by Chris Howard
He left Angelo to run the Marcene while he ducked out and—his crutches supporting him—took a businesslike circuit of his ship, stopping to talk to Ed Salzen for a minute, and then headed across the main deck, checking locks on the storage containers, glancing up at the big knuckle crane. He found the two survivors from the Serina leaning against the aft rail, backs to the sea.
Adista raised a hand as the captain approached. “Captain Wilraven.”
He looked past them at the Irabarren’s progress through the waves, tugging a bit at the other end of eight hundred meters of braided steel towing cables and spring spans. The Irabarren’s first mate, Jeanetta, and Chief Aramesh had the helm on the platform.
Wilraven nodded his head at the last of Serina’s crew. “Adista. Tychasis. Time to answer some questions for me?”
Ty made an open-handed gesture. “We have many of our own, but we will answer those we have answers for.”
Adista indicated her friend. “We were just talking about the egg, and how you released it from the Serina’s foredeck, pulling the two of us free. We should begin there.”
As if reading Wilraven’s curious look, Ty added, “Angelo Goriaga, your first, told us part of the story.”
“Egg?” The captain was already lost. He grappled with the thing being white and a roughly squashed-egg shape. “You mean the pod with the rebreather?”
“That was an egg, Captain. Perhaps the correct word is pseudovum.”
Adista whispered, “There was another in the egg with Ty and me. I believe that was Captain Nersesian. We tried—” She turned to Ty for help.
He picked it up. “We tried to give him a gift of power in the sea. To help him escape the Ekhidnadai—the monster that took the Serina to the seafloor.” With an exasperated breath he added, “There was not time, and he was taken with us.”
Wilraven stumbled, felt his heart thudding. He thought of the images he had captured of the pod’s final moments with Andres’ phone—lost now in the sea with the remains of Captain Nersesian. He whispered, “I didn’t even recognize him.”
She shook her head slightly, barely a motion at all. “Probably not. They feed as separate animals—an immature animal? Larva, that is it. Many of them planted within the egg: then, when the feeding is done they . . . synthesize and spawn new ones. You understand? They begin as separate beings and then learn to work—like schooling fish—into a single greater being. They started their feeding with Val, maybe because he was not going to last as long. Or was not as strong as us.”
Wilraven’s whisper came out thin and high; he felt the edge of panic closing in. “Feed?”
Adista misunderstood his reaction. “It takes months, maybe a year. They consume the three in each egg until they’re strong enough to break away. That is where we lose our certainty. We don’t know if they would join the Ekhidnadai or begin the growth of a new one. Ekhidna is a monster, but it isn’t one thing. It is hundreds of thousands of individual monsters acting as one, an immensely powerful school of predatory animals, coordinating attacks against their prey.”
Wilraven frowned at the sea over Ty’s shoulder. He didn’t know what to say, but he said it anyway: “You got to be kidding me.” It didn’t sound like his own voice, more like that of a child awaking from a nightmare.
Tychasis looked grim. “It is not something I would joke about.”
Adista shook her head, agreeing with him.
“Some kind of swarming monster made up of thousands of individual creatures. I got that. But that’s the same thing that took the Serina below?”
Adista nodded.
Ty let out a breath, hissing between his teeth. “We were completely surprised—on the Serina. I was below. There was something in the sea, under us. I felt it. Heard their motion in the water. Not a submarine, but something from nature. It was organic. I could hear their movement—many acting as one, but no screws, no sound of propelled water, cavitation, nothing that sounded like any machine I know.”
Wilraven wanted to laugh, but the words came out even and serious. “But a sea monster? The kraken. Leviathan.”
Ty didn’t look as if he was dismissing the idea entirely. “Or something made by man to mimic a monster? Like the airborne drones that glide and make no noise. They are very birdlike, or insect-like. But they are made by men.”
“Or grown?” Wilraven waved them back to the egg and larval feeding discussion.
