by Rob May
Jason was trying to find a comfortable firing position from behind the barricade. He had made a rest for the submachine gun with a padded chair seat, and was staring at Kat down the scope.
Brandon appeared from the kitchen with a collection of butcher’s knives. ‘Maybe they have a weak point,’ he said. ‘Under the chin or something …’ He stared at his reflection in the blades, seemingly lost in thought. ‘I can’t believe I’m considering the practicalities of engaging a genetically-engineered killing machine in hand-to-hand combat.’
Kat took his hand. ‘How long do you think you can keep us afloat in a bubble, if we escape both the ship and the thanamorphs?’
‘Ten minutes? Twenty at most, maybe? The physics involved in keeping us afloat mean that I might be able to hold a bigger bubble longer because of the surface area—’
Kat interrupted him: ‘But if there’s no chance of rescue after that, can you use the bionoids to … you know … make it all go away?’
Brandon’s ashen expression was the saddest thing Kat had seen so far in the months since the meteors started falling. He nodded glumly. Then, quick as a flash his eyes widened and he snapped of it. ‘They’re coming!’ he said. ‘It’s time to fight!’
They all ran to the centre of the fortifications: an island of clear floor surrounded by concentric semi-circles of tipped-up tables and upside-down chairs, all hooked, tied and piled together to make enemy progress across them slow. They watched the double doors nervously.
‘I saw one of them pass by the doors a second ago,’ Brandon said. ‘I have no idea where it is now. There are two more approaching now, sniffing around, and there’s another one in the amusement arcade directly below us.’
Gem glanced back at the wall of glass behind them. ‘Let’s just hope that they’re not smart enough to go out on deck and come at us through the windows.’
‘Well, Saoirse did say that they take on characteristics of their hosts,’ Brandon said,’ so I guess human-born thanamorphs are going to be the smartest we’ve seen so far.’
‘And,’ Jason added ominously, ‘there’s a crazy Captainamorph out there somewhere. I’ll bet he’s transformed into one big bad mother—’
The doors burst open and two thanamorphs came barging in. Jason was ready for them: he shot the first in the head before it had even set claw in the restaurant. The second monster made it to the first layer of obstacles. It waved its powerful armoured claws in front of it, and smashed a thick wooden table into kindling. Jason took his time to aim and take it down in one shot.
‘Alright!’ he whooped. ‘You were right, Sis—this must be the safest place in the entire Atlantic right now, which isn’t saying much, but still … we should be okay so long as the ship is still afloat. What time did you say the rescuers were coming here?’
Kat hoped that her earlier transmission had got through. ‘I called MI Zero,’ she said. ‘If anyone can reach us—anyone who will actually want to reach us—it’s them.’
More silvery thanamorphs were gathering outside the doors. In the shadows, their proportions made them look human, but as they lurched closer, their sharp edges and cold alien eyes made them look like the least-human things that Kat had ever seen. In the middle of the alien crowd, one giant thanamorph stood head-and-shoulders above the rest; as it raised it voice in a harsh shriek, the others seemed to respond, rushing forward to storm the barricades.
And as they did so, a terrible sound of ripping metal presaged the final death-dive of the Proteus. The floor tipped at a forty-five degree angle; a gradient that was too steep for the makeshift barriers that protected Kat and her friends …
The tables strained and twisted, breaking free of their anchors, and suddenly the whole entangled defensive structure was sliding down towards the doors of the room: towards the alien horde that was assembling there. Jason screamed the loudest as they skidded to meet the enemy, and he fired his gun with abandon, emptying the clip then hurling it aside to use the Uzi. Brandon too, sliding into the chaos on an upturned table like it was a toboggan, was blasting blindly with his laser pistol. Kat felt Gem hug her tight as they tumbled after the boys.
‘Don’t look!’ the older girl said, but Kat faced oblivion with eyes wide-open.
18—NIX
Kat’s whole world contracted and reduced to just one point of focus: a snarling, crouching monster that was clambering up the sloping floor towards her, while she skidded down to meet it. Its supple limbs were corded with armour-plated muscle that gleamed in the yellow light of the swinging chandelier. Claws as long as Kat’s forearms spread out, almost as if the thanamorph had been thrown a ball to catch, and its wide jaws opened in anticipation of delivering a fatal bite.
