Adrift

by W. Michael Gear

  Kevina shuddered as Breez’s small hands pulled Michaela’s trachea out, stretching the skin on the woman’s neck. Michaela’s eyes bugged, her mouth open, lungs sucking as Breez crushed her windpipe. No matter how Michaela bucked, she couldn’t dislodge the clinging and squealing Breeze.

  An eerie howl came from behind. Kevina whirled, seeing Felicity. Or what might have been Felicity. This time it was instinctive. Moments before the girl—her hands clawing before her—could connect, Kevina triggered the gun. At the large-caliber bullet’s impact, Felicity’s body spasmed, dropped nerveless. Arms, head, and legs bounced flaccidly on the unforgiving floor.

  “Sheena!” The boy’s scream from behind caused Kevina to whip around. Blink.

  Her first thought? Her son had been in green paint, maybe dabbed some white on his under arms. He was naked as he charged from down the hall, slid to a stop, and leaned over Sheena. He took the girl’s hand. Clutched it to his chest. Tears welled in his large, dark eyes.

  “Baby?” she asked, heart melting. “Sweet one?”

  Felix looked up, his face working. “Gonna kill you now.”

  Kevina vaguely noticed the hatchet in his other hand, “Felix it’s me! I love you! You’re my baby! Please, sweet . . . let me help you.”

  Vik’s rifle thundered from the lab door down the hall, and Kevina barely registered the bullet’s popping impact as Breez jerked and flopped onto Michaela’s motionless body.

  Kevina tried to lift the rifle, memories of her son’s face swimming before her eyes. This was her boy, the only being she’d ever loved with all her . . .

  He leapt, the hatchet raised as an inhuman howl burst from his lips.

  Kevina froze, eyes on the raised blade, at the dried blood on its sharp bit.

  The words, “No, baby!” shrilled as the hatchet swung in an impossible arc.

  Even as it split her skull, she didn’t believe it.

  90

  When Felix held Sheena’s hands, they were cold. Didn’t matter how warm and slick and wet his palms were, nothing came in return. He heard and felt that distant and hidden part of him, knew it was shrieking, kicking, wailing out its misery and the injustice of it all.

  It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. He wanted to cry. Couldn’t. The Voice told him not to. That it was all right. In the end, it didn’t matter. Only the little children mattered. And they were down deep.

  Safe.

  Growing with the One.

  Becoming.

  Felix squatted on the floor, heedless of the blood, the bits of brain that leaked out of Sheena’s broken head. He wished her one eyeball wasn’t staring at him, all empty, where it lay flopped loose in the wreckage of her skull.

  Down the hall, past Mother’s slashed and hacked corpse, Felicity lay on her stomach, a gaping hole in her back. At the broken door to level one, Breez was bleeding. She lay slumped over Michaela’s crumpled corpse, a string of intestines blown out of her side by the bullet. Michaela’s throat looked weird where the windpipe had been torn out.

  Even as Felix watched, a thick tendril of algae that had emerged from behind the shattered door wrapped itself around Michaela’s body, was pulling it and the bleeding Breez toward the stairs. Not a second later, Michaela’s head and shoulders dropped over the top stair with a thump. Breez, limp and dead, toppled loosely off of her and slipped part way down the stairs.

  That left one.

  Vik had locked herself in the lab. None of the other big kids were left, except maybe Tomaya. Felix wasn’t sure where she was. He could have walked over, stuck his hand into the algae, listened to the Song, and maybe it would have told him. The algae knew everything.

  Instead, he fought tears, picked up his bloody ax, and let go of Sheena’s hand; the Voice assured him that no matter what, she wasn’t coming back. He could hear the change in the Song, melodious in victory, saddened in loss. So many things communicated at once. Things Felix couldn’t quite understand yet. But that he would when he and the Voice finally became one.

