Nick Cutter - The Deep

No, Luke realized, not the station. The station didn’t have the ability to kill, in the same way a pistol didn’t kill a person—only its wielder did. The station was simply the instrument. The Skinner Box, overseen by whatever was administering the shocks.

“After I tried to find you, LB dashed off,” said Luke. “I followed her. She led me to Hugo.”

Al slapped herself, hard. Her eyelids had been sinking closed. She slapped herself again. The sound, a sharp spak!, made Luke wince. She jetted air between her teeth in a series of hard gusts like a weight lifter preparing for a record lift. She nodded as if to say, Okay, I’m good now , and then said: “Tell me what happened to Dr. Toy.”

Luke gratefully let the terrible event pour out of him—sometimes the only way to disburden oneself of the poison is to share it with somebody else.

“That poor bastard,” Al said, her cheeks pink from the slaps. “Jesus Christ.”

Luke told Al what he’d read in Westlake’s journal, too. He felt ludicrous telling her—they were the confessions of a rubber-roomed madman. And yet, listening to him, Al became very quiet. Ambrosia drifted past the huge window as Luke spoke. Shreds piled up like snow against the side of a barn. LB growled at it, a low huff that puffed the loose skin over her upper teeth.

“A hole?” was Al’s first question once Luke finished.

Luke nodded. “That’s what Westlake wrote. Small at first, but growing bigger. He could hear voices from it. Sounds crazy, I know.”

Al’s expression wasn’t disbelieving. It was fearful.

“Luke, listen… I think… yeah, I might’ve fallen asleep. I sort of remember tightening a few wires on the generator, then sitting down to catch my breath. If I nodded off, the thing is—my dream picked up right there . It began in that storage room with my body in the exact same position as it was when I nodded off. And so I got up in my dream and walked down the tunnel to find you, thinking I was still awake. You weren’t there. You’re saying you were—which makes sense if I dreamed it. And then you find me here, trying to get in there.”

She nodded at Westlake’s lab. A shudder racked her frame.

“What I’m saying is,” she went on, “ if I sleepwalked to the lab, how did you miss me? I would have stumbled right past Westlake’s room, right?”

Luke nodded. “You would have, yeah. And I would have seen you. Unless…”

“Unless you fell asleep, too. You were sleeping as I walked past.”

That was the only possibility that made sense: Luke had somehow drifted off while reading Westlake’s journal—slipped into a dream-pool without even knowing it. They’d both been asleep when Alice walked past Westlake’s room, right past Luke, neither of them aware of it.

How else could it have happened? Unless the Trieste was reorganizing itself, arranging into new configurations like puzzle pieces, snaking in different directions to ensure they wouldn’t have seen each other?

“We have to get that generator,” Al said. “Get the Challenger powered up and get our asses out of here. And stay awake .”

“What about Clayton?”

“Watch him, Luke. Hawk him. He’s been down here way too long.”

IT WAS A SLOGdragging the generator to the Challenger . An hour? Two? Four? Luke couldn’t say how long. Time drew out like a blade.

The generator wasn’t all that heavy, but it was cumbersome. It had handles on the sides and tiny wheels to help it roll; Luke thought they made it look like the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile, that familiar staple of small-town parades. A light sweat broke out over Luke’s body before they’d even muscled it out of the storage room; it trundled across the grates like a shopping cart with a wonky wheel.

Luke was bathed in sweat by the time they reached the crawl-through chute. Working together, using the handles, Al was sure they would be able to slide it into the crawl-through like a torpedo into the firing tube. But it would require both of them to lift it, meaning the generator would fall out the other end with nobody to catch it.

“The fall could break it,” said Al.

“Do we have anything to cushion it?”

A lightbulb clicked on in Al’s head. “Strip,” she said.

“What?”

“Your overalls,” she said, unzipping her own. “I’ll lay them on the other side as a crash mat.”

Luke removed his overalls. His body looked sickly in the tunnel’s light; the blackness of the sea, falling through a porthole above, cast a circular shadow over his heart. Al’s body was muscular and milky from a life spent underwater. She had a tattoo of a propeller on each hipbone.

“Old superstition,” she said, catching him looking. “Sailors used to get propellers tattooed on their ass, one on each cheek—a good luck charm against drowning. If your ship goes down, they help propel you to shore.”

They stood for a long moment, eyes on each other. Luke felt the warmth radiating off Alice’s body. There was appreciation in their gazes—the appreciation that prevails among soldiers sharing a bunker under heavy fire… but there was a raw hunger, too.

“Right,” she said, breaking eye contact. “Back in a jiff.”

She darted through the crawl-through in her tank top and fitted shorts, arranged their overalls on the other side, and slid back. They hefted the generator and slid it into the chute; it fit easily, with room to spare.

Alice powered it through, pushing it with her feet; Luke followed shortly behind her. The generator nosed out of the crawl-through and hit the floor with a crunch. They inspected it. It looked okay. They put their overalls back on and continued.

The tunnels seemed to be lengthening with a sly stretch and pull. They were narrowing, too, their ceilings lowering. The station’s geometries were shifting subtly. The beat of what sounded like footsteps came irregularly. These were not the mincing footfalls of the waterlogged children—these were plodding, dogged, and they came from somewhere inside.

Maybe it’s the thing from the crate , darling, Luke’s mother piped up. You must assume it’s got big feet to go along with its big hands…

Shut up, Mom , Luke thought. Who could it possibly be? Clayton was the only one left. Maybe it was Clay. Maybe he was stalking them. He really did want Luke to be here, and now he didn’t want to let him go.

Luke propped open the storage hatch. They shimmied the generator through, Luke doing most of the work on account of Al’s hand. A flashlight was clipped to the wall; Al grabbed it, flicked it on. It did very little to illuminate things.

The generator snagged on the grate. Luke hissed, a release of pent-up anger and fear, and gave it a kick, which only sent a spike of pain shooting up to his knee.

He collapsed, breathing heavily, his eyes stinging with sweat. A stone lodged in his chest—panic, but only a dull murmur of it now, mingled with a heavy sense of despair. The station wouldn’t let them go. Its overseers would erect roadblocks, allow them to feast on false hopes, then shred their escape plans.

Somehow, something would thwart them; Luke had become convinced of that. A small and silly matter, which would only sharpen the agony. A blown fuse. A stripped wire. A setback that wouldn’t daunt them for a moment on the surface—but down here, it would end them.

Or you may decide you want to stay , said a coal-dark voice in his head. Why not? It’ll be fun. Ooooh, the things we could show you…

Luke rocked the generator. His arms screamed and his shoulders nearly popped out of joint. The damn thing tore free with a screech of metal. He and Alice rolled it the final ten feet to the Challenger . Al unspooled three heavy-gauge cables and flicked a switch on the genny.