The Deep by Nick Cutter

precious few were the size of summer fireflies. They glowed warmest amber. Their bodies brightened and dimmed like embers in a fire.
    “Phytoplankton,” Al said. “They’re bioluminescent. You’ll see more of this kind of thing the deeper we go. Until we get too deep . . . then you won’t see a damn thing.”
    The plankton flurried like flakes of snow. Just like the night Luke met Abby.
    In that moment, Luke was back in Iowa City with his ex-wife—except she wasn’t even his wife then. She was twenty-two-year-old Abigail Jeffries of Chicago, Illinois. He met her at an intra-faculty mixer for seniors at the U of I. It happened that very night. Luke fell madly in love with Abby Jeffries. All parts of her, even the parts that remained unknown to him then.
    In time he’d come to love her chipped canine tooth, her snaggletooth as she called it, which she never bothered to get capped under the belief that a face without flaws was a face lacking character. He loved her habit of squeaking after she sneezed. He loved the way her skin sparkled after sex. He loved everything about her, indiscriminately.
    That first night they left the mixer and hit a bar. When everyone got kicked out at last call, they’d staggered happily down East Jefferson hand in hand. Snow had been falling, big fat flakes swarming out of the sky like the plankton was doing right now . . .
    The glowing flakes scattered as a monolithic shape passed by the Challenger . Luke glimpsed a pitted wall of blue-gray flesh. For a heart-stopping instant, he saw an eye the size of a dinner plate, a ring of shocking white banding a black pupil.
    The Challenger rocked; the displacement of water felt roughly akin to a tractor-trailer flying past his car on the highway.
    “Sperm whale,” Al said. “It’s the only creature that big that could exist down here. I’ve never spotted one this low.”
    Al cut the motors. The descent continued.
    Luke’s back was beginning to ache.
    “Can I stand up?”
    “Go right ahead.”
    Luke managed to stretch a bit, taking the pressure off his hips.
    He watched Al work. She piloted the Challenger with easy authority—it reminded Luke of observing an experienced veterinarian perform routine surgery. There was an air of practiced boredom to the way Al’s hands moved over the controls.
    “You don’t seem too concerned about all this,” Luke said.
    “If you’re talking about the dive, I’m okay,” she said. “I brought your brother and the others down. Supplies and food and scientific doodads after that, before the drones were operational. Hell, on my last descent I brought a poster of Albert Einstein. I’m a glorified delivery girl.
    “The thing is—and I’m sorry if this doesn’t make you feel any better—at a certain depth, it doesn’t matter. Where we’re going, the pressure per square foot is the equivalent of twenty-seven jumbo jets. If we spring a pinhole leak, the water will come through with enough force to cut through three feet of solid steel. It’d slice us apart like flying Ginsu knives. This sub will crumple. It’ll happen in a fraction of a heartbeat. Imaginebeing crushed between panes of extrathick glass traveling toward impact at the speed of sound.” She thwapped her hands. “We’re talking flesh pâté. Say good night, Gracie.”
    “Comforting image, that.”
    Al exhaled, jiggling a joystick using a few deft strokes.
    “Listen, Luke—dying that way, crushed in the blink of an eye . . . there are worse ways to go down here. We’ve only lost two men so far. But we’ve lost a bunch of drones and . . .” She bit down, her teeth making an audible click . “You ever hear the term short , Doc?”
    “You mean of stature?”
    “No, there’s another meaning. It’s a military term: short-timer . It’s when you’re at the end of a long hitch, just before you hit furlough. In a combat zone, that’s the most superstitious time. When the fates are gonna take a swipe at you. People get