Pandora

by Joshua Grant

  “And what about Konesco?”

  Julian’s question burned at her heart. Olga’s dementia-induced warning could have been wrong. The events of this day had her so turned around. With more monsters aboard, Konesco would need their help, and they could certainly use his. Then there was the matter of possibly condemning an innocent man to death.

  And if we let him in and he turns out to be a psychotic creep?

  Aubrey looked down at Gabe still nestled in her arms and thought of the way the captain looked at her when she found the first journal page, sizing her up, a wolf salivating at his prey.

  “He’s on his own for now,” she announced. “Now let’s go before something else comes for us.”

  Chapter 21

  Deck 11

  They asked for too much and I said I’d deliver. And I have, I really have this time. Five thousand bodies and six million dollars in machinery. What a waste. The Organization burns a forest to catch a stag.

  But this time all the cards are in my favor. This time the Organization will pay dearly for their indiscretion. You offered me a promotion for a simple course change Carver. Now you’re going to change course for me. I’m no one’s lackey. I know you’re not going to sit back and wait for a delivery. You’re too smart for that.

  But I’m smarter.

  Smarter than you. Smarter than the Organization. I have the Sample you want, your godhood you babbling zealots are always ranting about. It’s soon to be the only sample. I’ve ordered the men to sink the ship. Your future is about to go down in flames. But don’t worry, I’ve got another way off this ship. I’ll be in touch about payment. You thought I’d run headlong into the fire for the cause, content with a minor position in an Organization so obsolete it doesn’t even have a name. You thought you were gods already, the perfect race, superior to all mankind.

  It’s going to cost you. And Carver, I don’t take checks. We’ll start with an island as a goodwill deposit and go from there.

  And just remember Carver, I’m smarter than you.

  Konesco crumpled up the torn journal page and threw it at the body slumped in the corner.

  Sepella, you ass!

  He clenched his jaw tight—

  --and started laughing. Konesco was beyond furious, but he couldn’t help but admire the irony of the situation. Captain Sepella had only been inducted into the Organization for a few months. He was a minor player, a front man for the select group, an errand boy at best. Yet he thought he could challenge the Organization—blackmail them even—and get away with it.

  Now he was just a greasy stain in the safe room’s corner. After collecting the Organization’s sample, the man retreated to the hidden space behind his favorite onboard restaurant thinking he could hide from the lidless eyes of Watcher while his crew did the real work.

  But mere men couldn’t contend with Watcher. Sepella had potential to be something great, which is why the Organization inducted him in the first place, but he lacked the divine will to be a true member. The Organization had survived the fall of the Third Reich. It had fought and strived and clawed its way through the Cold War and the decline of the Soviet Union. It was immortal.

  “We’re immortal,” Konesco growled. “And you’re—well look at you.”

  Konesco laughed again. Sepella didn’t have a face and wouldn’t be looking at anything for quite some time. His body lay limply in the corner of the small room. A dozen dark stalks sprang from his neck where his head should have been, fanning out into the wall like a three dimensional tree mosaic. Konesco had already picked its forbidden fruit. Sepella’s bargaining chip, the small glass vial of Watcher’s flesh, lay safely in his vest pocket now. He’d collect several more of course, just to be on the safe side.

  But the real prize was still missing.

  In order to utilize Sepella’s method of escape, Konesco still needed his card which put him very uncomfortably back at square one. He’d shoot the man’s withered body if he weren’t worried it’d draw the attention of the others to this den of incriminating evidence. He’d just have to be content with the knowledge that Watcher was using his inferior brain for something less than savory.

  Konesco turned his attention to the computer that adorned the small desk in the room, the one where he found the taunting journal entry. The monitor displayed footage from several areas of the ship, none of it linked to the ship’s official security feed. From here Sepella watched his crew’s efforts fail one by one. The corner of Konesco’s mouth curved upward. Sepella undoubtedly felt a curl of fear slowly growing with each witnessed death as he realized how inferior to Watcher he really was. He must have died crying out to the Organization to save him.

