Starfish

"Sonar wouldn't pick her up anyway," Brander says softly. "Not through the DSL."

Lubin ignores him. "Listen, Alice. Did she say what she saw?"

"No. Just something, she said, and then I heard nothing more."

"Your sonar contact. How big?"

"I don't know! It was just there for a second, and the layer —»

"Could it have been a sub? Alice?"

"I don't know!" the voice cries, disembodied and anguished. "Why would it? Why would anyone?"

Nobody answers. The squids race on.

Ecdysis

They dump her out of the airlock, still caught in the tangleweb. She knows better than to fight under these conditions, but the situation's got to change pretty soon. She thinks they may have tried gassing her in the 'lock. Why else would they leave their headsets on after the lock had drained? What about that faint hiss that lasted a few seconds too long after blowdown? It's a pretty subtle cue, but you don't spend most of a year on the rift without learning what an airlock sounds like. There was something a bit off about that one.

No matter. You'd be surprised how much O₂ can be electrolyzed from just the little bit of water left sloshing around in the ol' thoracic plumbing. Judy Caraco can hold her breath until the cows come home, whatever the fuck that means. And now, maybe they think their gas-chamber-that-blows-like-an-airlock has got her doped or unconscious or just very laid back. Maybe now they'll take her out of this fucking net.

She waits, limp. Sure enough there's a soft electrical cackle and the web falls away, all those sticky molecular tails polarizing flat like Velcro slicking down to cat fur. She stares out through glassy unblinking eyecaps — no cues they can read there — and counts three, with maybe more behind her.

They're zombies, or something.

Their skin looks rotten with jaundice. Fingernails are barely distinguishable from fingers. Faces are slightly distorted, blurred behind stretched, yellowish membrane. Waxy, dark ovals protrude through the film where their mouths should be.

Body condoms, Caraco realizes after a moment. What is this? Do they think I'm contagious?

And a moment later: Am I?

One of them reaches towards her holding something like a handgun.

She lashes out with one arm. She'd rather have kicked — more strength in the legs — but the refsuckers that brought her in didn't bother taking off her flippers. She connects: a nose, it feels like. A nose under latex. A satisfying crunch. Someone's found sudden cause to regret their own presumption.

There's a moment's shocked silence. Caraco uses it, flips onto her side and swings one flippered foot backwards, heel first, into the back of someone's knee. A woman cries out, a startled face topples past, a smear of red hair plastered against its cheek, and Judy Caraco is reaching down to get those big clown-foot flippers off in time to —

The tip of a shockprod hovers ten centimeters from her nose. It doesn't waver a millimeter. After a moment's indecision — how far can I push this, anyway? — Caraco stops moving.

"Get up," says the man with the prod. She can barely see, through the condom, shadows where his eyes should be.

Slowly, she takes off her fins and stands. She never had a chance, of course. She knew that all along. But they obviously want her alive for something, or they would never have bothered bringing her on board. And she, in turn, wants to make it clear that these fuckers are not going to intimidate her, no matter how many of them there are.

There's catharsis to be had in even a losing fight.

"Calm down," the man says — one of four, she sees now, including the one backing out of the compartment with a red stain spreading under his caul. "We're not trying to hurt you. But you know you shouldn't have tried to leave."

"Leave?" His clothes — all of their clothes — are uniform but not uniforms: loose-fitting white jumpsuits with an unmistakable look of disposability. No insignia. No name tags. Caraco turns her attention to the sub itself.

"Now we're going to get you out of that diveskin," the prodmaster continues. "And we're going to give you a quick medical workup. Nothing too intrusive, I assure you."

Not a large craft, judging from the curvature of the bulkhead. But fast. Caraco knew that from the moment it resolved out of the murk above her. She didn't see much, then, but she saw enough. This boat has wings. It could lap an orca on steroids.

"Who are you guys?" she asks.

"Your cooperation would make us all very grateful," Prodmaster says, as if she hasn't spoken, "And then maybe you can tell us exactly what you're trying to escape from out here in the middle of the Pacific."

"Escape?" Caraco snorts. "I was doing laps, you idiot."

"Uh huh." He returns his shockprod to a holster on his belt, leaves one hand resting lightly on the handle.