butter.”

Some part of the vessel whined. Al made a minute adjustment, and the unpleasant noise stopped. Air bubbles scrolled around the window, delicate as those in a glass of champagne. The darkness was as absolute as the bottom of a mine shaft.

Luke said, “Christ, that’s desolate.”

“That’s the sea at night,” Al said, laughing a little uneasily. “Don’t you worry, it’ll get even darker. You’ve never seen the kind of dark we’re gonna encounter.”

They were already beyond the point of the deepest free-dive; Luke figured it wouldn’t be long before they passed the point of the deepest scuba dive. After that they’d reach the depth where oxygen toxicity set in: the nitrogen levels change and the air in a scuba diver’s tank turns poisonous. Finally, they’d enter the lung-splintering depths where humans simply didn’t belong.

A fizzy pop shot through Luke’s veins. He felt a subtle expansion between his joints. It wasn’t painful—more like being tickled inside his bones.

Al modified their trajectory. The submarine stabilized.

“Nitrogen buildup. You feel it? We’ll hang out here a minute,” she said. “We’re in the ‘Midnight Zone,’ by the way. Complete darkness. We’ll stop again at twenty-five hundred meters—the ‘Abyssal Zone.’”

The tickle subsided. The sea was a solid wall of black through the porthole. There was nothing out there. The bleakness crawled inside Luke’s skull.

“Check it out,” Al said. “Light show coming off your starboard side in five, four, three, two—”

It started as tiny, vibrantly glowing specks. They accumulated slowly, drifting on the current. A hundred became a thousand became a numberless quantity. A swarm of neon creatures a hundred feet wide, giving a sense of depth to the ocean in the same way the sweep of a flashlight will reveal a huge cave.

Some were small as grains of sand; others were the size of no-see-ums; a precious few were the size of summer fireflies. They glowed warmest amber. Their bodies brightened and dimmed like embers in a fire.

“Phytoplankton,” Al said. “They’re bioluminescent. You’ll see more of this kind of thing the deeper we go. Until we get too deep… then you won’t see a damn thing.”

The plankton flurried like flakes of snow. Just like the night Luke met Abby.

In that moment, Luke was back in Iowa City with his ex-wife—except she wasn’t even his wife then. She was twenty-two-year-old Abigail Jeffries of Chicago, Illinois. He met her at an intra-faculty mixer for seniors at the U of I. It happened that very night. Luke fell madly in love with Abby Jeffries. All parts of her, even the parts that remained unknown to him then.

In time he’d come to love her chipped canine tooth, her snaggletooth as she called it, which she never bothered to get capped under the belief that a face without flaws was a face lacking character. He loved her habit of squeaking after she sneezed. He loved the way her skin sparkled after sex. He loved everything about her, indiscriminately.

That first night they left the mixer and hit a bar. When everyone got kicked out at last call, they’d staggered happily down East Jefferson hand in hand. Snow had been falling, big fat flakes swarming out of the sky like the plankton was doing right now…

The glowing flakes scattered as a monolithic shape passed by the Challenger. Luke glimpsed a pitted wall of blue-gray flesh. For a heart-stopping instant, he saw an eye the size of a dinner plate, a ring of shocking white banding a black pupil.

The Challenger rocked; the displacement of water felt roughly akin to a tractor-trailer flying past his car on the highway.

“Sperm whale,” Al said. “It’s the only creature that big that could exist down here. I’ve never spotted one this low.”

Al cut the motors. The descent continued.

Luke’s back was beginning to ache.

“Can I stand up?”

“Go right ahead.”

Luke managed to stretch a bit, taking the pressure off his hips.

He watched Al work. She piloted the Challenger with easy authority—it reminded Luke of observing an experienced veterinarian perform routine surgery. There was an air of practiced boredom to the way Al’s hands moved over the controls.

“You don’t seem too concerned about all this,” Luke said.

“If you’re talking about the dive, I’m okay,” she said. “I brought your brother and the others down. Supplies and food and scientific doodads after that, before the drones were operational. Hell, on my last descent I brought a poster of Albert Einstein. I’m a glorified delivery girl.

