She waits, limp. Sure enough there's a soft electrical cackle and the web falls away, all those sticky molecular tails polarizing flat like Velcro slicking down to cat fur. She stares out through glassy unblinking eyecaps— no cues they can read there— and counts three, with maybe more behind her.

They're zombies, or something.

Their skin looks rotten with jaundice. Fingernails are barely distinguishable from fingers. Faces are slightly distorted, blurred behind stretched, yellowish membrane. Waxy, dark ovals protrude through the film where their mouths should be.

Body condoms, Caraco realizes after a moment. What is this? Do they think I'm contagious?

And a moment later: Am I?

One of them reaches towards her holding something like a handgun.

She lashes out with one arm. She'd rather have kicked— more strength in the legs— but the refsuckers that brought her in didn't bother taking off her flippers. She connects: a nose, it feels like. A nose under latex. A satisfying crunch. Someone's found sudden cause to regret their own presumption.

There's a moment's shocked silence. Caraco uses it, flips onto her side and swings one flippered foot backwards, heel first, into the back of someone's knee. A woman cries out, a startled face topples past, a smear of red hair plastered against its cheek, and Judy Caraco is reaching down to get those big clown-foot flippers off in time to—

The tip of a shockprod hovers ten centimeters from her nose. It doesn't waver a millimeter. After a moment's indecision— how far can I push this, anyway?— Caraco stops moving.

"Get up," says the man with the prod. She can barely see, through the condom, shadows where his eyes should be.

Slowly, she takes off her fins and stands. She never had a chance, of course. She knew that all along. But they obviously want her alive for something, or they would never have bothered bringing her on board. And she, in turn, wants to make it clear that these fuckers are not going to intimidate her, no matter how many of them there are.

There's catharsis to be had in even a losing fight.

"Calm down," the man says— one of four, she sees now, including the one backing out of the compartment with a red stain spreading under his caul. "We're not trying to hurt you. But you know you shouldn't have tried to leave."

"Leave?" His clothes— all of their clothes— are uniform but not uniforms: loose-fitting white jumpsuits with an unmistakable look of disposability. No insignia. No name tags. Caraco turns her attention to the sub itself.

"Now we're going to get you out of that diveskin," the prodmaster continues. "And we're going to give you a quick medical workup. Nothing too intrusive, I assure you."