The Black River (The Complete Adrift Trilogy)

by K. R. Griffiths

Phil nodded, his face stricken, and charged from the room, following the chaotic clatter of Herb's footsteps.

  Edgar watched another brother leave, and clenched his jaw in anger. They were so close. He felt rising fury at Herb for throwing a spanner into the works, but the true reservoir of anger pooled around himself. Herb was unstable, and bringing him was a risk. His skill with electronics far outmatched that of his brothers, and Edgar had insisted that Herb be a part of the team despite his doubts, purely because Herb being there would mean the device would get built more quickly.

  Edgar dropped his eyes to the device, and wondered if he had it in him to set it off if Phil didn't manage to bring Herb back. If doing so meant losing Herb, would Edgar be able to live with himself?

  Can I live with myself if I don't set it off?

  Frustration seethed in Edgar's mind. Despite the promise he had made to Herb in the back of the van, Edgar knew that doing his duty was the only thing that mattered. Getting off the ship was secondary. There was simply too much at stake.

  He'd set the device off.

  If it meant losing Herb.

  If it meant dying himself.

  The alternative was too terrible to contemplate: a disaster of epic proportions that would affect the entire world. Edgar wouldn't be the one responsible for that. For the betrayal of centuries of blood spilled to maintain the peace.

  He glanced down at his watch, staring at the second hand as it ticked slowly, like a failing heartbeat. Phil had been gone for almost a minute.

  Edgar fixed the doorway with a blank stare, and ignored Seb's gaze as it burned into him.

  Phil had four minutes left.

  13

  It was plainly obvious to Mark that, as long as he remained in the ventilation system, the man pursuing him would have a difficult time tracking his position. The ducts took unpredictable turns, deviating away from the corridors in some places; returning to run parallel to them in others.

  Several times, Mark heard running footsteps draw near only to fade away again. A couple of times, he thought he heard more than one man running out there.

  Yet they could not locate him.

  It would have been easy to wriggle deeper into the vent system; to hide, safe in the knowledge that the men chasing him would almost certainly never find him. Mark considered it, he really did.

  But there was the matter of the bomb.

  Even if Mark was doomed to discover that playing the role of hero was beyond him; even if he couldn't prevent the men from detonating the weapon, he was certain of one thing: he had to get out into the open air at the very least. If it came to it, he could launch himself from one of the lower decks and take his chances in the Atlantic.

  Some part of Mark's mind reprimanded him for his foolishness. The Oceanus was in the middle of the world's second biggest ocean, a long way from the nearest land, and night was falling. The water would be freezing, and survival would be extremely unlikely even if he could get far enough away from the ship to escape the blast that he knew was coming.

  It didn't matter. A choice between the bomb and the freezing waves was no choice at all. At least the sea offered him a chance.

  Hiding in the ducts was not an option, and so, when he reached a vent, and couldn't hear footsteps in the space beyond, he launched himself from the duct, propelling himself into the corridor outside it like a bullet. He landed awkwardly, twisting as he fell. Something popped in his ankle, sending a brief pulse of pain through his mind.

  Just a sprain, he thought as the pain dipped back to a bearable level. Nothing serious. Get the hell out of here.

  Worse than the sprain was the noise he had made: almost immediately he heard footsteps headed in his direction.

  Mark was fairly athletic, but he was far from being a big guy; certainly, he was nowhere near the towering wall of sinew that Steven Vega was. Speed was Mark's best physical attribute, but in the cramped confines of the vent system, any advantage his pace might have given him had been eradicated. It was impossible to move through the vents quickly.

  He had put all his energy into getting out into the open, where he could put his head down and run, and he would have backed himself in a foot race, but he had exited the vents too hastily, and the pain in his ankle from the fall slowed his progress considerably.

  He bit down on the simmering pain in his ankle and charged forward, moving as fast as he could.

  With each stride that Mark took, he heard the footsteps of the man—no, men—who were chasing him growing louder.

  Gaining on him.

  As he ran, Mark looked to his left and right, trying to get his bearings. He had been aiming to leave the system of ducts where he entered it, next to the service elevator that would take him back to the park level and the security suite, but somehow he had turned himself around, and it took him a moment to realise where he was.

  Close to the fuel tanks.

  The wrong side of the ship entirely.

  Mark wanted to scream in frustration, but the footsteps were close now, and he could hear one of the men shouting the other's name. Herb. The one that sounded like he was pissing the others off.

  The temptation to run blindly was almost overpowering, but Mark forced himself to pause and mentally run through a map of the ship.

  He knew the layout of the Oceanus fairly well, but hadn't had a chance to get to know every corner of it as he had the previous ships he had worked on. That knowledge came with time. Usually, by the third or fourth voyage on a vessel, Mark knew every hallway, every stairwell and corner, and could calculate the quickest route to the nearest bar almost instantly.

  He hardly ever bothered learning the layout of the engine rooms in the vessels he served on, though. There was simply no need; no pressing reason for senior security staff to venture into that part of a ship. Even if he had cared to study the engine room, it would take a long time to memorise the layout on the Oceanus: the engine room was actually a network of dozens of rooms spread across the three lowest decks, and running almost the entire length of the ship.