“The thing is—and I’m sorry if this doesn’t make you feel any better—at a certain depth, it doesn’t matter. Where we’re going, the pressure per square foot is the equivalent of twenty-seven jumbo jets. If we spring a pinhole leak, the water will come through with enough force to cut through three feet of solid steel. It’d slice us apart like flying Ginsu knives. This sub will crumple. It’ll happen in a fraction of a heartbeat. Imagine being crushed between panes of extrathick glass traveling toward impact at the speed of sound.” She thwapped her hands. “We’re talking flesh pâté. Say good night, Gracie.”

“Comforting image, that.”

Al exhaled, jiggling a joystick using a few deft strokes.

“Listen, Luke—dying that way, crushed in the blink of an eye… there are worse ways to go down here. We’ve only lost two men so far. But we’ve lost a bunch of drones and…” She bit down, her teeth making an audible click. “You ever hear the term short, Doc?”

“You mean of stature?”

“No, there’s another meaning. It’s a military term: short-timer. It’s when you’re at the end of a long hitch, just before you hit furlough. In a combat zone, that’s the most superstitious time. When the fates are gonna take a swipe at you. People get hinky. I’m so short I could parachute off a dime, man. That’s kinda how I feel. The more dives I make, the more I test this big black motherfucker, the Mariana, the more I’m sure it’s going to… Jesus. I’m sorry. I’m rambling. We’re fine and we’re going to be fine.”

“I trust you,” Luke said simply.

A stiff bark of laughter from Al. “Try to catch a nap if you can. Sleep might be tough to come by the deeper we go; the pressure can mess with your REM patterns.”

The sea swept against the Challenger’s hull with a lush suctioning. Luke felt as though he was in an elevator plummeting to the bottom of the world—closing his eyes, he envisioned red numerals flashing past:

10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, G, P1, P2, P3, B, SB, SSB…

Sub-subbasement—did floors go any lower?

“The Ag Mey.”

“Hmm?” said Al.

“The Ag Mey Are Here. The words written inside the Challenger. They have any meaning to you?”

Al sounded curious. “Is that how you read it?”

“What, you saw it differently?”

“Yeah. Man,” she said. “The Something-Man.”

“The Ag Man are here?”

Al shrugged. “Nonsense words, Doc. The grammar doesn’t even jibe. I don’t presume they’d have meant much to Dr. Westlake by the time he wrote them.”

4.

LUKE SHUT HIS EYES. He was hungry but he didn’t feel like eating; the sea seemed to reach through the submarine’s walls, pressing uncomfortably on his stomach. His thoughts circled back to his mother. He was anxious, and during such times his mind would stalk the walled-off corners of his memory relentlessly, chasing a handful of dire recollections like a terrier down a rat-hole.

After she was put on disability from the Second Chance Ranch, Luke’s mother began to eat. It became an obsession. Though she’d always been sturdy, she’d never been much of an eater—only enough to sustain her frame. She took no apparent joy in eating, and that never changed—only the quantity changed.

Porridge. She’d cook it in a huge steel pot—three, four pounds of edible sludge—and gorge herself in front of the television, eating it with the same sterling silver baby spoon she’d used to feed pabulum to her infant boys.

After a while the smell of cooking porridge was enough to make Luke feel ill. He’d come home and find his mother in the dark, eating congealed porridge with a wet-mouthed vacancy, her lips moving like a horse eating sugar cubes.

At first she simply got thick… a solidity over her arms and legs and bosom that gave her a matronly look. But she kept shoveling in that gray gruel and soon thickness gave way to bloated girth. Her arms projected from the sleeves of her shapeless shifts like the booms on a sailboat, larded with folds of quaking flesh that resembled hunks of wet wool. Her thighs widened to the point that when sitting, her legs appeared to be welded together: a vast blanket of quivering skin. When she limped from her spot on the chair, her thighs rubbed together with a raw whispery note. Her features receded into the shapeless bloat of her face. Her eyes stared out of that netted flesh like two raisins thumbed into proofing dough.

“We are all but flesh,” she would say to Luke’s father when he dared mention that she might think about cutting a few carbs, “and we will all go the way of all flesh.”

As her size increased, so did her cruelty. Especially to her husband. It was a sport to her. She’d belittle the man in front of his boys and torture him far worse in private moments.

