“Gonna die,” Jaim insisted through trembling lips. “Thing’s . . . gonna kill us. Crush us and eat us.”

“It can’t!” Varina insisted. “We’re gonna surface. Hear the air hissing in the tanks, babe? That’s positive buoyancy. We’re gonna go up.” She swallowed hard as the sub jerked sideways, something on the hull giving way with a bang. “Gonna . . . go . . .”

The sub twisted her off balance as it was rotated sideways and more of the loose items clattered around.

Damn it! If she just didn’t have to stare at those clamping and chopping mandibles.

“Let us the fuck go!” she screamed, hearing her own building terror.

The beast shook the sub with a vengeance, the mandibles clicking and banging as they bounced off the transparency, but the thick vacuum-molded glass held.

Varina’s fear broke free, a sob catching in her throat as she hung upside down in her restraints. A stream of bubbles began to trace their way upward across the glass, mixing with the mandibles, sucking into the clicking and clacking denticles, and vanishing down that dark throat.

That was the worst part, that she could hear those damn teeth through the thick glass.

“Gotta be close. Gonna surface any second,” she promised herself, unable to tear her gaze away from those shit-sucking teeth.

In the seat below, Jaim had gone apoplectic, her arms shaking as she gripped the controls. “Please, God. Please,” she barely managed to whisper.

“Where’s the surface?” Varina demanded, staring out at what little she could see past the flailing mandibles.

What the hell? If anything, it looked darker out there. They should be rising into the sun-dappled light, just beneath the waves.

Even as she thought it, the creature shifted, gave the sub a hard wrench, and with a bang, air whooshed, water gurgling. What the hell could that have been? But the air . . . it just kept venting, as if the entire tank had let go.

But what the . . . ?

The valve! It snapped the valve off the tank.

Hot tears began to stream down her cheeks. They silvered her sight, blurring the flicking and flashing mandibles ever so close to her face. There would be no surface. No positive buoyancy.

Out beyond the mandibles, where they clattered against the glass, the light seemed to be fading.

Glancing at the depth gauge, Varina watched in disbelief as they passed two hundred meters. The thing was taking them down. Ever deeper.

“Tam?” Jaim asked, her voice hoarse with fear.

“Yeah, babe?”

“Tell me it’s not going to eat us.”

Panic built. Varina wanted to throw up, to scream, to shriek at the fucking injustice of it all.

Can’t. Got to be there for Jaim.

“It can’t eat us, babe. It can’t crush the sub.”

As if that was any consolation.

The sound of grinding came through the hull. Then a bang.

One of the alarms went off.