Into the Drowning Deep (Rolling in the Deep, #1)

by Mira Grant

‘Did they elect you God when I wasn’t looking? I suppose that would be a paradox, if you think about it. God is a middle-aged biology professor who exists in God’s own creation, only to go back to the beginning and make it for herself. Although I’ll be honest. If you’re God, I want to have a talk with you about my accident.’ Theo joined her at the rail.

‘But we got to sail together one more time. Wasn’t that worth the risk?’ ‘For you and me? Maybe. For everyone else on this godforsaken vessel?’ Jillian shook her head. ‘It never was. It never could have been. And this is all my fault.’ This time Theo didn’t contradict her. They stood together, and watched the sun sink lower in the sky, creeping inch by dreadful inch toward sundown.

There are some challenges that are worth risking everything. — Heather Wilson Nothing is worth the risk of being lost at sea. — Dr Holly Wilson

Sharks exist, implacable, cold blooded, and terrible. That’s true. At the same time, I’m not going to stand here and tell you the crocodile is any real improvement.

Everything that threatens us in the sea has its counterpart on land, with less of the gravity-defying freedom the water offers. So what could have driven us away? Nothing more nor less than an equal.

The fourth shutter test was conducted in the middle of the day, where success would be immediately obvious to the passengers. Like the others before it, it failed.

Humanity was cruel, and if you were prepared to try to find a bottom to that cruelty, you had best be prepared for a long, long fall.

the problem with trying to define nature is that nature is bigger than we are, and nature doesn’t care whether we know how to define it. Nature does what nature wants.’

know you don’t want my advice, but here it is,’ she said. ‘Get out of here. Go upstairs, find the sister you still have, and hold her. You’re her voice when she needs to speak to the rest of the crew. More than that, you’re her anchor to the world. Without you she’ll drift, and if she drifts too far, you’re never getting her back. Don’t let that happen to her. Don’t let that happen to you.’

Her father had left bruises on her body. Her mother’s bruises, for all that they’d been harder to see, were proving much slower to heal.

Humans had the potential for good, although they did not always make the effort. But the creatures born from blending the two, the claw-and-tooth children of the deepest depths… they were not good.

They existed only to catch and snatch and devour. They sang no songs of their own, only songs stolen from the victims of their hunger. They were voiceless and cruel and terrible, and if not for them, the dolphins would never have needed to seek the shallows, or put themselves into the path of men, or choose the safety of cages over the freedom of the sea.

‘It’s beautiful,’ breathed Daniel, and while there were those who would have objected to the reverence in his voice, none of them corrected his statement. It was beautiful, in its own terrible way. So many monsters are.

Everyone in the room turned to watch as the grieving sister and the captive mermaid signed back and forth, slowly, seeking connection, seeking understanding across a gulf of space and species and environment, and no one said a word.

‘I don’t always understand… I mean, signals are hard. Especially about something like this. People don’t say what they mean. They say things that live in the same neighborhood as what they mean, and then they look at me like I’m stupid because I don’t pick it up instantly. I’m not stupid. I’m just not that specific kind of smart.’

The human race had always created dreamers whose seemingly frivolous dreams forced the creation of infrastructures and innovations that benefited everyone around them. He was just the latest in a long line of people who, by wanting something they could never have, dragged the rest of the world kicking and screaming into a new phase of the future.

The trouble with nature is that nature doesn’t care about us. The world made us, and it was done. Sink or swim, we’re on our own. The thing people forget about survival of the fittest is that it doesn’t work. You really think the giraffe was the fittest? Or the kakapo? Even our friend the axolotl has no business existing. Nature has made and rejected and lost and remade more biological diversity than currently exists.

‘When someone kills an American citizen, we don’t say, “Oh well, we killed one of theirs last week; we’re calling it even,”’ she said. ‘We declare war. We sweep civilizations off the face of the globe. They won’t care that they started it. They’re only going to care who finishes it, and to be honest, I’m not sure it’s going to be us.’

I guess I just wanted my sister to be proud of me. That’s what sisters want, right? They want to be good enough to be proud of. — Victoria Stewart

I’m not a reporter. I’m a propaganda machine, and I’ve never written my own script. — Olivia Sanderson

News flash, Victoria: we know you’re looking for the little mermaid who can give you back your sister’s voice. You’re not going to find her.

His foot slipped and he flailed, arms pinwheeling to catch himself before he fell. In his haste to lay out his specimens, Jason had lined up four of the pseudoshrimp, setting each on its own piece of corkboard. His hand hit the third in the row, slamming down on its abdomen. The impact caused the creature’s stinger to burst forth, hard enough to puncture the thin blue plastic of his glove.

Deserved.

Almost there. Almost to someone who could help him. It was just a little prick. There was no way this could be anything truly dangerous. The world was going to remember his name. He was absolutely certain of that. All he had to do was get medical treatment and get back to work. That was… that was…

He was dead before the elevator came to a stop, one deck down. All things considered, that may have been a mercy.

The spoken component of the siren language isn’t learned. It’s felt.’

‘It’s amazing how quickly you code switch,’ said Mr Blackwell. ‘You’re Mr Blackwell when I’m being formal, and Theo when I want something,’ said Dr Toth. ‘It’s not that complicated.’ ‘I didn’t say it was complicated. I said it was amazing. What’s going on?’

