by Ally Blue
He didn’t waste time wondering what that meant. He wanted to get suited up and head out ASAP. A sense of anxiety pushed on him, as if whatever waited for him in Richards Deep needed him to hurry. He couldn’t imagine why, but keeping it waiting felt far more dangerous than going out there in the first place. Since his instincts had kept him alive when Dubai fell apart, he wasn’t about to question them now.
Finding a way for Daisy to share his walker took more time than he liked. In the end, he was forced to put her in his helmet, since there wasn’t room for her anywhere else, never mind the fact that she insisted on being able to see.
He scrunched his eyes and mouth tightly shut when the flow of Mist began and she inevitably freaked out. As far as he knew, this was the first time in history an arachnid had been subjected to Mist. He wasn’t sure she would survive it. He held as still as he could while Daisy skittered around his helmet, shedding stinging hairs all over his face and hissing in his mind.
Goddamn. If he got through this experience with his sanity intact, he was never, ever going near another spider as long as he lived.
Finally, after what felt like years, Daisy settled down, both physically and in Mo’s head. He opened his eyes, cautiously, one at a time. He could just see Daisy, huddled in a miserable little black ball near his chin. She didn’t move, but Mo felt her presence in his mind. He decided to ignore the throbbing pain in his face and neck. She hadn’t meant to hurt him. Everybody panicked the first time they had to breathe Mist, and spiders didn’t even have the same respiratory system humans had. It must’ve been way worse for her.
Luckily for him, the suit’s filter system had evidently taken care of the damn tarantula hairs. At least, he didn’t seem to be breathing them along with the Mist. He didn’t like to think about what those things could do to his lungs.
“All right there, Daisy?” He knew he didn’t have to speak out loud. But it made him feel better. More normal. “Mist is always bad the first time.”
All. Right. She sounded stiff, even more stilted than usual—and how weird was it that a fucking tarantula even had a usual speaking voice?—but calm, which was the important thing. Must. Go. Must. Hurry.
Amen to that. The tension he’d felt from somewhere beyond himself had grown more oppressive while he and Daisy had been preparing to walk. It pressed harder than the weight of the ocean.
Mo went through the safety checks as quickly as he dared, then pressurized the chamber, opened the moon pool cover, and leaped into the water.
Out in the ocean, Mo let the silent guides in his head lead him as he’d done in the cart. The lights from his wrists and helmet revealed wonders at every turn as he walked. Sure, it was only rock, rock, and more rock, but he’d never been in this part of the Deep. Every outcropping, undercut, and wandering narrow pathway through the rising stone walls was new to him. Virgin ground.
Had anyone walked this particular bit of seabed before? Maybe he was the first. A true explorer, blazing a trail. The idea made his pulse jump faster.
He wasn’t sure how far he’d walked—he’d used nearly a third of the Mist he’d started out with, an uncomfortably large amount—when he caught a strange, inky radiance somewhere ahead. Frowning, Mo paced forward, studying the weird glow.
The closer he got, the more he realized it wasn’t so much an actual light as a mental suggestion of one. It was as dark as the surrounding sea, illuminating nothing, yet when Mo switched off his walker lights, he found he could see in spite of the utter blackness.
Close. Anticipation threaded through Daisy’s thick, crackling mind-voice. You. Will. See. You. Will. Know.
Mo ignored her. She’d done her bit, bringing him here. He didn’t need her anymore. Whatever the big secret was, it was here, right in front of him. Almost close enough to touch. For the first time in all his years of grasping for hidden things, he was finally about to learn something no one else on Earth had ever dreamed of.
Excited now, his heart galloping and his cheeks flushed with heat in spite of the cold and the Mist, he broke into an awkward trot. Daisy bounced along the base of his helmet, her prickly abdomen scraping his throat, but he didn’t care. Physical irritations were nothing. Knowledge was everything.
Each jostling step brought him closer, closer, closer to his goal. The black-lit horizon quivered and jumped. Shadows moved in the light that wasn’t there.
As he ran on, the twisting, confusing dark became a narrow yet endless chasm opening practically at his feet. He stopped, sending a cloud of silt spiraling into the depths as if pulled.
