by Nick Thacker
No, he thought. Not today, boys. We’re not coming out of here.
The lights on the rounded rectangular floor of the shuttle flickered, then died. The darkness was shocking, but Reggie allowed it to overtake him. Nothing more to do here.
He grabbed for Sarah’s hand. She knew, even though he couldn’t see her. She had stopped struggling, waiting for Reggie to notice that it was over.
He smiled into the dark, knowing that it would be light, not darkness, that would finally take him. No matter what, he was going to go out wearing the characteristic grin that he knew defined him. The ocean may be infinite, its bonds unyielding, but he wasn’t going to lie back and take its beating. He’d go out knowing that he’d fought, and fought hard.
He’d go out knowing that his best friend was somewhere up there, still fighting the battle he’d pulled him into.
He found Sarah’s hand. She grasped his, interlocking their fingers. He squeezed it, wanting to talk to her.
Then again, there was nothing to say. Nothing else to do but wait.
It wouldn’t be long now.
51
“FIND THEM!” CRAWFORD SHOUTED.
HIS hair was starting to fall, as if it could read his mood, the normally perfect shape of it drooping and sliding over to the side. He pushed a strand of the longer part of it out of his eyes. He was proud of his hair, like he was proud of all of the things regarding his looks people praised him for.
He’d built a career on his looks and charisma just as much as on his brilliance. Equal doses of all of them, and he’d mastered just when to use each one.
Right now, however, he wasn’t feeling particularly brilliant. And if his hair was any sign, he wasn’t feeling terribly handsome, either. This hair was only the outward display of what he was feeling inside.
Turmoil.
He hated this feeling. He’d fought against it his entire life, forcing it back into his subconscious, a demon he thought he’d defeated long ago.
Thoughts of his son started working their way upward into his consciousness.
No, he thought. Stop it.
Vicente Garza — ‘The Hawk,’ as his men liked to call him — turned to face him.
“Do you know where they are?” Crawford asked. “I need to find them.”
“Adrian, they’re —“
“Sir,” Crawford corrected.
“Right,” Garza said through clenched teeth. “Sir, they’re somewhere at the bottom of the Atlantic by now.”
“How do you know that?”
Crawford stepped up to the first desk he could find. The man seated there rolled backward, not happy about the sudden subversion of his power, but not fighting about it, either. Crawford tried to make sense of what he saw on the screen, but instead of closed-circuit camera feeds and the typical surveillance-style GUI, he saw nothing but spreadsheets, numbers and graphs. Apparently the desk he’d usurped was that of a lower-level Ravenshadow soldier, a man tasked with tracking the day-to-day inputs and outputs of the three rings’ energy production.
They were in the control center, or ‘command’ as the Ravenshadow men called it. The second ring, just beneath the surface in the first sub-level, where the laboratories, crew quarters, and employee offices were housed. It was a far cry from his own office and apartment, at the top of the hotel section in the center ring. This place was like an afterthought — empty and drab, efficient yet stark, as if the entire place was calling out in despair.
He hated it, and it was part of the reason he rarely traveled out here. The bridges and Subshuttle routes were abundant, but he couldn’t stand spending time out here with the employees. It made him uncomfortable, and though he could never admit it, it felt beneath him.
But now, in a crisis situation, Adrian Crawford couldn’t bear to be away from the action. Garza was capable — that was why he’d hired him and his team in the first place — but Crawford never trusted anyone else, at least not without a bit of oversight. Garza may have been smart, but he wasn’t the genius Crawford knew he was.
His entire life had been a roadmap of goals and challenges, with only brief stops along the way: graduation from high school at age 13, undergraduate work at age 15, graduate and post-doc at age 21. He had a brilliant mind, they’d told his parents, and there was nothing that would be able to stop him.
The man running his security, Vicente Garza, was hardly an exception: Crawford had hired him to do a job, and if he failed, he would be removed, like so many of his other employees. He’d found ways to work with the system when needed and against it when no one suspected. There was no government that would be able to halt his progress, and if they finally found some way to do it, it would be too late.
His research was already complete.
Now it was only a matter of testing and perfecting.
Ravenshadow and the CSO, the team it was after, was only slowing down his progress, and he wanted to see the resolution of it as quickly as possible.
Only because of these circumstances had he let his guard down, deciding to travel out to the second ring and watch the progress with his own eyes.
He realized that Garza was talking to him.
“What?” he asked.
“I said, sir,” Garza said, “we don’t know exactly where they are because the Subhuttle fell off its cable. It’s impossible to tell what exactly happened out there, since —“
“My shuttle fell off its cable?”
Garza nodded. “Yes, that’s what I said, sir.”
Crawford was half a foot shorter than the man, and far less intimidating, but he wasn’t about to let a subordinate give him attitude. “I respectfully request that you treat me as your superior officer, Mr. Garza.”
Garza’s nostrils flared.
“I know I’m not up to speed with the specific military lingo you boys all use,” Crawford said. “But whatever you call your top dog — that’s me. Got it?”
