by Ally Blue
Not that Mo blamed him. The changes in Dr. Douglas were enough to scare the shit out of anyone, even without murderous intent. And he’d definitely been trying to kill Armin.
Thank fuck Mo had gone back to his quarters for his Triton semiautomatic pistol, then followed Armin here, or Armin might be dead right now. The thought of him with his skull smashed or his guts strewn around the room made Mo’s stomach knot.
Bright flashes of memory—dream? hallucination?—pulsed one after another behind Mo’s eyes: Armin pressed against him at The Beach, Armin naked on the floor of the aquarium, Armin’s wide-eyed stare drilling into his brain like the end of the world.
Or maybe just the end of his sanity. He remembered comming with Armin before, but the time between that conversation and dancing in the empty bar was a black void in his mind. So were going to the aquarium and leaving it. His memory was a blank file dotted with scattered blips up until the moment Armin commed him again while he was wandering aimlessly in the hallways near his quarters.
Poole’s voice rose above the others, startling Mo out of his thoughts. “I am the senior scientist on this pod, damn it! I should be in charge of the autopsies.”
Mo wrinkled his nose. Bad time for scientific posturing.
On the com, Youssouf shut down Poole’s pouting with her usual efficiency. “I don’t give a shit about rank right now, Poole. You’re a damn good geologist, but you’re not a medical doctor. I am. Therefore, I’m running this show now. Unwad your goddamn panties and deal with it.”
Mo laughed out loud. Even Armin cracked a smile, which eased the awful haunted look on his face for a second.
Dr. Jhut spoke, sounding tired and grim. “I’m going to continue the experiments here in the lab. Mr. Gordon has agreed to remain here. He’s rounded up some of the BathyTech staff with military experience to act as security for you while you perform the autopsies. We do not want a repeat of what happened to poor Gerald and Misha.”
“Definitely not.” Armin stopped pacing and closed his eyes. In that moment, he looked exhausted and fragile, and Mo’s concern ratcheted up a few thousand notches. “Be careful, all of you. Be careful coming here. Don’t take any chances. Mandala, you be careful as well. And please let me know if you learn anything new.”
The others promised caution. They all sounded subdued. It was as if Gerald Palto and Neil Douglas’s deaths had broken them somehow.
A twinge of guilt prodded Mo’s gut, though he knew it shouldn’t. He pushed away from the desk, went to Armin, and touched his cheek. Armin’s eyes flew open, like he’d forgotten Mo was there, and Mo wished he had the power to turn back time.
“I’m sorry about Neil.” He moved closer. Traced his fingertips along Armin’s jaw. “You know I wouldn’t have shot him if I didn’t have to.”
“I know. And I’d be dead or worse if you hadn’t, so I’m grateful to you for that.” The wan shade of a smile curved Armin’s lips again. “Amara’s glad you shot him through the neck instead of the head, so his brain is preserved for autopsy.”
It took Mo a second to realize Armin was talking about Youssouf. Nobody on BathyTech called her by her given name.
He shook his head. “That was a cold thing to say to you.”
“She’s a practical woman, that’s all.” Armin peered at him with dark eyes full of fear, questions, and apologies. “Most of the pod is still confined to quarters. She’ll want you back in your room as well.”
“I figured she would.”
“You don’t mind?”
Fuck yes, I mind, I belong here, with you, figuring this shit out. Or at least working security. Not that there was much hope of that. Youssouf didn’t like trusting security to anyone without formal military or law enforcement training.
Mo swallowed his vitriol and forced a casual shrug. “I’d rather stay, but hell, I just work here. I do what the boss says.” An idea occurred to him that perked him up on the inside as well as the outside. “I can go over the videos from the first walk when we found the rock, and the ones we got of the mermaids the other day. Nobody’s had a chance to do that yet, what with everything else going on, so I might as well do it while I’m cooped up.”
A strange expression crossed Armin’s features. Like something Mo said connected with some half-forgotten fragment of knowledge in the depths of Armin’s subconscious. The hairs on Mo’s arms rose with the sense of impending revelation. Then Armin shook his head, as if to physically rid himself of whatever he was thinking, and the moment passed.
