Nick Cutter - The Deep

THE HATCH WAS CLOSINGas 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 room.

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 O 2purification 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.

LUKE CAUGHT UP WITH HERin 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 CO 2; 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.