by Mira Grant
Before exiting, the man turned to the medical team. “Lock the door,” he said. “Anyone human will be able to let you know what they need.”
Then he was gone.
Inside the medical bay, the battle for Michi’s life continued.
Outside, the battle for everyone else raged on.
CHAPTER 30
Western Pacific Ocean, above the Mariana Trench: September 3, 2022
The deck was abandoned. Thick trails of grayish slime marred the wood, some running up the walls, but there were no people, and more, there were no sirens. The Melusine might as well have been a ghost ship, drifting aimlessly forever.
Tory, her hands wrapped around the tranquilizer gun, frowned as she looked around, trying to find something, anything, to indicate that they weren’t alone. “Shouldn’t there be guards or something?” she demanded. “Where is everybody?”
“Locked in their labs like sensible people, probably,” said Luis. He stepped daintily over a patch of slime. It would have been funny, if he hadn’t looked so afraid. He held a small blowtorch, also taken from his tool kit. It was intended for underwater drone repairs, and it burned hot enough to vaporize flesh. It would do.
Olivia had no weapons. Olivia had her camera, watching everything through its screen. It was a way of distancing herself from the scene. Tory was almost envious. It would have been nice to have a little distance.
They inched their way along the deck, flinching from every sound. Danger could be lurking anywhere, and so the deep-down primitive portions of their minds had kicked into overdrive, seeing disaster in every shadow, hearing death in every scuffed foot or rasping breath. This was not their world anymore, if it ever had been in the first place.
They were halfway to the cafeteria when Tory stopped, staring at the wall. Luis and Olivia came to a halt behind her, both making sounds of confused protest.
“What is it?” asked Luis.
“Look.” Tory pointed.
Luis and Olivia followed her finger, frowning. Luis continued to frown as Olivia gave a small gasp.
“The light is on,” she said.
“The light is on,” echoed Tory, and moved toward the lab assigned to Dr. Holly Wilson. She raised her hand to knock, stopped herself, and rang the doorbell. There was no sound, but she knew that inside a light would be flashing, telling Holly someone was outside.
“We can’t wait here,” said Luis. “Those things might come back.”
“We can’t leave her here,” said Tory. “She’d never hear them coming.” Unspoken was the fact that Holly wouldn’t have heard the screams. She could lock herself in her lab and wait for rescue, but she deserved the choice to come with them.
“We need to go,” said Luis.
Tory rang the bell again.
There was a pause, followed by a click. The lab door swung open, revealing Holly, looking at them bemusedly. She moved her hands. Tory shook her head.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “We don’t sign. Can you read my lips?”
Holly made a wobbling motion with one hand.
“Thank God,” said Tory. “You need to come with us.”
“Why?” asked Holly.
All three of the others jumped.
Her accent was odd, which made sense: she knew the mouth-shape of the word, but not what it sounded like. Still, it was clear enough that they could understand her.
“I didn’t know you could talk,” said Tory.
“Of course I can talk,” said Holly. “But you can’t understand me, so I had to learn to make sounds with my mouth. Why am I going with you?”
“The sirens are on the ship,” said Tory. “They’re killing people. You need to come with us.”
There was a pause while Holly finished absorbing this. Lipreading wasn’t the effortless party trick it looked like in the movies: it was a laborious process of mapping lip motions to possible phonemes, rejecting words that looked the same but made no sense in context. Sign was so much easier. With sign, what you said was what you meant, and not some complicated guessing game.
Finally she asked, “Can I grab my laptop?”
Tory nodded. “Just be quick.”
Holly turned and ran across the lab, gathering the precious parts of her research, the things a backup couldn’t replace. Maybe it was silly. Maybe it was frivolous. But she’d already lost one sister, and her second sister was somewhere on this ship, out of reach, out of range. She wasn’t going to lose them both and her work at the same time. If that happened, she might as well give herself to the sirens. She’d have nothing left.
Tory, Olivia, and Luis formed a semicircle around the lab door, each holding their weapon—gun, torch, camera—in front of themselves, as if that small talisman would be enough to keep the entire world at bay. When Holly returned and tapped Tory on the shoulder, Tory jumped and squeaked. Olivia and Luis whipped around, and for one frozen moment, it looked like all four of them were going to scream.
The moment passed. Tory gave a nervous laugh.
“Okay,” she said. “Okay, let’s not do that again. Come on, let’s move.” She started walking again, once more taking point. Holly followed close behind, while Luis—as the only other person who had an actual weapon—brought up the rear.
They moved down the deck, only the soft thuds of their footsteps betraying their location. More of those terrible slime trails extended over the rails and up the walls. Holly stopped to study one more closely, but didn’t touch it. It smelled faintly fishy, and glistened where the light touched it.
Tory frowned at Holly and waved, trying to get the other woman’s attention.
“I need a sample,” said Holly. She looked around, finally settling on Luis. “You have a test tube in that backpack?”
“No,” he said, before digging a plastic baggie out of his pocket. A few crushed candy shells stuck to the inside. He held it out toward her. “Will this work?”
