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Which brings us, I believe, right back to where we started.

* * *

“Book,” the Doctor whispers, now—so soft I can barely hear him, over my own constant internal whisper.

“Doctor,” I reply. The word not meaning quite what it used to: Two empty syllables, ringing hollow in my skull. Language no longer seeming necessary, even as a nervous tic.

He clears his throat, or tries to, blood rattling in his lungs. Spits, or tries to. And shapes the words, with a last feeble breath:

“ . . . I’m . . . a—fraid.”

I shift

my gaze back to him, slowly. Take a moment to remember his title, his significance. Then nod. And think:

But not as much as me.

Thankfully.

* * *

Here on the Subeja Trench’s second shelf, already too far down to hope for rescue—anytime soon, at least—we drift past holes belching black lava, coral mountains crusted five arms deep with vivid, fleshy anemones. Everything watches us go by, large or small. They give us sidelong glances, and bare their teeth. And we keep on slipping down, fathom by fathom, until the foliage thins and the light falls away. Until there’s nothing to note our descent but a congregation of boneless, blazing things which regard us with a total lack of curiosity.

While I note the Doctor’s broken corpse, sprawled and sloughed on the floor beside me. Feeling similarly little.

Wondering: Did I really strike a bargain, just then? Or do I only THINK I did?

But if I can still think coherently enough to even consider the question, I guess, it probably just doesn’t matter all that much.

The sub buckles, twisting in on itself deck by deck. But I hold fast, footloose and evidence-free, to the improbable notion that I have been promised exemption—that even when the water seeps in under the Waiting Room door, this thing’s infernal patronage will render me impermeable, slicked with infection. No swelling, no softening, no gentle nibbles from passing teeth; just a long sleep, a long, long dream. One long nightmare, a phobophobic haze, during which I can jim in my own stew—

(you fucker, you promised)

—stew—swim in my own . . . juices. Awhile.

. . . a while, a minute, a century . . .

And when they (the CIA, the Doctor’s bunch, a salvage crew, whoever) finally find us, and pry open this busted can, how very sweet I’ll be. Well-marinaded, and ready to serve: To be my prehistoric savior’s chosen liaison, its translator. Its face prepared to meet the faces it will eat.

Or maybe we’ll just stay down here, forever, unfound and unmourned, until entropy eats us both.

I raise my hand, look at my fingers. See my vision narrow. My pressure-drunk brain, squeezing itself flat. Glitches, sparking and fading: Images fizzling. Kiley’s shadow-animals. Nanny’s hands.

The two moons of Mars, on that childhood chart. Deimos and—

(Phobo)

—Phobos. Meaning panic—

(phobia)

—and fear.

Fear, my motive, my spur. My dark and guiding star.

All my life, I think, my fear has driven me to take the easiest way. And where does the easiest way lead, usually?

Well, that would probably be—down.