by Mira Grant
“Theo?” she said quietly.
“I’m all right,” he said, opening his eyes and forcing a smile. “I really am. It’s just that I’ve been away from my quarters for quite some time.”
Comprehension dawned. “You don’t have your medicine,” she said. “How bad is the pain?”
“I’d consider an elective amputation at the moment, if I weren’t sure it would make things worse. The creatures smell blood, and ours is different enough from theirs that they can follow it …” He paused, eyes locked on Luis’s leg, like he’d just realized the other man was injured. “For the love of God, get that cleaned up, or we’re all dead.”
“We’re aware,” said Jillian. “Luis, come here and sit down.” She gestured to the room’s free chair as she moved to get the first aid kit from her desk.
“We may all be dead anyway,” said Theo. “They’re still on the ship, and it’s not safe to assume they won’t make another pass. They’re smart. You understand that? They know what they’re doing.”
“Even predators who aren’t this smart know how to double back for double the prey,” said Tory. “Orcas, leopard seals, they all exhibit that behavior. You don’t have to be a genius to know that something that runs will eventually come back.”
“Maybe not, but these things are geniuses.” There was an edge to Theo’s voice that had never been there before, sharp and unforgiving and pained. Jillian gave him a worried look. He scowled. “Yes, it hurts. But as there’s no way to get my medication without getting out of this chair, there’s nothing I can do about it.”
“Spoken like a man who’s forgotten who he married,” said Jillian mildly. “Luis, check my desk. Second drawer on the left. The chocolate drops, if you please.”
Theo’s eyebrows climbed toward his hairline. “You’re not suggesting …”
“Cannabis is a highly effective painkiller, and I don’t think you’re in a position to be picky,” said Jillian.
Luis stopped in the process of moving toward the desk, turning to stare at her in disbelief. “Are you telling me to get him high?” he asked.
“No. I’m asking you to reduce his pain. The chocolate drops are medicinal; the cannabis used in their manufacture has been bioengineered to reduce its THC content to negligible levels. Mr. Blackwell suffers from nerve damage incurred during the conclusion of his maritime career, and funny as I might find it to watch him grinding his teeth and denying how much pain he’s in, we need him lucid if he’s going to help us.”
“Help us with what?” asked Olivia.
Jillian bared her teeth in the semblance of a smile. “Survival.”
“I’ll eat your damned candy,” said Theo. “Just stop talking about it, and I’ll eat anything you want.”
“Promises, promises,” said Jillian. “Please, Mr. Martines. The candy.”
Olivia opened her mouth to ask what Jillian meant by “survival,” and paused as the mass spectrometer beeped. She looked past the doctor to the lab bench, where Holly had been silently preparing samples and feeding them into the various machines for analysis. “Um,” she said. “Should she be doing that?”
“Doing what?” Jillian turned. “Ah.” Raising her hands, she signed, ‘What do?’
‘I’m preparing the samples for analysis,’ signed Holly, picking up her dropper. She transferred two drops of Michi’s blood to a vial, then slotted it into the centrifuge. Then she signed, ‘You seemed busy.’
‘They weren’t labeled. Did you—’
‘I know how to avoid cross contamination.’
‘Okay.’ Jillian turned back to the others. “Dr. Wilson is preparing our samples. Together, she and I should be able to determine what sort of toxins these creatures carry. Which reminds me: Mr. Martines, after you give the candy to my stubborn cretin of a husband, please sit down. I need to check your wound.”
“Toxins?” asked Tory.
“How is she going to tell us what she learns?” asked Olivia.
“My ASL is poor in most areas, but excellent when it comes to science,” said Jillian. “It seemed like a good place to specialize, given the people I was likely to be working with—and I did some review when I learned the Wilsons had signed on for this voyage. I have a great deal of respect for both Drs. Wilson, and their work in their respective fields.”
