Down

by Ally Blue

  Mo’s head swam. He lost his balance and sat down hard on the floor, still staring at Daisy. “Help? Wh . . . what?”

  “She. Sees.” Daisy’s unexpected spider voice echoed in Mo’s brain. “They. See.” She stroked her forelegs along her fangs with a gentle, loving touch. “This. Show you. Tell you.”

  Mo rocked in place, shaking his head. He felt on the verge of some massive revelation, if only he could get what Daisy was trying to tell him.

  The hysterical laugh bubbled up again. He was talking to a spider. A fucking spider. And getting upset because he couldn’t understand what it was trying to tell him.

  Christ.

  Was this insanity? Wasn’t much fun, but honestly, it could be worse.

  A wheezing screech like the death of some ancient machine pierced Mo’s skull. He clamped his hands over his ears. “Ahh, fuck, stop it!”

  “Listen.” Daisy again. Goddamn. If he wasn’t careful, her strange, crackling mind-voice might end up becoming familiar. She waved her front legs around, for all the world like a tiny human losing patience. “I. Will make. You. See.”

  A pearl of bile-colored fluid oozed like oil from one of Daisy’s fangs onto a broad green leaf. Mo watched the light glance off the tiny drop, and suddenly he got it.

  For a few endless seconds, he knelt there on the floor, poised between terror and curiosity. Did he dare? What would happen to him if he accepted Daisy’s oblique offer? She’d promised to show him. To let him see.

  See what?

  It was the potential in the what that tipped the scales for Mo. Using the dresser for balance, he heaved himself back into his chair, opened the top of Daisy’s cage and reached inside. Daisy crawled into his palm. He lifted her out slowly, taking care not to drop her.

  He settled the back of his hand on the top of the dresser and watched Daisy stroke her fangs. His stomach churned and his pulse pounded so fast it made him dizzy. He couldn’t decide if his shaking fingers and bone-dry mouth were due to fear or excitement.

  Daisy’s forelegs stretched. Grew. Became long, slender, and flexible. Tentacle-like. She wrapped them around Mo’s wrist. They held him in a strong grip, the fine black bristles stinging like nettles.

  He licked his lips, suddenly more afraid than he liked. “Wait.”

  “No.”

  The spider sank her fangs into the inside of his wrist. Her venom pumped into him in scalding waves, and he saw.

  “There. Right there.” Armin pointed a gloved finger at the squiggly steel-colored oddity on the 3-D scanner. “Go around it counterclockwise, please.”

  Youssouf maneuvered the scope deeper into Neil’s brain with an expert touch. The display dipped sideways, blurring into a smear of white, gray, and blackish-red for a moment before settling back into an image of brain, coagulated blood, and the thing that definitely should not be there.

  They both stared at it. Poole, relegated to the role of assistant, dropped his petulant scowl long enough to tread closer and peer at the image in pure scientific curiosity. “So three out of four have it.”

  Armin nodded. “Apparently.”

  Neil’s was the fourth corpse they’d performed an autopsy on over the past few hours. Carlo Libra and Ryal Nataki had also shown the same abnormalities in their brain tissue, though Armin and Dr. Youssouf had very nearly labeled the grayish-black smears in Carlo’s brain a result of trauma. Since Neil’s brain was intact, unlike Carlo’s, the lesion invading both frontal lobes was undamaged. It was identical to the one in Ryal’s head. Which did nothing to help them identify it.

  Poole frowned. “What is it?”

  “I don’t know,” Armin answered truthfully. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “Neither have I.” Forehead furrowed with the effort, Youssouf guided the scope in a slow, steady tour around the anomaly. “It looks kind of like a malignant tumor, only . . . not.”

  Poole rolled his eyes heavenward. “Yes, very descriptive.”

  During the course of the autopsies, Armin had come to understand why so many of the BT3 staff disliked Dr. Poole. He might indeed be an excellent geologist—Armin wouldn’t know—but he had a habit of talking to others as if they were stupid.

