Starfish

"Good. Bit of defib at first, but okay now."

Mr. Canton bends over from the head of the table: maggot skin stretched across a human face. "It's okay, Ms. Caraco. We're just here to help you. Can you understand?"

She tries to talk. It's an effort. "g-g-g-g-G — O —."

"What?"

"Th-this is Scanlon's work. Right? S-Scanlon's fucking revenge."

Mr. Canton looks up at someone beyond Caraco's field of view.

"Industrial psych." The redhead's voice. "No one important."

He looks back down. "Ms. Caraco, I don't know what you're talking about. We're going to take your eyecaps out now. It won't do you any good to struggle. Just relax."

Hands hold her head in position. Caraco clamps her eyes shut; they pry the left one open. She stares into something like a big hypo with a disk on the end. It settles on her eyecap, bonds with a faint sucking sound.

It pulls away. Light floods in like acid.

She wrenches her head to one side and shuts her eye against the stinging. Even filtered through her closed eyelid the light burns, an orange fire bringing tears. Then they have her again, twisting her head forward, fumbling at her face —

"Turn the lights down, you idiot! She's photosensitive!"

The redhead?

" — Sorry. We kept them at half, I thought —»

The light dims. Her eyelids go black.

"Her irises haven't had to work for almost a year," the redhead snaps. "Give her a chance to adjust, for Christ's sake."

She's in charge here?

Footsteps. A rattle of instruments.

"Sorry about that, Ms. Caraco. We've lowered the lights now, is that better?"

Go away. Leave me alone.

"Ms. Caraco, I'm sorry, but we still have to remove your other cap."

She keeps her eyes squeezed shut. They pull the cap out of her face anyway. The straps loosen around her body, drop off. She hears them backing away.

"Ms. Caraco, we've turned the lights down. You can open your eyes."

The lights. I don't care about the fucking lights. She curls up on the table and buries her face in her hands.

"She doesn't look so tough now, does she?"

"Shut up, Burton. You can be a real asshole sometimes, you know that?"

The sound of an airtight hatch hissing shut. A dense, close silence settles on Caraco's eardrums.

An electrical hum. "Judy." the redhead's voice: not in person, this time. From a speaker somewhere. "We don't want this to be any worse than it has to be."

Caraco holds her knees tightly against her chest. She can feel the scars there, a raised web of old tissue from the time they cut her open. Eyes still shut, she runs her fingers along the ridges.

I want my eyes back.

But all she has now are these naked, fleshy things that anyone can see. She opens them the merest crack, peeks between her fingers. She's alone.

"We have to know some things, Judy. For your own good. We need to know how you found out."

"Found out what?" she cries, her face in hands. "I was just… exercising…"

"It's okay, Judy. There's no hurry. You can rest now, if you want. Oh, and there are clothes in the drawer on your right."

She shakes her head. She doesn't care about clothes, she's been naked in front of worse monsters than these. It's only skin.

I want my eyes.

Alibis

Dead air from the speaker.

"Did you copy that?" Brander says after five seconds have passed.

"Yes. Yes, of course." The line hums for a second. "It just comes as a bit of a shock, that's all. It's just — very bad news."

Clarke frowns, and says nothing.

"Maybe she got detoured by a current at the thermocline," the speaker suggests. "Or caught up in a Langmuir cell. Are you sure she isn't still above the scattering layer somewhere?"

"Of course we're s — " Nakata bursts out, and stops. Ken Lubin has just laid a cautionary hand on her shoulder.

There's a moment's silence.

"It is night up there," Brander says finally. The deep scattering layer rises with darkness, spreads thin near the surface until daylight chases it back down. "And we'd be able to get her voice channel even if sonar couldn't get through. But maybe we should go up there ourselves and look around."

"No. That won't be necessary," says the speaker. "In fact, it might be dangerous, until we know more about what happened to Caraco."

"So we don't even look for her?" Nakata looks at the others, outrage and astonishment mingling on her face. "She could be hurt, she could be —»

"Excuse me, Ms. —»

"Nakata! Alice Nakata! I can not believe —»

"Ms. Nakata, we are looking for her. We've already scrambled a search team to scour the surface. But you're in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. You simply don't have the resources to cover the necessary volume." A deep breath, carried flawlessly down four hundred kilometers of fiberop. "On the other hand, if Ms. Caraco is at all mobile, she'll most likely try and make it back to Beebe. If you want to search, your best odds are to look close to home."