“I want to know what happened in there,” he told her. “I want your assessment of the situation. I’m not just asking you for it now, I’m ordering you to tell me.”

She nodded. “Okay, sir. I’ll give you my assessment—blow that fucking place up.”

“Which is pretty much what Hubbs told me.”

“And he’s right. The city is a machine. It generates fear and anxiety. It knows what scares you, what disturbs you, and it plucks it from your mind and uses it against you to break you down. To take away your will. To enslave you. Make you part of it. It has to be destroyed. That’s my assessment.”

Bell thought it over. He watched her carefully. It was obvious that there was more to tell, but she held back. Whatever it was, it pained her deeply and he wondered what sort of personal trauma of hers it had externalized. It had pretty much done the same thing to Murphy.

And the scariest part was that he believed what she said.

“Hubbs told me that every time we go in there, that much less of us comes out.” She shrugged. “I thought he was crazy. But you know what, Chief? He’s not. He really pegged it this time, regardless of how nuts it sounds.”

He cleared his throat. “You want me to tell Orr this? Because, you know what? He’s going to ask.”

“Yes. Tell him.”

“I can pretty much tell you what his reaction will be.”

The ice she had encased herself in began to crack and he could feel her fuming inside, ready to burst. “Honestly, Chief, I don’t give a damn what his reaction is. The Navy put us in a terrible position here. If we don’t destroy that city, it’ll destroy us.” She held up a hand when he opened his mouth. “It’s already sunk its teeth into us. It’s already invaded our dreams. It’s devouring us bit by bit and it’ll never stop until we’re nothing but bones. We need to destroy it, then get the hell out of here. It’ll never let us leave if we don’t destroy it.”

By that point, Bell’s body had gone stiff. As a military man, his posture was never completely relaxed, always somewhat rigid. But right then, he was stiff as a plank. If he tightened up much more, his spine would crack.

“Javy,” he said, “we can leave anytime we want. That’s always an option. We can take the submersible up to the LSB. Orr will have our asses for lunch if we scrub the mission, but we can do it.”

She shook her head. “You’re wrong, sir. We can’t leave—the city won’t let us. If we try to, the submersible will be gone or it will be sabotaged. If we get into it, it’ll be crushed like a can.”