One night, unable to sleep, Luke had crept downstairs for a glass of milk. On the way back to his room, he passed his parents’ open door. He caught the rustling of sheets, the movements of bodies.

Next: a breathless exhale. It sounded like the moan of a man who’d been stabbed and wanted to deal with the injury as quietly as possible.

“You dirty boy.”

His mother’s voice.

You dirty boy.

It wasn’t an endearment or a sly encouragement. No, this was more as if Luke’s father really was a boy, a depraved and softheaded one, who’d been found under the porch steps smeared with his own excrement. Yet his father moaned in that soft, gut-stabbed way and whispered: “Yes, yes, so fucking bad.”

She ruined Luke’s father, decimated him until he sickened her. Her bulk would have cooled the ardor of some other men, but it only intensified his father’s servility. Like a whipped dog, he mooned around her petticoats, begging for scraps of affection, which only deepened his mother’s loathing.

All day she had nothing to do but sit in the dark, dreaming up ways to dominate the household. She’d squashed her husband already. Clayton was either down in his lab or, in later years, pursuing his projects at sponsoring labs. Beth’s immediate project was Luke, who by then had discovered the vast well of malice that lurked inside his mother.

Luke had once returned from his fifth-grade classes to find her in the tub. She was in the bathroom Luke and Clay used, even though she had her own. She didn’t sound a warning as Luke climbed the staircase and stared at him silently when he opened the door. Her body was ghostly and pale. Bubbles clung to the edges of the tub, gray and scummy, darkened from the dirt off her body. Her belly was ribbed with fat, her breasts huge and sallow.

Luke’s eyes dipped. She’d said nothing, willing them to rise again. He slammed the door.

“Don’t you ever knock?” her voice boomed from behind it.

Despite this, Luke continued to bring her a glass of Ovaltine after school, sitting at her feet like a lapdog. She’d slurp it and gawp at the TV—it played soaps or infomercials, although Luke figured she’d be just as happy with a test pattern. Sometimes she would say the nicest things. Lucas, you’re my angel. How would I live without you? But she could turn sadistic without warning. One time she’d stared at him dolorously and spoke in a dry monotone. I had such high hopes for you. Such high, high hopes.

In time, Luke believed his mother only said the nice things so that the barbs would sting even more.

Not long after the bathtub incident, he’d come home to find his comic book collection on the front lawn with a sign reading: FREE.

“You’re too old for comics,” she’d told him, sunk down in her easy chair with a dollop of porridge on her chin. “We must all let go of childish things.”

“But—”

Her head swiveled, eyes peering out from pits of buttery flesh.

“But nothing. Let some younger boys in the neighborhood have your funny books. You’ve read the damn things how many times already.”

Funny books. These weren’t Archies or Casper the Friendly Ghosts. These were Daredevils and Wolverines. They weren’t funny.

“But… they’re mine. I’m collecting them.”

“All they’re collecting is dust. They’re gone, Lucas. The matter is settled.”

He’d turned his back on her, tears scalding his cheeks. Those comics weren’t just ink on paper—they represented freedom from the increasing hostility of his home life. He could dive into those pages and spend time with characters who were larger than life, fearless, and did right by others. He’d even created a superhero alter ego, joining the cast of caped crusaders and crime fighters in his favorite comics. The Human Shield. As Luke envisioned it, his alter ego had touched a glowing asteroid that bestowed a singular trait upon him: his flesh was impenetrable. Nothing could hurt him: not bullets, not blades, not even a heat-seeking missile. The Human Shield’s role was to stand in front of children and single mothers while his superhero pals battled their archenemies; any stray laser beams or pumpkin bombs would strike his body, which safely absorbed the blast. He wasn’t one of the top-tier superheroes, but he was allowed to hang out at the Hall of Justice and X-Mansion, rubbing elbows with Aquaman and Marvel Girl. What Luke liked best about being the Human Shield was his ability to protect the innocent without fear—because his home life was by then characterized by a marrow-deep, ever-present dread.

Looking back, Luke was sure this was why his mother had chosen the comic books. It could have been his action figures or his bike, but he could’ve parted with those easily. The comics opened up a new world to him, a place where he was safe. And his mother wanted to rip that haven away from him.

