"So how do we get down there?"

  Constitution took off her helmet. She put one hand on my shoulder, with a look on her face that was at once pitying and about to break bad news.

  "How long can you hold your breath??" she asked.

  "Oh, no. No way."

  "I know, I know, ya know." She squeezed my shoulder. Her face was unbloodied and unmarred, save for the old scar across one eye. "I'm afraid I'd be lying if I said it would be easy."

  "I'm not drowning in the dark in a sinking ship. We have to get out of here."

  She nodded, eyes squeezed tight. "Totally agree, hon. But we leave with him. And if he's down there, that means we leave with the cargo."

  I pressed my fingers into my cheeks and massaged my face. "This is insane. It's completely dark down there. Have you even seen a layout of the ship?"

  Constitution grinned. "Well ya know, that's why I brought my magic lantern with me." She made a big show of checking her pockets, like she was performing for a child. Big storytime gesticulations and expressions. "Oh, ya know what? I seem to have left mine at home. Silly me!" And here it came, act three of her drawn-out prodding. "You wouldn't happen to-"

  "Okay, I get it," I interrupted. "I don't know if it will work underwater. Especially if I'm holding my breath."

  Her lips flattened. "Well, the holding your breath part is really important. Otherwise you'll drown."

  "You know what I mean. It takes concentration." I thought back to what Chris had said. He'd pointed my brain... well, not in the right direction, but away from the wrong direction. It was really more about not thinking about it that seemed to keep the lantern present. And that was worse, because there was nothing in the world to help you focus on something like trying not to think about it. "Just give me a second."

  She withdrew her arm, and I found a good place to stand. The water rose and fell from my belly to my chest. I'd have to name everything again, make my list. Not controlling my perception, but leading it.

  I held my hand forward, fingers out. Black water, frightening waves that threatened to swallow me, below which were surely Pangs zeroing in on unprotected bodies....

  "Ugh," I said. The shouts of the refugees behind us, pointing and calling to one another and helping people into boats made my heartrate spike. "There's too much going on." I glanced back.

  "There always will be, ya know," said Constitution. She tied her helmet to a loop at her hip.

  "I guess." I inhaled, held it, envisioned imbuing it with all the screams and stress--and fear--and let it out. But the reality refused to be anything other than real. We were in danger, and the megaphone creak-croaking of the hull was more urgent than any ticking clock.

  She opened her mouth to say something, but I held up a just-one-second finger. I breathed. I didn't have the luxury of calm, so I let the truth of the situation be true. I let my heart race, opened my ears to the screams, and let my imagination run wild. I catastrophized, allowing imaginary Pangs whipping through unseen currents shred my flesh below the surface, crush my bones, maul my body. That fear paired, I thought, very nicely with the continued factuality of it not actually happening.

  It was a start. There were survivors, birds, waves, debris, splashes of water....

  Golden light bloomed in my hand, and I closed my fingers over the incorporeal ring. It had a weight to it, but not exactly a real one, always swinging a little too early or too late to obey physics entirely, like it didn't know how.

  "There ya go, hon," said Constitution.

  The cloud of golden threads expanded, resting on unidentifiable pieces of wood and scraps of cloth. Most of the golden panels just said "debris" before blinking out.

  I lowered the lantern, dipping a corner into the surface of the water, half expecting it to burst into steam or sizzle at the touch.

  It didn't. Its golden light pushed back against the inky opacity of the water, reaching outward, slowly and unevenly expanding. I submerged it completely, and an entire tableau opened below us, a corridor of green-gray walls slowly giving way to wavering black. Gray scales of schools of curious fish glinted, scattering and fleeing. It even cast golden, wavering threads on the ceiling above us.

  "What are you thinking about right now?" asked Constitution.

  "There's this movie... you know what? Nevermind. Let's just do this."

  "Fill your lungs, hon. That way when you're out of breath, you can start releasing it and buy yourself some more time."

  I didn't think that was how it works, but I took a breath. Before I was ready, she dove under and dragged me with her, gauntlet firm around my arm.

  We sank like an anchor. In fact, we actually passed an anchor, a great sickle shape with a rippling film of fish nibbling at its undulating ropes. My first instinct was to fight it, and instead of fighting my instinct to fight it, I let myself thrash and jerk. Involuntarily, I did everything in my limited power to pull out of her grip, but gauntlet held firm. We were enveloped into a long, high-ceilinged gallery, too far for the lantern's glow to penetrate the entirety of. When my lungs began to burn, I summoned all my stoic-ness and acknowledged that my lungs were burning.

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  Then they caught fire. I was going to drown.

  I placed my feet against her and tried to kick free. She pulled me close, and blew bubbles in my face, a reminder. I let some out, evenly. It wasn't exactly regulating my breathing, but it did buy me a couple of seconds.

  She pointed up toward a dancing rhombus of lighter coloration abuve us. I nodded, and she pointed me toward it and let go. I rose too fast, not fast enough, glacially slow, like a jagged stone released from the depths....