“Sure,” she said, and took the baggie, turning it inside out. Candy shells littered the deck at her feet. Careful to avoid touching the mucus with her bare skin, she scraped a small amount off the wall and wrapped it in the plastic bag before tucking it in her pocket. She turned back to Tory and nodded, signaling her readiness to resume.
Their progress was slow but steady. They were almost to the cafeteria; soon they’d be in a position to close the doors and forget about the world outside, letting it become someone else’s problem. Tory was relieved. She’d come here to find the things that killed her sister, and she’d done that. She’d come here to see them with her own two eyes, and she’d done that too. Before, locked in the lab, she’d felt like she was running away. But now, out in the open …
There were monsters in the night. They had sailed off the edge of the map, and there was a good chance they were going to die here. Anne wouldn’t want her to die here. Anne would want her to make it home, to tell their parents what she’d learned, to introduce them to Olivia, to watch them fall in love with the idea that maybe she was finally going to fall in love. Anne would want her to live. And she couldn’t do that if she got herself killed.
“Almost there,” murmured Luis.
Olivia, watching the scene through her camera, screamed.
It was a short, sharp sound, cut off and swallowed almost as soon as it began, but it was enough. Tory fell back, her shoulders bumping into Holly and bringing her to a halt. Luis stepped forward, pressing in next to Olivia.
“You want to say something?” he asked, voice low and tight. “Because if you just saw a bug or something, I’m going to set your hair on fire.”
She didn’t say a word. She just raised one shaking hand and pointed at the place where the ceiling met the wall. Shadows pooled there, and Tory knew they shouldn’t have been that thick, or that motionless; there were lights running the length of the hall, and even where the light didn’t reach directly, refractions and ripples bounced off the water, making the darkness move. This darkness was perfectly still, like a cat preparing to pounce.
“Olivia …”
“It’s watching us,” whispered Olivia. She kept her eyes on her camera’s view screen, where the balance between dark and light had conspired to make the siren visible. “It knows we’re here, and it’s watching us. If we keep walking …” Her voice trailed off. She didn’t need to explain what would happen if they kept walking.
“Back up,” said Tory, her eyes still on the unmoving shadow. She took another step back, nudging Holly, who did the same.
The shadow twitched.
“Run!” shouted Olivia, and Tory grabbed Holly’s hand, and they ran.
For Holly Wilson, this entire day—this entire voyage—had been like a dream. She was accustomed to people ignoring her, thinking she was somehow less than they were because she couldn’t hear them. She was accustomed to people talking to her translator even when she was standing right there. That was part of why she preferred to have Hallie translate for her. Hallie would remind people that Holly was the one with the chemistry degree, and things would continue the way they should have from the start.
But Hallie was off somewhere doing her own research, and much as Holly wanted to be okay with that, she couldn’t. Not when she didn’t have another translator on board, not when monsters were coming out of the sea and devouring everything in their path.
Not when Heather was dead. Dreamlike as everything else seemed, she had no illusions about Heather’s death. Even in her worst nightmares, she’d never been able to conceive of a world where Heather was dead and she wasn’t. Part of her didn’t want this trip to ever end, because strange and horrific as it was, it wasn’t real. Once they got back to land, things would be real again, and she would have to start figuring out how she was going to live in a world without Heather. She wasn’t sure she could.
So she’d been trying to take refuge in her work. But her lab mates had gone and not come back, and now these semistrangers were hauling her around the ship, running from something she hadn’t spotted and couldn’t hear coming. Most of the time, she didn’t feel like her deafness slowed her down. Here and now, she would have given almost anything to know that when her death showed up, she’d hear it coming.
Tory shouted, lips moving too fast for Holly to follow. The group changed directions, dragging Holly in their wake. Their destination came clear up ahead: the elevator, which was standing open, apparently waiting for them. The light was on inside, making it clear that nothing was lurking there. It was, however temporarily, safe.
The group ran for the elevator, and Tory hit the button to close the door. She turned to the others, once again speaking slowly and clearly as she said, “The captain should be in the control room. We can go there, find out when the shutters will be ready. Maybe we can help. Maybe this is the only deck that’s been swarmed.”
They all knew she was … not lying, not exactly, but being willfully optimistic, like optimism could change the reality of their situation. If the sirens had been on a single deck, the guards would have descended like the fist of God, sweeping them away, making things safe again. The shields would have come down. That was the truly troubling thing about what was going on. If this wasn’t ship-wide, if this wasn’t some sort of disaster, why were the shutters not down? Why were the sides of the ship still open, allowing anything that wanted to come up from the depths to come aboard?
Holly slumped against the wall, trying to take comfort in the feel of the metal vibrating against her shoulder blades. They would be safe, soon. They would be. They had to be. She could barely function without her twin, her friend, the other half of her now perpetually broken heart. She couldn’t imagine what would happen to Hallie if she died too, and left her big sister alone.
(The thought that something could have happened to Hallie didn’t cross her mind. Hallie was the big sister, the mountain that protected them from the ravages of the world. If Hallie had been in that submersible with Heather, Heather would have survived. If Hallie were here, she’d know exactly what to do. Hallie could be bossy and annoying and I-know-best in the way of big sisters and hearing people combined, but she was also a superhero, and superheroes always knew what to do.)