Luke hadn’t dared retrieve the comics from the lawn. By that evening, the grass was picked clean. From that time forward, Luke made a point out of secrecy: if his mother was unaware of the things that gave him joy, she couldn’t take them away. But she had other ways to maintain her dominance.

One night she’d climbed the staircase, each step whining under her bulk, and opened his bedroom door. Luke had been sleeping alone; Clayton was in the basement most nights. She crossed the room with thudding footfalls, threw back the covers, and slid into his bed. The springs squealed and the mattress took a sickening downward lurch. Luke felt as if he were being sucked down into greedy quicksand.

She nestled her body up with his, spooning him. There was nothing motherly in the embrace. He caught the acrid whiff of her armpits and the dense, peaty scent wafting from her mouth.

She curled an arm around him; his pajama top had rucked up, and she spread her hand across his bare belly. Her flesh was sickeningly warm, a hot water bottle packed with boiled lard.

Her index finger tapped his stomach in time with the beat of his heart. As its rate accelerated, so did her tapping. Her mouth was close to his neck, her breath moistening the downy hairs. He was certain she’d sink her teeth into him, holding tight as she ate him the way she ate her porridge: in tiny, tiny bites.

Part of Luke realized she was trying to break him, as she’d already done to his father. Fear equaled control in the mind of Bethany Ronnicks. It was an effective tool. But only if you stood for it.

She wasn’t really clever. Luke had been coming to that realization for a while by then. Not smart, just cunning. Animals were cunning. Animals also ate their own shit and chewed live electrical wires.

The only way to deal with monsters—real or imagined—was to show no fear. You had to become the Human Shield.

Luke opened his eyes and gripped her wrist. Her muscles tensed under their encasement of flab. Shifting his weight, he slung himself out from under her and landed on the floor with a graceless thump. He stood and retreated to the door.

“Where are you going?” A mocking coo.

“This isn’t your bedroom, Mom. You don’t sleep here.”

“This is my house.” All mockery gone. “I sleep where I goddamn like.”

“Then I’ll sleep somewhere else.”

“Get. Back. Here.”

Luke hesitated… then left. He got halfway down the hallway and collapsed. What had he done? He was only thirteen. He couldn’t leave the house. He was trapped. What would his mother do to him now? What would she—

Luke awoke with a start. The dim ticking of instruments, the rush of water against the hull. He was in the Challenger. The heat of the instruments pulled sweat out of his pores. Alice stared down at him with concern.

“You’re okay, Doc. You were dreaming.”

Luke wiped at the drool on his chin, mortified. “How long was I out?”

“Couldn’t have been more than a few minutes. You were grinding your teeth; sounded like rocks in a blender. Mumbling, too.”

Alice was leaning over, her hand on his shoulder. He felt the warmth of her flesh and caught the scent of her body—the softest note of vanilla. It wasn’t perfume; Al didn’t seem the sort to wear it. Probably just a dab of hand cream—it was dry as a desert inside the sub, which was weird seeing as they were surrounded by water. She’d unzipped her overalls a little—the heat was intense—and Luke couldn’t help his eyes from orienting on that slice of bare flesh trailing down to the dampened hem of her tank top…

He wrenched his eyes up to her face. She was watching him impassively, her head slightly cocked.

Enjoying the view? her expression seemed to say. There was no recrimination in it, just a vague sense of mirth.

“What did I say?” Luke asked. “When I was sleeping, I mean.”

“Get behind me.” She smiled as if to say it wasn’t anything he ought to be embarrassed about. “Get behind me where it’s safe or something like that.”

5.

THE CHALLENGER LEVELED OFF. They were presently over twenty thousand feet undersea. Luke heard sly pops and crackles, the sound of Rice Krispies doused in milk.

“Relax, that’s just the foam,” Al said. “It’s compressing to bear the strain.”

The view was disorienting. Profound, terrible darkness. What could possibly live down here? Luke pictured the water rolling away for miles in every direction, empty and pitiless. This stratum was cleansed of nearly all the fundamental assets that foster life—sunlight, warmth, air, food—so the only creatures that lived in it should be, by definition, less than whole. Their skin would be jellylike; Luke imagined bodies draped in a thin stretching of greased latex, like condom skin. He almost laughed at the idea of schools of condom fish flitting through the deeps—

Tink!

