Into the Drowning Deep

by Mira Grant

  The handle clicked under her hand. The door swung open, dumping them both onto the floor, where they landed in a tangle of limbs that froze for a heartbeat, stunned into motionlessness. Then Tory’s mouth was seeking Olivia’s again, reestablishing the connection between them, sealing the loop, and Olivia’s hands were startled back into motion. Tory kicked the door. It swung shut. The cabin was dark enough that with the door closed, she couldn’t see anything, but she didn’t need to; the human body was a predictable playground, one line leading into the next.

  Olivia giggled. Tory gasped.

  The dark came down hard.

  After a small amount of time had passed—long enough for them to remove their clothing; long enough for them to feel their way to the bed, Olivia giggling every time she put her hand on something unexpected, Tory laughing in response, like joy was an infection—they lay curled together under the sheets on Tory’s bunk. Olivia’s knee was pinned between Tory’s thighs, keeping them both quietly captive.

  “It’s dark in here,” said Olivia.

  “I know,” said Tory. “I grew up on the beach. I never got used to a lot of ambient light in my room. My last boyfriend insisted on keeping his computer next to the bed. I never got a lick of good sleep while I was with him.”

  She felt Olivia shift against her, the smaller woman’s chin digging into the soft flesh of her shoulder. It seemed to be instinctive, the need to turn the eyes toward something they would never see. “Boyfriend?”

  “Bi,” said Tory. “Some boyfriends, some girlfriends, one friend in high school who didn’t like either gender for themself, but liked girls enough to get with me.” She paused before asking, “Is that a problem?” The question, as always, came with a vague wave of disappointment. She and Olivia weren’t dating—sex and relationships did not always go hand-in-hand, nor did she believe they should—but she was having a nice time, and had been hoping to keep the option open to do it again. Sadly, way too many girls who liked girls (and boys who liked boys, although that wasn’t a dynamic she’d ever been a part of) had issues with girls who liked both. She wasn’t a slut or a fence-sitter, or any of the other terrible things she’d been called since she was sixteen and started figuring out her sexuality. She just was pickier about personalities than she was about genders.

  Olivia was silent for a long moment. Long enough for Tory to start thinking about what it would take to extricate herself from the bed and make for the door. This was her cabin, but that didn’t matter: she could always retreat to the lab until things had died down. Luis would be there, ready to put a comforting arm around her shoulders and remind her that she had terrible taste in women, but her taste in men was even worse, so it all balanced out in the end. She could get away from this. If she had to, she could get away from this.

  “No,” said Olivia finally. “It’s not a problem. I just had to …” She stopped again. The silence felt lighter this time; it was hesitation to find the right word, and not hesitation to find the right rejection. Tory discovered that she could breathe again.

  Finally Olivia said, “I don’t normally sleep with somebody I’m not dating. I mean, I wanted to get to know you better, and cruise ships are where romantic assignations are supposed to happen, right?”

  “Even when under siege by man-eating mermaids?” asked Tory, and instantly regretted it as Olivia stiffened beside her. Cheeks burning, she said, “I didn’t mean …”

  “I know,” said Olivia. “But the man-eating mermaids are a stressor for both of us. That’s why we didn’t have this conversation before we did anything that couldn’t be taken back. I don’t mind if you like boys. Unless you want to ask one of them to join us. I’d mind that. I’d mind that a lot.”

  “I take it you don’t like boys, then.”

  “Not really.” Olivia hesitated. “It would be more about too many people, though. I don’t always do well with too many people in a small space. Ray was … A big part of Ray’s job was making sure no one crowded me. He was my bubble. I don’t know how I’m going to do the conventions without him.” A small sound escaped her, somewhere between a gasp and a sob, and she pressed her face against Tory’s shoulder again.

  Tory stroked her hair with one hand, thinking dismally about how it might not be a problem. This had been a moment stolen from the silence, a brief time to be human in the midst of coming chaos, but it had only been a moment. They were still miles from home, adrift on an uncaring sea, and the worst was yet to come. The worst was always yet to come.