The others were talking again, too fast for her to follow. Luis gestured wildly, indicating the elevator doors; he was upset about what they were going to find when they disembarked. Tory was more restrained. She kept glancing at Olivia, taking the other woman’s measure—worrying about her. That was interesting. Holly hadn’t been aware they were a couple. Heather had been under the impression that Tory didn’t care for Olivia, and had said so several times when they were alone in their cabin.
Guess you were wrong, she thought, and it burned that she’d never be able to tell her sister that to her face.
The elevator’s shaking grew more pronounced, shuddering and stuttering. Holly stiffened. The car was still moving, and the change in its tempo hadn’t been extreme enough for the other three to have noticed it; they were continuing to argue, Luis shouting, Tory replying too rapidly for Holly’s eyes to follow, Olivia aiming her camera at the elevator doors like recording whatever happened next could somehow change it.
What I wouldn’t give for one of those translation apps right now, thought Holly, and stepped away from the wall, touching Tory’s arm. Tory stopped yelling and turned to face her, lips forming a silent but recognizable “What?”
“Something’s wrong with the elevator,” said Holly.
“What do you mean?” asked Tory, not entirely succeeding in hiding her panic.
“The car just jerked. Something’s wrong.”
Luis touched the wall. “She’s right,” he said. “We’re slowing down.”
“Aren’t elevators supposed to slow down when they get where they’re going?” asked Olivia.
“Not like this,” said Luis. He was speeding up; whatever he said next was too fast for Holly, but it was enough to cause the other two women to look alarmed. Olivia took a step back, still focused on her camera, like she thought it was going to protect her.
Somehow, Holly doubted that.
Tory glanced up at the readout above the doors before hitting the button for the next floor. It was two decks shy of their destination, but it was substantially closer, and might mean getting off the malfunctioning elevator before it got fully stuck. Holly retreated into her corner, watching the others brace themselves, preparing for the doors to open. She didn’t have a weapon. She didn’t have a way of defending herself. She didn’t even have the luxury of knowing what they were talking about.
You assholes should have learned to sign, she thought viciously, and then a hand slammed through the grate at the center of the elevator’s roof, claws extended, snatching at the air. Everyone screamed, even Holly, who was startled into a wild, undulating yell.
The hand froze at the sound. The elevator stopped. The doors opened. Tory grabbed Olivia and ran out onto the deck. Luis paused, looking back at Holly, who was still backed into the corner, staring at the hand. Then he grabbed her by the wrist and dragged her after him, fleeing into the night.
“How did it know to get on top of the damn elevator?!” gasped Tory as she ran, hauling Olivia in her wake. There was more of that damned slime crisscrossing the deck, which they had come to recognize as a sign that the things had already gotten this far. The sirens were on the ship. The sirens were all over the ship; there was no escaping them. The best they could hope for was to lock themselves in a lab or cabin and pray the monsters outside didn’t realize they were there.
(The door would not protect them; the door was not enough. The door was wood and riveted steel and it was not enough. Tory had known that even before they’d run past the first shattered door. The cabin beyond had been dark, but not dark enough; there was blood on the door, and blood mixed into the slime on the deck outside, and none of them were safe. Not here, not anywhere.)
“Where are they?” countered Luis. “They’ve got to be everywhere on this damned ship. How have we only seen two?”
“The
y’re inside.” Olivia sounded almost serene. She was running as fast as the rest of them, but there was no wobble or hitch in her voice; she might have been going for a lovely afternoon stroll. She didn’t take her eyes off the camera. Whatever happened, she was going to leave a record. God help her, she was going to leave a record. “They went deeper. That’s what predators do, when they’re taking a reef. That’s what the mermaids are doing here.”
Tory didn’t correct her. If she wanted to call the damned things mermaids, despite Dr. Toth’s objections, she could go ahead. Olivia had earned the right as much as any of them.
“What do you mean, ‘inside’?” demanded Luis.
“They’re inside,” said Olivia. She pointed down a corridor as they ran past it. “Go deep, get the young and the weak, the ones that wouldn’t be on the outside of the reef. It means the quickest kills come first, and then they can move outward.”
“Oh God,” moaned Tory.
“There’s a stairwell ahead,” said Luis. “We need to get to the top of the ship.”
Why that was so important didn’t need to be discussed. The top of the ship meant finding the captain; it meant people with weapons, maybe even the Abneys, who were probably treating this whole thing as a grand adventure. It meant reaching the control room. Lowering the shutters with the sirens already on the ship might not do as much good as it would have if it had happened earlier, but at least this way they could keep the things from returning to the sea. They could sweep the Melusine one aisle at a time, shooting anything that moved, until they were free of aquatic attackers.
The captain had said not to panic, Imagine had everything in hand, but Imagine didn’t have everything in hand. People had died. People had died before this—Heather and Ray and who knew how many others—but now it had passed some unspeakable threshold, becoming the sort of thing that should drive them back to shore, ceding the ocean to the sirens. They’d have to. They had enough, didn’t they? No one could say mermaids weren’t real after this. No one could say they were making things up. Imagine would be vindicated. Anne would be avenged. Everything would be all right.