‘Cats chitter when they see a bird,’ she said. ‘They make this little squeaky noise. People think it’s adorable. I’ve used it in videos. Cats chitter, because they’re excited, because they’re about to start hunting. But when the hunt begins, they’re silent. They don’t make a sound. They come at their prey as quietly as they can, because a hunt only counts if there’s a kill at the end.’ Tory and Luis exchanged a horrified look.

It was a simple thing, after a life spent swimming through the crushing depths, to climb the side of a reef-that-should-not-be. It might rise out of the water, steep and hard sided, but it was only a reef, and reefs were made for ascending. From all sides the sirens came, their claws digging into the metal, their bodies draped against the steel, passage smoothed by the mucus secreted from their skins.

On the top deck, the mechanism that controlled the shutters strained and whined, attempting to engage. Again, it failed. Daryl and Gregory exchanged a look.

Before it could look away, she made a complicated gesture. It involved both hands, and while it lacked the fluidity of the siren’s own gestures – the fingers that shaped it were too short, too bound to gravity – it was enough to make the creature go still.

Hallie repeated the gesture, more emphatically. ‘What are you saying?’ asked Daniel. ‘I have no idea,’ she said. ‘But these things are mimics. They’re used to the idea that intelligent creatures can steal words from one another. I’ve stolen something from it. Let’s see what it does.’

‘We have no shared culture,’ Hallie said. ‘I can’t spread my hands and expect it to know I mean I don’t understand.’ She pressed one hand flat against her sternum instead, before making her name sign. When she was done, she touched her chest again. ‘What did you say?’ ‘My name.’

She touched her chest, repeated her name sign, touched her chest. Then, moving with deliberate care, she touched the glass. The siren made a new sign before touching its chest. ‘What did it say?’ asked Daniel. ‘Its name,’ said Hallie softly. ‘We’re communicating. We’re communicating. I got it. We can do this.’

They had sailed off the edge of the map, and there was a good chance they were going to die here. Anne wouldn’t want her to die here. Anne would want her to make it home, to tell their parents what she’d learned, to introduce them to Olivia, to watch them fall in love with the idea that maybe she was finally going to fall in love. Anne would want her to live. And she couldn’t do that if she got herself killed.

The trouble was, humans had been domesticated by their own hand. Humans had given up violence as a way of life, and that was a good thing; that was the reason they had civilization and universities and scientific missions, rather than living in a great chasm in the earth, mirroring their aquatic cousins. But the sirens had never domesticated themselves. The sirens were still nature, red in tooth and claw, and while they might die, humans died so much more easily that it was almost comic.

Too late to save the people, maybe, but not too late to save the science. Not too late to save the science.

It was a moment of peace stolen from the jaws of chaos, and it meant more than either of them could say.

She was scared out of her mind. This wasn’t what she’d signed up for. All she’d ever wanted was the chance to show the world who she was and what she could do, to make them understand that she was more than a collection of traits randomly generated by some cosmic lottery. She was a person. She could be a hero if she wanted to. She could save the world, she could change the world, she could belong in the world, and anyone who wanted to say she couldn’t could learn to live with how wrong they were.

Her heel came down, hard, on a deep patch of slime, and she found herself skidding suddenly out of control. She waved her arms frantically, trying to stop herself, but it was too late. She slammed into the rail, arms still flailing, and went over the side before she could get her momentum under control. I’m going to die, she thought frantically, and tried to force her body into a proper diving stance, arms out, legs together, head bent at a protective angle. It was the only thing left that she could do. She dropped along the length of the Melusine, hit the water, and was gone.

The trouble with discovery is that it goes two ways. For you to find something, that thing must also find you. — Victoria Stewart

‘Thank you,’ she signed to the siren – one of the handful of signs they’d been working on for the last few hours. The siren hesitated. Then, with the deliberation of someone who was learning a foreign language, it signed back, ‘You’re welcome.’ Hallie smiled.

‘The female.’ Tory finally opened her eyes, turning to look at the siren in its tank. ‘They’re like anglerfish. The female is hundreds of times larger than the males, and she’s so hungry. She could eat the world.

Tory laughed, and Olivia laughed, and the lights of the Melusine blazed into the sea, bright as daylight, chasing the monsters away.

Below the Melusine, deep and descending deeper, the matriarch swam. She had been close to a healthy feeding when the brightness had come, searing her sensitive eyes, turning her away. She had eaten a full dozen of the males in her anger, and would eat a dozen more before she could be soothed. They knew her anger for the terror that it was.

Her biology was not so novel as to be unique in the ocean, although her size was; she had outlived and outlasted most of the creatures on her scale, thanks in no small part to the efforts of her helpers, the small, swift males, which brought her food when she could not rise to take it for herself. She and her kind had endured for millions of years. They would endure for millions more. They had, after all, nothing but time.

The ship’s whistle blew, signaling their proximity to shore. Neither of them woke. Each, in her own way, was far away: Olivia running forever through a ship of ghosts, trying to save what had already been lost, and Tory swimming through the frigid water, lured on, ever on, by the dancing, impossible light of the lovely ladies of the sea.