by Tobias Wade
“She’s mad,” Eric whimpers. “Please Kathleen, if you ever cared about me—”
“Do it,” Kathleen says in a passionless voice. There’s a twitch in one of her eyes though. Small but definite. “When you’re finished, we can speak.”
Jessica swears internally, taking a quick glance at the black water. They’re all trapped down there, blind and helpless. Her fingers tighten around the hilt. Kathleen isn’t taking the bait.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers to Eric, feeling him stiffen against her. The blade flashes in the air as she pulls it back to strike his throat. Kathleen’s face contorts in pain, a shriek like a banshee ripping from her that Jessica can feel like a cold wind blowing through her body from the inside out. Jessica fights through it, driving the blade toward Eric’s exposed neck—
The muscles in her arm lock an inch from contact. It feels almost like a cramp which echoes throughout her body, stiffening one muscle group at a time until she’s completely paralyzed. She’s dimly aware that the shriek hasn’t stopped yet, but its becoming muffled as her senses grow disoriented. She feels like she’s falling one moment, then flying the next, then falling again. Her vision is fading to black, her heart growing louder and faster until she’s nothing but that erratic beat. She’s vaguely aware that her muscles have begun to move without her direction, but there’s nothing she can do to stop it. Th-thump—th-thump—th-thump, her heart pounding in her ears and resonating through her whole body, all thoughts dissolving except a singular will to keep breathing and hold on. And through it all she feels herself smiling, because whatever happened to her now doesn’t matter.
As long as Kathleen is controlling her, she won’t be able to steal the light from the waters. Dantes and the others have a chance now. She’d blocked him from her mind after what he’d done to her mother, but through that timeless haze she couldn’t force her thoughts any more than she could her body. He has a chance to close the portal, a chance to make it out alive, a chance to save them all. And however much she hated him for what he did, all she could feel was the quickening of her heart whose ceaseless hammering devours her consciousness and suspends her within its rhythm.
Jessica doesn’t know whether she’s trapped in such a state for a minute or an hour, but the next thing she’s aware of is the ice water closing around her head. Spluttering for air, she surfaces for a moment to glimpse the barren immensity of the open ocean which stretches as far as she can see in every direction. Then a freezing wave crashes around her head and she’s underwater again, her life vest gone and the weight of her baggy clothes dragging her down. Her useless legs dangle helplessly, her numb arms too weak to drag herself back for air.
26
The heavy darkness swirls through the water like smoke in a hurricane. Dantes' flashlight emits a weak spark, the birth of a star twinkling from nothingness. Then two more lights a little deeper down, fragile and beautiful, their creeping light a miraculous wave which creates everything it touches. Next comes the glow of the molten rock, weak at first, but spreading by the second until the whole sea floor is illuminated in the hellish aura. Even the current seems to slow as though in reverence to this impossible sunrise.
There’s no time to dwell on such niceties however, for they are not alone in the water. Light is no mercy when it falls upon such an abomination. Skin as molten as the rock runs down its body in great sticky globules, ceaselessly contorting and reforming into monstrous deformity and torment. It’s twice the size of a man with vaguely humanoid shape, although its black eyes have swollen into great orbs which dominate more than half its face. A pair of small spectacles have fused with the distending eyes. The wisps of its remaining beard are filthy with the smeared skin which has become trapped in it, the skin continuing to grow as it ran to form something like a fifth appendage.
The black orbs blink, momentarily stunned by the sudden light. Jacques and Jordan bank hard to swim out of its trajectory, but the creature doesn’t remain in the light long enough for it to matter. KNOCK, KNOCK—the sound they’d heard approaching revealed as the creature launches from rock to rock in rhythmic pounces, propelling itself with such powerful ferocity as to reduce the hardened lava to crumbling sand in its wake.
Dantes tries to track the creature with his light, but its ceaseless and unpredictable movement makes this near impossible. He catches the blur of movement or a heel disappearing into the darkness, often not finding it again until the next KNOCK leads him in the right direction. It hasn’t made a move toward them yet, seeming more curious than aggressive, although the vicious strength in its frog-like bounds leaves little doubt about how quickly it could demolish the yielding flesh of anything it made contact with.