Garza sucked in the sides of his lips as though he were about to spit something across the room. “We call that ‘general.’ Sometimes ‘admiral,’ depending on where you’re from. Or, if you’re getting fancy, maybe even ‘President.’ You heard of that one?”
Crawford’s fists balled. He stepped up to Garza. His breathing was faster, and there was nothing he could do to voluntarily slow it. He had never been in the military, and he wasn’t much of a fighter. His battles were won by wits, in the courtrooms, boardrooms, and private offices of the richest members of philanthropic society.
Still, he wasn’t about to back down. He’d faced off against far larger opponents. Perhaps not those quite as large as Garza, nor as brutal and physically imposing, but nonetheless, Crawford hadn’t achieved his successes by backing down. He stepped a foot closer, putting the two men eye to eye.
Garza just smiled. “You got something to tell me, boss?”
Crawford was appalled. It was rare someone was so blatantly nonchalant with his authority, and it was even more rare it was someone that worked directly for him.
“I — I want to know what’s happening, Garza,” Crawford said. “I thought I made that clear.”
Garza leaned in, nearly leaning over Crawford. “You did. However, I might remind you that our contractual agreement allows me and my team to operate in whatever manner as I please, including — as our contract states — ‘systems, personnel, operations, and procedures.’”
“What’s your point?”
“Simple. Finding your CSO friends now falls completely and ultimately under my list of responsibilities. You are welcome to stand by and observe my process, but I will take any questions, criticisms, and similar remarks as direct threats against my authority. In which case, I might add, will instigate a breach of contract on your part, resulting in your paying my full payment and fee, as well as the additional ‘forfeiture of rights’ fee as stated in the rider clauses.”
Crawford fumed. He was seething, but he knew Garza was right. He’s smart, but nothing I can’t handle, he thought. I’ve d
ealt with worse.
He knew it was true, too.
Garza was a strong-arm. He had hired Ravenshadow to keep the peace here at the park, and he had given them a hefty bonus for luring and capturing the CSO team as well. At the end of the day, however, the CSO team was the priority. He couldn’t operate with a carte-blanche team like theirs running around the world.
Garza was the man who had appeared to be the most qualified, and his men had appeared to be quite the impressive group of soldiers, but Crawford had always maintained a ‘slow to hire, quick to fire’ mentality. If Garza wasn’t going to get the job done, he needed to be working on an alternative.
He was already upset that he had allowed himself to let finding an alternative or two slide, assuming that Garza and Ravenshadow would be able to handle things.
“Listen, Crawford,” Garza said. “I understand where you’re coming from. You have assets out there, and those assets are under threat of attack right now. But you need to allow me to do what I need to do to rid you of this problem, understand?”
Crawford looked up at Garza.
“Understand?” he asked again.
Crawford was mad, but he nodded. “What does that even mean?”
“It means I’m going to do whatever it takes to get them back. Dead or alive, you’ll have them. Got it”
“What does that mean, Garza?” Crawford asked.
Garza looked up, staring out the glass window of the sub-level. He sighed. “You’ve got millions invested here, and a lot of reasons to keep this thing afloat. But I might need to do things that you wouldn’t necessarily approve, under normal circum—“
“What are you talking about, Garza?” Crawford asked. “If you so much as interfere with the research going on here, I’ll —“
“I might need to turn this entire place against them,” Garza said. “If there’s any way they got out of the shuttle — it’s not likely they survived, mind you — but if they come out, swim to the surface… I need to use everything I’ve got against them. You understand that?”
Crawford took a deep, long breath. He wanted to tell him no, that it certainly wasn’t okay to put his entire facility and the research here at risk. The research was still the most important facet of OceanTech’s progress, and there were finely tuned ecosystems that were interdependent. If even one of these systems was thrown out of balance, it could completely destroy the integrity of the research.
But they have to be found, Crawford thought. Above all else, I have to know they are dead.
Finally, he turned back to the man he’d placed in charge of his security. “You have ten minutes. Find them, and report to me directly. Do whatever it takes. You have the station at your command. You know how to reach me.”
Garza looked like he was about to hit him, but both men stood their ground. Finally, in a half-grunting way, Garza spoke. “Fine. Ten minutes.”
Crawford turned and started walking toward the door without acknowledging his subordinate’s response. As he left, he heard Garza barking orders to his staff and soldiers.
“Fire up the protocols tab,” Garza said. “We’re temporarily taking over this facility, and I’ve got an idea.”
52
THE SWIM TO THE SURFACE was the most intense thing Julie had ever experienced. She’d been in more than one firefight, had more than one person shooting at her at the same time, and had gone to hell and back on more than one occasion.
But swimming straight up from a sinking submersible vehicle with hardly a breath left in her lungs through crocodile-infested waters was by far the most taxing thing she’d ever been through.
And Ben is still down there.
She couldn’t think about Reggie and Sarah. There was only room in her mind for the task at hand — getting to the surface — and Ben.
Nothing more, nothing less.
