“You doing my job for me?”
“You hired me for my expertise. I guess I always was good at sticking my nose where it didn't belong.”
She stared at the folded piece of paper as if it were a puzzle, and she didn't know how to open it. At last, she tucked it into her jeans. “Now's not the time, Angus. I don't know what this shows, but I can't imagine any of them will get away with it.”
AJ shrugged. “Arrogance. Know anybody like that?”
“Many someones.”
“That may be true, but I have a feeling this paper will mean more to you than it does to me. As for their motive, I can't answer. I've seen a lot of strange things in a lot of strange places, but I've never seen anything to make me think growing tentacles that eat people would be a good idea.”
Dutch would have laughed at that, but she didn't. AJ didn't either.
“Then, I guess we'll need to protect ourselves.”
“You guess right.”
She pointed to a bunker in the center of the compound with an open door. AJ remembered poking his head in earlier and seeing a pair of corpses, but the shelves and boxed goods hadn't registered; he had been too preoccupied with finding her at the time.
“I know a place with guns,” she said. “A lot of guns.”
5
Less than an hour later, the fires on the platform finally achieved a temperature hot enough to ignite the unprocessed crude in the storage tanks. The remaining canisters burst like balloons, spattering flame and debris a hundred feet into the air. It was the final stage in the destruction of the platform.
The last crane collapsed when the tanks burst, annihilating the top level and wreaking destruction through the other floors as it fell. The helipad toppled. The catwalks buckled. All that was left was a smoking ruin, a skeleton of a metal titan on the water. The Carrion, what was left of them, burned with it. They melted and fell into the sea, dropping like insects in a forest fire.
Kate and her new friends were resting when it happened, she herself nearly collapsed from exhaustion. They did not see the great monument fall into the water. They did not see the four shapes dive from the lowest level just before the last of it disintegrated.
Chapter 18: Aphelion
The Island:
February, 1939
1
Dominik stopped just outside of the laboratory bunker, unable to walk through. Jan and Gloeckner came to a halt behind him.
“We've done everything we could, Mister Kaminski,” the doctor said. “She's resting now.”
She was down there beyond the door, his little girl. Dominik remembered they had ripped her body from his arms the day before, and now she was here. Here, of all places. It was fitting somehow, the consequences of his failure ending in the place it had begun. There were logical reasons for her to be in the lab, of course. The medical equipment was there, and it was one of the only rooms that could be called private, at least from a soldier's eyes. But as much as he wanted to see her again, to hold her, he didn't know what he would find. The cages were broken, and those things from the crater had been given free reign. They may not have grown far when her body was carried below, but now, a day later...
“We will give you leave to bury her tonight,” Gloeckner said. He had mentioned this on the walk over but repeated it now. “You can sit with her as long as you like until then. She was quite far along by the time she was taken from you, Mister Kaminski. The smell was... well, it was not very good. She has been embalmed.”
“Embalmed?”
“Yes. We do have the means to give our dead a proper burial here. The Führer saw to that. Our burial practices really aren't so different, your people and mine. Are they?”
Dominik had a vision of the chasm, thinking of the stories Ari had been telling him about their new commander. He wondered if the other prisoners would be afforded such a proper burial. But no, he was different from them; he was special. And so Zofia had been a punishment, swift and merciless, and then they would all be friends again. Like chopping off a limb and then cauterizing it so the victim would not die.
Embalmed.
He mouthed the word, and he was hit with another image. This one depicted the doctor himself stripping her down, cutting her open, pumping her full of chemicals. It was frightening, seeing him alone with her body, his gloved hands doing their blood work.
Dominik lunged at Gloeckner, his hands clawing and grabbing. At the same time, he felt his mind splitting. It was as if his body had flown off the handle but a separate part of himself was left perfectly sane. It asked him, why oh why am I hitting this man? He is not the real enemy, he is not the cause. So why? To this, he had no answer. He only knew that he needed to strike, and strike he would.
Before he could do so much as land a blow, however, Jan stepped between them. The sergeant grabbed the doctor by the scruff of the neck and tossed him back towards the path. Gloeckner stumbled and fell, barely catching himself before toppling into dirt. He pushed himself up, looking shocked and indignant. Jan held up a finger as if to warn him from saying anything further, then turned to Dominik. “Go,” he said. “Be with her. It's the only mercy you'll get in this place, and it's not much.” His eyes seemed to glow. Dominik could see pain in them and thought there was something more, perhaps compassion. Then, Jan took a step forward. “Get down there before I throw you down.”
Maybe not.
Dominik found himself stepping into the bunker before he had time to think. The door slammed behind him, squeezing his vision of the two men as if he were closing them out of his world. For all intents and purposes, he was. It was completely black, the generators not yet on for the day. He wondered if this is what the universe felt like before Creation: this feeling of nothing, and loneliness.
After a moment—or an eternity, Dominik didn't know—the lights flickered on. The universe reappeared, and he was standing in the familiar concrete labyrinth marking the place of his pseudo-employment. As he moved to the stairs and began to descend to the lab proper, he felt the weight of Zofia's loss grow heavier. There was no one here to save him, now.
