The Deep (45 page)

LUKE’S FINGERS
pulled out of the ambrosia rope with a gluey suction. His consciousness fled back into him as he broke contact with Clayton’s mind. Luke gagged, his skin feeling too heavy on his bones—like being smothered under a sopping bear pelt.

Clayton slumped against the generator, his eyelids hanging at half-mast.
Just taking a little catnap
, as their mother called them. Luke was still reeling from the revelation—not a vision, not a dream; that had been a truthful recounting of his brother’s past, a shard chipped off the granite of his memory. He’d killed their mother. It was that simple. He was
smarter than her and he’d made her pay. No guilt, no consequence. Clayton was simply expressing that monstrous part of himself—perhaps the
truest
part.

And Luke was grateful to him for that. He’d surely saved them both. But, like most of the great things his brother had done, it had been to satisfy himself and nobody else.

“I could try to cut through it,” Luke said softly. “Maybe we could still . . .”

The cord undulated lazily, as if it had heard Luke’s plan; Luke could sense its immense power coursing through his brother’s body.

“You go, Lucas,” said Clayton. “Go up. Go to the people you love, if they’re still there. You . . . you
try
. You keep on trying, yes?”

The cord jerked, dragging Clayton with it. Luke reached for him . . . then he stopped. This was how his brother wanted it. More importantly, it was what he’d earned. Clayton belonged to whatever lay on the other side of that hole more than he’d ever belonged to the human race. Maybe the voices had sensed this and called out to him. They’d found a way to bring him down.

Clayton smiled. He kept smiling as the cord retracted into the hole. Smiled as his stump and shoulder were swallowed into it. Smiled as his skull bent against the
Trieste
’s unyielding wall. Smiled as his spine broke with a wishbone snap, his heels beating a jittery tattoo on the floor. His head was consumed. The rest of his body followed.

Afterward all was silence. Nothing came back out of the hole. Maybe it had taken all it could possibly take.

“Will you let me leave?” Luke asked it. “I only want to see my wife again.”

Nothing answered him.

Luke faced the
Challenger
’s hatch. He hadn’t been back inside it since Alice had sent him through into the
Trieste
.

The wheel spun smoothly. The hatch opened with machined precision. He anchored his hands and boosted himself up into the—

19.

—INSIDE.

Light
. The first sensation. Stinging brightness. His rods and cones went haywire; tears squeezed out of his eyes and sheeted down his face.

Warmth
. The second, glorious sensation.

For a second, Luke imagined he was on a beach. Warm sand, sun blazing overhead. Gulls screeching as they wheeled in the postcard-pretty sky. Abby and Zach would be somewhere close by. Romping in the surf, snorkeling for starfish. He would find them and sweep them into his arms and never let them—

“How you doing, Doc? Ready to blow this Popsicle stand?”

The
Challenger
came into focus incrementally. Luke’s jacket was still slung over the web chair; he’d slid it off when it’d gotten too hot during the descent and had forgotten to take it with him. An energy bar wrapper was folded and threaded through an eyelet on his chair . . .

Luke’s gaze traveled upward, a rising note of confusion hammering his chest—

“Doc? Hey! Jesus, what happened?”

He ignored that impossible, treacherous voice. His eyes traversed the instrument panels, the shiny metal switches hooded with red switch guards. The buttons and gauges were all labeled—
somebody must’ve used one of those old DYMO label makers
, Luke had thought during the descent.
The ones that punch each letter onto a sticky black strip
 . . .

“Doc?”

Alice Sykes stared down from the
Challenger
’s cockpit, looking a bit worried.

Whole.
Intact
. Smiling cautiously. Alive.
Alice . . . Sykes
.

Luke reached a trembling hand toward her—then stopped, partially
due to the puzzled look on her face but mostly out of the fear that . . .

Toy’s voice:
You are not who you say you are
 . . .

“What’s up, Doc? Look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

The gears inside his head spun wildly, burning out in gouts of smoke. Her hand fell on his shoulder. Luke flinched from her touch.

“Doc? For the love of . . . What the hell happened to you?”

Luke said, “Are you . . .
you
?”

Alice recoiled at the rasp of his voice—or was it the capering lunacy in his eyes?

“Who else would I be?”

Was
it her? Or was he dreaming? Had he dreamed that terrible hive in Westlake’s lab with Alice’s body strung all through it? Had she been here all along, waiting for the
Challenger
to charge up?

“You can’t go inside the station,” he said, his breath knocking hollowly in his lungs. “It’s . . . it’s death in there.”

She nodded—a bit oddly, he noted, her chin dipping to touch her chest like a marionette in the hands of a clumsy puppeteer.

“You bet, Doc. We’re getting out of here. Clear seas above. We’re gonna bob right up like a cork. We’ll be eating broiled snapper al fresco in a few hours. You just sit tight, okay?”

Luke nodded, puppyish in his desire to please her. He’d sit tight as a drum, he’d be quiet as a church mouse oh yes indeedy, everything would be just right as rain,
neato torpedo
as Zach used to say,
wowee zowee
and
neato torpedo
; Luke would do any goddamn fucking thing Alice wanted as long as she—

“Huh,” she said in obvious puzzlement.

“What is it?”

She flicked a switch. A relay kicked over, shuddering the hull. The lights dimmed, then brightened again.

Alice glanced down at him. She looked different.

Her dark hair was thinner, with kinked gray threads shot through it. She smiled. Luke recoiled. Her teeth looked all wrong in her mouth, yellowed and rotten like shoepeg corn.

“Everything’s fine,” she said in a queer singsong. “Fine as cherry wine.”

She started whistling a familiar tune.
Papa’s gonna buy you a mockingbird.