  He didn’t look down as he passed Mother’s corpse. He had the memory of how his ax had felt when he split her head open. How the disbelief had filled her gray eyes, and how the blood had contrasted with her golden-blond hair. Her last words kept repeating, gone almost silent now, drifting off to some distant place in his memory. Didn’t matter that down inside he hurt. He didn’t have to. Could just tell it to go away, and it would. Hurting was just a curiosity, and a strange one at that. How peculiar that anyone should have to feel that way.

  Not like Sheena. That hurt lay closer.

  At the lab door, he reached up. Turned the latch. Locked.

  Raising the ax, he took a swing. Then another. He had learned with Iso’s room. This was a bigger, stronger door. Might take him a while.

  “Go back!” Vik called from inside. “You break that open, I’ll shoot! Just like I shot Breez.”

  “Got to,” Felix told her. “You’re the last.”

  “Why are you doing this?” Vik’s voice sounded shrill.

  “Now the Pod is falling down, falling down, falling down.

  “Once Vik’s dead we’ll go around, go around.

  “My fair lady.”

  “Felix? Don’t you get it? The Pod’s compromised. The slime is eating away at the pilings. It’s going to collapse, and we’re all going to drown.”

  “Not me. I can breathe water. So can the little kids. That’s where they are now. Living with the One. Underwater. The One has the Pod now. It will be safe once it’s all inside and nothing can eat it. It’s been waiting for a long time for a way to live all together. We’ll be adrift. And protected by the Pod. Nothing can get us, understand?”

  “Felix? Please. Let me help you. Maybe I can reverse this, make you well again.”

  “I am well. I don’t ever have to hurt again.” But he would miss the electric bliss he’d felt with Sheena and Felicity, that pricking delightful tingle that had run clear through his body. Maybe, when Tomaya came back, he could feel that again with her.

  From down the hall, he could hear the Song rising and falling as the algae rejoiced over Michaela’s body.

  He whacked the door one more time, seeing a long sliver of duraplast peel off.

  That’s when the roar started. He heard it from a long way off. Barely audible to begin with, then louder. And louder. Until the entire Pod was shaking so loudly it overwhelmed the Song.

  “Thank God!” Vik cried from behind the door.

  “Someone coming,” Felix told himself. Frowned. The last time it had been the Supervisor. This had to be her and the shuttle again. Then the shaking and sound died down to stillness. Had to be the landing pad.

  More grownups to deal with. He sighed.

  91

  “Got it!” Dek called as he banked the airplane. “About six degrees north of east and ten kilometers out.”

  From her seat in the cabin, Kalico stared down at the designs made by endless lines of swells. In Capella’s slanting light, the surface of the sea had a platinum look, intricately textured by wind and wave. She had always loved flying over water, watching as the composition of larger patterns of swells broke into smaller and smaller patterns until the whitecaps could finally be discerned. Layer upon layer of complexity. That’s what made oceans magical.

  Kalico could discern the long curve of the reef, marked by the way it refracted waves, and finally she picked out the change in color, the deep royal blue edging into lighter tans, yellows, and blue-green mats of submerged vegetation.

  And there, that little dot of white, that was the Pod.

  “How are we doing on charge?” Kalico called to where Dek and Talina sat in the cockpit.

  “Down to forty percent,” Dek told her. “With the prevailing tailwind, we could just make the beach if we had to.”

  “Let’s hope we don’t have to,
” Talina muttered under her breath.

  “Oh, ye of little faith,” Dek told her, that wry Taglioni smile bending his lips.

  “Yeah, we’ll, I guess we’ll see,” Kalico told them. “It’s the flipping Maritime Unit. Just a bunch of scientists, right? How much trouble can they be? And trust me, Michaela Hailwood won’t buck an order. Not from me. In fact, I wonder if I shouldn’t have replaced her the last time around.”

  “Kalico,” Dek called back, “if it wasn’t for her, the Maritime Unit would have died on Ashanti. That woman kept them together. Molded them from a disparate group of scientists into a family. Hell, they were so tightly knit that they all lived for the group. Like some sort of cultish commune. Played hell with the few of us who tried to have relationships.”

