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.
“If we’re lucky, we’ll have enough juice to skeedaddle,” she said. “But I want to pump every volt I can into the Challenger. That’ll take a few hours.”
“You’re gonna be able to do it with your hand like that?”
She nodded. “Just pushing buttons and flicking switches. I’m fine on my own. Plus it’s better if you keep an eye on your brother. I’d rather keep him in plain sight.”
Those footsteps thudded again. Closer now—just outside the storage area? The hackles stiffened down LB’s back.
The footsteps drew nearer, producing a thudding echo on the grates. Luke imagined someone—something?—standing—hunching?—in that dissolving edge of light. The outlines of this person or thing shifted restlessly, solidifying momentarily in Luke’s mind before adopting a new guise.
The footsteps stopped. In the silence came a low, liquid breathing. Unrushed and calm: the breath of a man on a leisurely hike.
“Clay?” Luke called.
The breathing stopped. Next, the source itself was gone. The presence vanished, evaporating like steam off a hot bath.
“It’s just the station,” Al said. “Groans and moans.”
“The station, sure,” Luke said, accepting her reasoning, as it made more sense than the alternative. “How you feeling, Al?”
Al held the flashlight under her chin like a boy telling a scary story around a campfire. “I’m feeling fine as cherry wine, Doc.” She chuckled. The walls sponged up her laughter. “We’re going to be okay, Luke. Aren’t we?”
“I think so. We just have to get a little lucky. And hope someone up there is watching over us.”
“Go on. Find your brother. Take the dog, too. And Luke—stay awake.”
3.
THE MAIN LAB was deserted. The lights burned at quarter power.
Luke flicked the switch to activate the exterior spotlights. They didn’t turn on. He flicked them again. Still dark. The viewing window reflected his haunted eyes.
He felt it out there. That sucking, hungering nothingness.
He found a flashlight in a drawer. He turned it on and trained it on the sea floor. The beam illuminated that mounded whiteness, marine snow piled in layers.
There are places on earth where light is unwelcome, Luke thought. Light has no power down here. Darkness is king. Light flees the dark, or it gets devoured.
He watched darkness eat into the glow of his flashlight, dissolving its weak radiance like acid. The beam winnowed and broke apart until—
Something snaked into the dregs of that light, lashing fretfully. Thick and reddish, an enormous night crawler flicking against the window. LB yipped in fright. Luke backed away… then was hit with another image, so much larger and so terrible that his soul withered at its prospect. And yet he didn’t see anything—it would’ve been impossible in that blackness. He only intuited it. Luke caught a sense of something out there. Its presence was enormous, mind-filling. In that moment, he saw how things would look if the seas were drained: the station surrounded by monolithic alabaster cliffs that went up and up until their faces welded with the blackness above. The trench unfurled flat and featureless to the base of those cliffs—and in his mind’s eye, he could see this… this… thing on those towering sheets of stone. It clung to the cliffs with many limbs, spanning all around the trench the way a spider fans its limbs across a web. It had no head to speak of. It was all limbs—all tubes—and each limb was the thickness of an oil tanker. Those limbs convulsed as it detached from the cliff, lowering its terrible body onto the ocean floor. Its limbs smashed down into the ghostly muck, sending up combers of marine snow that rolled in awesome white waves… .
“Lucas.”
Luke spun. The flashlight pinned Clayton in its beam. Luke inhaled sharply. Even LB let out a low yowl of concern.
“You look pained,” Clayton said.
Clay’s body appeared to have shrunk—it was as if the incredible pressure of the water was gradually crushing him down. His chest seemed thicker, his legs, too: Luke had the awful image of an accordion being squeezed with inexorable force.
Clay’s face bore the same hints of compression. Where before it had seemed aristocratic, with the high forehead and flinty cheeks, it now had a fleshy, porcine look. His eyes were squeezed between wadded-up skin, making it seem that he was peering through slits of fatback.
“Are you all right, Clay? You don’t look well.”
“Never better, brother.”
His lab was open. Light spilled across the floor. That familiar dripping noise invaded Luke’s ears.
Drrrrrthilllippppp!
“Come inside,” Clayton said. “You’ll catch your death of cold.”
Another one of their mother’s pet phrases. Luke’s memory raced through a few others. Useless as tits on a bull. Snowball’s chance in hell. Lord love a duck—the phrase she’d screamed after Chester Higgs had beaten her with that hoe.
“It’s not that cold.”
Clayton nodded dismissively and turned back to the lab.
“Clay, wait.”
Clayton wore a sweater, the kind fishermen wear. His left hand was swaddled in gauze. His left arm seemed thicker than his right. Luke figured the whole limb was encased in bandages. God knew what lay underneath.
“Dr. Toy’s dead,” Luke said simply. “The ceiling caved in. Crushed him.”
“That’s too bad,” said Clayton.
“Christ, Clay. Did you hear what I just…? No, of course you did. Westlake, now Toy. The ambrosia is… it’s not what you think it is.”
Clayton scoffed. “It’s simply a substance, Lucas. A tool.”