  “It’ll be okay,” she said, and it was a lie, but it was the right lie, and that made it okay. They lay there, tangled up and warm in the dark room, and neither of them said anything, and that was okay too. Sometimes silence was the only correct thing to say.

  A light flashed from the floor. Tory craned her neck to see. “I think my phone is ringing,” she said. “Let me up.”

  “Or you could ignore it and stay with me,” said Olivia.

  “So tempting.” Tory kissed Olivia on the temple before rolling away, untangling herself from limbs and bedding at the same time. The room had gotten colder, possibly as a consequence of contrast; up until very recently, they had been doing an admirable job of making their own heat. Now …

  Had this been a mistake? And even if it had been, had it been a mistake she was going to make again? She hoped it would be. Even if there was no future for them off this ship, having this time, in this place, was worthwhile. Humanity was worthwhile.

  The caller ID on her phone read “Luis.” Tory frowned. Of everyone on the Melusine, he was the one who knew her best—better even than Jason—and the only one who’d been aware that she was running off with Olivia for a little time alone. For him to be calling, there had to be something important going on.

  She swiped her thumb across the screen. “Hello?”

  “Victoria, you need to get down to the wet lab, and you need to do it now.” Luis’s voice was vibrating with barely contained excitement. “We got one.”

  Tory frowned. “Got one what?”

  “A mermaid. We got a mermaid. It came onto the ship—”

  She gasped. Behind her, she heard Olivia sit up, suddenly alert. She didn’t know whether it was a reporter’s instinct or just the reaction of a naked woman hearing sounds of nearby alarm. It came down to the same thing, in the end.

  “I’m fine,” said Luis, identifying the source of her dismay. “It chased me, and I ran into the Abneys. They shot it. They shot it more than was strictly necessary, I guess, but it’s dead, and we’re about to do the necropsy. I thought you might want to be here.”

  “Where?”

  “Wet lab, like I said. It’s closed to all but essential personnel—which means Dr. Toth, Dr. Lennox, Dr. Wilson, a couple marine biologists from the research team, and a bunch of guys from Imagine. And the Abneys. They’re not helping with the dissection. They’re just standing around with their guns in their hands, making sure everyone remembers who killed the thing.” He lowered his voice. “I convinced them to let you in, and Mr. Blackwell wants you to bring Olivia, but you need to get down here. They’re going to lock the doors before the news gets out to the rest of the ship. The captain’s making another announcement about staying out of the halls. That should distract people, but it won’t get you in if you’re slow.”

  “I’m on my way,” said Tory, feeling around for her discarded clothes with her free hand. She hung up the phone, shoving it into the pocket of her jeans before stepping into them and yanking them on. “Olivia? Did you catch any of that?”

  “Not really,” said Olivia. “What’s going on?”

  “We have a dead mermaid. There’s going to be a necropsy. I need to turn on the lights.”

  “My eyes are closed. What’s a necropsy?”

  “You know what an autopsy is?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s like that, but for something that isn’t human. Everything but us gets necropsied when it dies.”

  “Oh,” said Olivia. Then
: “You’re going?”

  “I am. Mr. Blackwell wants me to bring you, but I can say I didn’t know where you were, if you’d rather not.” Tory slapped the wall. The cabin lights flickered on, dim at first, rapidly brightening to standard levels. She snatched her bra off the floor. “I don’t know how much of it will make sense to you, but—”

  “I have a camera. I’m coming.” Olivia began retrieving her own clothes. Tory paused to watch her. Not for long—they didn’t have the time to waste—but long enough for her to take in the curve of Olivia’s hip, the sinuous line of Olivia’s back. The room had been dark when their clothes had come off. Some opportunities were not to be missed. Especially when there was a chance that they weren’t going to be repeated.

  “Fair,” she said, beginning to move again. She fastened her bra and tugged her shirt on over her head. “How’s your stomach?”

  It was Olivia’s turn to pause. She frowned at Tory. “What do you mean?”

