She realized she was smelling the depths of the city, even though that was patently impossible. But it filled her helmet—a smell of age, black mud, decay, and pervasive dankness. But there was something else, too, something just beneath all that—a hot, fusty animal smell like the stink of a wolf’s den, a place strewn with bones and moldering scraps.

It’s in your head, she kept telling herself. You can’t smell anything in the suit and you know it.

Now the air seemed thin, metallic-smelling, poisoned. She began to gasp, panicking despite her iron nerve. The clustering tube worms were clutching at her, grasping her suit like fingers, tightening, pressing in. She felt like a fly trapped in the strands of a spider’s web.

You have your faith. Remember that.

She worked the jets and drove through them like a bullet and she could hear them crying out in her head with a shrill squeaking sound that blotted out everything else. She cried out as their rubbery stalks pulled at her, snared her, trying to trap her.

And then she was free, her heart pounding, sweat running down her face. She whirled around with the jets and the forest of tube worms were motionless, eerie in their profusion, but utterly harmless.

Slowly, she brought her breathing down and turned toward the tunnel mouth. Except…suddenly, the mouth was replaced by whirling, churning suck hole.   Her fear spiked and she began to pray in a desperate, whispering voice. Her entire body was shaking. She couldn’t seem to move. Her head was filled with gurgling noises and slithery sounds. Unseen things brushed the suit, making scratching sounds against its shell.

What…

What the hell is…

What the hell is happening to me?

There was a surge of adrenaline inside her, an absolute eruption of it followed by a wild, hysterical, absolutely debilitating rush of pure, primal fear. It was uncaged and shrieking inside her, filling her mouth with white foam that bubbled down her chin as her lips trembled and her teeth chattered, her eyes wide and wet, her body quaking with terror.

Stark, berserk memories tangled in her brain and she saw Regina’s hard, cruel face staring down at her, her teeth bared, her huge eyes glassy and round like those of a predatory fish. Her mother’s sure, bony hand hardened by a lifetime of manual labor slapped her again and again and again until black constellations and imploding stars detonated in her head—

(you stupid stupid troublemaking little bitch i told you and told you not to go in the water never go in the water never swim in the sea and you broke my rules you broke them)

—and she cried, she screamed, but Regina kept hitting her and hitting her. Blood ran from her nose and split lip. She writhed and fought but Regina would not let go of her, would not let her fall to the floor.