The Deep (38 page)

“And then?”

“Then it invited itself inside. Problem solved.”

“In Westlake’s journal, he said that you collected a sample in a . . . a vaccu-trap, he said it was.”

“I lied about that.” Clayton’s shrug indicated this could have been one of many lies he’d told. “I didn’t want him knowing about the hole.”

Westlake didn’t want you knowing about his, either,
thought Luke.

LB padded over to sit beside Luke. Her gaze flicked anxiously to the cooler.

“It’s not safe,” Luke said. “The hole. Rift. Whatever. For Christ’s sake, Clay—whatever’s on the other side of these holes
killed
Westlake. Killed him, or drove him insane and made him kill himself. And I can feel myself slipping, too. My mind coming undone little by little. Do we know what it
is
, Clay?” Luke stared searchingly at his brother. “Could it
be some kind of . . . Christ, does it lead someplace else? Not into the sea on the other side of the wall, but another place entirely?”

Clayton said, “That may be the stupidest thing you’ve ever said.”

The rage Luke had been struggling to tamp down exploded inside his brain—as if somebody had pushed the plunger on a detonation box wired to a stick of TNT sunk into his most sensitive neuron clusters.

“You colossal fucking idiot! Clay, you’re squirreled away in a lab, thinking that hanging a fucking poster over something as powerful as
that
”—jabbing his finger toward the hole—“will do a goddamn thing! And you’re calling
me
stupid? You may be the smartest man on earth, but you’re fucking
clueless
down here and you’re too mule-headed to admit it. Well, I’m here to tell you, brother of mine, you’re severely outclassed.
Severely.
You’re an idiot child compared to this thing. You’d need two brains, or three, to even
begin
to understand this. And even then you’d be too much of an obnoxious, smug, know-it-all
prick
to admit that you can’t comprehend it.”

Clayton withstood Luke’s tirade as he always did: silently, motionlessly, but with a supercilious smile, as if he were a shrink weathering the blatherings of a raving maniac.

“So you’re under the suspicion that it’s some kind of—what?” Clayton’s hands fluttered in front of his face:
Oooh, spooky!
“A hole that takes you away to the Land of Nod? Or back in time, perhaps?”

“Jesus, Clay,” Luke said. “There’s a
hole
in the fucking
wall
of this station, which happens to be at the bottom of the fucking ocean!”

“Lucas, listen to yourself. Calm down. It’s nothing to be afraid of—cautious, yes, but fear is a wasteful emotion.”

You’re insane, Clayton
.
You have to be, if any of this strikes you as reasonable.

The bandages had unwound around two fingers of his brother’s hand. The material was sodden with dark blood and something else, something fouler . . .

Luke’s breath hitched; he nearly screamed.

When Luke was a boy his neighbor Cedric Figgs had developed a goiter on his neck. The massive, throbbing lesion resembled an
unpopped zit.
Never look at it
, his father instructed.
Why make him feel bad?

But it had been almost impossible
not
to stare at Cedric Figgs’ goiter. The eye was drawn naturally, as a child’s eye usually is to such horrors.

Clayton’s hand was far more difficult to avoid staring at. But Luke couldn’t let Clayton know that he’d noticed—because if Clayton saw Luke’s eyes dodging to his hand, he’d know that Luke had perceived what he’d done.

And if Clayton knew, then
it
might know, too.

7.

THE EXTINCTION KIT.
The thought blitzed through Luke’s fevered mind. The one Clayton used to kill that guinea pig. Was it still under the lab bench?

Luke had seen its contents. There was a vial of Telazol, an animal narcotic. Back in veterinary school, a student had gotten hooked on the stuff; the guy had been discovered in the drug lockup, limp as a cooked noodle—he’d nearly choked to death on his tongue.

But how could he prep a hypo without Clay noticing?

The next heartbeat, the lights went out.

Luke was trapped in a bubble of pure animal panic.

They snapped on again—not the regular lights, though. These were small red lights strung down the ceiling.

“Emergency backup,” Clayton said.

“We lost power?”

Clayton turned to face him in the blood-red glow. “For now. It should come back. It’s happened a few times.”

“Is there a power grid?”

“A fuse box, yes.” He favored Luke with a wintry smile. “Maybe we can reset the breaker. Why don’t I go check?”

