Nick Cutter - The Deep

“We’re in a Skinner Box,” Dr. Toy said with a sick smile, the kind of expression a slipshod mortician might tease onto a corpse’s face. “Operant Conditioning Chambers, to use the scientific name. Designed by B. F. Skinner, that old sss -suh-sadist. You put a rat in a box with an electrified grate. Two buttons on one side of the box, red and gruh-green. Push the red one, get a treat. Push the green one, get a shuh- shh -shock. Or vice versa. Vary the pattern however you want. Push either button and you get a tuh-treh-treat, say. Or either button earns the subject a shock. Don’t you see? The Trieste is the box. We are the rats. And whatever’s on the other suh-side of those holes are the scientists. They’re watching us. Seeing how we react. We’re the grand expuh-expuh… experiment .”

Luke continued to work at his bindings. He clenched his hands to stretch the tape. He could slide his wrists back and forth a bit now.

“Why did you need to see my blood?”

Toy’s focus was drifting. “What?”

“You made me cut myself.”

Toy waved his hand impatiently. “It gets inside you, understand? And wuh-wuh-once it’s there, you’re not yourself anymore. It has ways and means to gain entry. You’ve heard it, yes? It has a powerful pull. Very uh, uh, seductive .”

“I’ve heard it,” said Luke, though he hadn’t heard anything: just those sly fingertips worming against his skull.

“Cuh-Cooper came by not too long ago,” Dr. Toy said. “He looked awful. His neck covered in sores. I couldn’t let him in,” he said with a touch of guilt. “I opened the h-h-hatch only enough so we could talk. He sounded as bad as he luh-looked. We talked about our children. We both have daughters. Jennifer, my own. Precious child. She’s suh-sick. She’s caught the Disease, as Cooper called it. She started spotting a month ago.”

“I’m so sorry,” said Luke.

“We were performing trial runs on the Hesperus when my wife called to inform me. At the time I was worried that I wouldn’t be uh-able to operate in encluh-encluh… enclosed spaces. Claustroph-ophob-oph-oph…” He gave Luke a look that said: You know what I’m trying to say. “I was about to ask them to send someone uh-else instead. But then… Jennifer. So I cuh-came. I had to, for her.”

“Alice has found a generator,” Luke told him. “We’re going to power up the Challenger and get out of here. Will you come?”

Toy favored him with a look of utter pity.

“Oh, you poor devil. Do you really think they’re going to luh-let us go?”

Luke had stretched the tape to where he might be able to pop a wrist free. But he’d have to stand up to get the momentum needed to—

SHHHRAAAAKKK!

Hell invaded the Trieste .

A SECTION OF THE CEILINGdented down: a jaggedy fang that struck Toy with tremendous force, knocking him flat. His skull hit the floor with a hollow ringing note.

Luke jerked his arms. The tape was unraveling; he felt a ragged edge flapping against his fingertips.

Toy rolled onto his back with a groan. His nose was broken, the cartilage shoved off at a rude angle.

The children’s footsteps intensified: they danced a mad tarantella now.

TRRRRRAACHIKKK!

Another section levered down and slammed into Toy’s legs at midcalf. The sound of his tibias snapping was horribly loud. He shrieked, sat up, slammed his head into the lowering shelf of ceiling and slumped back, dazed.

The folding chair’s rear legs collapsed under Luke’s weight, spilling him backward; his shoulder hit the ground with a sickening crunch. He struggled to his knees, sliding his bound arms down around his buttocks and under his thighs. He rolled to his back and straightened his arms, but his duct-taped hands wouldn’t clear his heels.

Dr. Toy sat up again, numb with shock and clutching uselessly at his shins. Blood spritzed in thin jets, pulsing with the wild beat of his heart, slithering across the floor and soaking into the balled papers.

Luke’s mind fused shut. He understood how hares caught in traps could die of fright. He couldn’t yank his fucking hands over his heels. It was a physical impossibility. He was like some moron jerking at a locked door in hopes it would open. He’d literally gone stupid with fear.

The ceiling shuddered, rolling a few more inches up Toy’s legs. He howled as his hands scrabbled mindlessly at his knees. It was just as Alice had described: the ceiling of the Trieste ballooned and bubbled, its nature more rubbery than metallic. It groaned and shrieked but did not rupture… not yet. The sound of the man-made barrier fighting the pressure of water was terrifying: the trillion-dollar miracle polymer buckling by degrees, popping and splintering as it flexed. It was an arm-wrestling match, Nature versus the Works of Man, where one competitor was grinding himself to a steady advantage.

One leg at a time, nattered a voice inside Luke’s head. You can’t clear both heels at once, dummy! Drop your arms, bend one leg, and try again!

Luke straightened one leg, crooked the other, and was able to jerk his bound wrists around his dropped heel. He rolled to one knee—the posture of a man proposing marriage—with his hands under his crotch. From that position he was able to twist his wrists until his hands were free.

The ceiling shivered again as Luke crawled over to Toy. When Luke touched the man’s shoulder, Toy unleashed a desperate keening scream that made Luke flinch. The metal consumed another few inches of Toy’s shins, shattering bones and flattening flesh. What had Al said? Pressure equivalent to twenty-seven jumbo jets? The ceiling rolled over Toy’s legs as if his overalls were filled with Styrofoam packing peanuts.

“Ub-ubb- uuuuuuub! ” he screeched, a senseless string of syllables.

The roof trundled over Toy’s kneecaps in a slow, persistent advance. It was no different than watching a man gradually run over by a steamroller. Toy’s bones were pulverized like shards of crockery. The veins in his wrists and neck stood out in horrid blood-bulged strings under his skin.

Luke grabbed Toy’s shoulder as if it was possible to pull him away from this fate. The man’s arm was tensed tight, the blood pumping it to a freakish density.

“GlllluuuuuuhHH!”

A rope of blood ejected from Toy’s mouth, unfurling like a scarlet ribbon from a New Year’s Eve party favor. His eyes rolled back to their twitching, vein-threaded whites as he shuddered in a sickening dream state.

Go! He’s done for. No saving him, Luke. Get the hell out of here!

Dumbly, Luke jerked at Toy’s arm even as the roof dented inward at him, its murderous weight no more than a foot from his head. He figured the pressure might sever Dr. Toy’s legs; Luke pictured it the way a hot dog gets sliced off the link at a factory—a quick snip between two sharp blades and six inches of pink, processed meat drops into the hopper. If so, Luke could drag Toy out and maybe, with any luck, cauterize the stumps before he died of blood loss.

But the pressure was knowing . Toy’s legs were merely crushed, leaving an inch or so of clearance to the floor. The foam popped spastically as the ceiling trundled over Toy’s thighs, blood spraying in pressurized fans, then over his hips, which shattered and flattened with a percussive jolt that shook his entire frame—the sight reminded Luke of a butterflied chicken, its spine snapped with one deft downward thrust of a chef’s palm.

Toy’s face was greasy with shock. The gamy stink of adrenaline poured off him. The ceiling pushed drifts of paper forward; the balled-up wads accumulated at the sides of Toy’s body like dust bunnies around a bedpost. The metal rolled over Toy’s chest, but only enough to crack his ribs, which snapped with the sound of Black Cat firecrackers.