“I think that’s a good idea.” He took both of Mo’s hands in his, laced their fingers together, and squeezed. “I wish you could stay. I don’t like the thought of you in your quarters alone.”
Mo’s heart turned over. Nobody had worried about his safety since he left Dubai, a lifetime ago. It was sweet. And he worried about the doc too. All the time, actually, which bothered him. He hadn’t gone into this thing looking for a relationship. Especially now, with everything going to shit around them.
None of which he said out loud. Instead he tugged Armin close, leaned in, and kissed him. Nothing sexual or aggressive. Just a soft, lingering press of lips, letting the doc know they were on the same page. Even if they weren’t.
“I’ll be fine.” He stole another kiss, and another, quick and sweet. “Don’t worry about me. You smart types just concentrate on figuring out how to fix this mess.”
Armin smiled, and the flat, vacant look the attack had left on his face receded a little more. Mo was glad. Now that he’d thought of going over the mermaid videos, he was anxious to get back to his quarters and start watching them. Guilt about leaving Armin would only distract him, and wouldn’t help anyone else. Least of all Armin.
Youssouf and Poole arrived a few minutes later. As expected, Youssouf banished Mo to his quarters. He left without argument, exchanging a quick glance with Armin on the way out.
He’ll be fine, said the voice in Mo’s head that wanted nothing more than to examine the footage of the mermaids in private, with no one hanging over his shoulder. He nodded to himself. Armin was well guarded. Safer than Mo, most likely.
Jem, Rashmi, and Edie Ling from communications waited for him in the hall. He grinned, pleased to see his friends healthy and whole. “Hey. You guys get stuck with babysitting me?”
His boss rolled her eyes, but she was smiling. “Me and Rashmi’re walking you to your quarters, that’s all. Then he’s off to help Gordon guard the lab and I’m coming back here.”
Mo eyed Ling, who’d taken up a stance at the med bay door that practically screamed bad-ass guard, do not fuck with. It looked natural. Like she did it every day, even though she didn’t.
The corner of her mouth hitched into a wry half smile, as if she knew what Mo was thinking. “São Paulo. Jemima and I served together.”
“Oh.” Mo scratched his head, not sure what to say. He knew Jem had fought in the war that had torn South America apart and had been part of the battle that had nearly wiped Brazil’s largest city off the map fifteen years ago. But he couldn’t reconcile the quiet, soft-spoken Ling he said hi to in the hall with the ruthless soldier she must’ve been if she’d survived the bloodiest, most vicious war in over a century.
Jem plucked at his arm. “C’mon. Let’s hustle.”
“Yeah.” Mo shot Ling a smile. “Later.”
She nodded once, her smile already fading into a blank gaze that made Mo think of a machine. He turned and followed Jem and Rashmi down the hall with a sense of relief.
When they arrived at his quarters, Jem insisted on going inside first to make sure the place was empty and safe. She pffted when he protested. “People can get pretty damn creative when it comes to being places they’re not supposed to be. What’re you afraid I’ll see, anyway? Your lace underpants? Like I give a shit.”
Rashmi snickered. Mo scowled. “Fine. Whatever.”
Jem raised her eyebrows. With a deep sigh, Mo thumbed the sensor. The door slid open. Jem slipped inside and swept her
weapon in a wide arc before moving deeper in.
Mo waited in fidgety silence, chewing his thumbnail while Rashmi watched the hall as if something might attack from that direction any second. Truthfully, Mo had no idea why Jem checking his room made him so damned nervous. There was no good reason for it. Nothing for her to find that he’d be ashamed for her to see. Armin’s things were in there, but they hadn’t exactly kept their involvement a secret.
Logical or not, he didn’t relax until she emerged less than thirty seconds later and gave the all clear. “You know the drill. No leaving your quarters until Youssouf gives the go-ahead. Call with the emergency code if you need help urgently.”
Mo remembered Armin’s story about the woman on the Varredura Longa who’d had her tongue cut out. As far as Mo was concerned, the jury was out regarding whether she’d done it herself. “What if I’m disabled? Or I can’t speak?”