When he pushed the door open, he knew what he should see. He should see... he should see Zofia on a table, the light of the heavens shining down, her form surrounded by angels. That's what he should see, even if he expected the growths to have done their horrible work. It was his fault, after all. He had failed to control them. He had broken the glass and set them free.
But as he stepped inside, he stopped and stared in astonishment. Zofia lay in the center of the room, lifeless, but as beautiful as she had ever been, as pure as she had ever been. What he saw around her was wondrous. It was not an entourage of angels, but it was truly wondrous just the same.
2
Lucja snapped out of bed when she heard her father come in. A moment earlier, she had been dead to the world, but the sound of him brought her out of sleep quicker than the ringing of any alarm.
“Father,” she whispered.
Removing his coat with the deliberation of an old, old man, Dominik came to her side. He carried a canteen with him, an odd adornment for the circumstance, but he didn't speak of what was inside it, not right away.
“You're awake.”
“I couldn't sleep. Could you?”
He hugged her, and for a moment, they did nothing but cling to each other in the darkness. When he finally pulled his head up, she could see how haggard he was. He looked shrunken, like a flower that had withered in the cold.
“I need to speak to Ari.”
“I'm here.” He was looking at them from the doorway. Though he had tried to give them some space, he had never been far. Lucja didn't think he would ever be far now, given what had happened.
Her father stood with that same, awkward slowness, then crossed the small space to his friend. He reached into his pocket and brought out a folded piece of paper. He looked at it a moment as if contemplating whether or not to hand it over. Then he did, his face looking to all the world as if the n
ote were a written confession of murder.
Reaching for his spectacles with one hand, Ari took the paper and flipped it open with the other. He squinted at the writing.
“I want you to acquire these for me. Aside from Kriege, there shouldn't be anyone who will know what we can do with them,” Dominik said.
“Industrial steel tubing, silver, methanol... are you serious?”
Though Lucja was looking at the back of her father's head, she knew the expression on his face. Her father had a plan; it was the same look of intensity he had worn in the dark of The Adalgisa.
No, not like that, she corrected. He was different now. This would not be an ideation, not a gentle what if escape scenario. This would be iron clad. Because her father, like her, was now as cold and hard as the steel of his machines. This time, he would not freeze with the ax.
When he made a twirling motion with one finger, Ari turned the paper. Over her father's shoulder, Lucja could see a drawing of a strange machine. She could see vats and filters and tubes, all with arrows and diagrams and intricate labels. The design, no doubt, was a part of his plan.
“It works?” Ari asked. “Are you sure?”
“The substance works,” her father said. “I've seen it for myself. As to the production of it, that's what the machine and the chemicals are for.”
“But there's something else?”
“Oh yes.”
“And it works?” Ari asked again, as if not believing his partner had finally found a solution to the problem that had ailed them for so long.
“If only I'd found it sooner.” Even though she could still not see his face, Lucja knew the pain upon it. This thing, whatever it was, might have saved her sister.
“But... it's because of her,” Ari said.
“It was her gift to me. The funny thing is, when we have it, we're not going to use it on the fungus, not all of it.”
“We're not?”
“There's more, Ari. More that I would not care to write down.”
“Oh?”
And then, her father told them his plan.
When he had finished, they sat in silence for a long while. Lucja had been right in every assumption, and it terrified her.
“When it's done, I can't say for sure how we're going to get off of the island,” her father said. “The vehicles will be inoperable, so we'll have to hike to the shipyard. When we get there, we'll have to find a way to steal on board a ship. Most of the whalers will be faithful to the army, but some won't. Who knows, maybe we can bribe the others.” He shrugged. “It's a chance.”
Lucja nodded, and for the first time in months, she began to feel hope.
That night, under the watchful eyes of the guards, they buried Zofia in an unmarked grave outside of the walls, the three of them pondering the terrible things they were about to do.
3
Across the encampment, another figure jilted awake in the darkness. He hit his head on a shelf next to the bed and swore. He could not believe his clumsiness, even in a place so unfamiliar. But his hands had done their work; his Walther PPK pistol was in his grip before he was fully conscious.
Richter sat up and stared through the dark. The room was small and clearly empty, but he felt something, a lingering presence.
When his eyes adjusted, he saw immediately what it was. The door to the room was ajar. He had shut it and locked it before retiring as he always did. The fact that he could see a sliver of light from the hallway startled him. Throughout all of his years in the army, with the countless enemies he'd made, no one had ever gotten the drop on him. He was a man of good habits; he was a man who checked beneath the bed and in the closets and who always locked the door when he went to bed, even in friendly territory, even when the nearest enemy was a thousand kilometers away. And so to see the door open now, even a crack, gave him pause. Someone had opened it, and they'd done it quietly.