“It would have been nice if the rest of us could have gotten a passenger list,” said Luis. He handed the cellophane baggie of chocolate drops to Theo, who took it without comment.
“It would be nice if I had a pony, and yet here we are,” said Jillian. She pointed to Luis. “Sit. Now. Roll up your trousers, and be grateful we’re not asking you to take them off.”
Luis sat, cheeks flushing, and hissed under his breath as he pulled up the blood-soaked leg of his jeans. Another gush of blood accompanied the action.
Tory couldn’t watch her friend’s pain. Instead she watched Jillian, and the way Dr. Toth watched the blood. She’d mentioned toxins; she had been unwilling to go back to the medical bay. The image of Jason rose unbidden in Tory’s mind, and she shuddered, making no effort to minimize the motion. Something was going on. Something bigger and worse than just a swarm of sirens coming up from the deep and having their way with the ship.
“Dr. Toth, what aren’t you telling us?” Tory asked.
“Too much,” said Jillian again. “Help Dr. Wilson.” With that, Tory was apparently dismissed, as the good doctor knelt in front of Luis.
He watched as she prodded the skin, only wincing a little, sucking air between his front teeth in sharp hisses. When she paused he forced a grin and asked, “How’m I looking, Doc? All good?”
“Not really,” she replied. “You have four deep puncture wounds, and one that came distressingly close to compromising your Achilles tendon. You got off lucky, difficult as that may be to believe. The bleeding hasn’t stopped, but given you’ve been on your feet this whole time, that’s not as concerning as it might be. Does this hurt?”
She jabbed a finger into the deepest of the wounds, midway down his ankle. Luis yelped, trying to yank his foot away, only to be stopped as she closed her hand around it.
“I asked a question,” she said.
“Holy fuck, yes, it hurt!” he shouted. “Is that what you wanted to hear?”
“Yes,” she said, and removed an eyedropper from her pocket. “I’ll give you the good news first: it looks like you might be okay.”
“Uh, thanks,” he said.
“Michi Abney is dead,” she said calmly as if she were reading from a shopping list. While Luis gaped at her, she slid the eyedropper into the deepest of his wounds and sucked up about half an ounce of blood. He winced. Jillian ignored him. Voice still calm, she said, “This blood is contaminated; it’s been exposed to air, it’s experienced clotting, it’s not a pure sample. That’s what we need right now. The sirens are novel beings. They’re not extraterrestrial—their biology is too similar to things we already know exist to be aliens or invaders. They’re just another evolutionary path. They can eat us and not suffer for it. But that doesn’t mean everything about them is as harmless to us as we are to them.”
“I didn’t understand half of that,” said Luis.
“She’s saying the mermaids—sorry, sirens—are toxic to us somehow,” said Tory, with dawning horror. “But Jason stuck himself on one of their parasites.”
“Yes, and those parasites don’t kill their hosts, which means the sirens are resistant.” Jillian straightened. “Oof. My knees don’t belong to a young woman anymore.”
Luis frowned. “Are you saying I’m going to die?”
“I’m saying you’re probably not going to die; your blood is still clotting. Michi died partially because she bled out and partially because of the toxins in her bloodstream causing massive seizures, and you seem fine. Look at it this way, Mr. Martines: you’ve done science a great favor. Now we know these things don’t have venom glands on their nails. Although you’re probably going to need a lot of antibiotics, when
everything is said and done.”
She turned and walked back to the lab bench where Holly, head down, was preparing samples and loading them into machines with remarkable speed. Jillian touched her lightly on the shoulder and she lifted her head, a quizzical look on her face.
Jillian held up the dropper full of blood and indicated the centrifuge. Holly nodded and stepped to the side.
“This is nuts,” said Tory. “This is insane. We can’t just hole up in here and play with chemistry sets. We need to be closing the shutters. We need to be calling for help. Do we know if anyone called for help?”