  Konesco scanned over the various feeds, stopping briefly on the engine room, or what was left of it. Watcher had taken up residence there. The glimpse of carnage was enough to remind him that Sepella was right about one thing: he, and the Organization, were still vulnerable. For the moment Watcher had the upper hand and it wouldn’t be long before it played it. Konesco needed to hurry and finish this business. The Organization had chosen him, its glorified champion, to deliver its prize and burn his name into the fabric of history.

  Konesco aimed to deliver. Unlike Sepella he recognized the Organization’s divine intellect and right to rule over this world and all the things in it. He’d deliver Watcher to Carver and be rewarded with everlasting life, one of the few born into a new species that would rule this world as gods.

  But first he needed the keycard. The damn keycard.

  Watcher had made quick work of Olga. He had watched the whole exchange from here. Which meant he was in the market for some new talent. He clicked through the video frames.

  Ah, there you are.

  He paused on the group of people cautiously making their way toward the front of the ship. He’d never be able to get to Aubrey. She had no family he could use against her. Besides, using her would draw too much attention from Watcher (why the creature was so obsessed with her was still beyond Konesco). The kid was useless. Kids always were. Konesco still didn’t trust Mac, which left—

  “Looks like this is your lucky day Eduardo,” Konesco muttered. “Ricardo is in trouble and you get to save him.”

  Konesco smiled as Sepella’s head tendrils twitched darkly.

  Chapter 22

  Deck 3, Port Hall

  Julian jetted down the hallway feeling like something might jump out at him at any second. It wasn’t easy going it alone again. Mac’s refuge seemed pretty solid. The “Down in Front,” a massive show theatre in the bow of the ship had plenty of exits, though that meant more points of entry they had to defend against. But if the dining hall encounter taught them anything, it was that being cornered was equitable to death, and death wasn’t what it used to be.

  No, more exits was fine. Unfortunately, no ammo wasn’t. The battle with Sasha had cost them most of their resources. Between the three of them, they were able to scrounge up enough ammo to fill Aubrey’s pistol and about a half clip to both Mac and Julian. Not exactly Christmas. Which is what brought Julian here.

  Much to Aubrey’s protest, Julian left the others in the theatre bastion to search for the ship’s security office. He eventually won that argument because frankly they didn’t have a choice. Someone needed to stay with the kid and the recovering Mac and none of them would last five minutes without something to defend themselves with.

  Let’s just hope I last five minutes out here.

  Cold sweat trickled down Julian’s back as he ran, his footsteps echoing impossibly loud off the increasingly claustrophobic walls. He felt a million and one eyes watching him traverse the barren lifeless corridors. The security office was located at Deck 3 mid, just two decks below the theatre’s first floor and a short jaunt down the hall. Julian hoped it hadn’t already been looted in the chaos. Or overrun. He tried to ignore that dismal thought. If this thing, this Watcher Tom and Gabe mentioned, really was as smart as the kid seemed to think it was, the ship’s security c
enter would be one of the first places it would have posted up.

  Moot point. We need the guns, he told himself, regurgitating the same argument he used on Aubrey. It didn’t sound any more sane to him now. The path ahead wasn’t his only worry. Mac was banged up pretty bad, and frankly was a bit of a scaredy cat when it came to the wet work. The doctor was pretty solid. She had seen action before and it showed. That really left her alone to watch over the other two. Gotta be quick.

  Julian stopped abruptly in front of the door aptly marked SECURITY. A sign with smaller print hung beneath it stating, “If an emergency please dial 7 on any ship phone or speak to ship personnel located in any of our security offices.”

  Right, I think this qualifies.

  He cast one more glance back up and down the hallway. Empty. Far too empty. Julian yearned for the days when being alone didn’t mean being afraid. He sucked in a deep breath, grabbed the door handle, and turned. Good, it’s not locked. Of course, that meant it wasn’t exactly empty either. A dark cloud for every silver lining.