The notion that there were sea monsters out there pulling ships under just wouldn’t stick in his mind. The idea opened up in front of him, yawning, but too wide to cross, and so he dismissed it as unreal. Larval forms of some deep-sea colossus feeding on humans planted inside an underwater pod—pseudovum. Some hideous miscreation that swarmed over ships and dragged them to the bottom, without leaving a trace. He slapped the ideas one by one on the wall of his thoughts, but they refused to stick. Humans had sailed the sea for millennia, and monsters from the deep were built into seafaring culture. But deep inside every sailor was the truth that the sea was monstrous itself. The sea was the most violent and dangerous thing on the planet, enough of a reason for any ship vanishing from the surface of the world. Even knowing that—and with the knowledge of modern science—ocean demons and vengeful elder gods with more tentacles than brains just made better stories.
He coughed, cleared his throat, and pushed the words he wanted to say past his teeth. “Well, you shocked the hell out of us when the egg reached the surface and disintegrated. The dive team was below, on the Serina, when Damien found the pod. I saw Val Nersesian’s hand through a little window—didn’t know it was his. I just knew it was a human hand, and I was looking for answers to the Serina’s fate. That’s why I released it. Let it go to the surface.”
Adista exchanged a look with Ty, as if that agreed with their take on things.
Wilraven gestured to each of them. “So . . . the larval things started with Val and left you two alone?”
Ty’s toothy smile made him—in that moment, with the fading evening light—seem a monster himself, but in human form. “That is not how it works. Each of us was planted with the larvae.” He leaned forward off the railing, pulling his shirt over his head, lean, muscled abdomen, and chest. He ran his fingers along his stomach, whispering something with a softly flowing cadence. His hand flattened, palm pressed hard, curling over pressure or some balled-up shape underneath. He rotated the hand, pulling it away, cupping a small, wet creature, roughly diamond-shaped, but longer on one axis. There were four or five rows of exoskeletal claws curled tightly against its underside.
“That’s one of them?” Wilraven backed up a step. “You’re keeping them inside you?”
Ty slid it back into his skin. “Eight of them only. Keeping them safe. I have disabled their growth. I want to learn more about them before discarding them.” Thrusting his chin at Adista and pulling his shirt back on, he said, “I took the four inside Adista, and have four of my own.”
A gust of sea air blew through the sudden quiet, and the captain’s questions seemed to have dried up at the idea of “storing” the larval forms of anything inside a human. He moved next to Adista, leaning back against the rail as they were doing. Folded his arms.
And kept his mouth shut.
“Captain?”
When he looked over, the world closed down around him. He froze. Tychasis pinned him with a stare, and there was a tight hold on every muscle and a creeping headache starting behind his eyes. Sudden alarm at not being able to move with Tychasis looking into his soul. Something in the man’s eyes nailed him to reality, at that point in time, in that place. Any movement would break the world.
He wasn’t allowed to breathe. It only lasted a few moments. Tychasis looked away, and Wilraven was suddenly free. He sucked in a deep breath, bending to put his hands on his knees, out of breath as if he had just sprinted from stern to bow.
He looked up at Ty, anger starting to roll through his thoughts. “What the fuck was that?”
“You saved us,
Captain.” Tychasis turned to look out at the sea. “You went into the dark, released the egg and rescued Adista and I. You hid us aboard your ship, in the medical cabin. You hid our identities from that uncooperative man with the gun, Levesgue.” He turned back to Wilraven. “You protected us, Captain.”
Wilraven just stared at him, wondering how he knew all that. “Did you read my mind or . . . my memories?”
Tychasis smiled thinly. “I lived some of your memories. You do know memory cannot be played like a video? It does not work like that.” He tapped the side of his head with a finger. “I can, in some way, become you and see what you remember in quick flashes. That is what I saw . . . among other things.”
Wilraven felt a rush of heat and shame up his back. Memory was private, but Ty was treating it like a book someone had left out in the galley. “Others?”
“Regina Lowell was your friend. The dive master aboard the Marcene. She died.”