Don’t look, said the inner voice that was his own but sounded like Armin, because Armin had become important to him. If you look, you can’t unlook.
No doubt. But Mo was a pioneer. A trailblazer. So he stood on the brink, he looked, and he saw.
He opened his mouth and screamed.
Armin smelled the blood before they reached the final turn to the lab. Bile rose in his throat. “Oh no.” He started to hurry ahead.
Jem stopped him with a strong grip on his elbow. “Uh-uh. You stay put until I tell you it’s safe.”
“But—”
“No buts.” She pushed him flat against the wall. “Stay here.”
She slipped into the intersecting hallway before he could answer. A second later, she let out a soft curse. He tensed. “Jemima?”
“Keep it down, will you?” She stuck her head around the corner. “Come on. But for fuck’s sake, be quiet. I don’t know what’s going on, but it’s bad.”
Armin steeled himself against whatever he was about to see and followed Jemima out of his questionable hiding place into the lab corridor. Gordon lay facedown on the floor in a spreading red puddle.
“He’s dead.” Jemima glanced back at him, her face grim. “I checked, not that there was a lot of doubt.”
Armin swallowed and looked away. “How?”
“Throat’s slashed. Cut right down to the spine.” Her restless gaze settled on Armin long enough for him to catch a glimpse of the terror she’d buried far below the grief and rage boiling on the surface. “I’m going in. You stay out of sight.”
“Like hell.” Armin crouched, plucked Gordon’s weapon from his hand where his murderer had left it, rose, and glared at Jemima. “I know how to use a sidearm. And it’s better for us to stay together, don’t you think?”
She rolled her eyes. “Fine. I don’t have time to argue with you. Just don’t shoot anybody unless you have to, all right?”
He nodded. Evidently considering the question settled, she motioned him to the side, pressed her back to the wall, and entered the emergency code to enter the lab.
The door hissed open. Armin heard the unmistakable sounds of a fight.
Fuck.
Jemima peeked inside. She drew in a sharp breath and glanced at him. “You’ll know who to shoot.” She eased into the room and started firing before he could move.
His chest tight and legs shaking, Armin checked the safety on his weapon—it was off; Gordon must’ve at least tried to fire before he died—then followed Jemima inside.
He nearly tripped over something on the floor. He regained his balance, stopped, and stared, shocked. It was Poole, lying in a small lake of his own blood, a chunk of flesh torn out of his throat.
Armin backed away and looked around. Two women with horribly familiar elongated fingers and sharp, thin, translucent teeth lay nearby, both shot through the heart. One was twisted in a heap with her hair over her face. The other was sprawled on her back, blue-black eyes fixed on the ceiling. He recognized the woman Ryal Nataki had bitten and the miner who’d fought with him in the cafeteria before everything fell apart. It felt like ages ago.
Infected. Both of them.
One—Tsali, who’d volunteered as a security guard—held a knife coated with gore.
“Armin?” Mandala came out from behind the counter where she’d apparently sheltered. She was sweaty and disheveled, her dark eyes wide. She hurried over to him and grasped h
is hands in hers. “Are you all right? And you, Ms. Knang?”
Jemima brushed off the concern with a wave of her hand. “I’m fine. So’s the doc. Gordon’s dead, though.” She nodded at Tsali’s corpse. “I’m guessing she killed him.”
“Yeah.” Youssouf, looking every bit as mussed as Mandala, emerged from the rear of the lab, a scalpel in her hand. She tossed it on the counter, plopped onto a workstation stool, and wiped her dripping brow with her forearm. “Gordon was able to warn us before they got in. It probably cost him his life. If we get out of here, I’m giving him a posthumous award for bravery above and beyond.”
“Thank you for showing up when you did.” Mandala gave Jemima a tremulous smile. “You saved our lives.”
“No problem.” Jemima perched on one of the workstation stools, her gun in her hand and her eyes darting side to side. Still on watch. “Were you and the other doc fighting those two off by yourselves? Without weapons or anything? Where’s Rashmi and Ling?”