  It opened easily under his grip, swinging inward and revealing a small but adequate security center. A bank of camera monitors glowed in the corner casting eerie shadows over the mostly dark room. Some of the screens were off; two were snowstorms of static, their corresponding cameras long since destroyed; one was shattered altogether, probably going with the trickle of dried blood that tattooed the station like crimson lightning bolts.

  A desk was at the right filled with scattered reports of undoubtedly bland minor crimes. Those vacationing retirees didn’t tend to hijack ships or attempt to set fire to their rooms. In the corner opposite to the monitor station was an internal communication post, a place to receive calls from around the ship about lewd drunken behavior. It was a complete mess, no use to him at all. But on the far wall between the two stations were—

  Guns!

  Julian practically rushed in, his heart merrily skipping a beat. The weapons locker lay wide open, was beaten open to be more precise, and scattered out over the floor were shells, shotgun shells. Which meant there must have been a—

  Jackpot!

  Julian took it back, it was Christmas! He never expected to find any of the shotguns left, but one glorious pump-action arm cannon still clung to the rack, solitary but superb. Julian rushed in for the godsend—

  Movement to the left!

  He threw himself into the desk to the right, aiming, trying to acquire a target, a storm of papers fluttering into the air adding to the chaos. Stupid, Julian! Why didn’t you look? The papers settled and Julian saw what had caught his eye. The soft ghostly glow of the monitors just barely illuminated the only corner he had not checked. There in the shadows something wriggled, something less than human.

  His finger tightened on the trigger, but he did not shoot. The creature, more like a pod really, didn’t approach or attempt to attack. It looked like a large meaty tree trunk had pierced the corner of the room, extending right up through the floor and into the ceiling. Tiny string like tentacles—God, Julian hated those—snaked into the surrounding walls like a mold, anchoring the main stalk. A few of these wiggled on the surface like tiny scorpion tail branches, the source of Julian’s movement.

  He slowly lowered his weapon. Despite its sinister looks, it didn’t seem overtly threatening, at least not at the moment. Like the fungus he encountered several floors above, it must have been dormant. He’d conserve his precious ammo and save it for the things that were blatantly trying to kill him.

  Julian pressed towards the cabinet, keeping a careful watch of the pod tree in case it got cute, and stopped. Something at the monitor station caught his eye, screamed for it really, but what was it? Nothing seemed blatantly out of place—well, the post-apocalyptic version of out of place. He searched the monitors, scanning hard, coming up blank. Most covered hallways, each its own tornado trail of debris, one of them outside this room, two of them blocked by luggage and carrying carts that had been woven into a barricade, but nothing out of the ordinary, nothing that should have given him pause.

  Nothing but—

  There!

  The central monitor held what he was looking for. As it turned out, it really was nothing, but not the nothing he would have liked. It was the kind of nothing that wrenched at his already ulcer-bound stomach. The monitor depicted the “Midsummer Night’s Dream” dining hall they had so recently vacated. From the eye in the sky the place looked even worse, a portrait of degraded elegance full of crashed trays and toppled chairs. It was what was missing that bothered Julian.

  No, bothered was too polite. It really scared the shit out of him.

  They had been forced to leave Olga’s body behind, taking just a moment to close her unseeing eyes, search her for any unspent ammo (Julian hated that but thirteen bullets later he hated it just a little less), and then cover her with one of the stark white table cloths. He was still haunted by the deep red circle that formed on it as they walked away leaving her body there in the open to rot.

  Except it wasn’t there. The camera peered down at a bloody smear and a crumpled cloth. Either someone had moved Olga…or Olga was up and about looking for them, joining the thousands of other bodies that should have filled the monitors but didn’t. Julian didn’t like either prospect.