All around her, Kat could hear shouts, gunshots, screams and laser blasts. She could feel Gem behind her one second, but then the next she was torn away by either an alien or falling furniture—it was impossible to tell which. Kat could only see one thing now: red devil eyes, glowing from within, as if the alien was some kind of machine … which it almost was: nurtured in a lab, shaped and refined until it was the perfect killing machine. It was invincible when put up against the entire animal kingdom of Earth and the ninety-nine-point-nine-nine percent of humans who weren’t crack shots with a laser gun.
Kat had a laser gun but she certainly wasn’t a crack shot. Her first three blasts went wide; her next two bounced off the shiny angles of the thanamorph’s armour. It seemed only a dead-on hit would do it, but her next shot was good: by chance she hit the creature in the middle of its shin, and its whole clawed foot fell off. The thanamorph didn’t care though, or even seem to notice, and a fraction of a second later Kat fell into its arms.
The steely claws wrapped around her like a cage. The alien’s breath was hot and smoky, like the heat from a kitchen extractor fan. Its mouth opened wider than Kat’s head, and its fangs were like a row of chef’s knives.
But Kat had a knife too, and acting purely on instinct, trying to avoid the venomous points of the alien’s teeth, she jammed her arm between its gnashing rows. The Bowie knife entered the thanamorph’s brain via the palate of its mouth, and the light died behind the red eyes as Kat stared into them.
But there was no prize for her victory, no let-up in the danger. As the dead thanamorph fell away, with Kat’s knife lodged in its skull, another took its place. Kat whipped up her laser pistol and fired eights blasts at it. The last blast burned away the alien’s head, and its body crumpled down on top of the other one.
But still there was no respite. Two more aliens closed in, and then Kat was swamped by a sudden cold wave of freezing water, laden with chunks of ice and globules of dust. The water surged up over her, causing her to lose her grip on the laser pistol. Then almost as soon as it had begun, the water subsided, and the tilting floor righted itself as the ship was buoyed by a wave. But the thanamorphs were still there, water gleaming on their silvery skin. Kat’s hopes of survival had drained away with the water; her only thought now was how strangely pretty the humanoid monsters looked, how graceful and sparkling in the intermittent light.
She wondered if Brandon, Gem or Jason were still alive; if any of them would ever escape. All she hoped for now was that if she did get bitten, that she would slip away and drown before a thanamorph could make use of her body …
Shouts and yells interrupted her thoughts. Two people suddenly appeared and fell between Kat and the circling thanamorphs. A man and a woman. More specifically, the same man and woman who Kat and Brandon had relieved of their weapons outside Quarantine. The thanamorphs fell upon them like scraps at a table. There were other people rushing in to the restaurant; a whole crowd of them, fleeing from the rising seawater; running into the arms of the aliens. Everywhere Kat looked, the thanamorphs were jumping onto the panicking, unarmed crew and ripping chunks out of them.
Then the lights all went out, plunging the stricken ship into darkness.
A gloved hand took Kat’s own, and Saoirse said: ‘Come on! We’re leavi
ng this party!’
‘You’re back!’ was all Kat could say.
‘I thought I’d bring some help,’ the alien girl said. She flicked a switch on the side of her laser rifle and a beam of light extended from beneath the barrel. She pointed it up the sloping floor, up at the reinforced glass windows that looked out onto the rear deck.
Kat could only hear gurgling screams in the darkness around her. ‘They don’t sound like they’re helping much!’
Saoirse gave her a grim look. ‘They’re keeping the thanamorphs busy, aren’t they? I knocked all the lifeboats free so they had nowhere to go but back here.’
Kat could only manage a stupefied gape at the horror of it all. Saoirse continued squeezing her hand as she pulled the trigger of her rifle and shattered the rear windows with a blast of red energy. Millions of shards of flying glass now added to the dangers in what at that moment must have been the most hazardous place in the entire universe, let alone on Earth.