  “The first time I was present for a marine necropsy—a big sea lion—I nearly threw up in the thoracic cavity. The smell that came out of that thing was like nothing I’d ever encountered before. So how’s your stomach?”

  “Oh,” said Olivia. “That’s … Oh.”

  “Here.” Tory grabbed a small jar off the edge of the bookshelf and lobbed it underhand to Olivia. “Put this under your nose.”

  “Muscle relaxant?”

  “Menthol. It’ll overwhelm your sinuses. You won’t be able to smell anything but mint for hours. It’ll ruin your appetite, but that’s better than puking on the specimen.”

  Olivia nodded, applying the gel to her upper lip and making a sour face before pulling her trousers on. “Where is it?”

  “The wet lab. You know how to work that camera?”

  “I used to do my own videography, when I was just getting started,” said Olivia. She offered a quick, shy smile. “Ray came later. Imagine said I had talent, but they wanted me in front of the camera, not hiding behind it.”

  “Makes sense.” Tory stepped into her shoes, checking to see that Olivia was fully clothed before moving toward the door. “Come on. They’re going to start without us.”

  The ship was silent. Tory and Olivia hurried along the deck, neither of them able to shake the feeling that the quiet was somehow ominous: the calm before the storm. They knew the predators were coming, that at least two of them had reached the Melusine—at least two, because the one that had taken Ray would have had no reason to come back to the surface for hours, if not days. Predators didn’t work like that.

  There were more mermaids out there. And they were, without question, hungry.

  The wet lab door was closed. Two people Tory vaguely recognized as being part of the too-pretty Imagine security team were standing there. Both were dressed in black, their hands resting lightly on their belts. She could almost have missed the Tasers, if she hadn’t been looking for them.

  “This lab is in use,” said one of them.

  “Dr. Toth is expecting us,” said Tory.

  The men exchanged a look before one of them nodded and opened the door. Voices drifted out, some raised in mild annoyance, others hushed, almost reverent. Tory offered a polite nod in return and slipped through, Olivia moving close in her wake.

  The wet lab was designed for this, for dredging things out of the ocean and slicing them into pieces to see what made them work. Plastic sheeting covered the floor and most of the cutting surfaces. A stainless steel table sat at the center of the room, covered by more plastic sheets. And on top of those …

  All thoughts of frivolous things like infection and invasion slipped away as Tory stepped forward, jaw dropping open, eyes fixed on the mermaid. It should have been less impressive after seeing the live specimen in the hold, but somehow, it was more impressive in contrast. The mermaid in Mr. Blackwell’s tank was a mystery, inscrutable, too valuable to kill, too alien to understand. This, though … this was a solvable mystery, something that could be taken apart and reduced to its component pieces.

  Mermaid behavior required live subjects. Mermaid language required live subjects. But some questions—how did they mimic human voices? How did they make the transition from water to air? Were they fish or amphibians, or some third option, something stranger still?—could only be answered with a dead one.

  The room seemed enormous in its emptiness. Dr. Lennox and Dr. Wilson were off to one side, both wearing plastic scrubs over their clothing, expressions of profound discomfort on their faces. The marine biologists Luis had mentioned were standing near Luis himself, along with …

  “Jason.” Tory barely recognized her own voice. “What are you doing here? You’re a botanist.”

  “Thank you for the reminder, Victoria,” said Jason, lips twisting in a thin smile. “As it happens, I’m here because we need to figure out what these things eat, and they seem likely to be omnivores. So I’m going to be looking at its digestive system. And the term is ‘botanical plankton specialist.’”

  “Good, you know each other.” Dr. Toth turned away from the tray of surgical implements she’d been arranging. “Victoria, scrub and suit. I want you to assist me.”

  Tory blinked. “Me? But I’m not—”

  “Pursuing a specific research goal? That’s right. You can hand me tools without my needing to worry that you’ll get distracted by a lung bladder. Get your scrubs on.” Dr. Toth’s attention switched to Olivia, her eyes softening slightly. “Miss Sanderson. You’re welcome, of course, but I wasn’t expecting you.”

  Olivia held up her borrowed camera. “I need to record this for Imagine.”