  Armin decided speaking to Poole would be unproductive at best. “I understand what you’re saying, Dr. Youssouf. It does indeed resemble a malignant brain lesion in many respects. Particularly in its invasive nature.” He pointed to the branches snaking off the irregular lump and into Neil’s cerebrum. “But the differences are there. It’s simply difficult to pin down what they are.”

  Poole snorted. “Please.”

  “Exactly.” Youssouf ignored Poole as if he weren’t even there. Her gaze never wavered from the display. “I’m sampling now.”

  Armin watched as Youssouf carefully took samples both from the growth and the surrounding brain tissue, as she’d done with the remains of the other anomalous lesions. They’d also sampled Gerald’s brain, which looked completely normal on autopsy except for the massive trauma which had killed him.

  The fact that the anomalies only showed up in the brains of the men who’d shown symptoms of the contagion—or whatever it was—did not escape Armin’s notice.

  Youssouf pulled the scope free of Neil’s skull with an awful slurping sound. She deposited the samples into the microscanner, peeled off her gloves, tossed them in the recycler, and crossed to the sink to wash her hands. “Well. We have a few minutes until the scans are finished. You want to give Mandala a call and see how it’s going in the lab?”

  “Good idea.” Armin stripped off his gloves, gown, and mask, washed up, left the autopsy bay and plopped into the closest chair. God, he was tired. He activated his com link. “Armin to Mandala.”

  A second passed. Two. Armin shifted in his seat. Three seconds. Four. Five. Should he call again? Get Gordon on the com? If something had happened to Mandala—

  “Mandala here. Are you finished with the autopsies?”

  Relief left Armin weak. He sagged against the back of the chair. “Just now, yes.”

  “And?”

  “And we found anomalies in Carlo’s, Ryal’s, and Neil’s brains. Tumorlike growths. Gerald’s was normal except for the trauma.”

  Shocked silence on the other end. “Jesus. Any idea what the growths are?”

  “Not yet. The lesion in Carlo’s brain didn’t retain any kind of identifiable structure. We’re still running cellular analysis on the ones from Neil and Ryal, and chemical and atomic level analysis on all the samples.” Armin rubbed his forehead. “What about you? Have you been able to find out anything else about our mysterious rock?”

  Mandala let out a sigh that said it all. “That damned thing.”

  Armin chuckled. “I suppose that answers my question.”

  “Well, it definitely doesn’t harbor any sort of life as we know it. Which is good, I suppose, because it means this object didn’t bring a contagion on board. At least, not one of a type we’re familiar with.”

  Not exactly encouraging. “What have you found?”

  “This object gives off a completely unknown array of spectral readings.”

  He frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean its spectral pattern is unknown. There’s nothing remotely like it in the worldwide database. This confirms that our previous results were correct, and not a result of equipment malfunction.” Her voice dropped to the low, clipped, precise tone she used when she was excited and trying to maintain her scientific objectivity. “Armin. None of the known elements that we saw previously are showing up on spectral analysis. Oxygen, carbon, none of them. I’ve checked the equipment. It’s functioning perfectly.”

  Armin swallowed, his throat dry. “So you’re saying . . .”

  “I’m saying that this object is composed of materials that are entirely new to science.”

  The idea of it struck Armin dumb. A material utterly unknown before now was a huge enough find on its own. One that also fit his theories to perfection change
d everything.

  “I want to see.” He sounded breathless in his own ears. Awestruck. He rose, putting his hand on the wall for balance when his knees threatened to buckle beneath him. “The microscans will be finished soon. The moment they’re done, I’ll come to the lab. Then we can swap notes and hopefully come up with some sort of plan.”

  “Yes, if this object in fact has anything at all to do with what’s happening here. It might not, you know.”

  He knew why she had to say it. They hadn’t established a firm link between the object and the bizarre events here, in spite of the timing, and a scientist could never assume. But he knew in his gut that every death, every hallucination, every unexplainable occurrence was connected to the object in the lab’s vault. Their job was to figure out how.

  “I’ll be there soon,” he said. “Armin out.”

  An hour later, Armin, Youssouf, Poole, and Mandala all huddled around the small conference table at the back of the lab, discussing their findings and trying to decide what it all meant. So far, there had been much speculation—not all of it friendly—but nothing in the way of solid conclusions.

