by Mel Odom
“All of you will do as I say. This remains unfinished.” The shadow turned to face Rachel. “If you do not do as I say, you will die.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Then believe this: if you do not do as I say, I will destroy this man.”
The shadow closed his hand. Immediately, Hawke felt iron bands tighten around his body. Everything hurt, and he was certain every bone in his body was about to shatter. Even though he tried to hold it back, a cry of pain escaped him.
“All right! Stop hurting him!”
The shadow unclenched his fist, and Hawke dropped to the ground, gasping for breath and unable to move.
“All of you are in great danger.” The shadow walked to the pool. “Aztechnology and NeoNET are set on taking the true Artifact. That which you have found is false, placed there to trick my enemies and to start you on your Journey, so you could come here. Now you must find the real Dragonseed.”
The shadow waved his arm, and the pool erupted as water shot up. When it stilled, a three-dimensional image of a ruined city hung there. Made of stone, once-proud towers lay broken across broad stone steps. Walls had holes that earthmovers could be driven through. Columns lay in crumbled pieces. Images of unimaginable creatures stood out in bas-relief among the remains.
“This is Gharyn. Once a powerful trading city, it was lost to the sea millennia ago. But it still protects the Dragonseed.”
The three-dimensional image shifted and changed as the pieces twisted and turned into new scenes, new places, new wreckage. Finally, the rushing water stilled to reveal a building partially crushed under a mountain. A glowing gold marker hung in a chamber within the tumble-down ruin.
The shadow turned to face Rachel. “This is the Dragonseed. Retrieve it so that you may be safe. If you do not, you will all die.”
Hawke finally drew a deep breath, grateful that his ribs no longer felt like jagged glass, then a massive force slammed into him and his senses spun away. He thought maybe the shadow had decided they weren’t going to live after all. Then he couldn’t think anything at all.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE
“Hawke!”
Groggily, certain his head was about to split open, Hawke opened his eyes and looked up at Flicker.
“You still with me, omae?” She smoothed a hand across his brow.
“Yeah . . . yeah, I’m still here.” Hawke discovered he was lying on the floor in the safehouse. Med techs surrounded him. “I’m wiz. Get off me.” He sat up as the med techs drew back.
“His vitals are all stable,” one of the techs said, glaring at him. “Except for the lack of gratitude, he appears to be fine.”
“It’s okay,” Flicker told the woman. “I got this.”
With one more grudging look, the woman and her team left the room.
Hawke looked around and saw Snakechaser, Nighthorse, and Paredes all seated in chairs against the wall. None of them looked worse for the wear.
Best of all, Rachel Gordon sat on the bed with a cup of what smelled like chicken soup. She looked a little confused. “I guess a lot has happened here since I’ve been away . . . there.”
“Yeah, I’d say so.” Hawke forced himself to his feet and tried to ignore the dizziness spinning up inside his head. “Why am I the last one to recover?”
“You were the only one in there who wasn’t Awakened, hermano,” Paredes said.
Flicker blew out a breath. “Maybe it was that, and maybe it was because you’ve been running on fumes for days.”
“Whatever.” Hawke nodded at Rachel. “You okay?”
She stared back at him for a long moment, then nodded.
Flicker folded her arms. “She’s lost some weight. She’s a little rundown. Nothing she can’t come back from.” She glared at Hawke. “If this ‘Shadowman’ doesn’t decide to kill us all.”
“It’s not gonna come to that. We can run.”
“It’s too late for that,” Nighthorse said. “You, me, Rachel—all of us—we’ve been Marked. Whoever that was in the cave, he’s got our number. And he’s powerful. If we don’t go after his little trinket, we’ll all be hosed.”
“That’s just a smokescreen. If he was so powerful, he’d go get the artifact himself.”
“He can’t,” Rachel said.
“Why?”
“Because it’s mine. It’s tied to me.”
Hawke looked at his Awakened teammates. They all nodded without hesitation. “Then why does he want it?”
“He doesn’t want it,” Rachel said. “He wants me to have it.”
“Why?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know.”
Hawke wanted to slam his fist through the wall. None of this made any sense. He took a deep breath and let it out. “We don’t even know where it is.”
“We do,” Rachel said. “I do. I’ve already shown them.”
Hawke tried to catch up. “Where is it?”
“Off the coast of the Diego Ramirez Islands, it seems,” Flicker said.
Shaking his head, Hawke said, “I don’t even know where that is.”
“Off the coast of Chile,” Flicker said. “About a thousand meters down.” She touched her deck, and a trideo projection manifested in the center of the room around Hawke and Rachel. The coastline of what he assumed was one of the Diego Ramirez Islands butted into the sparkling green of the Pacific Ocean.
“Underwater?” Hawke couldn’t believe it.
“Yeah. A sunken city no one’s ever found before. It’s supposed to be in a cave system that survived the flooding. But it was still destroyed.” Flicker pursed her lips. “There’s no reason this Shadowman would make anything easy.” She cursed the man—or whatever he was—under her breath.
“Gharyn sank during the Fourth World,” Rachel said. “Apparently the city came under attack by some . . . things. Huge, grotesque creatures that laid waste to it before the ocean finished it off.”