  “Imagine has things under control,” said Mr. Blackwell. Olivia turned. He was sitting in a nearby chair, leg extended stiffly in front of him. If he was in pain, he was doing an admirable job of not showing it. “We have camera and makeup crews en route. I want you in front of the lens, not behind it.”

  Olivia hesitated, fingers tightening on her camera. Her discomfort and the desire to object were visible in her expression. Finally she nodded. “All right,” she said. “I could use some foundation.”

  “As I’ve said, makeup crew.” His eyes went from her to the mermaid, motionless and cold, waiting to have its secrets spilled. “We can wait for you to be ready. After all, what’s the point in preserving something for posterity if we don’t do it correctly?”

  Olivia, who suspected that the point was getting out of the line of fire, said nothing. She just stood there, alone, and clutched her camera, and waited.

  CHAPTER 23

  Western Pacific Ocean, above the Mariana Trench: September 3, 2022

  Daryl walked the upper deck, anxiety making his hands shake so badly that he feared dropping his borrowed pistol. He wanted to be indoors. No, that wasn’t right. He wanted to be on land, miles away from the ocean, well out of the reach of any terrors from the deep that might be looking for hot meat to fill their bellies. Instead here he was, checking the servos that controlled the shield, assigned to wander in the open air while the security teams—the people who had signed up for this shit—were safe in the halls. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair. Who cared if the mermaids would have to climb past all those armed fools in their spotless uniforms, with their untried guns, before they got to him? He still should have had a guard. Or two. Or twenty. Not just him and Gregory, alone, exposed, and vulnerable.

  “I hear they’ve got one of those things on board,” he said. “They’re going to dissect it. Take it apart like a salmon and see how it fits together.”

  “They’re scientists,” said Gregory. He was smoking, a hand-rolled cigarette that smelled of cloves and pungent marijuana. Tobacco was banned on board—something about tobacco mosaic disease and the plants the botanists were trying to culture in their hydroponic beds—but there was nothing in the rules forbidding pot. It was a loophole no one was in any hurry to close, especially not now. Without the pot to soothe his nerves, he might never have stopped screaming. If it slowed his reaction time a bit, it wo
uld also take the edge off any pain that happened to come along—and if one of those watery horrors found them, there would be a lot of pain. “Taking things apart is what they do.”

  “But these things, they look like people, right? Don’t you think they look like people? They’ve got faces and hands and … and all the other bits.”

  “No legs, though. No feet. I think they’re halfway to being people at best.”

  “Those marine biologists say dolphins are people. If humans are people, and dolphins are people, and mermaids are half-human and half-dolphin …”

  “Those marine biologists smoke more weed than I do. They’d probably tell you a glacier was a person, if you got them high enough.”

  “I’m just saying. If you take a human apart, the other humans will want revenge. That’s what humans do. And we know dolphins will chase down orcas and sharks that eat their babies.”

  Gregory gave Daryl a sidelong look. “What are you trying to get at?”

  Daryl took a deep breath, tilting his head until he was staring at the sky. Even with the ambient light from the ship, the stars out here were amazing, like beacons to guide the lost ships home. He could have looked at the sky back in California every night until he died, and never seen half that many stars.

  “I’m just saying maybe before … That Wilson girl went into their territory, and they took her. And one of them came up on the ship and took Ray, but we don’t know that it was actually hunting, or even that it was trying to hurt him. They go from water to air without a problem. Maybe it was just trying to say hello. Now we’ve killed one of them. We’ve killed it. So maybe they’re going to be looking for revenge.”

  Gregory stopped walking. It took Daryl a moment to realize. He stopped in turn, frowning as he lowered his gaze from the sky to the older engineer’s face.

  “What?” he asked.

  “You really think those things are smart enough to understand revenge?” Gregory asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Daryl. “If you’d asked me a week ago, I would’ve said mermaids weren’t real, and that this whole damn trip was just PR. But now they’re real, and they’re killing people, and we don’t know anything about them. They were smart enough to sink that submersible thing. What else can they do?”