Saoirse threw Kat to the floor and covered her as a metre-long shard sliced past and embedded itself in the back of the nearest thanamorph. Kat had barely time to react before she was dragged to her feet again. ‘We need to be out on deck,’ Saoirse said. ‘There’s a spaceship coming!’
A spaceship! Maybe she had been too optimistic to think MI Zero would ever find them, especially in this storm, but the thought of a spaceship coming instead filled Kat with dread. Whether it was the brutal balaks, or the civilised zelfs, Kat guessed that they’d be more interested in saving the bionoids than saving lives.
Both of them on all fours now, Kat followed Saoirse up to the window bay. They had to scramble awkwardly over the moaning victim of a thanamorph bite—a young man of barely twenty who was tangled in the remains of the barricade, a bloody bite in his neck. Saoirse and Kat left him behind—what would be the point of trying to help him?—and continued clambering up. Behind them another surge of water flooded in, soaking them with spray. The floor started to tilt again.
Kat spared a second to think of the others. She sent her thoughts out to Brandon, who was fast to reply: We’re okay! his voice rang in her head. Jason’s still got the laser gun; Gem’s finding us a way up and out; I managed to use the bionoids to shield us from the glass. We’ll see you on deck!
The floor was almost vertical now, and the restaurant below was a frothing pool of churning water, where humans and thanamorphs thrashed and splashed about. Saoirse had made it to the window ledge and reached down to pull Kat up. What was once a drop-off beyond the window was now almost horizontal: a wall that was now a platform they could walk on. The rear deck of the ship had almost turned ninety degrees; the wooden decking rose like a cliff in front of them. A river cascaded from the swimming pool that was emptying as the angle steepened. The white light that marked the aftermost rail at the stern of the ship was now the highest point above sea level … but it wouldn’t be above sea level for long.
Brandon, Gem and Jason were waiting in the hail storm outside the window ledge; all three of them soaking and bruised. They had ignited their handheld signal flares, but the red glows were barely visible in the downpour. Lightning flashed, but there was no horizon to light up—the Proteus was surrounded now by fountains of spray and clouds of shimmering water particles, as the trapped air in the underwater foredeck forced its way up and whipped the sea into frenzy: the death throes of a great beast going unwillingly to its grave.
‘Where is this bloody spaceship then?’ Jason shouted, turning to shoot a thanamorph that had tried to follow them out of the window. ‘Damn it!’ he raged ‘That was my last shot!’
‘We need to hold out as long as we can!’ Gem shouted over the deafening sounds of the sea. She look up to the very stern of the ship. ‘Can we get up there somehow?’
Kat looked around. A cable ran from the end of the ship to the top of the superstructure. She nudged Saoirse. ‘Shoot that cable free!’
Saoirse nodded, and took out the cable’s moorings with one precise shot. The cable swung loose, dangling down from the stern, a perfect climbing rope that offered another fifty metres of escape from the devouring sea. They didn’t waste time arguing over who should go first: Saoirse grabbed the rope, and started walking up the deck. The others followed. Once more, Kat’s world closed in until all she could think of was grabbing the rope with one hand after another, and keeping her feet on the deck. The pain in her arms was acute; her feet constantly threatened to slip away beneath her; and despite their efforts, they were barely climbing faster than the ship was sinking.
She risked a glance backwards: the superstructure, made up of all the upper decks, was now completely beneath the waves. A great gush of water belched out of the restaurant windows. There were no more air pockets to keep the ship up any longer; the all-devouring sea rushed up to meet them. And they were only half-way up the cable … there wasn’t even going to be any chance of a dramatic rescue from the very end of the stern.
The Proteus was vertical now: One hundred thousand tonnes of steel and aluminium plummeting five kilometres to the bottom of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge; to a grave where it would never ever be found again. Kat’s mind wasn’t on such trivia though. All she could think of, as strange red and blue flashing lights could be seen breaking through the clouds above, was that they weren’t going to make it and they were going to get dragged down in the vortex left behind in the ship’s wake.