If she had control of her thoughts, she would have tried to push those of Ben out, but it was impossible. She loved him, and there was no ignoring the fact. He was part of her, as much as she knew she was a part of him. She could try to survive, using all of her conscious energy and mind’s power to plow up and forward through the water, but she couldn’t not think of Ben as well.
He’d have protected her. He would have prevented the crocs from getting to her, if he could.
They were swimming around her now, teasing her. Playing. Possibly trying to figure out what it was, exactly, was swimming around in their tank.
She shuddered, but she continued forward. Her lungs were about to burst, but she knew she would make it. The problem was, of course, that air wasn’t the only challenge she was facing.
The crocs were darting back and forth through her field of vision, closer every time.
She knew nothing about their habits, whether they fought in packs or in singular units. She assumed they were individual, and likely all one gender. They seemed to be fully grown, as the ones swimming circles around her were between eight and fifteen feet long.
Smaller than some of the larger crocs she’d seen, but still…
Eight feet of crocodile was about nine feet too many.
With a final thrust of her arms and a kick with her legs, she burst through and broke the surface.
She gasped for air, filling her lungs. It was only a momentary reprieve.
A long, black shape was swimming directly toward her.
And it was fast.
She screamed, seeing Susan in her peripheral vision. The woman was struggling against the side of the tank, trying to pull herself up and over the two-foot tall edge that stuck up above the water. It was the side of the ring they were nearest, and Julie knew it wouldn’t take much to pull herself up and to safety.
If only she could get there.
She shoved the water, trying to make it obey an entirely different set of physics laws, and her hands unsurprisingly shot straight up, splashing water up into the air. The croc wasn’t deterred. It bore down on her, and she tread water until the thing was right in her face.
At that moment, she slid sideways, twisting at the same time. She was far smaller than the beast, but their maneuverability was matched. Still, she was a half-second faster than the croc, and her torso slid under the water right as the crocodile flew over her head. It bucked, realizing that it had lost its prey, and Julie felt its powerful claw scrape against her back.
She wanted to scream in pain, but she kept her mouth shut, knowing that to give in was to lose everything.
Where’s Ben? she thought.
The croc turned, awkwardly but fast in the water, and she knew she wasn’t going to be nearly as lucky this time around. This crocodile had to be at least fifteen feet long, possibly even larger. It was clearly the leader of the pack, and while she was not the least bit interested in fighting off an alpha, it meant the rest of them were, temporarily at least, ignoring her.
The croc made its arc, then pummeled down toward her. She was farther away from the wall than she had been before.
She prepared herself. It would come in teeth-first, knowing its strengths. It was a reptile, so it wouldn’t be able to calculate her position or movement much beyond ‘it’s trying to escape.’ That was the only advantage she could think of, but she planned to exploit it as much as possible.
Wait until it’s close, then duck out of the way, she thought. He’s just trying to defend his territory now. There’s no element of surprise.
She tread water, facing off against her reptilian attacker.
The croc was ten feet away, gaining speed.
She wanted to close her eyes, get it over with.
The croc opened its jaws. A display of power, or an anticipation of its meal?
It was five feet away, and Julie braced herself for the impact. Would it hurt? Would it just swallow me whole, or would it take its time?
There was no time. She couldn’t afford to be thinking about things like that.
She was planning on ducking to the right this time, not that it would trick the stupid beast a
nyway. It was acting on instinct, solely doing whatever tiny component of its tiny brain that controlled its huge body told it to do.
Three feet.
She prepared to lunge to the right.
The croc’s jaws widened, then snapped shut. It darted to its right — Julie’s left — then sank beneath the surface of the water. Julie tracked it, seeing its tail whip up and back down, a gigantic splash following.
What the?
The croc rolled, then buckled, nearly in half, as it reacted in surprise. Something had attacked it from below, causing it to panic and roll away from Julie and the sure prize she offered.
The croc splashed again, frantic and still caught off guard, and Julie took the opportunity to begin her swim to shore. She pulled herself along with her arms and legs, grabbing the water by the gallon in her cupped hands and kicking harder than she’d ever kicked. She wasn’t much of a swimmer — she could do it, but she’d never trained for ‘chased by crocodile’ before. Still, she didn’t allow herself to look back.
The other crocs, if they were still there, were watching and waiting to see their alpha’s success or failure. Julie had a straight shot to the shore, where Susan was just now pulling herself up and out of the water, dripping from every inch of her body.
Keep. Going.
She willed herself to speed up. She could rest on dry land, where the crocs wouldn’t be able to reach her.
She hoped.
The alpha was still writhing in the water, unsure of what had attacked it, and how. Apparently it hadn’t expected an enemy from below, and Julie watched it out of the corner of her eye as she swam. She reached the shore just as she saw a head pop out of the water.
Ben…
He was alive, and very much pissed at the crocodile that had almost claimed his fiancee’s life. He roared in anger, then ducked underwater just as the croc passed over his head.
The croc was heavy, but Julie saw its belly lift up out of the water as Ben punched it from below. It would do nothing but anger the crocodile, but she was happy to see it nonetheless. The croc writhed and tumbled, off-balance for a moment.