“Hey, glad to see you’ve recovered, Hawke,” Dolphin said over the commlink. “But you don’t have time for a celebration. Aztlan and NeoNET both know where you are, and have sent sec teams to intercept you.”
“Let’s go,” Hawke said. All his confusion and anger vanished as he focused on getting gone. “How’d they find us?”
“They received an anonymous email from KilmerTek.”
“From whoever sent the Johnson?”
“That’s what I’m guessing.”
“Start backgrounding everyone attached to that corp.”
“I already have. I’m looking for who’s Awakened, has a lot of nuyen to throw around, and is exceedingly devious.” Dolphin sighed. “If he’s connected to that corp—”
“He has to be,” Hawke interrupted as he grabbed bags of gear and led the way out of the room.
“—then he’s devious enough that I haven’t been able to find him yet.”
“Find him.”
“He can’t hide from me forever.”
“If he’s as good on the Matrix as he is at magework,” Nighthorse said, “finding him may sign your death notice.”
“It’s already been signed,” Dolphin said. “I got an email from an anonymous sender that said if you guys don’t find the artifact, I’m going to die with you. So . . . I’m motivated to find him, and to help you guys on your treasure hunt.” She paused. “Get moving. You’ve got six minutes before the first Aztechnology sec men hit the safehouse, and NeoNET’s right on their heels.”
The medical people were headed out as well. The last two out the door set off incendiaries that would reduce the building to ash as Hawke led his team into the street.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX
“Well, amigo, I didn’t think I would ever see you again.”
An easy smile on his face, Captain Joaquin locked eyes with Hawke as he came aboard the Scorpionfish at the prearranged rendezvous off the coast of Cabo San Lucas.
Hawke ignored the man. Arriving at the resort city in the early hours of the morning, they’d easily gotten l
ost amid the constant partiers haunting the beaches. Once at sea, they’d boarded the submarine and, for all intents and purposes, disappeared.
Flicker had set up the transport, and Joaquin had “hijacked” them on the coast. Of course, Joaquin knew Aztechnology and NeoNET were still breathing down their necks, making them hot property, and he was putting himself at risk as well. Hawke was certain the captain wasn’t just doing it for the credits, though. His friendship with Flicker mattered to him.
“Hola, Flicker.” Joaquin took her into a fierce hug. “I am glad your friend hasn’t gotten you killed.”
Flicker hugged the man back. “You only think that because you don’t know Hawke like I do, Joaquin. He’s all about saving people, not getting them killed.”
“I hope that is true,” the smuggler captain said.
Silently, Hawke hoped so too, but this run was way out of his control now, and that bothered him because he didn’t have an end game in mind. Too much depended on what they found in that sunken city.
It’s just water, Hawke told himself while leaning on the observation deck railing below the Scorpionfish’s prow. A beach, a beer, and some well-filled bikinis, this could be a good place.
But the observation deck lacked all those things. There was just water, water, and more water all around, and that filled him with barely controlled dread.
According to one of the sailors, the submarine was cruising at something short of two hundred meters underwater. Well above crush depth, he’d assured Hawke That news was unsettling, though, because he hadn’t even known there was a “crush” depth. That immediately led to thoughts of how people found out if a submarine went deep enough to get crushed in the first place. He tried not to concentrate on that, and wished he could sleep like the rest of his team.
The large transplas window looked out into the seemingly endless blue-green sea. He spotted mostly marine creatures he couldn’t identify, but every now and again he would spot a shark or a whale or a manta ray.
“Can’t sleep?”
Turning, Hawke saw Rachel Gordon enter the observation deck chamber. She looked better, more rested, than she had when they’d left the safehouse twelve days ago.
They’d been on the run ever since, constantly harried by Shadowman, who—whenever he evidently thought they were taking too long—set the Aztechnology and NeoNET hounds on them again through his anonymous emails. Despite nearly round-the-clock hacking, Dolphin hadn’t gotten any closer to finding out who he was.
“I can’t,” Hawke admitted.
“I can’t sleep because my sleep cycle’s all wrong right now. I’ve been sleeping too much, and now I’m out of sync with everyone else.” Rachel studied him. “That’s not really your problem, I suppose.”
“I’m fine. My mind’s just been busy.”
Rachel smiled and walked over to the railing near him. “That’s not true. You’re afraid of the water.”
Hawke didn’t say anything.
“I know that,” Rachel said, “because knowing if people are telling the truth or lying is something I just know now.” She shrugged. “I talked to Dani and Snakechaser about it. They think it has to do with how I’m coming into my Awakened powers.” She snorted, and for a minute Hawke thought she was going to cry. Suddenly uncomfortable, he realized he didn’t know what he would do if she did.
She rubbed a sleeve over her face. “This isn’t anywhere near how I imagined my life would go.”
“How’d you think it would go?”
For a moment, she was silent. Then she shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe I’d get to travel around the world, see things nobody’s seen in hundreds or thousands of years.”
“Well, that’s kind of what you’re doing.”
She glared at him, then smiled, then started laughing, hard. Tears welled in her eyes, and she wiped them away. “Doing all that while running from corp assassins is so not how I pictured it.”