  He had taken a wrong turn.

  He thought he had to double back from his current position. Somewhere nearby, there was a door that would take him to a flight of steps that would lead up to the deck that housed the nightclub. From there, Mark would be able to navigate just fine. The nightclub was one of the locations that he had programmed into his mental GPS as soon as he got the job on the Oceanus. Whether Vega forbade mixing with the passengers or not, Mark fully intended to spend most nights getting drunk there.

  He set off at a light jog, wincing at the pain in his ankle, but grateful to find that it seemed to be receding a little. No real damage done.

  As he ran, he silently cursed Steven Vega for his pettiness, and for sending him down to deck three on a bullshit mission that had become something far more dangerous than he could have imagined. Yet even as he cursed Vega, he found himself wishing that the ex-marine would pop into existence right in front of him. God knew, Vega's macho bullshit would come in handy right now.

  He considered trying the walkie-talkie again, and all of a sudden his hand was slipping the radio from its holster on his belt almost by itself, like his mind had finally had enough of trying to piece together the right course of action, and had decided that he needed to do something.

  Still running, he depressed the button, and drew in a breath to yell at Vega to get the hell down to deck three.

  The words never came.

  The breath exploded from Mark's lungs as he collided with something solid moving in the opposite direction. He had been so focused on the radio, he hadn’t even seen the man coming around the corner in front of him.

  That, Mark thought, as he toppled backwards and saw the walkie-talkie flying from his grasp and disappearing into the shadows beneath a mountain of pipes, must be Herb.

  Mark hit the floor hard and rolled instinctively.

  And time slowed to a crawl.

  For a moment, as the world froze around him, Ma
rk was back in his father’s garage, listening to his father drone on about the Ledger family talent for violence; promising his pre-teen son that the love of the fight would come some day, and that in the meantime he should train.

  According to Paul the hammer Ledger, a man needed to be a blunt instrument if he was to survive in the world; needed to be ready to knock down the obstacles that stood in his way. Becoming a boxer was more than just having a profession; more than survival. It was about becoming a man.

  Growing up on one of the roughest estates in Birmingham, a place that even the police only ever visited with significant backup, meant fighting to survive in every sense of the phrase. Fighting for jobs, fighting for money and food, and just plain old fighting. Almost every house on the Weyford Estate got broken into frequently, and muggings were as common as autumn showers. It paid to toughen up.

  Mark's house was only ever broken into once. Once was all it took for the neighbourhood to realise that his father was the same Paul Ledger who had once been a moderately successful middleweight boxer.

  Mark's father had little time for the police, and so the two men that broke in one night, brandishing cricket bats and demanding money and jewelry had to face a different sort of justice.

  The hammer left them alive—barely—and when he was done with them, and he had hauled them out onto the street and left them in pools of their own blood, Paul Ledger walked back into the house and came face to face with his nine year old son.

  You saw all that? he had asked gruffly.

  Mark would never forget that he had been unable to speak, his tongue locked in place by a cocktail of fear and excitement. He forced a nod.

  Good. That's how you take care of yourself, son. I won't always be around to help you, and you can be damn sure no one else will. When life knocks you down, you hit back, and you hit back hard, you hear me?

  After all these years, maybe it turned out that the old man had a point after all.

  Mark pushed himself up from the floor, roaring an incomprehensible bellow of pure rage, and he shoulder charged Herb, tackling him around the waist and lifting him clear off his feet, driving the man back into a metal valve.

  Mark heard the cracking of the man's spine, and knew immediately that the fight he expected was over before it had begun. He watched in satisfaction as Herb crumpled to the ground, his face creased in agony.

  Mark gave silent thanks to his dead father for a moment. The old bastard had been a terrible dad in most ways, but he had raised a scrapper, using the poverty and relentless violence of the Weyford Estate to harden his son. That upbringing had been outdated and useless for the most part.

  Until he needed it.

  Mark bunched his fists and leaned over Herb, ready for anything the fallen man might throw at him.

  Anything, that is, except the look of fear and surrender on the man’s face.

  "Listen," Herb said weakly. "I’m not here to fight. You have to call for help. Right now, before it's too late. Get the captain to send out a distress call. Broadcast the ship’s position."

  Mark stared down at Herb in confusion.

  "What?"

  "Everyone on the ship is in danger," Herb coughed. "Call for help. You don't have much time."

  Mark's mind raced. Herb's words had to be lies, but they were delivered with sincerity. The confusion that Mark had felt when he first heard voices in the air con system suddenly ratcheted up several notches. The terrorist had chased him to warn him?

  "Help?" Mark asked. "Help with what? The bomb that you and your terrorist buddies are planning to—"

  The words were knocked back down his throat by a wrench that caught Mark in the temple, ringing his skull like a bell and toppling him to the floor. A suckerpunch he didn’t see coming, and he had time to curse himself for forgetting that he had heard a second set of footsteps following him, and the world went dark.

  *

  "You wouldn't actually do it while they're still out there, would you?"

  Edgar sighed impatiently and glared at Seb.

