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

by Mira Grant

Part of her didn’t want this trip to ever end, because strange and horrific as it was, it wasn’t real. Once they got back to land, things would be real again, and she would have to start figuring out how she was going to live in a world without Heather. She wasn’t sure she could.

(The thought that something could have happened to Hallie didn’t cross her mind. Hallie was the big sister, the mountain that protected them from the ravages of the world. If Hallie had been in that submersible with Heather, Heather would have survived. If Hallie were here, she’d know exactly what to do. Hallie could be bossy and annoying and I-know-best in the way of big sisters and hearing people combined, but she was also a superhero, and superheroes always knew what to do.)

“They went deeper. That’s what predators do, when they’re taking a reef. That’s what the mermaids are doing here.”

“Go deep, get the young and the weak, the ones that wouldn’t be on the outside of the reef. It means the quickest kills come first, and then they can move outward.”

The captain had said not to panic, Imagine had everything in hand, but Imagine didn’t have everything in hand. People had died. People had died before this—Heather and Ray and who knew how many others—but now it had passed some unspeakable threshold, becoming the sort of thing that should drive them back to shore, ceding the ocean to the sirens. They’d have to. They had enough, didn’t they? No one could say mermaids weren’t real after this. No one could say they were making things up. Imagine would be vindicated. Anne would be avenged. Everything would be all right.

They were hearing what the sirens really sounded like, or at least what they sounded like while they were on fire.

There were four guards outside the door and two more inside, and Dr. Toth wasn’t sure anything would have been enough to make these people feel safe. Maybe not ever again. If they made it back to shore alive, all of these witnesses to Michi’s death were going to have nightmares for the rest of their days.

Let these people feel what it was to truly sail to the ends of the earth. No one who went this far from shore came back unscathed. No one ever could.

They come wave after wave, and each one is larger than the one before. We’re in the lull between right now. There may be a few stragglers on the ship, but for the most part, they’re taking their catch to the bottom of the sea.”

Keep the doors closed. Keep the lights on. And pray. At this point that’s the best you can do.”

It was always better if she could leave without a big argument, and sometimes saying the unthinkable would shut people down long enough for her to do that.

“We forgot about you, but you never forgot about us,” she said. “I suppose that gives you the advantage.”

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.

For all her bravado in the medical bay, there was a difference between offering a theory ...

Thinking never changed the world. Research did, yes, and study, but that was action. Science was philosophy plus movement. Thought alone couldn’t make the grade.

‘None of these people sign. They’re assholes.’ ‘Assholes who are keeping you alive,’ signed Jillian.

Or maybe because the fucking shutters have never actually worked worth a damn.

I'll take option three for $500

It was a choice born of pure, ruthless practicality: Jillian spoke enough sign to let Holly make herself understood. Tory and the others were nice, but they couldn’t understand her. Going with the person who knew her language was the only real choice she could make.

“What are you planning to do with that?” he asked. “I am neither a marshmallow to roast nor a seam to solder. You might be better off with a brick, assuming you can find one. Blunt trauma is traditional for a reason.”

People are dying, as you so charmingly say, and I can’t see where closing the doors and giving ourselves a shooting gallery could possibly make that any worse. Who knows? It might make a few things better. I think we’re well overdue for something that gets better.”

“Even predators who aren’t this smart know how to double back for double the prey,” said Tory. “Orcas, leopard seals, they all exhibit that behavior. You don’t have to be a genius to know that something that runs will eventually come back.”

“Cannabis is a highly effective painkiller, and I don’t think you’re in a position to be picky,” said Jillian. Luis stopped in the process of moving toward the desk, turning to stare at her in disbelief. “Are you telling me to get him high?” he asked.

“It would have been nice if the rest of us could have gotten a passenger list,” said Luis. He handed the cellophane baggie of chocolate drops to Theo, who took it without comment. “It would be nice if I had a pony, and yet here we are,” said Jillian.

Does this hurt?” She jabbed a finger into the deepest of the wounds, midway down his ankle. Luis yelped, trying to yank his foot away, only to be stopped as she closed her hand around it. “I asked a question,” she said. “Holy fuck, yes, it hurt!” he shouted. “Is that what you wanted to hear?”