More than likely, it was a young schütze. In spite of his confidence, the commander wasn't blind to the way some of the soldiers looked at him. It took guts to be a commander of men. It was not a job for the ordinary, but then, the Schutzstaffel was not an ordinary division of soldiers. The Führer had great plans for Germany—for all of Europe—and ordinary soldiers would not get the job done. Richter's transfer from the regular army had been one of the great honors of his life, and it was not done without envy from his peers. Envy, and to some extent, fear. The Schutzstaffel were the elite. They were the ones who would stand at the front lines when The Führer unleashed his plans to the world. And it is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both, he thought, quoting Machiavelli. The Führer understood this, and it was one of the reasons why Richter loved him so dearly.
So was it possible that a lesser man had come to spy on him? To harm him? The commander intended to find out. If there was one thing he was good at, it was finding the truth. He enjoyed finding it in one of the myriad texts he studied each night before bed, but he enjoyed finding it more in men. Opening them up and reading them was so much more gratifying than what he found in books.
He approached the door like a hunter and thrust it open, but the hallway greeted him with stillness. Then, he looked up and saw the bunker exit door was also ajar. Whomever had slipped away had retraced his steps right out the front. There was supposed to be a sentry standing outside, but he saw no one.
The smells of cold earth and stale concrete wafted into his nostrils, but he could also smell something pungent beneath, something like old flowers. His jaw tensed. Cornelius Richter feared no man, but this... this was fear of the unknown. The oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown. Lovecraft, wasn't it? What would such an ass of an American writer have known about real fear?
Brazenly, the commander stepped into the cold, his pistol raised. The expanse of the base opened before him, as quiet and docile as he had ever seen it. The sentries stood in their towers. The generators hummed pleasantly behind the barracks.
Perhaps the the stress was getting to him. Perhaps, in his foolishness, he had left the door to his room unlocked, or even open. It was not often he admitted to himself that his job was taxing in the extreme, that it took a heavy toll on his psyche, but in the deep recesses of his mind, Richter knew these things.
When he looked at the ground, however, he saw a spatter of black. It was not much, barely more than what you'd see from the start of a nosebleed, but it was enough. The guard to the front door of the barracks was missing, and now, there was blood.
Feeling his eyes drawn, the commander looked towards the gate. In the dying light of the sun, he saw a face. The wrinkled visage stared back at him through eyes as gray and dead as the sky. Then, just like that, the face was gone. The form slipped out beyond the gate and into the wilderness, vanishing into the dusk.
Richter looked up at the guard towers. “Alarm!” he shouted. “Alarm! Alarm!”
4
“The commander says it was Kriege,” Metzger said, walking beside the lieutenant.
“He's sure about what he saw?”
“Can you imagine the commander being unsure of anything?”
Harald could not, and so decided to keep his mouth shut from then on. He trudged to the gate overlooking the chasm, and he could see bedlam below. Pockets of orange light danced around the perimeter, men searching the area with torches. Not electric flashlights or lanterns, but torches. The commander had his men searching the grounds like witch hunters from the dark ages.
“He's here somewhere,” he heard Richter yell. “He's here! Find him! I want every nook searched. Unless he dropped into the pit, he's hiding in the rocks.”
Harald could see most of the staff about, including Jan and Seiler. The Gestapo agent, in particular, looked even more displeased about the affair than Harald was himself. He was standing by an outcropping with Hans, the two of them talking amongst themselves.
The lieutenant broke off from Metzger's trail. “Boris! What the hell is going on?”
“They have not f
ound him yet,” Seiler said moodily. “But the commander is certain he is here.”
“I hope they catch him,” Hans said.
“Do you think he's here?”
Seiler shrugged and ignored the question. “I do not like this. I have a bad feeling.”
Before he could say anything else, Richter spied the group and made to join them. “Lieutenant! I'm glad you're here.”
Walking stiffly up the path, the man looked at Harald's brow as he came to a halt. The lieutenant realized it was because he was wearing a new hat. It was indistinguishable from any other officer's hat, though Harald had been told this particular model had belonged to his island predecessor.
“Any luck?”
Richter shook his head. “Not yet, but we have the perimeter covered. It won't be long.”
“Commander,” Harald said, at once unsure why he had begun to speak. Then, “Are you sure about what you saw? The men say he is like Smit.”
“I am sure. Until he is found, we're on high alert. This is why it is so imperative we act quickly. Surely you understand that?”
“Of course.” Harald looked around at the men, saw how efficiently they were sweeping the grounds. If the doctor was here, they'd find him. “I hear Kaminski has made a discovery,” he ventured, changing the subject. “If so, it will help prevent these kinds of incidents, I would hope.” And this was true: the lab was positively beaming with the news. Even Thomas Frece, one of the most curmudgeonly men Harald had ever met, seemed upbeat. Of course, this was all hearsay. Harald had been meaning to talk to Kriege to find out the details. Now, that might never happen. He'd have to get the word from Kaminski himself.
“Even if it's true, it would have been nice to have an answer a little sooner, yes?” Richter said. “Kriege was one of us. I hate to lose him.”
“We haven't lost him yet.”
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