Something struck the porthole’s glass, then pelted away.

Tink! Tink!

“Do you hear that?” he whispered.

Al’s voice was tight. “Viperfish, I’m thinking.”

The water exploded with frenzied movement.

Tink! Tink! Ti-tin-ti-ti-tink! Tink! TINK!

Luke recoiled as quicksilver flashes smashed into the glass.

Ti-tin-t-t-t-ti-TI-ti-TIN-TINK!

It sounded as if they were being shelled with machine-gun fire.

“Al, hey, is this normal?”

“Yeah, it’s pretty unnerving,” she said. “We’ll be okay. Viperfish are the undersea version of wolverines. They’ll attack anything, even if it’s a hundred times their size.”

Just then, a viperfish got snagged before the glass. Its jaws—huge, sickle shaped, fearsomely toothy—were enmeshed in the foam. The creature was long and eelish, with fluted gills and oily black eyes socked in a polished-steel face. It was the most predatory thing Luke had ever seen.

“They’re mean as catshit,” Al said. “And I’d say we’ve hit a swarm of them.”

TINK! Ti-ti-ti-TINK!

“I’ve never seen so many of them. They’re fixing to tear that foam to shreds. We gotta boogie, Luke. Hold on.”

The Challenger plummeted. Luke caught a flash of the massing school of viperfish: a glowing sheet of bodies staggered into the water, tens of thousands of whiplike fish darting furiously about.

The sounds ceased as Al stabilized the vessel.

Tink!

“Fucking things,” said Al. “We must be in a cone of them—there’s no way they could drop that fast.”

Again, the Challenger plunged. The pressure built in Luke’s ears. That tickle returned to his bones, becoming quite painful now.

“Hold on,” Al said. “I’m feeling it, too.”

Luke’s gums tightened around his teeth until he was sure they’d shatter. The plates of his skull ground together.

Al stabilized the sub again. She shot a look down at Luke. A rill of blood, as thin as a pencil line, was trickling out of her nose.

“You’re bleeding,” Luke said.

She wiped it away. “Yeah, you, too.”

Luke wiped his nose. His fingers came away clean.

“Higher,” said Al.

Luke felt wetness leaking from his eye. He wiped away a single, bloody tear. “Am I bleeding from my eye?”

Al nodded. “You’ll be fine. Happens a lot down here. The blood comes out of you in funny, nontraditional places.”

Luke wiped the bloody tear on his overalls. “That will take some getting used to.”

They waited for those dreadful tinks! to resume. When they didn’t, Luke’s heartbeat settled into its normal rhythm. Al jimmied the controls and got the Challenger dropping again at a more leisurely rate. Water shushed against the hull, causing the foam to issue splintery popping sounds. Luke blinked and swiped a finger under his eye. A watery rill of blood tracked across his fingertip, warm and—

SWACK!

Luke jolted in his seat. Something entirely different was stuck to the glass now. A band of albino tissue, shockingly thick.

“What the—” Al said as the Challenger juddered. “Oh, are you shitting me?”

The band thinned out as it flexed across the glass. Eight inches across, with a vein running under its skin that was so black it could’ve been filled with ink. Studded all along it were disks—they reminded Luke of the plastic suction cups you’d use to stick sun-catchers to your kitchen windows.

“It’s a giant squid,” Al said, although Luke somehow knew that already. “I didn’t think we’d encounter one this far down.”

The Challenger rattled. An alarm shrilled.

“For the love of fuck!” said Al, the words exiting her mouth with a brittle snip. She flicked a switch and the vessel went dark.

Luke’s lungs locked up as an icy ball of terror crystallized in his chest. It was as if the sea itself had slid inside the Challenger, filling his eyes and throat and brain.

The squid’s tentacle sluuurped across the glass. A shape shot out—THACK!—snapping violently. It was the squid’s beak, which resembled that of an enormous parrot.

THACK!—harder this time.

Luke waited for the glass to crack and his life to end.

The lights flicked on.

“I thought it might leave us alone if we went dark,” Al said in a low voice. “Let’s try the opposite.”

She hit the spotlights. They didn’t illuminate much, despite their incredible intensity—a pall of sickly light picked up a patina of deep-sea sediment that swirled like dust in an enormous room.