There was an unbuckling sensation inside Luke’s head, the feel of a hasp popping under extreme duress. With it came relief of a sort. His brain smoothed out, achieving a state of total unconcern. It felt good. Very good indeed.

“You’re dead, Alice,” he said, his voice itself dead as a dial tone.

The whistling stopped. In its place came a sucking, whispering exhale.

“You’re dead, Al, and I’m very sorry. I wish . . . I wish you were here. I wish that so, so much. But you’re not. This is just another game.”

“A game, a game, a game . . .”

Alice’s voice had changed, too. Higher, reedier. A child’s voice.

“. . . all the world’s a game . . .”

Something slammed into the
Challenger
, rocking Luke in his seat. An alarm pealed; the emergency lights kicked on, bathing him in their blood-red glow.

“Oh my child,” that voice said, “the game is only just beginning.”

He looked up, unable to help himself. Alice’s eyes were melting.

They puddled in her sockets as she stared down at him, smiling through her rotted mouth. The corneas liquefied to a jet-black fluid that flowed upward against gravity, over her forehead and hair, fanning out, crawling over the insides of the
Challenger
.

“It’s fun, Daddy,” she said in perfect mimicry of Zachary’s voice. “The Fig Men have the very best games. Oh, it’s just the most fun you can possibly imagine.”

The blackness unraveled from her eyes, black scarves fluttering over the submarine’s interior, coating the consoles and blotting out the lights. The
Challenger
rocked again, the metal squealing—
please
, Luke thought
, please rupture
—as something hammered at the hatchway, hard staccato beats like an enormous fist rapping on a door. Alice was laughing now,
howling while the black fluid poured from her eye sockets and crept down the walls toward him.

The power cut out. The
Challenger
plunged into total darkness.

A voice spoke right next to Luke’s ear.

“I’m so happy, Daddy. You’ve come home.”

1.

LIGHT. HIGH ABOVE HIM.

Beautiful golden light.

Luke stretched toward it. He was underwater. The light came from the sun. It shone upon the surface of the water, a plate of mellow gold.

He kicked, surging toward it. His legs were strong, his strokes confident. A dark square rested atop the water. It was a floating dock. A rope trailed down from it. Thick nautical gauge, clung with algae. It hung down through the water and disappeared into the darkness below.

His eyes hugged that darkness for a moment. Things thrashed and tilted down there, a few inches past the point where the light went bad.

He looked away. Looked up.

Two shapes jutted from that dark square. Shoulders, heads. Instinctively, he knew it was Abby and Zachary. The smaller shape dipped his hand into the water. The tips of his fingers sent out delicate ripples.

Luke thought:
Don’t touch the water, Zach. Don’t give yourself over to it, ever
.

His body speared toward them. His lungs burned. It felt good, necessary. You had to suffer to reach those you loved. To suffer was to care.

An emotion bigger than joy, bigger than relief, bigger than hope ripped through his chest: bigger because it was all these emotions, concentrated and magnified.

He arrowed upward. He was moments—a mere heartbeat—from breaking the surface.

Their faces. He could remember their faces again. Soon he’d touch them, hug them both, never leave their sides, not for a moment. Not for anything or anyone.

His hand stretched upward, fingers straining toward the surface—

2.

—LUKE SNAPPED AWAKE
in the dark. Inside the
Challenger
.

Calling his son’s name.

How much time had gone by? He didn’t care. Something had broken inside his head. He lacked the ability to properly acknowledge this fact. His mind could no longer process the scale of its own ruin.

He laughed. A cold, empty note. It dissolved into a hiccuping cough and petered out in a prolonged moan. He sat in the silence. Alone.

A voice.

“Daddy . . . Daddy . . .”

Luke stirred. Sat up straight.

“Daddy, where are you . . . ?”

The voice came from outside the
Challenger
. Inside the
Trieste
.

“I’m scared, Daddy . . .”

Luke strained toward that voice. His son was inside the station. Zachary was cold and lost. And he needed his father.

Luke crawled to the lip of the porthole. A chill crept over his flesh.

“Daddy, please . . .”

He went. Unthinkingly, he went.

The storage tunnel was lit with an alien glow. The generator still partially hid the hole that had consumed Clayton, but its surface was placid now.

“Daddy!”

Luke broke into a run. He flashed around the gooseneck and spotted Zach in the hatchway wearing his favorite PJs, the ones with the fire trucks and police cars.

“Zachary!”

His son turned and fled. A spike of ice penetrated Luke’s chest. Was
Zach
scared
of him? For God’s sake, he wasn’t the monster here. He was desperately trying to protect
him
from the monsters. He wanted to be a good father. The Human Shield. It was all he’d ever wanted.

He followed Zach toward the main lab. The
Trieste
looked different. The walls were rusted and dull. A thick layer of dust had settled over everything.

He glanced down. Hey! LB was there, trotting at his side. His heart swelled to see her . . . until he looked a little closer.

“I thought you were dead, girl,” Luke said.

LB’s eyes were two plugs of midnight stuffed into her sockets. Her jowls sagged and her fur was bone-white and hoary, like ancient corn silk. She opened her jaws in a canine grin; the inside of her mouth was a cottony white, the blood all leeched away. Her teeth had rotted to nothing, gums drooping inward.

Nope, boss. I’m not dead. Wish I was some days, but what are you gonna do?

Luke smiled sadly. “You look . . . you look real old, girl.”

LB chuffed. It sounded painful, her insides rattling.

Well, time works differently down here, boss. Sometimes I feel like I’ve lived a thousand lifetimes . . . it’s funny. The pain is a constant. Sometimes it’s so much that I can’t stand it. I bite at myself, tear my skin off, but I can never quite die. Like I said, funny. But to hurt is to love, right?