“You saw that?” His voice was rough. His eyes felt heavy with tears. He squeezed them shut for a moment, opening them after rubbing the back of his hand across each.
Ty gestured to him, but Wilraven wasn’t certain what that meant. “Difficult not to. You live through her final breath and moments every night, Captain. She is high in your thoughts and memory.”
Grabbing the rail and looking out at the waves, Wilraven said, “Yeah. She is. Always will be.”
Adista stepped back, just watching the exchange.
Ty moved beside the captain, looking out at the same waves, pale orange light dancing off them in cycles of motion. “She died not far from here.”
Wilraven turned to glare at him, pointing like some ghost showing the way to some watery grave. “It was forty, maybe fifty miles west, up along the bank.”
Ty, still looking at the water, said, “The current carried her nearer to where we are now.” Before Wilraven could respond to that—with something angry--Ty crouched down and jumped the rail, going over the side of the Marcene and into the sea.
Wilraven grabbed his phone, called the bridge. “First? Call up Jeanetta—warn her. Shut things down for a few. No on the anchors. Let’s drift for a bit. Just alert Irabarren to our move, have them use some thruster to maintain the gap and some slack in the lines.”
Almost an hour later, Wilraven was about to call the Coast Guard, or start up and continue on their course—which was what he felt like doing after Ty had climbed around inside his thoughts and memories. Adista convinced him to wait. She had gone exploring the Marcene, but came down to the deck fifteen minutes later to watch the sea with him.
Tychasis jumped aboard soaking wet, with a dive helmet in one hand. “I found her, Captain. She was alone, back against a jutting row of rocks on the floor. Peaceful. I made a small temple with the rocks, and laid her to rest beneath it. Nothing in the sea will disturb her rest. I could not speak to her, but I think she would have wanted you to have this.”
Wilraven’s mouth dropped open. He forgot to breathe.
Ty held up Regina Lowell’s trusty Kirby dive hat, dented on one side, the headlamp crushed where something had hit her, or where the currents had carried her into the rocks. There was some sponge growth along one side. Across the top was a sticker that read Don’t Fuck with Chuuk, part of a wreck preservation program she had been passionate about—Chuuk Lagoon, containing the largest graveyard of ships in the ocean.
Adista put her hand on Wilraven’s shoulder, gave him a reassuring squeeze when the tears started running down his face. His hands were shaking when he took the helmet, staring through blurred vision into the dark empty mask. Regina really was gone.
Chapter Forty-eight
Home
The sound of water washing up and back on the shore kicked Andreden into consciousness. He opened his eyes, and then shut them against the blinding sting of the sun. Every muscle in his body felt worn, bruised, as if every one of them had been pulled right up to the point of breaking and released.
He felt tired, but the deep gunshot-wound pain was gone. The ache in his leg . . . wasn’t there. He remembered being shot a hands-width above the knee, and the bullet had gone right through, tearing out a chunk of skin and muscle with it.
He tried to grab for something real in what his senses were feeding him. They had been inside the building, downstairs. Now the sun was high in the sky. And he couldn’t feel the pain that should have gone along with the gunshot.
Reality started filtering in, but it was slow.
His ears were ringing. The air smelled like fire and old dust. He brought a hand up to cover his eyes, opening them carefully. How much time had passed? He felt his elbow sink into sand, which sent a stab of confusion through his clearing thoughts. “Where am I?”
His voice sounded tired, raspy, just above a whisper.
“On the shore not far from the wharf fire and explosion.”
Laeina was there. She sounded wide awake.
“What happened?”
“The building was rigged with explosives that went off some time after we tripped the alarm.” She paused, and he could hear her breathing hard, angry. “It would have killed everyone inside—even their own people.”
“Martin and Rebekah and the others got out, right?” He was pretty sure he remembered that part of it.
“Yes. They are safe. Martin and Rebekah are waiting for you at the far end of the lot where we parked the red car.” She sounded disappointed. “The car did not fare well in the blast.”