Youssouf gestured toward the door. “They went to check out a report of someone trying to force their way into private quarters.”
“We haven’t heard back from them yet.” Mandala let go of Armin’s hand and paced back and forth, back and forth. “I hope everything’s all right.”
“They probably haven’t had a chance to report in yet.” Youssouf mopped sweat from her neck. “Especially if they had to handle a situation.”
Meaning another infected person. Good Lord. Armin rubbed at the pain drilling through his right temple.
“Yeah.” Jemima dropped her hand, hopped off the stool, and rested one hand on it. “I’ll give ’em another ten minutes before I start worrying. Not that I can do anything about it.”
She sounded unhappy. Armin sympathized. He hated being stuck in the lab when the whole pod was descending into chaos. But in the end, if a solution existed, it would come from here, in this room. From him, and Mandala, and Youssouf. So he’d keep his restlessness to himself and do his job.
“We need to do something about the bodies.” Mandala nodded toward the corpses without looking at them.
Youssouf laughed, harsh and humorless. “You’re right. Problem is, I’m fresh out of medical staff, except me. We can take ’em to the morgue, but it’s gonna take me a while to get all the postmortems done along with everything else.” She studied Poole’s corpse with sorrow and fury churning in her eyes. “In fact, we don’t have room for four more bodies in our morgue. No one seriously expected anything more than the extremely occasional medical death when this place was designed. Mass violence was never in the plan.”
“I can imagine.” Armin watched the fear, helplessness, and anger play across Amara’s face and wished he could do more than feel bad for her. “Is there anywhere else we can take them?”
Mandala sat up ramrod straight. “There’s a freezer right here in the lab. It’s for samples that need to be kept in extremely low temperatures, of course, but I think under the circumstances we could make an exception.”
“Dr. Jhut, I like how you think.” Jemima set her weapon on the counter and strode over to the nearest corpse—Karen, the woman who’d fought with Ryal in the cafeteria, long ago in another life. “Doc Armin, you wanna help me move her?”
“Of course.” Armin slid off his stool and went to help Jemima carry the dead woman.
Between the four of them, they got all the corpses into the freezer and the worst of the blood cleaned up in about forty minutes. That done, Armin fetched pouches of vitamin water for all of them from the lab’s refrigerator, and they sat down to discuss what to do next. Jemima remained inside the lab at Amara Youssouf’s insistence, her argument being that Gordon might not have died if he’d been inside instead of outside. Armin could tell Jemima didn’t like it, but she was a soldier at heart and she obeyed orders.
Ling commed while they were talking. She and Rashmi had gotten another call while out on the first one. They were taking a long-toothed, glowing-eyed cafeteria worker to a makeshift lockup before heading off to investigate the second call—another complaint of someone trying to break into someone else’s quarters. Armin got the gloomy feeling those calls would only increase.
They’d been brainstorming for nearly an hour before Mandala came up with their first truly useful idea. “Why don’t we scan all personnel for signs of abnormal growths in the brain?”
“Hm. All of the infected people who we’ve autopsied so far have had abnormal growths in their frontal lobes.” Armin scratched his chin, thinking over Mandala’s idea. “It’s hardly foolproof, though, is it? I mean, we don’t know at what point in the contagion the growths begin to appear, or even if all infected persons would actually have them.”
“Or if this is really a contagion at all, for that matter, though I think we all believe it is. In any case, we have to operate on the theory that it is.” Youssouf frowned at the floor. “Well. I suppose it’s a starting point. Blood tests wouldn’t do any good, since none of the autopsies showed up any abnormalities in the blood. And we have to find a way to identify infected people if we ever hope to figure out how this thing is spread. Or if it’s spread.”
“So how in the hell do we scan everybody on this pod?” Jemima swept a hand toward the door, as if to indicate the population of BathyTech 3. “There’s thirty people here. Or, well. There were.”
A solemn silence settled over their little group at the reminder of those who had died, and of Hannah who lay in an upside medical bay, critically ill with an unknown pathogen.