Flash—flash flash—flash—Jordan is signaling something. His light reflects from a shimmering halo deeper within the ancient city. The portal? No, it looks more like the the surface, although they’re far too deep to have found a way back out. Perhaps there’s an air pocket in the cavern where the highest parts of the city may not have been flooded.
KNOCK—KNOCK—KNOCK—moving faster now, the creature already pouncing from somewhere else by the time the previous location is illuminated. Stone walls and tiled roofs which have withstood the battery of ocean currents for eons turn to rubble in a tightening perimeter around the men. Dantes propels himself upward toward the top of the city, lifting an arm and pivoting it at the elbow to signal his men follow. They’re only too quick to consent, reading the grim realization in each other’s faces: they’re utterly vulnerable in the water.
KNOCK KNOCK—racing on ahead to intercept their path. Jacques slows, his hands fiddling with the chord which ties the waterproof tarp together. Dantes shakes his head, grabbing Jacques by the air tank and heaving him onward. It hasn’t attacked yet—why provoke it? Maybe it won’t even bother them. Or maybe that’s just Jessica in his head again, her scream as she held her mother’s corpse still fresh enough to almost hear. To admit that there’s anything but evil in these twisted mockeries of life is to admit that he may have really killed her mother with the monster. The benefit of the doubt is not an accessible luxury in war. Dantes decides to stick close to Jacques, one hand on the tarp.
Jordan breaks through the surface into the air pocket first. He heaves himself up, discarding equipment as he goes upon the shore. Jacques makes a lunge for the rock shelf, only making it halfway out of the water before the weight of the explosives drag him back down. There’s no leverage to help him up from underwater, so Dantes pulls himself out to help. Jacques hands the blue tarp up first, which Jordan takes and immediately begins to unpack. Next Jacques throws a hand out for Dantes to pull him out of the water. Their hands almost meet, a few inches from contact, before Jacques’ groping fingers suddenly retract, vanishing below the water.
KNOCK. Even louder outside the water, and immeasurably closer. The rock cliff below the shelf they’re climbing onto explodes. The air is filled with the dancing frenzy of stone shrapnel and spraying mist.
Jordan lunges toward the edge where Jacques was a moment before, but Dantes roughly shoves him back.
“Get the detonators ready,” Dantes shouts.
Hearing a voice like that is tantamount to running headfirst into a steel wall. The rock shelf is smaller than expected, although there’s a clear lava tube onward which continues to climb away from the water. A way out—but not for Dantes. Maybe Ender was a fool for falling into the hands of The Beast, but he understood one thing: there is only one way to leave a battlefield while his men still fight, and that is at the hands of the enemy.
Dantes dives headfirst back into the frothing water, a hunting knife gripped in each hand. Everything is chaos—the wrestling bodies, the flooding bubbles, the blood which has already begun flowing freely through the water—but chaos is the music which death dances by, and Dantes had been keeping step his whole life. Crouching against the crumbling cliffside, , Dantes launches himself into the spinning combat to drive his knives into the creature’s back. The blad
es sink up to their hilt in its warped skin, and the creature gurgles an underwater screech.
Its grip on Jacques slackens for a moment, and the wounded soldier immediately makes for the surface. Dantes attempts to stab the monster again, but he can’t get the blades out of its back. The skin is growing around the handles before his eyes, absorbing them into it like sloppy, sucking mouths devouring the steel. Rapidly hardening scabs are already clinging to Dantes' fingers, threatening to work their way over his hands and up his arms if he holds on any longer.
The creature flails behind it with fluid arms which contort grotesquely around their joints, but it still can’t reach Dantes directly behind it. Pulling his legs up once more, Dantes uses its back as another launching pad to drive himself back toward the surface. He’s forced to abandon his embedded knives though, leaving him completely vulnerable in the open water.