  He shivered, looking back at the disfigured tree as if it might explode across the room at him, but it just wriggled menacingly, content with its dark and murky corner. Right, get the guns and go. Julian swiveled that direction and his hand bumped against something on the monitor desk surface. He caught the clipboard, the papers on it narrowly escaping a plunge to the floor. You’re getting clumsy Eduardo. Probably a side effect of the lack of sleep. A nice power nap sounded pretty good right now. Yeah, and a shower and a tub of ice cream. He sighed, moving to set it back on its perch, reading the title out of pure curiosity.

  Security Memo: Integration of New Systems.

  Julian focused on the bloodstained monitor. Guys must have offed themselves from boredom long before the shit hit the fan. He went to toss the clipboard back onto the desk and abruptly stopped, his hand trembling slightly with the effort. His heart beat faster as he read the next line.

  Emergency Escape Pods for Ship Personnel.

  Julian read the sentence several times, his excitement mounting. Could it be true? Was there still another way off this ship than jumping? Aubrey and the others needed him to get back quickly but the memo certainly warranted further investigation. Hell, if it was true it beat out a shotgun any day. He glanced up at the monitors. No one was in the hallway outside. He had time. He read on, his excitement growing with each word.

  That’s right boys, this one’s a doosey. Julian wrinkled his nose. Doosey? What was this, the sixties? Some bigwig brainiac thought it would be a good idea to add on two low-capacity escape pods in light of all the captains and crews that have been abandoning their passengers lately. They figure the captain will be more willing to go down with the ship if he has some way to get off of it after it sinks. Bunch of eggheads.

  Julian smirked. It actually made sense, but most of his smile was fueled by the prospect of escape, something that was quickly boiling into a desperate need to be free of this place. He quickly put that in check and read on eagerly.

  The two pods will be located up top with the smoke stack. They’ll be installing them as soon as we roll into port in the morning. They don’t want the passengers knowing about this, says seeing escape pods being put in in the middle of the cruise makes people worry, so we’ll be setting up barriers and directing people away. Sasmodi, you and Baird—

  The rest of the memo looked like deployment instructions and duty rosters, but Julian didn’t care, it was officially his favorite written work. It certainly is a doosey, he smirked.

  The escape pods hadn’t been included in the ship’s specs. That meant the passengers and possibly even the rest of the crew didn’t know about them. In other words, they had two tickets straight out of here! Julian would gra
b the guns, snag the others, and be on the Lido in fifteen. How ‘bout that shower and ice cream? He smiled, placing the clipboard back on the monitor station surface—

  --blood drained from Julian’s face faster than if a black hole had opened up nearby. Someone stood on the monitor of the hallway right outside the room! No, they were in the doorway right behind him!

  “Looks like you struck gold.”

  Shit. Julian closed his eyes, kicking himself for not being more careful. That was twice in one room. Can’t give up now, not when we’re so close. He swiveled to face Konesco who was leaning casually against the door frame. Despite his relaxed posture, the captain’s hand was on his machine gun, finger on the trigger. Double shit.

  Julian would never be able to rush him and live, not like this. If he’s the traitor that Olga made him out to be, he reminded himself, but even as he thought it he knew the optimism awarded by the possibility of escape didn’t transfer. Marcus knew something shady was going on out here, and the way Konesco stood, so confident and relaxed, certainly didn’t paint him as one of the good guys. Julian had to get him talking, distract him somehow. Konesco beat him to the punch.

  “Security office. Good thinking Julian.” He abandoned his perch and slowly strode into the room, nodding to the alien life form in the corner, “Could do something about the décor though.”

  If Julian needed proof that Olga’s words were true, this was it. Konesco was so calm, so at ease, but beneath the surface bubbled nervous energy. There was a sort of delighted arrogance about him that Julian had never noticed before. He was a carefully cultivated volcano that would blow on command and Julian was right in the blast radius. Get him talking. Draw him in close.

  “So you’ve seen them too?” Julian put his machine gun on the monitor surface. It wasn’t much good to him at this point. Konesco could blow him away long before he levelled it. At least this way he could gain some trust, or at least generate a false sense of security. Then, maybe just then he could get close enough.