by Ally Blue
“I wouldn’t be anywhere else.” Mo’s voice was soft. Tender. He framed Armin’s face between his palms to peer into his eyes with a frankness so deep it hurt, and Armin’s heart turned over. “I’m here, and here I’m gonna stay. With you. Okay?” He kissed Armin’s brow as if he were a child in need of comfort. “Now let’s sit down, and you tell me what you brought me here to tell me.”
“Yes. Of course.” Feeling tired—but far calmer than he had only moments before—Armin dropped his arms, took Mo’s hand, and led him to the bed, where they sat side by side. “I’m afraid, Mo.”
Mo’s sigh sounded infinitely weary. He rested a gloved hand on Armin’s thigh. The heat of his palm sank through the layers of latex, the light material of the iso suit, and clothing to sear Armin’s skin.
“I’m scared too. I think we both have a right to be.” Mo leaned closer. Rested his forehead against Armin’s temple. “But Doc, something’s happening here. We both know it. Don’t you think we have a better chance of fighting it if we’re honest with each other?”
He was right. Deep in his soul, Armin knew it.
Mo straightened up, tugged off his gloves, took off his mask, then reached out and removed Armin’s mask. He wadded all of them up together and threw them to the floor. “It’s just us now. Can we both agree we don’t need these?”
The light flickered, dimmed, and stabilized again, yellow and subdued. Armin shut his eyes. “I don’t know how to stop this. I’m so sorry.”
“Doc. Hey. Don’t.” The mattress shifted with Mo’s weight as he moved closer. One strong arm slid around Armin’s back. Mo cupped his cheek and lifted his face for a slow, deep kiss that woke every nerve in his body. When the kiss ended, he cracked open his eyelids, and Mo smiled. “Better now?”
Armin laughed, because he couldn’t help it. “Yes. I think kissing you makes everything better.”
“Can’t hurt.” Mo kissed him again, a chaste peck on the brow this time. “Okay. We came here to talk. So why don’t you tell me what’s been bugging you about that fucking rock?”
A warmth that made no sense whatsoever spread through him like a drug. Of course Mo knew where the heart of their troubles lay. He was an unusually perceptive man. Armin liked that about him. Liked it to a dangerous degree, in fact.
He leaned against Mo’s shoulder so Mo wouldn’t see how his desire had begun to move beyond sex. “The rock is . . . different.”
“I figured.” Mo’s fingers traced down his neck, the touch light enough to raise goose bumps. “Different how? C’mon, Doc. Spill it.”
Armin peeled off his gloves, stood, and unzipped his iso suit. He felt Mo watching him as he took it off. Whether he was stalling for time, or he needed to get out of the uncomfortably hot suit sooner rather than later, he couldn’t say. All he knew was that he didn’t want to have this conversation until he’d gotten out of the isolation gear. Now that he and Mo were alone, he didn’t think it was necessary. It seemed unlikely he’d caught anything from Ashlyn, since she couldn’t possibly have been exposed to anything he hadn’t.
He kicked the suit aside and settled back onto the bed, into the curve of Mo’s arm. “You already know this thing, whatever it is, isn’t the first of its kind. Or at least I’m fairly certain it isn’t.”
Mo nodded. “Yeah. The other one you wouldn’t tell me anything about.” His voice held no particular inflection, but Armin heard the faint put-out quality anyway.
“Yes, well, I truly don’t know anything about it. What it is, where it came from, anything at all. But I’m going to tell you the whole story of how we found out about it.” Armin stared at his hands, putting the story together in his mind. Finding the best way to tell someone who didn’t know. “A few weeks ago, I got a call from Mandala on behalf of Dr. Klaudia Longenesse, a colleague of ours who headed the Varredura Longa, a deep-sea research pod on the ocean floor off the coast of Antarctica. They were funded by Chile’s university system, coupled with donations from private parties, so they had a great deal of money for research of all sorts. Mermaids had been reported there, and they’d been trying to get footage of them. Trying to study them and learn something of their habits. Anyway, Klaudia and her crew had found an odd sonar signature a few kilometers from the pod. They went to check into it, and brought back something unusual.”