Jacques’ legs vanish above the surface as Jordan drags him out. The impetus from kicking off the creature is depleting itself, and Dantes is exquisitely aware of how slowly he’s closing the remaining distance to the ledge. A glance over his shoulder—the creature is retreating into the darkness, the two fleshly knives still in its back appearing as uneven shoulder blades puncturing through the skin. It’s wounded though—it’s fleeing. There will be time to climb out of the water and leave it behind—
KNOCK. But it wasn’t leaving. It had only retreated far enough to find a hard surface to leap from, and now it hurtles back toward Dantes with ghastly glee. Dantes doesn’t even have time to brace for impact. The creature slams into him with a force that turns his bones to rubber. His whole body goes limp. Before he can even recover, there’s a second impact as he’s propelled face-first into the cliffside . It feels like his jaw spins halfway around his face before snapping back. Hands are clutching him now, gripping under his arms with merciless insistence, their pressure distant and unreal compared with the jarring slam.
Will it drag me under? Or rip me apart? Drowning seems like the worst death Dantes can imagine, although being ripped limb from limb to bleed out in the water is a strong contender. He doesn’t have to wonder for long though, because the hands are pulling him now…
… out of the water, onto the rock shelf. Human hands—Jordan’s hands—pulling him away from the demon. Dantes feels himself being lifted onto Jordan’s shoulders to carry him in a stooping run.
“… in there. You’re alright. You’re alright. You hear me, Captain? I’ve got you now.”
Dantes isn’t listening though. His whole awareness is straining to listen for another sound, and he hears it. The splash of something exiting the water behind him.
“Blow it! Blow the fucking tunnel behind us!” Dantes screams, his voice echoing hauntingly through the lava tube.
“Can’t do,” Jacques protests. “We don’t have enough.”
The splashing has stopped. The creature is fully out of the water now, more horrible than ever for the clear sight of it. From over Jordan’s shoulder, Dantes can see the streaming water lance off its body and emphasize the disturbing flow of its skin.
“Use them all,” Dantes shouts. “Light this place up!”
Jacques has turned back and is staring at the creature too. “Your call, Captain.” His fingers fly across the phones which are wired to the bottles of explosives. He’s typing in codes. He chucks each one into the tube’s entrance like a trail of breadcrumbs behind them as soon as he finishes.
The creature is already crouching, preparing to leap, when the first explosion goes off. The crashing noise combines with searing light and suffocating pressure to fill the entire closed space. They’re going off like clockwork, , one every second or two. Jacques stands his ground as the blast waves roll over him one by one. At first it seems like the tunnel will endure, but the successive blasts shake the lava rock apart. By the fourth explosion the ceiling and walls have caved together into a heaping pile of rubble, and by the sixth and final blast, the way appears completely blocked.
The screeching on the other side is finally audible again as the last rubble settles.
“Merde.” Jacques pants for air. “That will hold, yes?”
The screech pauses, presumably for the creature to draw breath, and the unmistakable sound of shifting rock can be heard in the stillness.
KNOCK—KNOCK—KNOCK—trails of dust and pebbles dribble down from the ceiling as they reverberate from the impacts.
“Not for long,” Dantes says, easing himself to his feet. “We can’t rest yet.”
“That was Henry, wasn’t it?” Jordan asks solemnly. “I recognized the beard and spectacles.”
“Merde. Shit,” Jacques says again.
The numbness in Dantes' body has started to make way for a deep throbbing ache across his whole body. He limps deeper into the tunnel, carrying with him a grim satisfaction that at least he stopped Mackenzie from turning into that. Maybe if Jessica saw it, she’d be able to forgive him. He freezes to consider. Jessica—Kathleen will have found her by now. Is that why the darkness lifted? What’s happening up there?
“That was my whole stash,” Jacques grumbles. “Now how are we supposed to destroy the portal?”
“We trust each other. And we keep going. We’ll find a way when the time comes, we always do,” Dantes says.
That’s a captain’s job, isn’t it? Give hope to his men and leave none for himself. Or maybe that’s what a coward does—stubbornly refusing to face the grim reality that lies in store. But Jessica was still up there, and his men were still alive, and that seems like a good enough reason to put one foot in front of the other until death can no longer be held at bay.
