The Deep

They drive into a quiet seaside village. Though the shops function and people move about, the silence feels strained. Luke sees a girl with spots on her elbows, the first outward sign of the ’Gets. He knows the disease will progress until she loses her memory of language, routines, sense of self, and eventually, how to function and breathe.

The car pulls up to a wharf, and Luke gets out. He watches crabs and an eel slip between pilings. He recalls that only humans and honeybees get the ’Gets—other animals are apparently immune. He boards a Zodiac that ferries him toward a conscripted yacht whose owner died from the disease. From the water, he looks back at the hills and spots a single burned-out church, the only destroyed building in the area. The boat reaches the yacht, which will take him to the oceanic research station, Hesperus, his next step toward the Trieste.

Aboard the yacht, Luke meets Leo Bathgate, the captain. He reflexively checks Leo’s hand for symptoms before accepting the champagne that Leo found on the yacht. In a flashback, Luke recalls traveling from Iowa City to Guam, moving through airports and service stations in which normal rules frayed and then snapped under the pressure of the pandemic.

Leo asks whether Luke thinks his brother, Clayton, has an answer to the ’Gets. Luke hopes so. Leo explains that Clayton is eight miles under the water at the Trieste and not responding to any calls.

That night, Luke has a recurring nightmare of the memory of his mother entering his childhood bed. He thinks about her past: Bethany Ronnicks, a domineering orderly at Second Chance Ranch whom staff called Battle-ax Beth. He recalls a former resident, Kurt Honey, telling him how Bethany psychologically tortured another youth until he broke. Luke then remembers how another patient assaulted Bethany, leaving her with a disability. Afterward, she stopped working, and her cruelty toward Luke and Clayton intensified. Luke lies awake, sensing her shadow reaching into the present.

Luke wakes again and drifts to memories of sharing a small room with his brother, Clayton, as boys, steadying him through night terrors.

He goes on deck to find some drinking water and sees Leo, who is also awake. In the galley, they share snacks and whiskey. They discuss their different paths: Luke tells Leo how he worked his way through veterinary school, while Clayton, a prodigy, received scholarships.

Leo opens up about his wife, Mona, and how the ’Gets took her, piece by piece. The marine radio crackles with a call from Hesperus: Something has surfaced from the Trieste. The voice urges them to come quickly. Leo throws the yacht’s engines to full power, and they race toward the station.

At dawn, they see the Hesperus on the horizon, a floating research city anchored over the Pacific Ocean’s Mariana Trench. Leo docks the yacht. Luke says goodbye to Leo and climbs into a golf cart driven by a soldier. They stop at a black-sided building where Dr. Conrad Felz greets Luke, noting his resemblance to Clayton. He ushers Luke inside the complex that manages access to the Trieste.

Felz leads Luke into a surveillance room, where monitors show failing or frozen feeds from the Trieste. He describes Clayton as a difficult genius and explains that the Trieste houses Clayton, Dr. Hugo Toy, and animal test subjects. Communication and video cut out hours ago.

Luke’s thoughts jump to Clayton’s teenage experiments, in which he created a mouse with a nose grafted onto its back and another twisted with deformities. Luke would euthanize Clayton’s experiments himself.

In the present, Felz says Clayton and Dr. Toy found something that defies explanation.

Felz takes Luke to a compact laboratory. He unlocks a refrigerated black box, saying the object inside remains where it wants to be. He lifts out a sealed petri dish and places it on a steel bench. As condensation clears from the lid, Luke watches, anticipating what could be an answer or a new complication.

Inside the dish, Luke sees a gelatinous, sparkling blob Felz calls ambrosia. Felz explains that it does not fit any known classification and assimilates other materials. Luke notices it eating into the plastic dish. Its inner lights pull his attention until Felz warns him back.

Felz recounts how Dr. Eva Parks, a researcher, discovered ambrosia on a lantern fish that lived far beyond its natural span. Survey data later showed that the material concentrates in Challenger Deep.

Felz shows a video of a mouse riddled with incurable cancers. A speck of ambrosia touches its fur and moves inside without a wound. The cancers disappear. Luke asks if ambrosia heals or takes control. Felz answers with Clayton’s theory of locks and keys—every problem has a lock, and one must find the fitting key. Luke asks about Dr. Parks. Felz says she died by suicide after the discovery.

A door bangs open, and a woman strides in.

Lieutenant Commander Alice “Al” Sykes introduces herself as the person who will take Luke down to the Trieste. She drives Luke and Felz to the submarine dock and points out Challenger 5, the sub she will pilot for Luke’s descent.

She mentions that the third Trieste scientist, Dr. Cooper Westlake, surfaced hours earlier in another sub. They stop at the station morgue, where Alice gives Luke the choice to view Westlake’s remains. Luke chooses to see him.

In the morgue, Alice explains what happened. Westlake holed up in his lab, where the camera broke. A massive current ring near the trench blocked those on the surface from descending. While Clayton reported that everything was fine, Challenger 4 began ascending on its own. At the same moment, every link to the Trieste went dark.

Alice says Westlake did something to himself during the ascent. She opens the vault.

Luke sees Dr. Cooper Westlake’s body, swollen and layered with overlapping scar tissue. The bends shattered his limbs when he ascended to the surface too quickly, and someone—or he himself—had carved his face into a wide smile. Alice reports that they found a dull scalpel in the sub but no ambrosia. Luke suggests Westlake might have mutilated himself while ambrosia instantly sealed each wound, leaving his body scarred.

Alice explains that Clayton requested Luke by name. She plays a distorted audio clip of Clayton asking him to come home because they need him.

They reach the quarantined Challenger 4. Alice opens the hatch, and a foul stench rolls out. Inside, Luke finds words smeared in blood on the wall: “THE AG MEY ARE HERE,” and beneath it, “COME HOME WE NEED YOU COME HOME,” echoing Clayton’s call (61). The sight clarifies Luke’s role in what waits below, but neither of them understands the reference to the “AG MEY.”