One of my captors waved the device in front of me again. It was a regulator, attached to an air hose. I turned to stare at her; I could barely make out her expression through the faceplate, though Witness instantly recognized another target. The air hose led to a second tank on her back. I had no way of knowing what the tank contained – but if it was harmful, I was only minutes away from drowning anyway.

The diver’s eyes seemed to say: It’s your decision. Take it or leave it.

I looked around again. Kuwale’s arms were tied behind vis back, and ve’d given in and accepted the unknown gas. I was still weak from the toxin, and short of breath. I had no chance of escaping.

I let them bind my hands together, then I opened my mouth and bit hard on the regulator tube. I sucked in air gratefully, reeling between panic and relief. If they’d wanted us dead, they would have run a fishing knife through our ribs by now – but I still wasn’t ready for the alternative.

The harvester approached, and the divers swam forward to meet it, dragging us along. I wanted to shield my face with my hands, but I couldn’t. The medusa’s-knot of transparent tentacles opened up around us, writhing like the pathological topologies of pre-space, like the vacuum come to life.

Then the net closed tight.

Chapter 21

The harvester’s toxins were enervating, but not painful. If anything, they made the ride more bearable: relaxing muscles tensed in revulsion and claustrophobia, dulling the sense of being eaten alive. The creature was probably just a commercial species, not the privately-engineered weapon I’d imagined. Belatedly, I started recording; my eyes stung from the salt, but closing them gave me vertigo. I could see Kuwale and the divers guarding ver, blurred as if through frosted glass. Pacified by the toxins, cocooned in translucent jelly, we moved through the bright water.

I pictured us being winched into the air and dropped unceremoniously onto the deck, like the catch I’d seen disgorged earlier. Instead, someone relaxed the harvester with a hormonal wand while we were still in the water, and the divers hauled us up over the side, climbing rope ladders. On deck, Witness matched three more faces. No one spoke to us, and I was still too spaced-out to compose an intelligent question. The woman who’d offered me the regulator bound my feet together, then tied my hands, already joined, to Kuwale’s, linking us back-to-back. Another of the divers took away our notepads, wrapped a length of (non-living) fishing net around us – threading it under our arms – then hooked it to the winch and lowered us into an empty hold. When they closed the hatch, we were in total darkness.