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

by Mira Grant

“I’ll sedate you,” said Luis. “I know how to set your microphones. If I set your microphones while you have a nap, no one will ever know, and if they did know, they wouldn’t blame me.”

Most of the scientists aboard the Melusine had come to an understanding about their research and results: “publish or perish” was still a driving motive for many of them, and no one wanted to see their hard work appearing under someone else’s name.

Children of islands and the coast went one of two ways: they learned to fear and respect the water, or they learned to live for it.

‘You can’t just do a scan and declare a piece of ocean safe,’ Heather signed. ‘You know that. Things move in the water. Just because there isn’t a shark right now doesn’t mean there won’t be a shark later.

She could help Heather get ready. She couldn’t watch her go. Some things were just too much to ask.

Never mind that she traveled with a submersible designed to her parameters, signaling all alarms and issues with flashing lights and pressure changes in the fabric of her seat; they were uncomfortable about the idea of working with a deaf woman, and while the Americans with Disabilities Act made it harder for them to refuse her employment, it didn’t make it impossible.

There would always be lawyers who specialized in keeping the disabled out of the workforce, especially when the jobs they wanted to do—the jobs they were trained to do—were difficult or dangerous or otherwise complex.

Blacking out from hunger while hundreds of feet below the surface of the sea was a good way to wind up a statistic, one more name on the long list of lives the water had claimed as its due.

This would change the world. Maybe not in the big, flashy way Imagine wanted, but it would be enough for her, and for every deaf girl with a dream who came after her.

“Kids are great, but holy shit, am I glad I’m not one anymore.”

“You know what I like about the ocean we do have?” asked Dr. Toth. “The part where we’ve dumped so much crap into it that it would be justified in becoming something out of a horror movie, and yet the horror movie it’s giving us isn’t related to any of those things. Not really.”

They stayed in their own environment until we started sending ships into their living room. To them, we’re the myths. We’re the monsters. We appear out of nowhere, we’ve probably snagged more than a few of them in fishing nets and trawler rigs, and half the things we have on us at any given time are going to be incomprehensible to a preindustrial society with no concept of manufacturing. They aren’t our fault. We didn’t mutate some flatworm into a murderous new form, and we didn’t melt a glacier that freed a prehistoric predator. They exist because they exist. That’s nice.”

“I’m so used to humans being responsible for everything that it’s a pleasant change when we didn’t do it.”

Science was all about curiosity. It was a world where the kids who touched hot stoves and poked sticks down mysterious holes in their backyards could get better tools, protective gear, and bigger holes to poke at. Asking scientists not to look into an open box was like asking cats not to saunter through an open door. It simply wasn’t practical.

But not wanting to be free and not wanting to feel free aren’t the same thing.

This was not where she belonged. This had never been where she belonged. Humanity had chosen the land over the sea millennia ago, and sometimes—when she was letting her mind wander, when she was romanticizing what she did and how she did it—she thought the sea still held a grudge.

The seas did not forgive, and they did not welcome their wayward children home.

something happened to breach her hull or compromise her window, she’d die almost instantly. If something happened to her cameras, on the other hand …

doing purely scientific work, she’d take entertainment over government contracts any day. At least the people who worked for Imagine knew how to laugh, and didn’t treat her like some sort of affirmative action hire.

There was nothing in the world like the deep ocean, where life was rare and its hold was tenuous but tenacious, refusing to let go.

A jellyfish drifted past, diaphanous tendrils dangling, and for a moment she could see the outline of a human form in the way its membranes pulsed, the ghost of a drowned girl forever doomed to haunt the restless sea.

She’d known she could never be an astronaut since she was a child, that no one would put a deaf girl into a rocket and tell her to reach for the stars, so she’d looked around until she’d found the next best thing, and then she’d done what she had to do to make it her own.

She was one of the best in her field, and a lot of that was because after giving up on one dream, she’d be damned before she gave up another.

In that regard she was already a creature of the deeps. Light, more than sound, caught and held her focus.