“A not-rock like the one in the lab, you mean.” The grimness in Mo’s voice matched the way his fingers gripped Armin’s shoulder.
“Well, that’s the thing. We’re not sure what it was they brought back.”
Mo scratched his chin. “They didn’t show you any footage?”
“No.” And, God, how Armin had wished, over and over and over, that he had pressed Mandala to ask Klaudia to send them something—anything—for study before they went to Antarctica. But he hadn’t, and now he had nothing but a low-quality video clip from an outside camera. “Klaudia wanted to keep it as secret as possible, and we didn’t push her since Mandala was planning to bring a team down soon anyway.”
“What happened?”
Blood. Bodies. The smell of death. Klaudia Longenesse walking into the darkness. And God, Dr. Aguilar . . .
Armin rubbed his palms on his thighs, trying to scrape away the memory on the rough cotton of his trousers. “Klaudia contacted Mandala first, because she needed a microgeology expert. Mandala asked me to join the team because the object was found in fifty-seven hundred meters of water, and my secondary degree is in deep-marine biology. Carlo was on board because he is . . . was—” Damn, that was painful. “—a leading expert in deep-marine geology. She called Neil Douglas also, because he’s one of the world’s only true experts in the field of exobiology. She wanted a full complement of experts in various disciplines that might be needed, and we’d all worked together before at one time or another so we were already familiar with each other and knew we worked well together.”
“And what happened when you got there?”
When they got there.
He knew he’d see those first moments in his nightmares for the rest of his days.
He stared at the brownish blotch on the middle drawer of his dresser so he wouldn’t have to see Mo’s horror and pity while he told his tale. “Only Neil and Carlo were available immediately. I wasn’t able to get away for another ten days at the earliest. Mandala could’ve gone within the week, but no one thought there was any rush. Klaudia said the object was safe in their vault and for us to come when we could. So the group waited for me.” He laughed, the sound sharp and bitter. “Ten days, that’s all. But when we arrived, there was no one there to greet us. All but one of the Varredura Longa crew was either dead or missing.”
“Jesus.” Mo rubbed a hand over the stubble developing on his chin. “How? And where in the hell did they go?”
“All of the walkers were missing, as well as both rovers. Oddly enough, the sub for traveling upside was still there. And the dead . . .” The memory had his pulse racing as if he were experiencing it all over again. He turned to face Mo. “They weren’t simply dead. They’d been slaughtered. Torn apart. Some had knives still in their hands. Others had injuries we couldn’t figure out at all. We were forced to identify some of the crew by DNA sample, because all that was left was internal organs.”
The color leeched from Mo’s face, though his expression didn’t change. “Jesus.”
“We found only one surviving crew member.” Armin watched Mo’s fists open and close, open and close. “Dr. Prema Aguilar, one of the marine zoologists. She specialized in studying deep-sea octopi, particularly in the Antarctic area. A brilliant scientist.” He paused, remembering.
“Armin?” Mo touched his knee. “What happened?”
Not for the first time, Armin wondered how a mind as bright and quick as Mo’s remained sane in a profession as dull as mining. He laid his hand over Mo’s. “We found her barricaded in the infirmary. She’d cut out her tongue and both her eyes.”
“Oh shit.” Mo swallowed. He looked ill. “That pa
rt sounds a little too familiar.”
“Exactly.” Armin wove his fingers together with Mo’s and focused on the places where their skin pressed together. “We found other eyes scattered around the place. Seventeen of them in all. One pair and a single belonged to two of the more intact bodies. We never did find the people the other ones belonged to.”
He watched the realization dawn on Mo—that some of the missing Varredura Longa crew must have gone walking minus their eyes.
Mo licked his lips. “That must’ve been a shock.”
“It was.” Armin studied the glisten of Mo’s newly moistened lower lip with fascination. “Neil’s the only one of the three of us with any practical experience in medicine, so he stabilized Dr. Aguilar while Mandala and I attempted to download the computer logs and lab records into our portables before notifying the authorities of the deaths.”
Mo rubbed his thumb along the edge of Armin’s hand. “So you didn’t think they’d let you go back there once the investigation was started?”
