Chapter 4

chapter 4

ELLE

"Dr. Kepzler?"

The intercom inside the small compression chamber I was in crackled before it came online.

"Yeah?" I sounded like a cartoon character. They'd been slowly siphoning off the nitrogen in the normal atmosphere I was used to and replacing it with helium, because at pressure helium was safer to breathe, it wouldn't give you the bends like nitrogen would.

And it wasn't worth trying to figure out which of the many cameras overhead my minders were watching me from—I couldn't even pee without a camera during the blowdown phase, in case becoming compressed somehow incapacitated me on the toilet.

"You've got a call coming in." I recognized Captain Darius's voice. "Do you want to take it?"

He, of course, already knew who was on the other end of the line—whereas I only had a sinking feeling that I did. I rubbed my sweaty palms against the hospital scrub-like clothing I had on to dry them off, not liking the familiar flimsy feel of the cotton.

I was halfway to being pressurized enough to be transferred to the Aquatic Life Research Installation, or ALRI for short, which was an incredibly innocuous-sounding acronym for a mysterious and dangerously deep ocean institute founded by billionaire Arcus Marlow, far past where any international treaties could officially reach. I had no idea how he'd gotten the krakens' permission to build it—I guessed somehow money talked, even underwater.

And I knew that Mr. Marlow had had enough money to do a thorough background check on me. It wouldn't have taken long for him to find all the reasons he shouldn't have hired me on the internet, in either obituaries or medical records; the only point in my favor for this job was a brief stint when I'd gotten into free diving for a year, because I'd been working on a dig by the Blue Hole in Egypt. It was strange skill to have, diving into the water without gear, to see how far down you could go.

Little did I know though how much it'd prepare me for my current life.

I felt like I'd been holding my breath for months.

"Doctor Kepzler?" the captain asked again.

I exhaled, in a rush, knowing what was coming. "Yeah, I'll take it," I said, and heard a familiar voice come on the line.

"Hey, Elle." It was my husband, Grant.

"Hey, baby," I said back, out of longstanding habit, and bit my tongue too late. "What's up?" I asked, trying to sound cheerful. I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt.

I didn't want it to go down like this.

He groaned on the far side of the line. "I forgot that you were going to sound like Donald Duck."

I snorted. "Me too." Then there was a long pause, during which I only grew more certain of how this conversation was going to go. "This call's probably costing someone a thousand bucks a minute, so hopefully it's collect."

He gave a sad laugh, and then began. "I just can't do this anymore, Elle. It's not you, it's me."

A bitter taste zapped across my tongue, and I became deathly still. I'd known the knot of our relationship had been unraveling these past few months, but I'd wanted to live in denial, and so I had, hoping that we'd find a new normal together.

Only we hadn't?—

"And it's not about the double, either."

I rolled my eyes to the low looming ceiling of the pressurized cargo container I was in and sighed.

"It's not, Elle. I'm better than that. You know it's true."

"I don't know—seems like you love me less now that there's not breasts involved." I was sarcastic on purpose, because I wanted to hurt him like he was hurting me.

Hadn't I been hurt enough already? I'd found out the hard way that I had the brCA gene which genetically predisposed me to breast cancer like whoa when my sister Lena died, almost overnight. She and I each had half of a heart tattooed on the inside of our left wrists, so they'd match up with each other if we held them together just right—and right now it felt like the other half of my heart was missing.

I'd gotten a double mastectomy the day after her funeral, and here Grant was, breaking up with me.

He was the last person I had left alive that loved me, and he'd only lasted six months solo.

"It's not that at all!" he protested. "It's the future."

As in, we didn't have any.

I'd finally gotten enough of a name in my field that I felt safe taking time off from work, and Grant and I had had a giddy month of trying to get pregnant. It didn't happen, but we were undeterred, until I'd gotten the news about Lena. Caring for her took sex off the table entirely, and then when I tested my own genes and found out that I was also at risk, and any of my offspring would be too—I went from dreaming of motherhood to being horrified by the timebomb I'd become, while watching Lena fade away.

"I don't mean to be cruel," he said, going on. "It's just that—you know how my family is."

I nodded, but only the crew members watching in the ship above could see me. Grant's mother dropped hints for us to have kids like old men at the park dropped crumbs for pigeons.

"There's always adoption," I said—like I'd told him a hundred times before. But I already knew what he'd say before he said it.

"Not for me."

I didn't understand that in the least. Kids were kids. How could you not love them? Why did they have to be yours?

"Because you're so special?" I scoffed. If this was the end, I was bringing out the knives. "Because you can't love someone who doesn't look like you?"

"Elle—"

"Or because you know you can still go on and have a family without me?" I said, my voice rising higher even than the helium. "Because you don't love me enough to stay."

I heard the words echo in the chamber I was trapped in, and imagined them reverberating up the line and into his ear—and him standing there, listening to me drowning, from the safety of his shore.

"I do love you, Elle," he said softly. "I'm just not in love with you anymore."

I'd had to fly halfway across the world for this job, and then live in an isolation tent by myself for a week to make sure I wouldn't be bringing any active infections down to any of the other crew members at the bottom of the sea. "And you couldn't have told me that before I left our apartment?"

"I didn't have the guts, okay? Is that what you want to hear? Fine. I'm not as strong as you—I think we both know that. Is this the easy way out? Yes. The thing is, I don't care anymore, Elle. And you deserve someone who does."

A weight heavier than all the atmospheres of pressure being placed on the outside of this submersible's shell landed on my shoulders.

"I've gotta go, Elle. I'll have papers waiting for you when you come up," Grant said, then waited for me to respond. When I didn't he continued. "I'll be fair—I'll?—"

"Fair?" I screeched. I'd just lost everyone I'd ever loved, and was still grieving the loss of my future, then I caught myself. Technically, I was at work and in front of an audience—and what's done was done. "Goodbye, Grant," I said with force, and then mimed hanging up a phone to one of the cameras. I heard the connection sever. "And fuck you," I said more quietly, before throwing myself into my bunk to read my tactimetal suit's manual one more time.