Without another word, Clayton stepped into the main lab.

This is your chance, Luke
.
Your only chance, maybe.

The Extinction Kit was still under the bench. A much larger medical kit sat beside it. Luke found the Telazol. His hands shook as he snapped the cap off the vial, a motion he’d done a thousand times, so often it should be automatic. But right now his thumbnail couldn’t find the stupid seam.

Goddamn it, move!

He set the vial aside. He unwrapped a syringe and affixed a needle to the tip. It was a small gauge, not much thicker than an insulin needle; if it bent while he grappled with Clayton—and he anticipated a struggle—then he might not be able to inject enough to immobilize him.

Prepare two syringes, then. Split the dose.

He unwrapped another syringe and needle. His hands shook. His brother was knocking around the main lab. Harsh rattling sounds.

Convenient, isn’t it?
his mother said from the deepest pits of Luke’s subconscious.
The lights going out. What perfect timing for you, hmmm? Almost as if it was predetermined. Planned, somehow.

The red lights pulsed against Luke’s eyes. He didn’t care why the power had gone out, or how; he had thirty seconds, maybe less, to make use of it. He shook the vial and tried to sink the needle into the rubber stopper—only to have it skate off the metal cap he’d forgotten was still on.

His brother was thumbing breakers now; Luke could hear the heavy
thu-thuck!
as he reset them in turn.

Had Clay noticed yet? The bandages unraveling off his fingers, revealing . . . ?

Don’t think about it now, Luke. Just work.

His thumbnail found the groove; the cap popped off. He jabbed the needle in and withdrew 3 ccs, released the excess air, and set the hypo aside.

Clayton’s footsteps approached across the main lab floor.

Luke sunk the second needle through the stopper. Shit. Too much air in the hypo; if he injected it, an air bubble could travel to Clay’s heart and flatline him.

Would
that kill him now, though? Would it kill what he might have become?

Clayton stepped through the hatch. Luke dropped behind the bench.

“Lucas?”

Luke drew the plunger back and this time he got the telltale
suck
that told him he was drawing only fluid.

Clayton rounded the bench. “Lucas, what are you up to?”

His voice had gone cold. A grating, gravelly rasp.

Luke depressed the plunger. A stream of Telazol pissed from the needle tip.

Clayton’s hand fell upon his shoulder. The ragged, gummy edge of a bandage flapped against Luke’s ear. Clay’s hand squeezed with terrific force.

“Are you being bad, my child?”

The voice didn’t belong to Clayton anymore.

In one move—remarkably smooth, considering how scared he was—Luke jerked up the hem of Clayton’s overalls and sunk the needle into his calf.

It was, Luke imagined, like being stung by a hornet: it took a second for the message to travel to Clay’s brain, then back down to the sting site. Clayton roared and lashed out. His boot struck Luke’s chest. The glancing blow was enough to send Luke across the floor. The grate shredded his overalls and sent glittering shards of cold down his thighs.

“Very bad, my child. Oh yes-yes-yes, very bad indeed . . .”

Clayton’s eyes. Oh God, his
eyes
. They glimmered in the bloody red light. There was nothing in them—not hostility or hurt or lunatic rage. They looked like lead-colored marbles socked into the face of a stuffed animal.

Those eyes rolled from Luke’s face down to the hypodermic, which jutted straight from his calf, stiff as a diving board. Clayton’s mouth pursed in a wry smile.

“Clever boy.”

Luke crab-walked away. Clayton pursued sluggishly, dragging his leg.

“Clever, clever, clever . . .”

Luke’s back hit the wall. He spun, disoriented in the red light, and scuttled away as Clayton made a clumsy and almost playful lunge.

He moves like a child,
Luke thought wildly.
A baby learning how to walk.

Luke tripped awkwardly against the lab bench. Clayton spun like a happy drunk, a blankly joyous look on his face. His leaden eyes widened:
the look of a predator whose prey had stumbled carelessly into its midst.

Clayton reached for Luke. His bandaged arm had elongated in some terrible way, his fingers stretching, each digit acquiring extra joints . . . a version of that terrible arm that had
hu-thumped
out of the Tickle Trunk.

LB charged at Clayton, snarling. With disturbing quickness, Clayton shifted his attention from Luke to the dog. He caught her deftly, almost lovingly. LB snapped and bit, her teeth tearing shallow grooves in Clayton’s neck—his flesh tore all too easily, like tissue paper.