  Light bloomed--my light--in the most claustrophobic place I had ever been. Whatever it was, it was mostly flooded, a small pocket of air trapped under the corpse of the ship. I gulped the wet air, hitting my head on the ceiling.

  Catching my breath, I examined the space above the water. I had no way to tell where I was, like trying to map a forest by looking at one of its leaves up close.

  "Constitution?" I sputtered. There was no immediate answer. Then something disturbed the water, a cluster of bubbles coming up. Nothing followed. "Connie?"

  Thankful to the indifferent teens at the community aquatic center who had taught middle-school me to how to open my eyes underwater, I took a breath and pushed my face under the surface. The passage below was obscured by rising bubbles. Then a dark shape was moving, but it was too sleek and fast, moving too naturally, to be her. It swam like a frog, and a panel appeared, banishing after it darted past.

  Another shape followed it like a warty torpedo.

  And another.

  My guess was that Connie had spotted the air pocket and dropped me off, trying to distract them from me. She'd taken a lot today and walked away from it. Could she take on three more Pangs, by herslef, underwater, with no air?

  Well, I knew she would try.

  I had to help her. How was I going to find her underwater? I plunged in, saw a fourth Pang who miraculously did not turn toward my light, and came back up, breathing too hard.

  I tried again. I had no plan. Some Wisdom I was, chasing certain death through certain death before time ran out and certain death sunk down on top of me. It would be safer to stay here in this pocket of air and wait for backup to arrive.

  But I was the backup. And who knew how long this pocket of air had left? A minor tilt of the hull, and it would blorp out the side or find some crevice to disappear up through, leaving me out of luck.

  I made my list, starting with the dangers. It was a little too long. Then I named everything I could feel. My light blazed, burning even in the cold water. Everything seemed so ridiculous, so far off. It only stood to reason that this was happening to someone else, right? And after all, this wasn't my body, was it? It certainly wasn't my tattooed hands, my scarred eye, my wiry frame. I was out there, two out-there's away, rolling dice, hopefully.

  So I watched. I watched as the light bloomed and showed me the way. I lost sight of the Pangs, but felt a strong pull in the direction I was certain they had gone. There were dissipating bunches of bubbles rising above, but I couldn't trace them back to their origin. They were from long seconds ago, lost.

  Was it my mind coloring in the feeling with something understandable, or was that a thin golden thread leading me over the giant axle and into a side compartment? My lungs burned hotter, but a little less hot when I followed it. I puckered my lips and slowly blew out bubbles that tickled my face as they traced past.

  Under a tight, featureless, nautical hatch, and down a short hallway that seemed to grow another meter with every kick. Above me, a thin light like the air pocket's, a surface of water. I sped toward it.

  Something darkened it, a tangle of long, angular limbs and flailing hands.

  --began the little golden panel. But a rubbery body burst through it, covering me even as I began to breach.

  The pang kicked and scrabbled, weighing me back down just as I attempted to take a breath. I swallowed cold water. My light went out. In the darkness, I sank, lungs spasming involuntarily and trying to eject water and take in air that wasn't there.I threw my hands over my mouth and kicked feet in a direction, any direction.

  There was a hideous squealing, but air. It was too moist, but I wheezed inwardly, raggedly and greedily stealing a swallow of it, then half-vomited water onto dark armor that shimmered with short, wicked spikes.

  "Oh," said Constitution. "Okay, yeah, get it all out."

  "Sorry," I said, only I didn't, because what I really said was "Bbrleullerurghlergugha."

  She twisted and set me down gently, and stumbled forward with a Pang clawing at her back. She snapped her helmet off the loop and bludgeoned the thing in the mouth. Teeth and ooze rained, and its jaw sheared off the end of its own wriggling tongue, driving it into a frenzy.

  "Connie!" I shouted. "Behind you!" Not fast enough. The third Pang, which must have been the level 5, struck with oversized claws at the small of her back. Plates clanked against one another, but Constitution arched her back and grunted. She tried to put her helmet on, but it slapped it out of her hand with the kind of lightning-fast strike you only see in nature.

  The first Pang--really, the second, as the first one which had jumped on me as I surfaced was, embarrassingly, a corpse--danced wildly and snapped in and out of conscious focus, claws whistling through the air at enemies seen and unseen. It had lost control through the relentless pain of being de-tongued.

  It saw me.

  It was on me before there was time to think. No lantern, no staff, no protection from Constitution, making a noise like a mockery of a shriek with its mangled tongue.

  Teeth and blood and eyes wild with mad pain and more teeth and--it disappeared. One second the Pang was the picture of animal rage, the next it was across the room, flattened against the wall like a bug on a windshield.

  A broad-chested god stepped calmly from the shadows, hides dripping wet. "You are here," observed Strength. Was that surprise? He held the cudgel and thorn-mace loosely, both matted with dark gore.