  Seb was the second eldest of the four brothers, beating his twin by around five minutes, and he was also the brother that Edgar trusted most to have his back in any given situation. He was a quiet, thoughtful sort of guy. The type of person that faded into the background and occasionally piped up with some profound statement that could alter the course of a conversation in an instant.

  It was the same question that Edgar was asking himself, over and over.

  Can I really do this to my own flesh and blood?

  "If I have to," Edgar snapped. "You know what's at stake here."

  Seb rolled his eyes.

  "Yeah, bro, I know what's at stake. How could I not? We've all had this shit drilled into us since we were munching on rusks. One day, the time may come and yadda-yadda-yadda. Neither you nor Dad have ever given us a chance to forget what's at stake. Well, what's at stake right now is the lives of two of our brothers, and Dad’s not here. This is down to you. So I'll ask again. You wouldn't actually set that thing off while they're out there? You know they'd never find their way back."

  Edgar grimaced, and tried to keep a lid on his mounting frustration. He didn't do a great job of it.

  "You act like I'm signing their death warrants, Seb. But what if they don't come back? What if, instead of Herb and Phil, we see a security detail walking through that door? What then?"

  Seb stared at him blankly, but Edgar saw a flicker of emotion fizz across his brother's eyes, and abruptly realised that Seb was working really hard to hold his shit together. Behind the implacable facade, an inferno of doubt raged.

  Edgar heaved in a deep breath.

  "Look," he said finally. "I get it. I really do. You think I don't struggle with it, too? One way or another, we are signing death warrants. Best case scenario is three thousand. Worst case...well, I don't even want to think about what the worst case could be. We all came into this with open eyes. We all knew there was a chance we'd never see land again, right?"

  Seb nodded morosely.

  "And the reason I've been acting like a prick," Edgar continued, "is because I don't want that to be the way things end up. We had to all stay in line; all had to read from the same script, you know?"

  "And you didn't think that would be impossible for Herb?" Seb said. "You know what the guy's like."

  Edgar nodded.

  "Unstable. And if I could have left him at home I would have. But you know the crazy part? I think if that had been an option, Herb would have demanded to tag along. Because he knows that Dad isn't lying about what's coming. He knows that I'm not lying about what happened in Brighton. He knows they exist. He just doesn't believe that they can do the things I've seen them do."

  Seb said nothing.

  "Herb would have tagged along—with all the bitching and whining fully intact—because deep down he knows that this," Edgar pointed at the device, "is just about the most valuable item on the planet right now. Setting it off is all that matters, even if it means we don’t make it. I should have done it instantly."

  Edgar shook his head wearily.

  "I just didn't want to do it while there was still daylight. Didn't want to leave anything to chance. I just wanted a moment to think."

  Seb grimaced, and Edgar clapped his hands on his brother's shoulders.

  "We all knew we might not make it back," Edgar said again.

  Seb didn't speak, but Edgar saw the resigned look in his brother’s eyes and knew that he had his agreement. He breathed a sigh of relief. Despite everything he had said, and everything he knew, some part of him wasn't sure that he could have proceeded without Seb's backing.

  Edgar glanced at his watch.

  "It's been over six minutes," he said. The words hung in the air.

  Seb nodded, and without a word, strode over to the small silver satchel that remained where Edgar had placed it when they first arrived.

  "Is it sealed?" Edgar asked.

  "Yeah," Seb said. "You think it will work
?"

  He looked at Edgar dubiously.

  "Dad assures me it will, and everything I've read suggests he’s right. I don't know if it's actually been proven, though. I guess you'd have to ask someone in the military, but I doubt they'd answer. Probably throw you in a deep hole just for asking."

  Seb snorted.

  "So I guess we just have to have faith," he said glumly. "Just have to pray that the bag works, or we're as far up shit creek as everybody else is."

  Edgar shrugged.

  "Under the circumstances," he replied, "I'd say praying is probably pretty apt right now, wouldn't you?"

  Seb nodded.

  "I guess so," he said, and checked his own watch. Seven minutes. Closer to eight. He stared at his big brother evenly.

  "So do it," Seb said.

  Edgar took the silver satchel from his brother and clutched it tightly under one arm, moving in front of the device that they had built in record time.

  Too fast, he thought. Had they taken a half hour longer, Herb and Phil would still be standing alongside him, darkness would already have fallen, and there would be no problem.

  Or whoever was in the vent would have come back with a fucking army.

  Edgar lifted a trembling hand.

  He didn’t have a choice. This moment was his calling. His duty. The point of everything. All of Edgar’s life had led to this decision, and he had been taught not to let anything stand in the way of his doing what was necessary when the time came. Not the potential loss of his brothers. Not even the possibility of his own death.

  The device they had built didn't have a timer. No way could they have trusted that. Someone had to be there, right alongside it. Someone had to set it off. Had to know for sure.

  He returned Seb's stare, and saw a droplet of sweat trickling down his brother's brow.

  They do exist. And I've seen what they can do.

  "Fuck it," Edgar snarled.

  And hit the button.

  *

  Bing!

  The doors opened on deck five, and Steven Vega bit back the almost irresistible urge to scream at the passengers waiting beyond that this particular elevator was out of fucking service.