  “How so?” Kalico asked.

  “They always went back to the family. Like, ultimately, if they were involved with anyone from the crew, it always ended up as a sort of betrayal to the others. I guess, in the end, when you think about Maritime Unit, the Unreconciled, and crew, Ashanti was three different worlds.”

  “They sure didn’t take to me, and I was the Supervisor.”

  “So, what’s the game plan when we land?” Talina asked as the airplane dropped toward the dot of white.

  “We stick together,” Kalico told her. “Watch each other’s backs. Maybe this clannish family thing has gone over the edge. If it’s us versus them, I want us on top after it all shakes out. They do have four rifles. But other than that, who knows what they could cook up.”

  “If it’s really that bad?” Dek asked. “Say, they meet us at the landing pad and those rifles are aimed at us?”

  “We scoot and toot,” Kalico told him. “That tells us to leave dealing with them to the marines. This is a fact-finding trip only. If there’s something else wrong, maybe they’re at each other’s throats but still listening to reason, I’m ordering the evacuation of the Pod. We’ll come pick it up with the shuttles after they’re back to the mainland.”

  “For all we know, it’s a blown transistor in the radio,” Talina added. “That, or like that idiot Weisbacher, they don’t know how to fix the radio.”

  “Guess we’ll find out.” Kalico was pressing her face to the window, trying see as Dek eased them into the wind on approach.

  “What are those?” he asked in awe.

  Kalico craned her neck, seeing the most amazing glowing cones floating just off to the east of the Pod. Elongated and internally lit, they seemed to float just above the sea, three of them, angled into the wind and trailing what looked like gossamer tentacles at the edge of a blue-green patch of something floating around the Pod.

  “Never seen the like before,” Talina admitted. “Think they’re a danger?”

  “If they try and attack the plane,” Dek told them, “we’re pegging the throttle and getting the hell out of here.”

  “Roger that,” Kalico told him. “We don’t want to be stuck out here, and we sure as hell don’t want to end up in the drink. I’ve seen what’s swimming around down there.”

  “On approach, people,” Dek told her, dropping the flaps, and letting the compact aircraft cup air as it slowed its descent.

  Kalico’s heart began to pound. Damn it, not only were they dropping in on a potentially hostile bunch of people, but those floating things could be crazy enough to launch themselves at the airplane. Not to mention that the landing pad looked like a tiny, tiny target in a really fucking big ocean.

  “You sure you can land on that?” Kalico asked, trying to keep the tension out of her voice.

  “Who do you think is flying this crate, woman? I’m Dek Taglioni.”

  “Yeah,” Talina said dryly. “Him and all those quetzals who hate flying and water. You sure you got this?”

  “Demon and the rest curled up and turned patterns of yellow and black the moment we took off,” Dek told her. “They’re as scared as I am.”

  “That’s a joke, right?” Kalico asked.

  All she got in return was the profile of Dek’s amused smile as he eased up on the Pod, slowed, and changed his thrusters to float them gently over the landing pad. Below, Kalico could see into the clear water, got a look at the Pod before they drifted over the observation bubble. She could see the lower part of the station coated in something blue-green. Same with the seatrucks down on the dock. The launch was missing. If there was any good news, it was that the floating cones had backed off.

  There didn’t seem to be any sign of life, which was ominous.

  “The Chinese lantern things are giving us space,” Talina noted. “That’s a good sign.”

  “Yeah. I’ll take it.” Dek eased them over the length of the Pod, then settled them down artfully onto the landing pad. Kalico felt barely a bump. Dek killed the thrust, letting the turbines spin down.

  “Welcome to Maritime Unit,” he told them. “Let’s see what’s happening here.”

  Kalico nerved herself, unbuckled, and stepped over to the door. She dropped to the landing pad; the gusting wind made her squint as she started for the access door. One hand on her pistol, she walked up, stared into the window. Nothing in the foyer. But she could see that the locker was open, rifles missing.