“We knew they wouldn’t. And we were right. After we reported the deaths, we weren’t allowed back into the facility.” He clung to Mo’s hand. Mo’s strong grasp calmed him. Steadied him. Made him feel as if he could face whatever lay ahead. “None of us ever heard anything else about it. No one told us what the findings were. And none of us were allowed to see Dr. Aguilar again.”
“You said you attempted to download the records. Does that mean you weren’t able to?”
“They’d all been wiped blank.”
Mo’s lips formed an oh. “Damn.”
“Yes.” Armin sighed. “We have no idea why they would’ve done such a thing. It makes no sense. And to my mind, at least, such a deliberate act doesn’t fit with the unbridled violence that obviously occurred there. The dichotomy makes me uneasy.”
“Yeah, I can see why.” Mo’s eyes focused on Armin’s face as if he were an anchor in a stormy sea. “What about the thing they found, that they’d wanted you guys to look at?”
“It was gone. Most of the security footage was reduced to static—we still don’t know why—but we were able to recover three seconds of footage from one of the outside cameras. It showed Dr. Longenesse in a walker suit, moving away from the pod into the open ocean, carrying what looked like a round, black stone.”
Mo drew in a hissing breath. “Just like the one we recovered.”
Armin nodded. “The footage wasn’t very clear, but as far as we can tell, this one is identical.”
“Christ.” Mo hunched his shoulders, his forehead creased in thought. “How’d you know it was her?”
“Varredura Longa walkers are very much like BathyTech’s in that they’re the same color, but they’re personalized to their wearers. Her name was printed on the back. Otherwise we would’ve had no idea who it was.” Armin closed his eyes and watched the memory of the Varredura Longa parade across the inside of his eyelids, his punishment for not getting there in time to save them. “We never seriously considered an infectious organism, though of course we suggested that the authorities test for one. There are no known organisms that fit what happened there. Some do spread that quickly, but absolutely none cause psychological symptoms without physical ones.”
“And you never thought you might be dealing with something brand-new?” Mo sounded surprised and put out.
Armin opened his eyes and stared at Mo, defiant. “Something new? From where? Even if the object were extraterrestrial and Klaudia and her team found signs of life in it, that wouldn’t equate to something infectious. You wouldn’t say that if you had any idea what the odds were against it.”
“Okay. Fine. Sorry.” Mo moved closer, his fingers tightening around Armin’s hand. “I really am sorry. We shouldn’t be fighting right now. We need to be a team.”
“Yes.” He leaned forward to press a kiss to Mo’s mouth. “Yes. We do. We are. A team. You and me.”
Mo smiled, and Armin’s heart did a strange little flip. He squeezed Mo’s hand. The connection felt good. It felt right. It calmed the confusion and terror swarming like locusts inside him.
Mo’s smile faded into a solemnity that matched Armin’s to perfection. “The things I’ve seen and heard scared me before. But it scares me even more now.”
“It scares me too.” He slid closer still until his leg pressed against Mo’s. “I have no idea if this is truly a contagion, some sort of mass psychosis, or something else entirely. But whatever’s happening right now, it’s very real, even if what you’re experiencing isn’t. If we’re going to fight it, we have to keep our heads. We have to distinguish the real from the imagined.”
“Yeah.” Mo rested his free hand on Armin’s knee. The heat of his palm sank through Armin’s trousers to warm his skin. It made him feel protected. “I know when I’m seeing or hearing things. Or, well, I think I do. I’m pretty sure.” He let out a soft laugh. “Okay, no, I’m not. I can’t always tell anymore. Not when the shit I’m experiencing feels so damn real.”
Armin nodded. “It’s terrible not being able to trust your own senses.”
They stared at one another. Armin knew they had much more to say to one another, but he couldn’t quite mold his thoughts into words, and he suspected Mo felt the same.
The com beside the door whistled the tone for general emergency announcements, sending a jolt of adrenaline through Armin’s body. He clutched Mo’s hand tight while they listened.