“Good dog-gie.”

Luke scrambled up, hunting for the second hypo. The floor was scattered with bits of medical equipment.

Gauze, a box of Band-Aids, a scalpel . . .

Clayton’s hand tightened around LB’s ear flap. With one spastic movement, he tore it off. It came off the dog’s head with a gristly burr, kind of like an obstinate sleeve torn off an old letterman jacket. LB issued an electric yelp of pain.

The second hypo had fallen halfway through the floor grate; the plunger was hooked precariously on the saw-toothed metal. If the grate got rattled, the hypo could fall. Luke’s fingers weren’t long enough to reach it if that happened.

His brother’s fingers, however . . .

LB strained in Clayton’s grip, her legs scrabbling desperately. Clayton’s smile widened—a madcap leer that threatened to split his head in half.

Luke closed his thumb and forefinger around the hypo, pulling it carefully from the grate. He moved behind his brother—whose unearthly eyes seemed to track him from an impossible angle, telescoping like a snail’s eyes—then rose up and sunk the needle into his throat.

Clayton gargled and dropped the dog. The needle protruded from his neck. His bandaged arm flailed; Luke ducked as the limb swung over his skull like the unmoored boom on a sailboat.

Clayton staggered back and hit the wall and slid down, still clawing
at the needle. He sat, legs splayed, toes pointed at the ceiling. His head dipped. His posture was that of a wino passed out in an alleyway.

LB had crawled to a corner and lay there whimpering.

Luke said, “It’s okay, girl.”

Gingerly, he pulled her paw away from the wound. A ragged tear, the flesh ripped unevenly to leave an inch or so of ear. Blood stained her golden coat.

“I’ll fix you up. You’ll be good as new.”

Clayton’s unbandaged hand still clutched LB’s ear. Luke knelt beside him, fearful that his brother’s eyes would pop open. He wrenched at Clayton’s fingers until he pried LB’s ear free. Staring at the blood-soaked flap, Luke was rocked by a wave of despondency and loneliness as profound as he’d ever known . . .

. . . the only time that came close to it was years ago, in that playground . . .

Luke’s mind heaved. Another chunk broke off the crumbling landmass of his psyche, drifting into the dark. The portion that remained could comprehend that madness—true, uncaring lunacy—was not far away. Madness had been there since he’d set foot on the station; it had been dogging him persistently, waiting for the cracks to develop so that it could slip painlessly inside. That’s exactly how it would happen, too: a quick little jab like a needle administered by an expert nurse. He’d barely feel the insanity take hold.

“You stuck your hand through the hole, Clayton. Couldn’t help yourself, could you?”

8.

TWENTY MINUTES LATER
LB’s ear was bandaged and the dog was curled up, resting. Clayton was strapped to the bench in the main lab.

Luke used a Tensor bandage to lash his brother’s heels together, then tied them to the bench. He hacked another Tensor in half and tied his wrists down. He could only hope that the restraints, plus the coldcocking dose of Telazol, would keep Clayton immobile while Luke inspected his arm.

“Let’s see what we’re dealing with, brother of mine.”

Luke found latex gloves and a pair of medical shears in the first-aid kit. He slit Clayton’s sweater up to his shoulder. Bandages covered Clayton’s entire arm. They were encrusted with some kind of paste that smelled faintly of honeysuckle.

Luke cut the bandages away, starting at Clayton’s shoulder. The flesh was pale and sweaty. But as Luke pulled the wrappings back, things began to change.

Pencil-thin threads of black appeared. They darkened Clay’s flesh like tattoos. These gradually knit into a band of solid black, roughly four inches above his elbow.

Luke touched that flesh with his finger. He had a lot of experience with frostbite, which could turn skin black, but this wasn’t it. Frostbite turned flesh pulpy and pestilent. The flesh of Clayton’s upper arm was firm, just terribly discolored.

“What the hell what the hell what the
hell
 . . .”

He snipped and gingerly peeled the bandages away; they trailed strings of gummy translucence like strips of duct tape whose glue had softened in the sun. The flesh beyond the black layer—about two solid inches—was the chalky white of processed lard. No arm hairs, no freckles or blemishes.