Then there was Ashlyn, who remained missing. After two days of searching, no one had found a trace of her anywhere, though Youssouf had designated a two-person team to search the pod every twelve hours. Armin held himself personally responsible for whatever had happened to her.
“There’s only one way.” Youssouf cast a grim glance around the room. “We’ll have to escort everybody to the med bay one at a time and scan them.”
Simply thinking about it made Armin more exhausted than he already was. He scrubbed both hands over his eyes. “Dear God.”
“It would take at least three to four hours. Possibly longer, depending on how quickly and smoothly we’re able to get the staff through the process.” Mandala leaned both elbows on the counter. “If anyone has a better idea, believe me, I’m all ears. I’m not in love with this course of action. But I think Amara’s right. It’s the only way.”
“It’s not ideal. But it’s the best idea we have right now.” Youssouf pressed both hands to her lower back and stretched. “Okay. We could sit here talking in circles ’til the end of time, but since that won’t do anybody any good, I’m making an executive decision to go ahead and start scanning all personnel for these brain growths.” She gestured toward Jemima. “Jem, you know this pod as well as anyone. Help me figure out the logistics so we don’t miss anybody, will you?”
Jemima nodded. “Yeah. Sure.”
“Great. Thank you.” Youssouf stood, wincing when her knees cracked. “Damn it. I’m getting old. Armin, Mandala, I hate to say it, but we’re going to have to scan Karen’s and Tsali’s brains to see if they have the growths. Might as well do that before we start on autopsies.”
Mandala nodded, her mouth compressed into a thin line. Armin murmured his agreement. What else could he do? He didn’t look forward to dragging the two corpses out of the freezer, taking them to the autopsy room, and performing the necessary tests. He’d much rather return to Mo’s quarters and join him in bed. At least then he’d know Mo was safe. He wouldn’t worry about him. But that wasn’t possible right now. There was important work to do, and Armin was needed here.
“Whoa, hold up.” Jemima glanced from Youssouf to Armin to Mandala and back to Youssouf with disbelief stamped all over her face. “Rashmi and Ling aren’t back yet. They’re probably gonna be chasing crazies for ages. Gordon’s dead. That just leaves me. Do I stay here and stand guard, or go with you to the med bay?”
Uncertainty flickered through Youssouf’s eyes. �
��Well—”
“We’ll be fine,” Mandala said. “If Jemima comes with us, that would leave you alone. None of us ought to be on our own right now.”
“True.” Youssouf scratched her neck. Studied the floor with creased brow and bottom lip sucked into her mouth. “I can lock the lab door using executive override. No one would be able to get in or out without my voiceprint.”
Armin considered, and didn’t like it. “You’d be safe, I suppose, but there’s too much that can go wrong on both sides of the door.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right.” Youssouf sighed. “All right. You and Mandala take the bodies on your own. Jem and I can stay here and figure out a schedule. At least we’ll get it done faster with the two of us together.”
“Very well.” Armin raised his eyebrows at Mandala. “Are you ready?”
She nodded, and the two of them headed into the rear of the lab to gather the bodies.
They’d just finished loading the dead women onto two hover stretchers when the lab’s communication port burst into static. Armin spun around. “What the hell?”
An unfamiliar voice rose above the crackle and hiss coming from the com link. “Peregrine to BathyTech 3. Please answer. Urgent.”
Youssouf was on it before the person on the other end had finished speaking. “Dr. Youssouf here. Who am I talking to and what’s going on?”
“This is Shonda Wildcat, chief engineer. I’m comming at Dr. Ngalo’s request. We’ve had twenty-four people develop signs of the same contagion you’re dealing with down there. The doctor wants to know if you’ve made any progress in pinning down how it’s spread or how to stop it.”
Armin and Mandala glanced at one another. He saw a dread matching his own in her eyes.
Across the room, Dr. Youssouf shut her eyes and rested her forehead on the wall for a moment before answering. “Copy that, Wildcat. Actually, we’ve just been discussing that very problem. Tell Dr. Ngalo we haven’t found anything better than our previous theory as far as how this thing’s spread, but we do have an idea for how to screen people for infection.”