“Oh, that’s too bad.” He wanted to laugh, but all he could muster was a faint sense of loss. “Especially considering it wasn’t ours.”
“But we made it out, and we learned so much about Lenient Luck and the Ekhidnadai.”
He blinked. The soldier, Cameron, had told the whole story. Even something about Damaris and his breeding program.
Then he had felt the shift in the floor—in a dream. The building was flying apart around them, and there was no way out. Even Cameron laughed and told them they were about to die.
“How did we escape?” He kept one hand shading his eyes, but found Laeina’s face, her dark eyes fixed on his—and she was smiling.
“I owe you so much, Jon Andreden, for all of this.” She waved around at the smoke and destruction. “I was not about to let you go without paying the debt. I created a shielded water-wall around us, protecting us from the blast. I will be honest and tell you I didn’t know if it would work. It was a quick thing, not easy for our bodies to take, and I hope you are not damaged—more than you already are.”
He shook his head—as much to clear it as to respond. He could hear her through the ringing in his ears, so the damage didn’t feel deep or permanent.
She added casually, “I also healed your leg. You were in so much pain.”
“That’s good news. I’ve been shot before. This just reconfirmed an old conviction that it’s one of my least favorite things.”
“Good. I have newer news.”
He looked up at her. “Found your sister?”
She replied with a genuinely happy smile. Some of the lofty, arrogant smile was still there, but it had softened. And there was a clear, focused delight in her eyes. “Adista is alive. For a brief time she was in the water south of here, in the Caribbean Sea. I know no more than that—except that she is alive now, and on the ship Marcene. I have to leave you for a little while, to see her.”
He sat up, still blinking against the sunlight, but waved her away. “Go see your sister.”
“I didn’t want to leave without thanking you.” Laeina stood up, her shadow falling over him. “Come. Get up, walk with me to the water. I want to show you something.”
It took some effort, but he crawled first to his knees, then—with Laeina’s help—climbed to his feet. His right leg—a juddering tension from the knee up—definitely felt newly healed, a little unstable, but he braced his feet apart, getting his balance, and then slowly followed her to the edge of the harbor.
Laeina was already up to
her thighs in the murky gray-green water. Without looking away from him, she reached down, and a small twirling submersible with whipping flagella shot from the soft, lapping waves into her waiting hand. She passed it to him.
“This one’s for you. Take it home or to your lab and explore its functions and structure and mode of power. I will see you soon—within the next month—to deliver on my promise of ideas and explanations.”
It took him a minute, but Andreden waded into the water to receive the gift. When he lifted it out of Laeina’s hands, his fingers pressing into the thing’s living skin, it spun the flagella half a turn and then curled them around his wrist and up his arm. It felt alive and warm and welcome in his grip.
She took another step away from him, into the harbor, but stopped and turned when the water was up to her hips. Looking up, Laeina just smiled at him and said, “Thank you, Jon Andreden. Farewell. For now.”
There was a jump of energy in him suddenly, following a well of feelings that didn’t want her to go. “Hey. Remember back at Knowledgenix, I asked you if you really are a toymaker?”
She stopped, one eyebrow up, curious. “And I gave you an answer.”
“Now I’m wondering: who do you make the toys for?”
The eyebrow cranked higher, and she was going with a full questioning stare. “What do you mean? I make them for those who want to play with them.”
“Like children?”
She shook her head. “Why is it children who get to play with toys and no one else?”
“Oh, no, I was just thinking of . . . ” He thought of Theo’s valiant attempt to defend him from the divers, lost in the Atlantic somewhere. “Right, that makes . . . complete sense. Thank you.”
She just nodded back at him with her mildly superior smile, the delight and questioning in her eyes replaced with something strong and deeper than any abyss. It was like that night at the north fence of Knowledgenix on the edge of Monterey Bay—which seemed so long ago. Laeina turned toward the harbor. She waded into the water and went under.