"Fuck, Lenie," he says. "I'm so scared."

"I know," she says softly.

"This waiting, it's just— God, Lenie, you wouldn't put a dog through this. Please."

She closes her eyes, waiting.

"Pop the hatch, Lenie."

She shakes her head. "Joe, I couldn't even kill myself. Not when I was eleven. Not— not even last night. How can I—"

"My legs are wrecked, Len. I can't feel anything else any more. I c-can barely even talk. Please."

"Why did they do this to us, Joel? What's going on?"

He doesn't answer.

"What has them so scared? Why are they so—"

He moves.

He lurches up, falls sideways. His arms reach out; one hand catches the edge of the hatch. The other catches the wheel in its center.

His legs twist grotesquely underneath him. He doesn't seem to notice.

"I'm sorry," she whispers. "I couldn't—"

He fumbles, get both hands on the wheel. "No problem."

"Oh God. Joel—"

He stares at the hatch. His fingers clench the wheel.

"You know something, Lenie Clarke?" There's cold in his voice, and fear, but there's a sudden hard determination there too.

She shakes her head. I don't know anything.

"I would have really liked to fuck you," he says.

She doesn't know what to say to that.

He spins the hatch. Pulls the lever.

The hatch falls into Forcipiger. The ocean falls after it. Somehow, Lenie Clarke's body has prepared itself when she wasn't looking.

His body jams back into hers. He might be struggling. Or it could just be the rush of the Pacific, playing with him. She doesn't know if he's alive or dead. But she holds onto him, blindly, the ocean spinning them around, until there isn't any doubt.

Its atmosphere gone, Forcipiger is accelerating. Lenie Clarke takes Joel's body by the hands, and draws it out through the hatch. It follows her into viscous space. The 'scaphe spins away below them, fading in moments.

With a gentle push, she sets the body free. It begins to drift slowly towards the surface. She watches it go.

Something touches her from behind. She can barely feel it through her 'skin.

She turns.

A slender, translucent tentacle wraps softly around her wrist. It fades away into a distance utterly black to most, slate gray to Lenie Clarke. She brings it to her. Its swollen tip fires sticky threads at her fingers.

She brushes it aside, follows the tentacle back through the water. She encounters other tentacles on the way, feeble, attenuate things, barely twitching against the currents. They all lead back to something long, and thick, and shadowy. She circles in.

A great column of writhing, wormlike stomachs, pulsing with faint bioluminescence.