He remembered the darkness of the passages, the tiny creatures swimming around them, the whirling globs of sediment in their lights. And…Javy. He remembered her being with him, which was patently untrue because Murphy had been his dive partner.

Yet, the memory was strong.

Javy and he entered a chamber that was vaguely ovoid in shape. There was nothing very exceptional about it; it looked very much like many of them did: the marine growths, the weeds, the mats of green algae etc. Yet, upon entering it, he had felt a slowly-building fear take hold of him that gradually escalated to full-blown terror when he saw what was hanging on the walls. Javy had found it and immediately drew his attention to it. When Bell got his lights over there, he saw what made her eyes go wide beneath the acrylic bubble of her face shield: two bodies hanging from the wall, their limbs moving in the current with a slow, feathering motion. They were both male and both naked, bloated white things like human slugs, their flesh torn by hungry crustaceans and nibbled by fish, streamers of it floating around them like strands of confetti. Neither had eyes and both had the huge, rubbery mouths of sucker fish.

“It’s Murphy and Hubbs,” Javy had said. “Dear God, it’s Murphy and Hubbs.”

Bell did not try to convince her otherwise, because there was no mistaking it. But it couldn’t be. It just couldn’t be. They were back at the Neptune. And—according to Bell’s report written in his own hand—Javy wasn’t with him at all.

“The bogies,” Javy said in small, wounded voice.

“What do you mean?”

“The bogies got them.”

“These are fakes, Javy. They have to be.”

They looked unpleasantly real, but if they weren’t fakes, then who was back at the Neptune?

As Bell sat there, remembering it all, he felt more disturbed than ever. Surely, he was confusing what really happened with a dream. It had to be. He knew he went to the city each time with Murphy. He’d never gone with Javy. Hubbs was her dive partner. His report verified that. But why was his recall of the episode with Javy so damn strong?

Maybe he should have told Orr about it, but he hadn’t dared. There was an answer to this. Maybe the bogies had implanted it in his head to toy with him. Maybe what Hubbs had said was true. Regardless, his old paranoia concentrating the veracity of memory was back in full force and he felt like he was lost in the maze of his own mind, unable to differentiate between reality and fantasy, real memory and that which might have been implanted.

All of which was unacceptable.