Even as the screams had been starting elsewhere on the ship, people had still been walking to the water, sitting down, and trying to let the fish swimming there soothe them.

Sirens lounged in the pool, chewing idly on their kills, prodding at the walls in their quest for a way out. Others explored the room, moving more slowly than their cousins on the upper decks. They had the luxury of curiosity, of time, and they were going to enjoy it.

They were more concerned with people not being able to get into places they shouldn’t go than getting out of them if they were already there.”

“Safety and accessibility were handled by different teams. That’s not unusual. A project this size, you’re always going to have contradictions, because no one has the time to ask whether every little thing made sense.”

“I’m smaller than you are. I have the narrowest shoulders. I work out every day. If you’re going to dress like Emma Frost on national webcasts, you need to have the body for it. I know how to free-climb. I can make it up the shaft, and besides, I’m the nonscientist. If someone is going to find a better solution, it’s not going to be me. This is the thing I can do.”

“If I don’t come back, you’ll keep going. That’s what you’ll do. I haven’t been here long enough for you to do anything else. Eventually, maybe, I’ll have been here long enough. If I come back, we can try for that.

FINALLY. A ROMANCE THAT'S TALKING SENSE.

We’re fighting a battle on multiple fronts, Miss Stewart, and while it would be nice to pretend it was fair, it simply isn’t.”

It was an imperfect solution. It was probably going to get one or both of them killed. There wasn’t anything better.

“God save me from the children,” muttered Jillian.

“We’re done fighting. We’re only doing it because some of you have managed to latch on to the delusional idea that we’re safe in here just because this room has a door and a lock. We’re not safe. We’re not going to be safe until we finish getting the damn shutters deployed.” Even then, they wouldn’t be safe, not until they were miles from here, with their feet back on solid ground. That part didn’t need to be said. That part was obvious to all of them.

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

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.

With the siren she was reduced to a tactic that had worked for humans since the dawn of recorded time: she turned, and she ran.

The truth is out there. And when we find it, I’m pretty sure we’re going to want it to stay out there, while the rest of us go home to our beds.

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

Belief has shaped the history of human accomplishment—we believe we can, and so we do—but belief has never changed the natural world.

Intelligence, and its attendant blind spots, might be the thing that would save her.

They hadn’t been intended to stop sound from coming in from outside. Screams came through from time to time, muffled by the walls, but still distinct enough to be undeniable. Olivia bit her lip harder, trying not to think about what was happening out there—and more, trying not to focus on the increasingly pressing thought that maybe Ray had been lucky. He’d died quick and early, without knowing how bad things were going to get for the rest of them. Things were getting so bad.

“Do you want me to call for Jacques?” “Yes,” he said. “No. Maybe … Wait. Do you think we should call for him?” “No, sir,” said the guard. “I think we should find a way to triple lock the doors, and maybe set a few land mines to make sure he doesn’t get in. He’s going to lose it. I can’t say I blame him. I’d lose it, if that were my wife. But he’s going to lose it bad, and then we’re all going to be in trouble.”

“Define trouble.” “That’s the problem: I can’t. He’s got no impulse control under the best of circumstances. Michi was the one who told him not to do things he shouldn’t do, and he listened to her, because dealing with the rest of us was easier than having her mad at him. You take her out of the equation, and I genuinely have no idea what he’ll do.”

But this was Jacques Abney. He’d been hired because he would not hesitate to pull the trigger if he saw something worth shooting, and there was a good chance he was going to see them as worth shooting once he accepted the situation.

“Men are weak,” said Jacques dismissively. “Nothing which wants to survive should keep its genitals on the outside of its body.

The sound of gunfire began only a few seconds later, calm and methodical, one shot at a time. “I think we should stay here,” said Dr. Odom. The guard on the floor groaned.

They were smart, they were intelligent, and intelligent things knew how to hold a grudge—knew how to get angry, and stay angry, and take revenge.

The code was twenty characters long: not the best choice for something that was supposed to be the answer to any major danger.