“I’m good, but you should take Tory.” Luis pushed his partner’s shoulder, knocking her forward, ignoring her glare. “She loves a good dive, don’t you?” “I hate you and everything you stand for,” said Tory. “That means yes,” said Luis, and turned to help Dr. Toth out of the boat.

I always love McGuire's humorous banter

This was where darkness went to live forever, growing deeper and more powerful as the eons passed it by.

(Which begged the question, she sometimes felt, of whether there were senses humanity, blessed as it was with light and air and a relatively pressure-free environment, had given up on as useless.

What else might people have given up, and never noticed was missing, since it was virtually impossible to define an absence?)

There were those who considered scientists heartless, or cruel, or uncompassionate, because of moments like these: anyone who could turn their back on a tragedy to chase down something seemingly inconsequential like a sonar rig was clearly somehow less than human.

Curiosity was the reason humanity had come down from the trees and spread across the world.

Sometimes science was the closest thing to the sword of an avenging angel humanity was ever going to get.

Everyone knew the risks that they were taking. They had chosen to take them anyway, risking their lives in the name of scientific progress. But that didn’t change human nature. There was always a chance someone connected to Heather would see her death as a way to make a quick buck, trying to balance a loss that could never be balanced with a bigger bank account.

Every person on this vessel was a story in the process of telling itself, and all of them were fascinating, and all of them deserved to be heard.

Mermaids were real, and they were deadly. All the scientific knowledge in the world wasn’t going to change that.

The world was bigger and stranger than people thought, and things that were big and strange could also be fatal.

“They like to stay deep, until they don’t,” said Olivia.

Her eyes were fixed, not on the water, but on the horizon, and the distant, drawn-out promise of safety.

“Everything comes back to someone. If Lani shoots a man, is that on us? Is it on our parents? How far back do we follow the consequences of free will?” “Until the guilt goes away.” “Then we’re going all the way back to the apple every single time. Do you really want that kind of responsibility?”

The sun’s going to go down, and whatever damned secret plan you’re trying not to tell me about—whatever made you bring those dolphins, and those bastards with their overly large guns—is going to start, and a lot of people are going to die. A lot of people are going to die. Maybe even us.”

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.”

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. One whose mastery of the waters outpaced our own, and left us with the choice to flee as predators, or to live as prey …

There was no point to starting a fight with the unusual, which didn’t even smell of food, when it could be avoided. Ah, but that had been long ago, before the waters changed. The fish had dwindled in number season on season, until the rich feeding grounds were all but gone, replaced by nothing to fill a belly or strengthen an arm.

There were appetites to be sated, no matter how cold the water became, no matter how strange the sea turned. As long as there were bellies, they would need to be fed. As long as there was life in the sea, there would be teeth.

Where there was one of these things, there were always others. The delicate, delicious things that died so easily never traveled alone. Their schools varied in number from few to many, but they never traveled alone. Deep beneath the waves, the hungry turned their eyes upward, toward the promise of plenty, and began to prepare.

Okay, how can we know what's happening and STILL be terrified?

Was it true the entities had attacked? Heather was dead, and her bones were never going to be recovered—was that true enough? How dead did she have to be before people stopped asking the question? Well, what had she done to provoke them? Because mermaids were beautiful mermaids were peaceful and gentle and kind, mermaids were fairy tale creatures given flesh, and who cared about the Atargatis video? Who cared about the blood already on their hands? Heather must have done something.

Because if Heather hadn’t done something, they would need to consider the fact that they were floating in the middle of open waters, sitting ducks for anything that might decide to surface and begin the slaughter.

she retreated to her cabin and closed the door, sequestering herself from a world that wanted to talk endlessly about her sister’s death without ever pausing to acknowledge that her sister, her twin, the other half of her heart, was gone.

Some things hurt too much. Some things needed to be delayed as long as possible.

This was what Imagine had been hoping for. This was the worst-case scenario described in their contracts, in the fine print that said that even in the event of injury or loss of life, the mission would be carried out to the best ability of the surviving crew.