  Armin felt light-headed and strung out with exhaustion. His colleagues didn’t look in any better shape. Entirely aside from that, they were wasting time talking in circles while the situation beyond the lab door deteriorated by the minute.

  He cut off yet another of Dr. Poole’s wild theories about mass hypnosis by slapping his open palm on the table. “This is ridiculous. It would be lovely if we could go step-by-step and test all the possibilities, but we don’t have that luxury. The longer we sit here and talk, the harder it’s going to be to fix this before it’s too late.”

  Mandala stared at him in transparent shock. “I can’t believe you just said that, Doctor. The scientific method is the basis of everything we do.”

  “I’m aware of that.” Armin rubbed his dry and stinging eyes. “But this isn’t a lab experiment. We need to do something concrete, soon, before everyone on this pod dies.”

  Youssouf nodded, her face thoughtful. “You’re right. I wish we could be more careful, but we can’t.” She covered a wide yawn with both hands. “Excuse me. So, what do we know for sure?”

  “Nothing, really.” Poole slouched in his chair, arms crossed. “This is all some sort of mass hallucination. What we need is a psychiatrist.”

  Youssouf didn’t even bother to look at him. She held up a hand and ticked off points on her fingers. “We know that we have six dead people on this pod, three of whom have measurable physical growths in their brains. Testing shows that those growths are not cancer, or abscesses, or in fact anything else previously known to medical science. Those same three people showed psychotic symptoms prior to death. Ryal Nataki and Neil Douglas both showed outward physical changes. We’re not able to verify any physical changes in Carlo since he wasn’t seen before he went out into the ocean and the massive trauma he suffered obscured any macro-level changes. We also know that this rock you found turns out to be made up of something previously unknown to science. Even Poole can’t deny that, because he saw the spectral readout for himself.”

  Poole scowled, but for once didn’t argue. As a geologist, he’d recognized the bizarre nature of the spectral analysis the moment he’d seen it.

  Mandala planted her elbows on the table, clasped her hands together, and rested her chin on her steepled index fingers. “Perhaps the object gives off some sort of radiation that we’re unable to detect. If that radiation causes these brain growths, might that lead to the sort of strange behaviors we’ve seen?”

  “That’s a good thought.” Armin stood and paced in an attempt to get his sluggish mind moving. “Amara? What do you think?”

  “It’s entirely possible.” Youssouf pressed her thumbs together, frowning. “I’m just wondering how radiation poisoning would be passed on from person to person.”

  Poole eyed Youssouf with open contempt. “Awfully big leap to make, isn’t it? From radiation in a rock, to it somehow being passed person to person.”

  “I’d agree with you, except for the fact that Ryal never laid eyes on the damn rock.” Youssouf arched an eyebrow at Poole, who sucked in his cheeks and glared daggers at the wall.

  A mental image of Neil’s horrifically changed face popped into Armin’s head. “This is going to sound strange. But their eyes glow. The people who are symptomatic, I mean. They begin to show physical changes, and glowing eyes is one of them. Maybe that’s how it’s passed on.” He glanced around at his fellow scientists, who were eyeing him with caution. He let out a soft laugh. “I guess you haven’t noticed.”

  Dr. Youssouf spoke before Poole could, which was probably a good thing. “Nothing like that’s ever been documented before. But then again, all of this is new territory. We can’t afford to rule out any possibility that fits what we already know.”

  “Armin, you said that Ashlyn talked about weeds getting in through the eyes.” Mandala gazed up at Armin with dread stamped all over her features. “What if she was right?”

  The idea silenced all of them. Ashlyn might not have had all the details worked out, but it seemed she might have hit upon the essential nature of the problem before any of the rest of them.

  Youssouf pushed back her chair. “I’m calling upside. The medical team there needs to know what we’ve found here, and how it might impact Hannah’s care.”

  “We should find out anything they’ve learned as well.” Armin came back to the table but remained standing. He thought if he sat right now, he might fall asleep in spite of the situation. That couldn’t happen. He had to remain alert.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll ask.” Youssouf activated her com link. “This is Dr. Amara Youssouf, head of BathyTech 3, calling any medical personnel on the Peregrine. Priority emergent.”