  “Tal?” She accessed her com. Heard nothing. So, was the whole station offline?

  She waited, pistol drawn. On the landing pad, the only thing out of place was a couple of packs and satchels along with a duraplast crate.

  Talina and Dek came at a trot, having seen to the airplane tie-downs and having plugged the airplane into the grid to recharge. Both had their rifles. Tal kept scanning, keeping total situational awareness.

  “What have we got?” Tal asked.

  “Rifles are missing. The question is, who has them, and what are they planning to shoot at?”

  “Kalico,” Talina told her, “if they make so much as a threatening move, I’m not letting them shoot first.”

  “Roger that. Me either.” Kalico opened the door, pistol at the ready. “This isn’t right. Coming in like we did, it should have shaken the whole station. It’s not like they don’t know we’re here.”

  Stepping to the top of the stairs, Kalico called, “Hello? Anyone here?”

  Heart beginning to hammer, she started down.

  A face peered at her from around the corner. Then it drew back.

  A very young face. The kind that should belong to a little boy.

  92

  Felix considered the problem presented by the Supervisor’s return. As he did, he could hear Breez and Michaela’s bodies making irregular thumps as they were pulled down each riser and tread. No help there. Surely he was smart enough to take down a single woman. She would have no clue that he was anything but a little boy.

  It would be nice if Tomaya were here. It was always easier with two. Like Sheena used to do, running around behind to distract a grownup while Felix slashed above their kneecaps with the ax.

  But the Supervisor wouldn’t know. Sort of like with Bill Martin. He could just walk up with the ax behind his back, and when she stopped to stare at the bodies spread out on the hall floor, he’d get close. She would be distracted by the blood, the bullet-shattered corpses. That would be Felix’s chance. He’d slash her above the kneecap. Down she’d come.

  Carefully, Felix tiptoed down the hallway, stepped around Mother’s body. Just around the corner of the stairs leading up to the landing pad, he tightened his grip on the bloody ax. He waited, listening. Heard voices, and then someone called, “Hello? Anyone here?”

  As the person started down the steps, Felix peered around the corner. Not one, three!

  With rifles.

  Whole different problem. The ax wasn’t going to work.

  What to do?

  The Voice didn’t seem to have any idea, though the Song was ringing through the entire Pod.

  “This is the Superv
isor. Hello? Little boy, who are you? Where is everyone?”

  Glancing around, his gaze fixed on the rifle where it had fallen from Mother’s hands. He’d never shot one. Never held one. But how hard could it be? He’d seen how Michaela shot Sheena, how Mother had shot Felicity, and finally how Vik had killed Breez.

  If he hadn’t been so strong, he might not have been able to handle it so easily. And it was still way too long for his arms. The butt barely fit into his shoulder. His new muscles rolling under his green skin, he lifted the thing, looked down the length of it, and figured out the sights. Just put that blade on the end where he wanted the bullet to go.

  They were still in the stairs but coming slowly and carefully. He would have to move really fast.

  93

  Talina, a step behind Kalico, caught the odor: blood, a lot of it. Fresh. And mixed in? The scent of a putrefying body. It seemed to cloy in the staircase, thickening as they descended. The narrow confines of the sialon walls, the close ceiling, the three of them, jammed together? Nothing about this was good. Where did she go if this all turned to shit?

  And there was the sound, a rising and falling humming coupled with a deep thrumming. Nothing a normal human could have discerned, not in the high and low frequency ranges her modified hearing could pick up. Even as faintly as she heard it, the almost musical tones had to be organic. Somewhat mindful of the chime. And this, she had the gut feeling, was a kind of communication. But saying what?

  That fleeting glimpse of the little boy? That did nothing to ease Talina’s fears. The kid had painted himself green, his thick shock of dark hair looking mussed. Filthy, even. She’d have sworn the eyes were too big for the head and oddly black. Inhuman. Dangerous.