“The new com bracelets have emergency sensors, remember? All you have to do is press it for three seconds.” She studied him with obvious concern. “You okay, Rees?”
Inside, Mo cursed himself for forgetting about last month’s modifications to the com links. Outside, he put on his best casual smile. “Yeah, no worries. Just covering the bases.”
Her eyes narrowed. Mo kept his smile in place and hoped he hadn’t just talked himself into a trip back to the med bay, this time as an isolation patient.
Let it go, he thought at Jem, gritting his teeth behind his fake bland expression. Just let it the fuck go.
Finally, Jem sighed and stepped back. “All right. Well. I guess we’re off, then.” She pointed at him, reminding him of his oldest sister for a second. “Behave yourself for once.”
Mo saluted. “Aye aye, Cap’n Mama, sir.”
Rashmi laughed out loud. Jem shook her head. “Asshole. Stay here and don’t get killed, okay?”
Mo grinned. “Love you too.”
Her mouth twisted into a reluctant smile. “C’mon, Rashmi. Let’s go.” She turned and started up the hall.
Rashmi shot Mo a solemn look. “Take care, brother.”
“Yeah. You too.”
Rashmi trotted after Jem, who’d already gotten a sizable lead in spite of her shorter stride. Mo watched them until Jem turned to glare at him over her shoulder, then he stepped through the door into his quarters and locked it behind him.
Inside, alone, his tension fell away. He rolled his shoulders. “Turn lights down to low.”
The light dimmed to a soft golden glow that illuminated the untidy heaps of clothes, shoes, and various junk he and Armin had left on the floor. He kicked his way through the mess, promising himself he’d clean up after he went over the vids. It seemed like a stupid waste of time, but what the hell else was he going to do while he was stuck in his quarters? Lie on the bed and worry? Fuck that.
He settled into the round, plush chair at the workstation in the corner, and drummed his fingers on his knee. Maybe he could go ahead and watch the mermaid vid first, since it was so short. Get it out of the way. After that, he could watch the one from the first walk. Hell, they were both no more than different ways to kill time and keep himself from going nuts wondering what Armin was learning in the lab. He didn’t expect to find anything earth-shattering on either one. Interesting, maybe. Useful? No way.
“Computer, 3-D display of video record from my walker cam, dated 14 May 2137. External cam.” Walkers automatically recorded each walk on their built-in feeds, but since that data tended to take up a lot of space in the central system those feeds were necessarily lower quality. He’d watch them later on, maybe, but he doubted it would help much. What he really wanted to see was the high-quality, high-res external cam. The one that only recorded when he told it to.
“Anything you say, Mo.” The computer spoke in a low, sexy growl. He could almost picture the man behind the voice stretched out naked on rumpled sheets, a lazy grin curving kiss-swollen lips, one big hand trailing down well-defined abs, following a line of black hair to—
Stop it. Focus.
He cast a nervous glance around the room. Other than the hellacious mess Armin seemed to take with him everywhere that wasn’t a lab, it looked the same as it ever did. No naked men lounged on his bed, thankfully. He didn’t think he could handle that particular hallucination right now.
Daisy crouched in her cage beside the dresser, half-hidden behind the large, leafy branch, the empty husk of her latest meal discarded nearby. She watched him with her beady black spider eyes. He wondered what she was thinking. Was she curious about him and what he was doing? Did she miss Hannah? Or was she laser focused on how good that cricket had been and when she might get another one? Was she content with her plastic-caged existence, or did she yearn for the jungle she’d never seen, and the hunt she’d only known in her strange arachnid dreams?
The floor of the Peru–Chile Trench sprang to miniature life from his desktop, startling him out of his near-trance. Laughing at himself to dispel his uneasiness, he wheeled closer, adjusted the settings on the 3-D display to one hundred twenty percent magnification, and peered at the video.