  A male voice answered immediately. “Acknowledged, Dr. Youssouf. This is Niro Aster. I’m the RN in charge. What’s your emergency?”

  “I need to speak to Dr. Ngalo right away. We’ve learned something she needs to know.”

  “About Hannah Long, I hope.” The nurse’s voice had a grim undertone that Armin didn’t like one bit. “I’ll get the doctor.”

  Armin and his colleagues barely had time to exchange a what the hell look before a crisp female voice answered. “Dr. Youssouf. This is Dr. Ngalo. Please tell me you’ve figured out what’s wrong with this patient you sent me and what to do about it.”

  Ngalo sounded positively disgruntled, which worried Armin. Things were bad enough down here, but if the worst happened at least it would be contained by several kilometers of ocean. Not so on the Peregrine. If this strange plague spread upside, there would be no stopping it.

  He saw his fears reflected in Amara’s drawn brow and tight shoulders. She sat forward. “What’s happened?”

  “She’s much worse over the past twenty-four hours. She’s delusional and violent, attempting to attack me and the nurses. She’s also become quite photophobic. We’ve had to put her in an isolation cubicle with blackout curtains because she claims that even the slightest amount of light causes her a great deal of pain.” There was a rustling sound, as if the doctor had covered her com link with her hand. She shouted something Armin couldn’t make out. “Well. We’ve just had to sedate her. She bit Niro.” Her voice dropped low. “Can you explain to me how it is that a human bite is able to leave puncture marks?”

  Armin’s stomach rolled. He resumed pacing because he had to do something.

  Across the table, Mandala shook her head. “Christ. What the hell’s going on up there?”

  Armin let out a hollow laugh. “Same thing that’s going on here.”

  “Quiet, both of you.” Youssouf massaged the back of her neck with her free hand. “Dr. Ngalo, have you noticed any . . . physical changes in Hannah? Such as, uh . . .” She wrinkled her nose. Armin didn’t blame her. She had to know how the truth sounded. “Such as elongated fingers, glowing eyes, and longer, sharper teeth?”

  Silence. When Ngalo spoke
again, a solemn fear had replaced the irritation. “She’s exhibited precisely those changes, yes. She was beginning to show them when she arrived, but they were subtle. Now they’re obvious. We’re not sure what to make of them. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “Same here. But we’ve had others show those symptoms—the psychosis and the physical changes—since we sent Hannah to you.”

  “And? What happened to them?”

  Youssouf drew a breath. Let it out. “They’re all dead.”

  “Dear God.” Ngalo sighed. “Tell me.”

  “Two were shot because they were actively attacking other personnel. One walked into the ocean and took off his helmet. So Hannah’s still the one who’s survived the longest. She’s also patient zero, if this is some sort of contagion—which I think we have to assume it is.”

  “I think you’re right. I’ll have Niro put your girl on suicide watch, just in case. She’s already on isolation, simply because we weren’t sure what was wrong with her.” Another sigh, deep and tired. “You said you’d discovered something. What is it? Will it help stop this?”

  “I’m not sure. But I hope so.”

  Armin’s mind wandered while Amara explained their autopsy findings, the events and discoveries surrounding the object from Richards Deep, and their half-formed theories regarding how the two might be related. He wondered what Mo was doing. Was he still poring over mermaid videos, reviewing them for the umpteenth time? Or had he given up? Was he sleeping? Dreaming? Lying in the semidark he preferred and staring at the ceiling, unable to stop thinking about death and needle grins, secrets and fear, and pupils that shone when they shouldn’t?

  Unable to shake the uneasy sense that Mo needed him, Armin lifted his com link close to his mouth. “Armin Savage-Hall for Maximo Rees. Mo, I know you’re probably resting, but please answer. I need to know you’re all right.”

  Nothing. He waited while the endless seconds ticked by. Armin gave him almost a minute, then called again. “Mo, this is Armin. Please answer. Urgent.”

  Still no answer. By this time, Youssouf had finished talking to Dr. Ngalo and was watching him. “Armin? What’s wrong?”