"—Judy—" it whispers, almost too faint to make out. "—scatter— lay—"

"Alice?" Clarke's got her vocoder cranked loud enough to hurt her own ears. "We can't hear you. Say again?"

"—just— no sign—"

Clarke can barely distinguish the words. Somehow, though, she can hear the fear in them.

A small tremor shudders past, raising clouds of mud and swamping Nakata's signal. Lubin throttles up his squid and pulls away. Clarke and Brander follow suit. Somewhere in the darkness ahead, Beebe draws closer in decibel fractions.

The next words they hear manage to cut through the noise: "Judy's gone!"

"Gone?" Brander echoes. "Gone where?"

"She just disappeared!" The voice hisses softly from every direction. "I was talking to her. She was up above the deep scattering layer, she was— I was telling her about the signal we saw and she said she saw something too and then she was gone..."

"Did you check sonar?" Lubin wants to know.

"Yes! Yes of course I checked the sonar!" Nakata's words are increasingly clear. "As soon as she was cut off I checked but I saw nothing for sure. There was something, maybe, but the scattering layer is very thick today, I could not be sure. And it's been fifteen minutes now and she still hasn't come back..."

"Sonar wouldn't pick her up anyway," Brander says softly. "Not through the DSL."

Lubin ignores him. "Listen, Alice. Did she say what she saw?"

"No. Just something, she said, and then I heard nothing more."

"Your sonar contact. How big?"

"I don't know! It was just there for a second, and the layer—"

"Could it have been a sub? Alice?"

"I don't know!" the voice cries, disembodied and anguished. "Why would it? Why would anyone?"

Nobody answers. The squids race on.

Ecdysis

They dump her out of the airlock, still caught in the tangleweb. She knows better than to fight under these conditions, but the situation's got to change pretty soon. She thinks they may have tried gassing her in the 'lock. Why else would they leave their headsets on after the lock had drained? What about that faint hiss that lasted a few seconds too long after blowdown? It's a pretty subtle cue, but you don't spend most of a year on the rift without learning what an airlock sounds like. There was something a bit off about that one.

No matter. You'd be surprised how much O2 can be electrolyzed from just the little bit of water left sloshing around in the ol' thoracic plumbing. Judy Caraco can hold her breath until the cows come home, whatever the fuck that means. And now, maybe they think their gas-chamber-that-blows-like-an-airlock has got her doped or unconscious or just very laid back. Maybe now they'll take her out of this fucking net.