Hawke grinned. “I don’t know. I kind of like the running. Keeps the adrenaline spiked.”
“Seriously? You’re crazy.”
“That’s not crazy. Crazy is the Shadowman and his little shell game. Until he came along, I figured I had everything handled pretty well.”
Her good humor disappeared. “If I could, I’d take it all back.” A haunted look filled her eyes as she turned to the window.
Feeling guilty, Hawke looked at her. “Listen to me for a minute, omae.”
She tore her gaze away from the ocean and looked back at him.
“This isn’t your fault,” Hawke told her. “You and I are here because of the Shadowman. We’re all pieces on his game board at the moment. Until we figure a way out of it.”
She wrapped her arms around herself. “Do you think you will?”
“I do.”
Tentatively, she smiled at him. “You do remember I can tell when you’re lying?”
“Unless you can predict the future, I can lie about it all I want. Otherwise, we might as well put a bullet through our own heads. I’m not gonna do that. I’ll go down with a blade in my hand and somebody’s blood in my teeth.”
“Not exactly a winning game plan.”
Hawke smiled. “No, but it’s how I live.” He leaned on the railing again and looked at all the water, trying to think of it as merely window dressing. A few minutes passed, and a large turtle glided into view.
“That’s a leatherback turtle,” Rachel said, pointing. “You can tell because they don’t have a bony shell like most turtles do. Their carapaces are just thickened skin.”
The turtle swam languidly in the distance, growing closer as the submarine got nearer.
“How long can they hold their breath?” Hawke asked, curious because he hadn’t ever thought about it before.
“On a long dive, anywhere from thirty minutes to over an hour.” Rachel looked at him. “So, why did you stick around and try to save me in Guatemala? It wasn’t just to get paid. If that was the case, you would have sold me off to Aztechnology or NeoNET long before now.”
“Shadowman—”
“No,” Rachel interrupted, “Shadowman is a recent development. Why did you do what you did?”
Hawke hesitated.
“Remember, I can tell when you’re lying.”
He stared at the turtle a long time before replying. “I don’t have a normal life. I don’t know if I could ever have one. That decision got taken out of my hands a long time ago.” He looked at her. “But I thought . . . maybe you could still be whoever you wanted to be if I could get you out of the drek storm you were in.”
“And now?”
“Now?” Hawke thought about that. “Now, I’m just hoping we get to the other side of this thing alive.”
“Me, too,” Rachel said quietly. “And thank you.”
Hawke nodded.
“I think I can sleep now,” she said, “so I’m going back to bed. You going to be all right?”
“Yeah.”
She turned and walked away, leaving him there. “Don’t worry about the ocean, Hawke. I don’t think any of us have to be concerned about drowning.”
Hawke tried to take some comfort from that, and for a moment or two, he almost managed to.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN
Three days later, Rachel told them they’d reached the site where Gharyn had gone into the ocean, and that it lay below the Scorpionfish. Joaquin’s radar techs confirmed the existence of a large, hollow space under the seabed about seven hundred meters below the ocean’s surface.
According to Flicker, that put the distance a hundred or so meters short of the collapsible—she called it collapsible, not crush—depth of the deep sea submersible she’d brought out of her stable of vehicles for the meet in Cabo San Lucas. Hawke hadn’t even known she owned a submarine.
“It’s not actually mine,” Flicker admitted. “It’s more of a time-share I have with five other riggers. We all use it to recover lost salvage we get hired for. I had to call in some favors to get it now, omae, and i
f I don’t bring it back in one piece, the other people I share it with aren’t going to be happy with me.”
“I’d rather bring it back in one piece, too,” Hawke agreed. “Uncollapsed.”
Flicker was jacked into the controls as the Scorpionfish opened the moon pool—which had nothing to do with anything lunar, and was the name for an airlock, Hawke discovered—and dropped the Helldiver into the open Pacific. The submersible, to his way of thinking, was aptly named because it streaked right for the bottom.
He sat in one of its seats and tried not to think about crush depths or drowning. Occupying himself with thoughts of what they might find in the sunken city didn’t help, because he couldn’t stop wondering what it would take to flood the air-filled chambers with seawater. Getting shot by NeoNET or Aztechnology sec teams seemed a distant threat, despite the fact that both corps’ forces were closing in.
There were no windows to peer out of, and Hawke was glad of that. If there had been, he would have been looking, and that would have only made his anxiety worse.
The submersible’s control center was compact, smaller than he expected it to be. He didn’t understand any of the controls or readouts he saw floating around Flicker. Rachel sat next to the rigger, watching everything with avid interest. Nighthorse, Snakechaser, and Paredes talked in low voices in the passenger seats. In the compact cargo space barely large enough for him, Rolla snored, and Twitch slept quietly sitting against the wall near him, both of them resting for what was to come.
Hawke wished he could do the same.
“Scorpionfish to Helldiver,” Joaquin called over the comm.
“We read you, Scorpionfish,” Flicker replied.
“We’re clearing out as agreed, but I wanted you to know that the pursuit we’ve been dodging has shown up. They’ve marked our location, but aren’t following us. They know you’re in the sea, however.”