That’s what her true fear had always been but she had not known it until now. She swallowed. The fear rose up inside her, black and enveloping.

“I don’t want…to…drown…”

(YOU WENT DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE, ALICE, AND NOW THE CITY WILL RISE AND YOU’LL RISE WITH IT…)

Tears splashed from her eyes. The eyes of the beast blinked several times. It knew. It understood. Its eyes were the eyes of a mother that loved her and would deliver her gently and lovingly to her destiny, the ancestral heritage of her family who gathered in the green, sparkling depths at the end of their lives and were reborn, remade, to swim in the secret, sunken temples of Dagon, the one true god.

Tentacles covered her, shut out the world and there was only the cradle of their warmth and softness, their morphic splendor.

I’m ready, oh Mama, I’m ready now…

Javonivic went limp and closed her eyes, dreaming now. Beyond pain. And only when her mind had slipped entirely away did the tentacles begin to squeeze and exert dangerous pressure. The beast pulled her into itself, coveting her. Then its bulk slipped back down into the moon pool and out into the lake beneath.

The Entry Lock was filled with water.

The lights blinked out one after the other. Those in Main Lock followed suit.

And at the bottom of Lake Vordog there was an unbroken darkness.

And a serenity as Javy returned to the sea.

38
THE MONSTER

Orr saw it happen and he did not believe it.

Beneath the dark, boiling waters of the lake, he saw lights surfacing. Some tiny sliver of hope in him thought it might be the submersible coming up with his divers. A feeling of pure joy leaped inside him, but it was quickly extinguished when he saw that it was one of the Exosuits. The helmet broke the surface in an eruption of bubbles.

One of them survived! One of the divers survived!

In his mind, a simple plan evolved: he would use one of the winches and bring the suit aboard and get the diver out.

Then behind him, Anderson said, “We’re going to die. It’s come to kill us.”

Which was an absolutely irrational thing to say. Orr was about to swear at him, chastise him for such stupid thinking. He even opened his mouth to do so, to vent the frustration and anger he felt…then, he watched the impossible happen. One of the suit arms reached from the water, its triple-pronged robotic manipulator grasped the deck railing like the talons of a beast and began to pull the suit up out of the water.

It could not be.