“There are no ships larger than a private fishing vessel within two days of our location. In the best-case scenario, air support will take hours to reach us—and that’s assuming I could call them. The internet has been out since the captain stopped answering calls. And before evacuation could take place, there would be other considerations, which might prove … problematic,” said Theo wearily. He closed his eyes. “The cannabis is helping, but it will be a few minutes before I can assist further.”
“I don’t think we have a few minutes,” argued Tory hotly. “We should be doing something. We should be moving. Where is the captain? We need to find out what’s going on.”
“On the top deck, preparing to deploy the shutters,” said Theo.
“Well, then, we’re done, because there’s no way to get to the top deck,” said Luis. “Not with those things in the elevators. We can’t trust the stairs to be clear. The sirens are everywhere.”
“What if we didn’t take the stairs or the elevator?” asked Olivia.
Luis and Tory turned to look at her. Even Theo raised his eyebrows.
“What did you have in mind?” he asked.
Olivia took a deep breath. “Ray and I got to the ship early. I don’t … I don’t like new spaces that I don’t know very well, and it was important that I be comfortable with the Melusine if I was going to do my job and interview the arriving scientists. We got an accommodation to allow us to board before anyone but the essential crew.”
“You did nothing wrong, Miss Sanderson,” said Theo. “I’m aware of your accommodations. I signed off on them. What did you find?”
“The ship was designed to be used for cruises and stuff after we finished using it for research, right? Well, um, there are tubes. For room service and dirty dishes and things like that. They open on every deck, but since they’re not supposed to be used by passengers, only members of the crew, they only open if you have the code. I don’t think the sirens could get in there, could they?”
“No,” said Theo. “I don’t believe they could. Unfortunately, without a member of the crew, I don’t believe we can either.”
“I can,” said Olivia. “I can go to the top, and find out what’s happening, and call back. I can do it.”
“How?” asked Tory.
Olivia shrugged, looking briefly self-conscious. “Because I have the code.”
Theo blinked before beginning to smile. “Well, then,” he said. “Perhaps we can do something about our situation after all.”
CHAPTER 32
Western Pacific Ocean, above the Mariana Trench: September 3, 2022
The swimming pool served multiple functions. It was key to the Melusine’s water filtration; without the intake and expulsion of the surrounding sea, there was no way for water to be cleansed. It was a mobile sampling unit. Even as the water itself could be strained and sifted until all traces of salt were removed, small sampling tubes around the intake ports were constantly capturing and filing vials of water from the surrounding area. By the time they returned to shore, the plan was for most of the ballast to be made up of water samples, all ready to be taken ashore and analyzed.
Once the Melusine stopped above the Mariana Trench, the pool had been converted from recreation to research, scooping up samples of the local wildlife and holding them in what was effectively one of the largest tide pools ever made. It had become a slice of the living sea, brought inside for the amusement of the scientists on board. It had worked very, very well. Even as the screams had been starting elsewhere on the ship, people had still been walking to the water, sitting down, and trying to let the fish swimming there soothe them.
No one sat there now. Blood and mucus clotted the floor and dotted the ceiling. Bodies floated in the water, missing pieces, missing limbs. The sirens that had broken the screens and slithered through the intake had discovered the clever mechanisms designed to keep captive fish from escaping; they had been unable to slither out the way that they’d come in. Without the ability to take their prey back to the depths, they had been reduced to eating it, ripping off huge chunks and swallowing them whole.
Sirens lounged in the pool, chewing idly on their kills, prodding at the walls in their quest for a way out. Others explored the room, moving more slowly than their cousins on the upper decks. They had the luxury of curiosity, of time, and they were going to enjoy it.
One of them felt its way along the wall, fascinated by the different textures. It dug its claws into a strange black box, sliming the mechanism with mucus in the process. The keypad reader, unequipped to handle this sort of accidental biological assault, beeped once before it shorted out. The siren pulled back, hissing. Two more sirens slithered over to join it.
The wall swung open.