The squid immediately detached and vanished with one convulsive flex. Luke got a split-second sense of its size: stunningly long, torsional and many limbed, whipping into the darkness like a bullet train speeding into a tunnel.

“Hold on,” Al said, and again they dropped.

They seemed to be falling even faster—the depth gauge near Luke’s head spun wildly, around and around like a cartoon clock. Al was busy with the readouts; thankfully, it appeared neither the squid nor viperfish had dealt the Challenger a terminal blow.

Shock-sweat had broken out all over Luke’s body. Tiny beads of moisture clung to the hull, too.

“The sub’s sweating,” he said.

“That’s normal,” Al said tersely. “Condensation. Our breath. Cold as a witch’s tit down here. Minus thirty or so.”

“Doesn’t the water freeze?”

“Never with saltwater. Not this deep.”

Al shut the spotlights off, plunging the sea into darkness again.

“Wow. That was the weirdest thing,” she said, exhaling heavily. “You have to understand—this is like the desert down here. It’s barren. Picture it this way: we’re a pin dropped into an Olympic swimming pool almost totally devoid of life. So why and how we’ve run across all these critters… it’s just weird. And that they’d attack us… The viperfish I get, but the squid? And back-to-back like that? No. Just no.”

“Not outside of a Jules Verne book, anyway.” Luke’s laughter held a glass-snap edge.

“Right, and then we’ve had that current ring the last week or so. Every possible disturbance you could encounter, we’ve been facing it lately,” Al said. “If I didn’t know any better I’d almost think…”

She trailed off, not saying the words. But Luke was thinking the same thing.

It’s as if something is trying to stop us from reaching the Trieste.

6.

“THEY SHOULD’VE INSTALLED A RADIO in this thing,” said Al, “or a CD player or something.” She blew a raspberry. “They sunk a trillion bucks into this operation. A radio’s gonna bankrupt ’em?

“They spent hand over fist,” she went on. “Nobody had ever tried building anything like the Trieste before. Space shuttles, sure, but in space you’re dealing with an absence of pressure. You can put on a suit, step out, float around. Try and do that down here and…”

“Flesh pâté.”

“Bingo. They had to bring the station down in sections. Lots of trial and error, lots of problems. Dropped them with heavy weights, collected them with robotic dive craft. Every section came down encased in a protective shell, with a seam of foam sandwiched between. They got slotted together, riveted by the pressure-resistant robo-divers, foamed, then the shell was cracked away. The station was designed in the principles of orb physics; the egg was the designer’s blueprint. Push on the sides of an egg, right, and it’ll break. But if you press on the top and bottom, it’s nearly unbreakable. A miracle of nature, or so they tell me.

“Plus the material the station’s made out of… it’s metal but not metal. Some kind of high-tech, ultra-state-of-the-art polymer core—it allows the tunnels to flex and bend and … bubble, I guess you could say? Instead of cracking under pressure, the material will expand the way rubber does. The water can warp it, but it won’t burst through.

“Anyway, once the pieces of the station were all slotted together, someone had to go in and open it all up from the inside. There was this membrane linking each section that had to be cut and foamed simultaneously; if it sprung even one leak, the whole structure would flatten. Otto Railsback—that was the name of the guy. Wee scrap of a thing. A single man did the whole job. You want to talk about a real hero? I brought Otto down. He was the first man inside. I attached to the entry port, cracked the hatch, then he went inside.”

“So what happened?” asked Luke, now fascinated.

“Well… I remember the smell that came out at first,” Al said. “My family ran a ranch in Colorado. There was this cave system where I lived, Cave of the Winds. The main part was a tourist trap—drunk dudes wandering around with miner’s helmets, calling themselves spelunkers. But the whole thing sprawled twenty miles underground. You could enter it through a vent in the forest floor about a mile from my home. Just a dark cut into the rocks, right? I went down there one day, alone. I was thirteen, fourteen. Thought I was a badass. I had a flashlight and a sack lunch.

