Free The Deep by Nick Cutter Page B

high-pressure vacuum, drawing out every bit of excess air. Then the seal will engage.”
    A workman appeared in the porthole window. Luke couldn’t hear anything outside now. The sub must be noise-proof. The man’s hands clutched one of those high-tech caulking guns; a puffy crust of foam began to encircle the window.
    “They’re foaming the seals,” said Al. “The entire vessel will get a coating, except for the bank of high-intensity spotlights running down each side. You okay?”
    “Yeah,” Luke said. “Just . . . this is really happening.”
    “Try to relax. I’m kicking on the air recycler.”
    Cool air pumped around Luke’s feet from pinhole vents. It had the same chemical tang that puffed from the vault containing Westlake. Luke was worried that his lungs would lock up, refusing to inhale the foul stuff.
    The crane lifted the sub and pinioned it over the water.
    “Buckle up,” Al said. “The crane operator’s got a heavy hand.”
    As soon as Luke’s belt clicked, they dropped. His stomach leapt as it would on a roller coaster. They hammered the sea’s surface. Water climbed the porthole. Luke’s breath came in shallow gulps.
    Breathe , he chided himself. You’re safe, totally safe.
    His final surface sight was of a new moon hovering in its eastern orbit: a waxen ball whose light plated the slack darkness of the sea.
    Then they slipped under and were gone.

3.
    AL FLICKED SWITCHES and twisted knobs. Her hand entered Luke’s peripheral vision, toggling a joystick near his ear.
    “This tub’s got three motors, but they’re strictly for stabilization and maneuvering,” she said. “We’re carrying three thousand pounds of lead weights. We just drop . When we want to surface, we’ll start shedding those lead plates bit by bit.”
    “How fast are we falling?”
    “About thirteen hundred meters per hour. I’ll increase that as the currents subside. Once we enter the Mariana Trench, three miles down, there’s no current at all. Then we’ll go faster—the proverbial hot knife through butter.”
    Some part of the vessel whined. Al made a minute adjustment, and the unpleasant noise stopped. Air bubbles scrolled around the window, delicate as those in a glass of champagne. The darkness was as absolute as the bottom of a mine shaft.
    Luke said, “Christ, that’s desolate.”
    “That’s the sea at night,” Al said, laughing a little uneasily. “Don’t you worry, it’ll get even darker. You’ve never seen the kind of dark we’re gonna encounter.”
    They were already beyond the point of the deepest free-dive; Luke figured it wouldn’t be long before they passed the point of the deepest scuba dive. After that they’d reach the depth where oxygen toxicity set in: the nitrogen levels change and the air in a scuba diver’s tank turns poisonous. Finally, they’d enter the lung-splintering depths where humans simply didn’t belong.
    A fizzy pop shot through Luke’s veins. He felt a subtle expansion between his joints. It wasn’t painful—more like being tickled inside his bones.
    Al modified their trajectory. The submarine stabilized.
    “Nitrogen buildup. You feel it? We’ll hang out here a minute,” she said. “We’re in the ‘Midnight Zone,’ by the way. Complete darkness. We’ll stop again at twenty-five hundred meters—the ‘Abyssal Zone.’ ”
    The tickle subsided. The sea was a solid wall of black through the porthole. There was nothing out there. The bleakness crawled inside Luke’s skull.
    “Check it out,” Al said. “Light show coming off your starboard side in five, four, three, two—”
    It started as tiny, vibrantly glowing specks. They accumulated slowly, drifting on the current. A hundred became a thousand became a numberless quantity. A swarm of neon creatures a hundred feet wide, giving a sense of depth to the ocean in the same way the sweep of a flashlight will reveal a huge cave.
    Some were small as grains of sand; others were the size of no-see-ums; a