Minnow leaves the moon pool like a thought you cannot take back. You are on your belly in the little acrylic bubble, Reed’s knee against the trim panel, lamps waking a tunnel of flakes.

The tunnel is beautiful. Beauty is a liar at nine hundred meters. Ten meters out, the gold coin of light is already a coin. Twenty meters, it is a suggestion. The vent field, when it begins, is a cathedral of dark with a few dirty candles.

Reed: “Puck is live. That’s a baby sonar on the nose. Gauges are live. Your inner ear wants to drive by the candles. Don’t.”

A chimney appears like a building that grew overnight. Shimmer sits on it, a heat-haze that does not belong in a freezer. Your lamps hit the shimmer and come back as glitter, as if someone poured glitter into night.

Vargas in one ear: “If you lose the puck, you are a myth. Myths wedge.”

You taste metal. The sled’s hands—the manipulators—are folded like a person trying not to grab. You can still fly by numbers. You can still fly by glow.