Scanlon braces against his rock, pushes off. Water pushes back, slowing him instantly. The reptile doesn’t see him. Scanlon kicks. He’s only a few meters away when he remembers.

Ganzfeld Effect. What if there’s some Ganzfeld Effect down h—

The reptile spins suddenly, staring directly at him.

Scanlon lunges. Another split-second and he wouldn’t even have come close, but fortune smiles; he catches onto one of the creature’s fins as it dives away. Its other foot lashes back, bounces off the helmet. Again, lower down; Scanlon’s sonar pistol spins away from his belt.

He hangs on. The reptile comes at him with both fists, utterly silent. Scanlon barely feels the blows through his preshmesh. He hits back with the familiar desperation of a childhood punching bag, cornered again, feeble self-defense his only option.

Until it dawns on him that this time, somehow, it’s working.

He’s not facing the neighborhood bully here. He’s not paying the price for careless eye contact with some australopithecine at the local drink’n’drug. He fighting a spindly little freak that’s trying to get away. From him. This guy is downright feeble.

For the first time in his life, Yves Scanlon is winning a fight.

His fist connects, a chain-mail mace. The enemy jerks and struggles. Scanlon grabs, twists, wrestles his quarry into an armlock. His victim flails around, utterly helpless.

“You’re not going anywhere, friend.” Finally, a chance to try out that tone of easy contempt he’s been practicing since the age of seven. It sounds good. It sounds confident, in control. “Not until I find out just what the fuck is—”

The lights go out.

The whole Throat goes dark, suddenly and without fuss. It takes a few seconds to blink away the afterimages; finally, in the extreme distance, Scanlon makes out a very faint gray glow. Beebe.

It dies as he watches. The creature in his arms has grown very still.

"Let him go, Scanlon."

"Clarke?" It might be Clarke. The vocoders don't mask everything, there are subtle differences that Scanlon's just beginning to recognize. "Is that you?" He gets his headlamp on, but no matter where he points it there's nothing to see.

"You'll break his arms," the voice says. Clarke. Got to be.

"I'm not that—" strong— "clumsy," Scanlon says to the abyss.

"You don't have to be. His bones have decalcified." A momentary silence. "He's fragile."

Scanlon loosens his grip a bit. He twists back and forth, trying to catch sight of something. Anything. All that comes into view is his prisoner's shoulder patch.

Fischer.

But he went missing— Scanlon counts back— seven months ago!

"Let him go, cocksucker." A different voice, this time. Brander's.

"Now," it buzzes. "Or I'll fucking kill you."

Brander? Brander actually defending a pedophile? How the hell did that happen?

It doesn't matter now. There are other things to worry about.