“This is Dr. Youssouf with an emergency announcement from Dr. Palto. Effective immediately, operations are halted and all personnel with the exception of the medical team are confined to quarters. We’ve had an outbreak of a suspected contagion. We are not certain how it spreads, or even its exact nature. All we know is that whatever this is, it spreads very, very quickly. Symptoms we know about so far are psychotic and/or violent behavior, and, well, that’s all.” She paused. “Sorry, folks. I know nobody likes it. But it’s for your own safety, so just do it, okay? Youssouf out.”
Armin absorbed the news without surprise. After all, he’d recommended it. Although . . . “I know this is a ridiculous question, but living quarters here are equipped with standard two-week emergency rations, right?”
“Yeah. We’ll have to split it if we stay together, which gives us a week’s worth, but I can’t see this thing lasting that long anyway.” Mo let go of Armin, stood and paced to the door and back again. “Damn it. I can’t stay in here.”
“I know how you feel. My team and I need to continue our work if we’re ever going to understand what’s happening here. But this is the safest thing for the population of this pod.”
“I know.” Mo scratched his neck. “I was just thinking about Daisy.”
Jealousy elbowed Armin in the gut. He ignored it, because he had no patience with irrational feelings. He raised his eyebrows. “Who’s Daisy?”
“Hannah’s pet pink-toed tarantula. Nobody thought to take her upside with Hannah, so I’m taking care of her.” He shrugged. “Maybe it’s silly to worry about a spider right now, but Hannah loves her, and it’s not like she can forage for herself or anything down here. She’s pretty low maintenance, but still . . . If this does end up lasting more than a week and I’m not there to feed her and give her water, she’ll die.”
This glimpse of Mo’s sweet side warmed Armin’s heart. He rose to his feet. “Then let’s go to your quarters. We’ll wait it out there, together. If I bring my rations we won’t even have to split anything.”
Mo’s eyes widened. “Are you sure you want to do that? You’d leave your own room?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” Armin gestured at the small, plain space. “There’s no particular reason for me to stay here. I’ll simply tell the auto-port I’m staying with you.”
“We’ll get in trouble if we get caught leaving.”
“Then we’ll have to make certain we don’t get caught.”
A slow, wicked smile lit Mo’s face. He grasped Armin’s wrist, tugged him close, and planted a toe-curling kiss on h
is lips. “You’re sexy when you break the rules, Doc.”
Armin grinned. “In that case, I’ll have to do it more often.”
A dark fire glittered in Mo’s eyes. He kissed Armin again. Deeper this time. Aggressive. Armin’s knees wobbled.
Finally, ages later, Mo drew back, looking as dazed as Armin felt. “Well. We better get going, before Youssouf decides to lock everybody’s doors just in case.”
Armin blinked, startled. “Can she do that?”
“I don’t think so. But I’d rather not find out the hard way that I’m wrong.”
“Right. Just let me get a few things.”
Mo fidgeted beside the door while Armin threw his toiletries and a few changes of clothing into his travel bag, along with the silvery pouches of his freeze-dried food rations. Once he was packed, he told the auto-port to forward any messages to Mo’s quarters, and the two of them slipped out into the hallway, each carrying one of the five-gallon water jugs from Armin’s ration closet.
The corridor seemed deserted. They saw no one during the short walk from Armin’s quarters to Mo’s. But the back of Armin’s neck prickled, and he had to fight the urge to turn around.
Reaching Mo’s room was a relief. He set his things on the floor and flopped onto the bed as soon as Mo sealed the door behind them. He watched, curious, as Mo opened the lid of a tall, wide, transparent-plastic cage on the floor, took a cricket from a box, and dropped it into the cage. The arachnid skittered down a leafy branch propped diagonally from bottom to top and attacked faster than Armin would’ve thought possible.
Armin pushed up on one elbow so he could see better. “Fascinating. I’ve never seen a tarantula feeding in person before.”
“Yeah, it’s something all right. Not sure what exactly, but it’s something.” Mo crouched beside the cage and peered through the wall at the spider. “Hi, Daisy,” he crooned in a high, singsong voice. “You’re a big old hairy, creepy thing, you know that? Yes, you are.”
Armin laughed. “And yet here you are, feeding her and talking to her like she’s your child.”