Starfish

Clarke looks. Four's fifteen meters away and the water's a bit murky this shift. Still, she can see something big and dark sticking to the intake vent. Its shadow twitches down along the casing like an absurdly stretched black spider.

Clarke fins forward a few meters, Caraco at her side. The two women exchange looks.

Fischer, hanging upside down against the mesh. It's been four days since anyone's seen him.

Clarke gently sets down her carry bag; Caraco follows her lead. Two or three kicks bring them to within five meters of the intake. Machinery hums omnipresently, makes a sound deep enough to feel.

He's facing away from them, drifting from side to side, tugged by the gentle suction of the intake vent. The vent's grillwork is fuzzy with rooted growing things; small clams, tube worms, shadow crabs. Fischer pulls squirming clumps from the intake, leaves them to drift or to fall to the street below. He's cleaned maybe two meters square so far.

It's nice to see he still takes some duties seriously.

"Hey. Fischer," Caraco says.

He spins around as if shot. His forearm flails toward Clarke's face; she raises her own just in time. In the next instant he's bowled past her. She kicks, steadies herself. Fischer's heading for the darkness without looking back.

"Fischer," Clarke calls out. "Stop. It's okay."

He stops kicking for a moment, looks back over his shoulder.

"It's me," she buzzes. "And Judy. We won't hurt you."

Barely visible now, he rotates to a stop and turns to face them. Clarke risks a wave.

"Come on, Fischer. Give us a hand."

Caraco comes up behind her. "Lenie, what are you doing?" She's turned her vocoder down to a hiss. "He's too far gone, he's —»

Clarke cranks her own vocoder down. "Shut up, Judy." Up again. "What do you say, Fischer? Earn your pay."

He's coming back into the light, hesitantly, like a wild animal lured by the promise of food. Closer, Clarke can see the line of his jaw moving up and down under his hood. The motions are jerky, erratic, as though he's learning them for the first time.

Finally a noise comes out. "Oh — kay —»

Caraco goes back and retrieves their gear. Clarke offers a scraper to Fischer. After a moment, he takes it, clumsily, and follows them to number four.

"Jussst like," Fischer buzzes. "Old. T — times."

Caraco looks at Clarke. Clarke says nothing.

* * *

Near the end of the shift she looks around. "Fischer?"

Caraco pokes her head out from an access tunnel. "He's gone?"

"When did you see him last?"

Caraco's vocoder ticks a couple of times; the machinery always misinterprets hmmm. "Half hour ago, maybe."

Clarke puts her own vocoder on high. "Hey Fischer! You still around?"

No answer.

"Fischer, we're heading back in a bit. If you want to come along…"

Caraco just shakes her head.

Shadow

It's a nightmare.

There's light everywhere, blinding, painful. He can barely move. Everything has such hard edges, and everywhere he looks the boundaries are too sharp. Sounds are like that too, clanks and shouts, every noise an exclamation of pain. He barely knows where he is. He doesn't know why he's there.

He's drowning.

"UNNNNNSEEEEELLLLLHHHHHIZZZZZMMMMOOUUUUUTH…"

The tubes in his chest suck at emptiness. The rest of his insides strain to inflate, but there's nothing there to fill them. He thrashes, panicky. Something gives with a snap. Sudden pain resonates in some faraway limb, floods the rest of his body a moment later. He tries to scream, but there's nothing inside to push out.

"HHIZZMMMOUTHFORRRKKRRIISSAAAAAKHEEEZSSUFFUKKATE — "

Someone pulls part of his face off. His insides fill with a rush; not the cold saline he's used to, but it helps. The burning in his chest eases.

"BIGGFFUKKINNGGMMISSTTAAKE — "

Pressure, painful and uneven. Things are holding him down, holding him up, banging into him. The noise is tinny, deafening. He remembers a sound —

— gravity —

— that applies somehow, but he doesn't know what it means. And then everything's spinning, and everything's familiar and horrible except for one thing, one glimpse of a face that calms him somehow —

Shadow?

— and the weight's gone, the pressure's gone, icewater calms his insides as he spirals back with her, outside again, where she used to be years ago —

She's showing him how to do it. She creeps into his room after the shouting stops, she crawls under the covers with him and she starts stroking his penis.

"Dad says this is what you do when you really love somebody," she whispers. And that scares him because they don't even like each other, he just wants her to go away and leave them all alone.

"Go away. I hate you," he says, but he’s too afraid to move.

"That's okay, then you don't have to do it for me." She’s trying to laugh, trying to pretend he was just kidding.

And then, still stroking: "Why are you always so mean to me?”

"I'm not mean."

"Are too."

"You're not supposed to be here."