He's been out now for about fifteen minutes. Beebe's just a few meters away. Clarke and Brander escort him on his maiden voyage, keeping their distance. Scanlon kicks, rises clumsily from the bottom; the mesh lets him swim like a man with splinted limbs. Vampires skim the edge of his vision like effortless shadows.

His helmet seems like the center of the universe. Wherever he looks, an infinite weight of black ocean presses in against the acrylic. A tiny flaw down by the neck seal catches his eye; he stares, horrified, as a hairline crack grows across his field of vision.

"Help! Get me in!" He kicks furiously towards Beebe.

Nobody answers.

"My helmet! My hel—" The crack isn't just growing now: it's squirming, twitching laterally across the corner of the helmet bubble like— like—

Yellow featureless eyes staring in from the ocean. A black hand, silhouetted in Beebe's halo, reaching for his face—

"Ahhh—"

A thumb grinds down on the crack in Scanlon's helmet. The crack smears, bursts; fine gory filaments smudge against the acrylic. The back half of the hairline peels off and writhes loose into the water, coiling, uncoiling—

Dying. Scanlon pants with relief. A worm. Some stupid fucking roundworm on my faceplate and I thought I was going to die, I thought—

Oh Christ. I've made a complete fool of myself.

He looks around. Brander, hanging off his right shoulder, points to the gory remnants sticking to the helmet. "If it ever really cracked you wouldn't have time to complain. You'd look just like that."

Scanlon clears his throat. "Thanks. Sorry, I— well, you know I'm new here. Thanks."

"By the way."

Clarke's voice. Or what's left of it, after the machinery does its job. Scanlon flails around until she comes into view overhead.

"How long are you going to be checking up on us?" she asks

Neutral question. Perfectly reasonable.

In fact, you've got to wonder why nobody asked it before...

"A week at least." His heart is slowing down again. "Maybe two. As long as it takes to make sure things are running smoothly."

She's silent for a second. Then: "You're lying." It doesn't sound like an accusation, somehow; just a simple observation. Maybe it's the vocoder.

"Why do you say that?"

She doesn't answer. Something else does; not quite a moan, not quite a voice. Not quite faint enough to ignore.

Scanlon feels the abyss trickling down his back. "Did you hear that?"

Clarke slips down past him to the seabed, rotating to keep him in view. "Hear? What?"

"It was— " Scanlon listens. A faint tectonic rumble. That's all. "Nothing."

She pushes off the bottom at an angle, slides up through the water to Brander. "We're on shift," she buzzes at Scanlon. "You know how the 'lock works."

The vampires vanish into the night.

Beebe shines invitingly. Alone and suddenly nervous, Scanlon retreats to the airlock.

But I wasn't lying. I wasn't. He hasn't had to, yet. Nobody's asked the right questions.