27
Jessica gasps for breath, paddling furiously in the open water. She’s only barely able to get her face above the surface before another freezing wave crashes over her, filling her nose and mouth. She chokes and coughs, but it only intensifies the maelstrom of salt pouring down her throat.
The boat—where’s the boat? She can’t see it anywhere, although maybe that’s because her blurry eyes are barely able to open before she’s submerged again beneath the bitter waves. The last thing she remembers is the scorn and hatred in Kathleen’s black eyes. With Jessica’s knife pressed against Eric’s throat, can Jessica really blame her?
The unspoken question that she’d refused to consciously acknowledge is impossible to hold back any longer. How far would Jessica have gone to provoke Kathleen into lashing out? How deep would she have pressed the blade into the innocent man’s skin if it meant giving her friends a chance? There’s no point lying to herself here at the end. The unequivocal answer was that she’d been prepared to kill.
The seed had grown inside her mother until it infested her from the inside out, and still she sacrificed her life trying to help Jessica understand. And here she was, more demon than the demons, deserving the slow suffocation the world promises her is coming soon.
Every time she goes under, it takes her longer to crawl back to the surface. She’s swallowing more water every time she gulps for air. How long can she keep this up? Five minutes? Probably less. The numb chill is seeping all the way into her bones, stiffening her muscles and sapping their strength. She’s under again, holding her breath as long as she can, but knowing it won’t be long enough as she slips deeper into the silent waters.
“Are you ready to be reborn again?” The voice is insubstantial, lingering in the water with haunting reverberations.
Jessica forces her stinging eyes open underwater. Kathleen is there floating beside her. She’s smiling now, all the hatred gone. Jessica swipes her arms to push herself away, but she’s so weak that she can’t even overcome the rolling current which drags her closer to the demon. Kathleen stretches out a hand, and Jessica is helpless to prevent it from caressing the side of her cheek.
“Blessed are the dying before The Beast, for they are the great explorers, and arrows of longing for the other shore.”
The hand is so warm against Jessica’s frigid skin. She can�
�t help but lean into it as it strokes her face.
“Blessed are the wrathful, and the violent, for they are the great undoers who will remake the world in their vision.”
The darkness is closing in, but it’s too slow and natural to be a demonic art. This is death: true, honest, peaceful, carrying with it a blissful warmth which begins at her fingers and steals its way up her limbs.
“Blessed are those with fear, and sorrow, and joy in their hearts, for they are the instruments through which The Beast plays the music of life.”
The darkness is closing in fast, but there’s still enough light to see Kathleen reaching her fingers down her own throat. Kathleen chokes as a grotesque bulge makes its way up her neck. Jessica doesn’t need to clearly see the pulsing dark mass which spills from Kathleen’s mouth and into her hands. It isn’t the first time she’s been offered the seed, but it will be the last. If she can just resist a little longer though, then resistance will no longer be necessary.
“You know he’s waiting for you, don’t you, Jessica? Only next time there will be no eternity which can steal you from him. Your divine flesh is alive by his grace. His love is the blood in your veins, and the last of your stale breath. Do you know why I took the seed that Henry offered? I’ve spent my whole life working to understand and undo the damage humans have done to this world. No atrocity nor evil in this world or the next can compare with those man inflicts upon himself and his home. The Beast asks for nothing but what is poorest in me, my humanity. I can feel your heart slowing, Jessica. You are out of time. Will the pinnacle of your pointless life be an equally vain death, or will you shed the skin which holds you back and embrace who you truly are?”
Whether it’s some infernal magic or the last desperate spasms of a dying mind, there is yearning in those words. Jessica feels the seed being pressed into her hands, and in it burns a spiritual fire. Hadn’t her mother said that The Beast within her is dead? That she would not be giving herself away, but finding herself once more? She would have the power to read the Codex and close the portal. She’d be able to save her friends, to save Dantes. She has been seeking her whole life, not knowing why or for what, only knowing that she is incomplete until she finds it. And now she clutches what she didn’t know she’d been looking for between her fingers and senses it feel her in return. And now she opens her mouth and presses it inside, and now she swallows, seemingly pouring gallons of icy water into her belly as she does.