Luke bit back a jeering rejoinder. Hadn’t he dismissed Westlake’s claims himself, just hours ago? Mocked them as Clayton was mocking them now?
“Why don’t we give them a listen? You tell me what you hear.”
Luke was convinced Clayton would dismiss the offer out of hand; instead, he surprised Luke by nodding curtly and saying: “Fine, show me.”
6.
THE MAIN LAB was unoccupied.
“Al?” Luke called out. “Hey, Al!”
Silence from the tunnels leading into the lab. How long had he been in Clay’s lab? Less than a half hour? Luke now felt treacherous for leaving Alice out here all alone, but he wouldn’t have gained entry into Clayton’s lab any other way.
His ears caught the buzz emanating from behind Westlake’s door. The sound crested and ebbed, the sonic equivalent of waves crashing on a beach.
“You’re sure that hatch isn’t going to open?” Luke asked.
Clayton shook his head. “Password protected. Our labs are meant to be bastions of privacy. If we wanted to share research, we did so out here.”
Luke turned from Westlake’s lab; it continued to exert an uncomfortable pull on his thoughts—insistent fingers tickling his forehead, seeking entrance.
He faced the viewing window. The sea was endless and hungering. It stirred a childlike fear in Luke: the dread of getting lost in the dark only to find yourself prey to whatever creatures made a home of that inhospitable element.
“Turn the lights on, will you?” Luke said.
Clayton switched on the spots. Twenty yards of sea floor was washed in a skeletal pall.
Something moved at the edge of the light… or had it flinched? Skittishly fled? No, it hadn’t really done that, had it? When you prod a snail with a stick, it will retreat inside its shell. Things react that way when they’re scared.
But the things occupying the mammoth sea beyond the window weren’t startled; Luke was sure of that much. If they were there at all, if they weren’t just fabrications of his overheated brain, then they had merely withdrawn—the shadowy fluttering of black scarves wavering through the water—because for the moment, they preferred to remain hidden.
“It’s not dangerous,” he heard Clayton say. “Not if you respect it.”
Luke turned to find Clay’s cold mineral eyes trapping his own.
LUKE LED CLAYTON to Westlake’s chambers. He opened the laptop on the cot. The screen was black. He pushed a few letter keys. It remained stolidly black.
Did the battery die? It still had plenty of juice when he’d shut it down last.
Stupid goddamn thing. He pressed the start button with increasing irritation. The computer screen remained obstinately black.
“I’m telling you, Clay. This was working a few hours ago.”
“Oooookay. Well, it’s not working now. And whatever’s on it isn’t the proof you believe it to be anyway.”
Luke wanted to put his fist through the fucking screen. It would feel so damn good—a release of the poisonous tension pulsing behind the bones of his face. Put his fist through it, and then plant that same fist square in his brother’s smug mouth. He wouldn’t be expecting that, would he? Fuckin-a right. It’d be so easy. His fist pistoning until Clay’s skull was nothing but a bowl of red mush, Luke laughing and laughing, his lips flecked with blood.
Luke recoiled, snorting like a man who’d been given smelling salts.
Where had those thoughts come from?
He’d never perpetrated premeditated violence on another person in his life. Yet he’d seen himself doing it. His fist slamming down again and again. His eyes alight with mad glee. An insectile buzz invading his mind as he nursed crude animalistic impulses… .
Clayton was scrutinizing him now. “You all right, brother?”
“Yeah.” Luke laughed coldly. “Just pissed this thing won’t work.”
“Down here, it’s unwise to let your emotions get out of hand.”
Are you coming down with a case of the sea-sillies, El Capitán? His mother’s mocking voice. You weren’t built for rough water, sailor.
Luke shut his eyes and squeezed her out of his head.
7.
THEY FOUND ALICE in the main lab. She was once again staring at Westlake’s hatch.
Her skin had a sickly pallor—cadaverous was the word that sprang into Luke’s mind—her eyes peering out of her cored sockets with bovine confusion. Her lips moved, reciting words or phrases Luke could not make out.
She ran a hand over the hatch… intimately, somehow searchingly. Luke could hear snatches of her speech now.
“I want to… yes, oh yes, I’d love to…”
Luke said: “Al?”
Her hand circled the hatch, tracing odd patterns. Her fingers fell to the keypad.
Clayton flicked a switch, bathing the lab in a harsh wash of halogen light. Al blinked, disoriented. In that moment her face held a wrathful, almost murderous look—the look of a person awoken from a dream she wished would never end.
Luke said: “You okay, Al?”
Al swiped her palm across her nose, a childlike gesture.
“Never better, Doc. Feelin’ fine like cherry wine.”
Luke peered out the window. Those inky scarves unfurled beyond the spotlights. A wave of panic rose in him. He tasted it: the tang of pure dread, acrid as the juice in a springtime leaf.
Get out of here, he thought wildly. You have to convince Al to leave.
“Alice, listen… Do things feel a bit hinky down here? I’m asking because you’ve spent years underwater. Maybe it’s just me.”
Al pulled her gaze away from Westlake’s lab with what seemed like a great, almost Herculean effort. Somewhat reluctantly, she nodded. “It’s not just you.”
Luke pointed to Westlake’s lab. “Something happened in there, I’m pretty sure. Something… not good. For all I know, it’s still happening.”
Clayton grunted dismissively. Luke ignored him.
“And oh yeah—Clayton showed me something very interesting.”
“Don’t you say a word,” Clayton snapped.
“Oh, screw off, Clay,” Luke said casually. “Al, you should give Clay a round of applause. Why? Well, my brilliant, brainy brother was able to cure a guinea pig of what is commonly viewed as a terminal condition. A condition known in the veterinary biz as getting its fucking head cut off.”
He told Al everything. The ambrosia, the shears, the blood-tentacles. About Westlake’s files, too. The hole.
“Is this true?” Al asked Clayton.
Clayton said: “The ambrosia, you mean? Yes. It’s a remarkable substance. But regarding this hole my brother keeps babbling about?” Clayton rotated his finger around his ear, the universal gesture for loony.
“That does sound a little nuts,” Al said to Luke with a charitable smile. “And Westlake… well.”
“I never claimed it was sane,” Luke said defensively. “I think it’s… symptomatic, maybe. Of what’s happening down here—how this place tears at your head. Westlake went nuts, fine. A hole in the wall is impossible. I thought so, too. But maybe the Trieste or whatever, it caved in his mind.”
Al nodded sympathetically—but to Luke it seemed too much like the pinched, dismissive nod someone would offer a raving bag lady.
“Some people aren’t built for this,” she said. “Doesn’t matter how smart they are or how rugged in every other way. This is a specific kind of pressure, and you can’t toughen yourself against it.”