This was his second sighting of the rare fish, and the first time he’d ever had a vid he’d taken himself to study and compare to his actual eyewitness sighting. Mermaid videos were exceedingly rare in the first place. To Mo’s knowledge, only seven—including his—existed. Hell, he remembered when news of the creature’s discovery had first broken. He’d been six years old then. He and his family had watched the news on TV, ages before the massive storms that destroyed the power grids in most of the Middle East. The memory of those few seconds of blurred black-and-white video had lurked in the back of his consciousness through the wonder of learning about life on the deep-sea vents, through the long, dark hell of the Dubai blackout when half his family had died and he’d learned how to kill, through the training to become a bathyspheric diver and miner, through all the ups and down of his life since then.
The creature was so rare and so poorly documented that even now, half the scientific community thought it was a myth, like the Loch Ness Monster or something. That the few vids of it were either mistaken identity or outright fakes. But Mo knew it was as real as himself. Ever since he’d first seen a mermaid swimming toward him out of the blackness of the Mariana Trench, pallid and green-eyed and dreamlike, he’d wanted to see one again. To vid it. Capture its horrific beauty for himself.
And now he had. Now he could study it at his leisure.
If he could concentrate. Seemed like his mind wanted to wander. The short video had ended while he was sitting there daydreaming instead of paying attention.
He dug the heels of his palms into his eyes. “Computer. Restart video from the beginning.”
Thankfully, the computer did it without comment. He thought he might lose it if he heard that fucking impossible seductive voice again.
This time, he ignored all the mental pictures swirling through his head and kept his attention on the display. The mermaid’s image hovered in the translucent black cube, its tail undulating from side to side and its elongated, fingerlike pectoral fins stretching and contracting as if reaching for something beyond the edges of the video. The creature’s wide mouth gaped open, showing rows of teeth like glass shards. Its eyes seemed to stare straight into Mo’s.
It can see me.
Mo’s pulse caught in his throat. The skin pebbled up and down his arms. Logically, he knew he was imagining things. A video couldn’t see him. It was only a shadow of the original, without awareness. But he couldn’t shake the sensation of a keen mind focused on him through the image of the mermaid’s bulging, hazy eyes.
“She sees.”
Adrenaline shot through Mo’s blood, freezing his breath and paralyzing his limbs. He spun around. No one was there. “Who said that?”
The strange, cracking, clicking voice spoke again. “She. Sees. You.”
He glanced around, but couldn’t find a source for the sound.
Because it’s not real. You
’re hallucinating.
Right?
The grinding whisper answered as if it had heard his thought. “Not. Imagined. Is. Real.”
Mo laughed. It sounded deranged. “You just answered something I didn’t even fucking say. You realize that doesn’t help, right?” He covered his face with his hands when it dawned on him what he’d just done. “And now I’m talking to the voice in my head. Great.”
“Not. Voice. I am. I am.” Something went tap-tap-tap, very softly, close enough to make Mo jump. “Look. At me.”
What?
Not knowing what else to do, Mo spun his chair in a circle. He still didn’t see anyone, or anything. No possible origin for the weird, alien voice in his brain. Bizarrely, the frustration beating at his consciousness felt as if it came from an outside source rather than his own rapidly disintegrating control of the situation. Which was so many kinds of wrong he didn’t even know where to start.
He shook his head. “Where are you?”
The only answer was the tapping noise. Tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap.
What the hell was it? Christ. Holding on to his sanity by his fingernails, he leaped from his chair and paced from one side of the room to the other. No one was there. He was alone, except for Daisy, tapping on the side of her plastic cage with one pink-toed foot.
Wait.
Mouth dry and heart racing, Mo knelt beside the dresser and peered at Daisy, who’d climbed to the top of her branch and sat crouched near the humidifier in the upper left corner of the cage. Her fangs had grown longer. Thinner. Translucent. Yellow fluid dribbled from the cruelly sharp tips.
Every one of her black marble eyes glowed an awful, familiar purplish blue.
Mo’s vision went gray around the edges. He clung to the sides of the dresser and stared at the spider until the urge to pass out faded. “Daisy?”
She waved her front legs. “Can help. I can.”
Fuck. This can’t be happening.