The room on the other side was reasonably sized, dimly lit, and dominated by a clear wall, looking in on one of their cousins hanging suspended in the water. The captive siren flared its fins at the sight of the others. The three of them pulled themselves rapidly into the room, silent now, looking around with wide, light-devouring eyes.
Daniel and Hallie had gone still as soon as the door swung open. They didn’t know what else to do. Mr. Blackwell had been gone considerably longer than he’d said he was going to be, and no one was picking up, either in the command room or in Holly’s lab. Hallie had been calling her sister every fifteen minutes, and had never been able to get through. They’d been expecting guards, or Mr. Blackwell, or refugees running from some terrible catastrophe. They’d been expecting something, although their curiosity had never been quite enough to make them open the soundproof door, betraying their presence to the world. They’d been waiting.
They hadn’t been expecting three sirens, their arms and faces gummy with human blood, slithering into the room. There was nowhere for the two scientists to run, nowhere for them to hide; the sirens blocked the only exit. More, there were more sirens outside, some visible on the walls, others sliding into the waters of the viewing pool. None of them seemed to be interested in what the others had found. Hallie didn’t know whether to be grateful for that or not. It was as easy to be killed by three as by thirty.
The sirens had seen them. The one in the lead bared its teeth in something that could have been either threat or warning. It didn’t matter. They were dead either way.
Hallie fumbled in the dark beside her, stopping when her hand found Daniel’s. He grabbed on and held tight, taking comfort from the small human contact even as she did. Together they backed up, stopping when their shoulders hit the glass wall of the tank. Neither of them had said a word. They didn’t need to. They knew how this ended.
Holly, I’m sorry, thought Hallie. She wanted to close her eyes. She wanted to have some small sense of peace when the end came. She did no such thing. She watched the sirens slither closer, taking a deep breath and holding it. It was going to hurt. It was going to hurt, and it wasn’t going to stop hurting until she died. All she could do was hope she faced her end with dignity, that she didn’t try to break and run at the last moment. There was no way out. She might as well die with some sense of control.
The sirens were only a few feet away. Daniel squeezed her hand. She braced herself, waiting for the first lunge.
The sirens stopped.
She blinked.
They cocked their heads like they were distracted by something. The one in the lead leaned back on its pelvis enough to raise its hands,
balancing there as it signed.
They must have incredible core strength, thought Hallie, and glanced over her shoulder to the captive siren. It was signing to the other three, hands moving in patterns she’d never seen before, patterns that had nothing to do with human ideas of sign. She glanced back to the sirens. They were answering.
This time, when Daniel squeezed her hand, Hallie squeezed back as hard as she could, hoping he understood what they were looking at. Don’t move don’t talk don’t do anything that could make them angry, she thought. There was no way he could hear her, but oh, it helped to think it. It helped to feel like she was doing something.
The sirens kept signing. It was impossible to read their expressions, but something about them seemed perplexed, like they couldn’t understand what was happening any more than she could. Finally, with a hiss like a deflating balloon, the lead siren turned around and slithered toward the door, with the other two close behind.
Heart in her throat, Hallie waited until they were safely out of the lab before running after them and slamming the door. She turned back to the room, slumping against the door frame, and sank slowly to the floor as her knees gave way.
Daniel was still standing in front of the tank, seemingly frozen. Behind him, their captive siren continued to sign. Hallie recognized a handful of words—her name, the sign the siren had given for its own name, and, oddly enough, the word captive, over and over again.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“The chutes aren’t big,” said Olivia. “Maybe three feet across at their widest points, usually narrower than that. There are doors on every deck.”
“Can they be opened from the inside?” asked Theodore.
She nodded. “Ray and I tested it. We wanted to know, in case it ever mattered. They were more concerned with people not being able to get into places they shouldn’t go than getting out of them if they were already there.”
“Doesn’t quite fit with being so concerned about appearances that they’d require a passcode to get inside,” said Luis.