“Predictably, I got lost. Thought I knew where I was going. Didn’t. It got so deep and twisty that if it weren’t for gravity, I wouldn’t have known up from down. My flashlight went on the fritz. I sat in the dark with the rocks dripping around me.” She paused, wrapped in the memory. “That darkness had weight, Doc. As a kid, it seemed hostile—like it wanted to keep me right where I was. And I was scared for practical reasons, too. I could’ve missed a step, slid down a shaft, and busted a leg. I’d have died down there. But I’d gotten into it, right? I had to get out. So I just listened. The dripping water helped. I figured it had to be trickling down, so I just had to follow it up. It was way past my curfew when I reached the cut. My dad skinned my ass raw.”

She sipped water from a silver pouch that reminded Luke of a Capri Sun drink.

“Anyway… the smell in that cave was the same as what came out of the Trieste. This overwhelming reek of darkness. A raw mineral smell; it had presence, an aliveness, like in Cave of the Winds. It freaked me out—no good reason; just that old childish worry—but Otto went right in. He sealed the compartments, made the Trieste truly safe for habitation. After that, others came down to set up the gennies, the air purifiers. But Otto was the guy who got it all rolling. He was the only one who died in the Trieste, too.”

“Jesus. How?”

“He just never came back out,” said Al. “I waited and waited, but when he didn’t show up they told me to resurface. I couldn’t get inside, anyway. But surface diagnostics indicated the station was safe to enter, meaning Otto had completed his task. When the electrical team came down, they found him curled up in the animal quarantine. Dead. Embolism. He just finished his job, then laid down in the dark and died.”

The only one who died, Luke thought, except for Westlake.

“It’s all self-contained,” Al said. “Electricity, air, waste removal. Food and water are brought down as needed. A perfect little microsystem that thumbs its nose at the laws of physics.”

Luke barely heard her. He was still dwelling on Otto Railsback, who’d crawled diligently through the tunnels with his foam gun until he reached his own end.

7.

THERE IS A SPECIFIC DEPTH you’ll hit where the soul finds it impossible to harmonize with its surroundings.

It’s not the darkness. A man is acquainted with it by then—as acquainted as he can ever be. It’s not the vast silence or the emptiness or the absence of any life-forms he can draw warmth or certainty from.

It’s not the pressure. It’s not even the fear of death that constantly nibbles at the edge of his mind.

It’s the sense of unreality. This out-of-body feeling that you’ve stepped away from the path your species has always tread. Things become dreamlike, inessential. Your mind, seeking solace in the familiar, retreats to those things you understand, but those things become so much harder to grasp.

Memories degrade. You remember parts of people, but you surrender their wholes. Abby could crack an egg with one hand. It was a quirky skill Luke remembered wishing he had. He could still recall the sight of her doing it and the yearning that he could do it, too. But the more essential parts of her were already failing him.

The water wasn’t the same down here.

Water is what runs out of our kitchen taps or a playground drinking fountain. It fills bathtubs and pools and yes, of course, the ocean—but at a certain depth, water becomes a barrier from all you remember, all you think you know.

You’re trapped within it, a plaything of it.

Focus erodes. Your thoughts mutate. The pressure.

The pressure.

The soul can’t cope with that. It shouldn’t be expected to.

Humans weren’t built for this. There’s a reason nothing lives down here.

Or nothing should.

8.

LUKE WAS UNAWARE of the exact point when it began to snow.

Marine snow, according to Al. The detritus of animal and plant life that had died miles above. It fell steadily through each zone of the ocean, down and down, shredding into flakes, leached of pigment until it became bone white. A snow of death.

It fell without cease, each “flake” composed of lace-edged rags of flesh and bone and gut. Looking at it, Luke thought back to that first night with Abby—the snow falling from a coal-dark Iowa sky. He tried to isolate the details of Abby’s face but they slithered through his mind, eelish and ungrippable.

Al toggled the joystick, angling the Challenger slightly downward.

“We’re here,” she said quietly.

Luke squinted through the porthole. Darkness thick as grave dirt. Then, permeating that darkness, the tiniest speck of light.

This speck attached to another speck, and another. From these specks, a rough shape resolved and the Trieste came into view. Luke sat by the window, jaw open, staring.

It was repulsive.

The blood backflowed in his veins, the strangest sensation—like a clock running backward against its mechanics, stripping gears and snapping springs.

We need to ascend now, he thought wildly. Seek the sunlight, fast, and never come back.