‘Brandon,’ she gasped. Now would have been a good time to wrap them all in a protective bubble, even if it meant being swallowed by the sea and spat out miles away from any chance of rescue. But Brandon, above her on the cable, evidently had other ideas: Kat suddenly felt her muscles pulling in oxygen, and her blood surging through her body. Rejuvenated, she powered up the cable at twice the speed she had being climbing before. The bionoids were forcing her body into action, hastening her power of recovery. Saoirse and the others were already at the top, and with the cold grey sea lapping at her heels, Kat too reached the rail at the stern of the ship. But she didn’t stop there: she pulled herself upright, until she was actually standing on the rail, arms out for balance …
… Then she stepped off and into the open hatch of Discord, where Lieutenant Hewson was standing ready to take her in his arms.
The black-clad, black-skinned MI Zero agent held Kat in a strong embrace as the long, sleek spaceship began to rise clear of the dangerous waves. ‘I got your call, Katherine,’ he said to her. ‘I’m always happy to provide a taxi for you kids. Sorry it took so long; it took us a while to get this ship up and running again.’
Kat was laughing and shaking in relief. ‘Thanks, Dad.’ she said. ‘I’m sorry too that we stayed out too late—’
She was cut off as she found herself being tugged back out of the ship. Something had grabbed hold of her ankle. Hewson managed to take her wrist, but ended up tumbling halfway out of the ship with her. Kat found herself hanging in mid-air, being stretched like an elastic doll in two directions.
She looked down.
The tempestuous sea was still only metres away—spurts and whooshing geysers were now the only evidence that the Proteus had ever existed. But something had jumped from the stricken ship at the last minute and caught Kat by the ankle. The biggest and most fearsome thanamorph of them all was now climbing up her leg, its incredible bulk—twice the weight of the Captain who had spawned it—threatening to pop Kat’s bones out of their sockets.
She screamed in horror and looked back up. Jason and Brandon were holding on to each of Hewson’s legs, trying to pull him back in. Hewson reached for the gun at his holster with his free hand, but then Discord was buffeted by battering winds, and the gun was ripped from his hand and lost to the sea.
‘Help!’ Kat yelled. ‘Get it off me!’ The thanamorph was trying to perform some kind of pull-up motion, bending its elbows in order to bring its venomous fangs closer to her. Saoirse appeared at the hatch above with her laser rifle. ‘I can’t get a clear shot!’ she said, a trace of panic in her voice for the fi
rst time since Kat had known her.
Kat kicked at the top of thanamorph’s head. It was like stamping down on hard pavement, and she felt a jolt of pain as her ankle twisted. The leg that the alien was hanging onto had already gone dead. She felt like she was going to black out with the pain that coursed through every ligament in her body, and only the stinging cold spray of seawater kept her conscious.
Kat was frantic. A laser bolt zapped past her ear as Saoirse tried, and failed, to shoot off the creature. Kat looked up and saw her taking aim for another shot … one that could take Kat’s head off just as easily as it could the thanamorph’s.
Then she noticed Gem at the open hatch. Brandon’s sister took something from Saoirse’s belt, and lay down and passed it to Hewson, who took it in his free hand. The lieutenant then handed it down to Kat.
Her Bowie knife! Saoirse must have pulled it out of the skull of the dead thanamorph back on the ship! Suddenly the odds had tipped, if not completely in Kat’s favour, then at least by a few percentage points.
She reached down to where the thanamorph was gripping her leg and started to saw at its claws, slotting the blade between the joins in its armour plating, crunching it back and forth over the ligaments. She felt Hewson gripping her other wrist with both hands; she felt Brandon’s presence inside her head, encouraging her as his bionoids fuelled her efforts. From above she heard Jason shout, ‘Come on, Sis!’
The thanamorph howled at her—an inhuman screech that almost made her drop the knife. But then one alien limb, relieved of its claws, fell away. She moved on to the next, shouting down at the thanamorph as she worked away, spitting her words into its face as its slathering jaws got closer and closer. ‘I know you wanted to be rid of me the moment we stepped on board!’ she raged, remembering the Captain’s meaty hands gripping her neck the first time they met him; remembering the cruel tricks and selfish schemes he had masterminded. ‘Well now I’m leaving! But you forgot one vital thing …’