by Paul Draker
“Go!” she shouted. “Go help him!”
Without turning his head, Juan held up his hand—I heard you—but still he didn’t jump. Her throat tightened. She had seen him risk his life to save a child; was he just going to watch this man Dmitry die now?
She wasn’t a great swimmer, but somebody had to help him. Camilla bounded down the breakwater, leaping from rock to rock, risking a bad tumble.
As she drew closer, Juan backed up several steps on the dock, then ran forward, picking up speed to split the water in a clean dive. The tightness in her heart loosened—she wasn’t wrong about him. But long seconds went by, and he didn’t resurface. Oh god, had the shark…?
Popping up alongside Dmitry, Juan rolled him onto his back and looped an arm over his chest. As he stroked toward the dock, hauling the scientist, Camilla searched the water around them, looking for a fin, a disturbance, seeing nothing. A few minutes later, they reached the shallows and pulled themselves up onto the rocks.
Camilla scrambled toward where the two men lay on their backs, but before she could reach them Juan slapped Dmitry on the shoulder, rolled over, and stood up.
He headed for the dock, and she followed.
Pushing roughly past her, the bearded scientist named Jacob grabbed Juan by the arm. “That was sixty thousand dollars of Institute property—”
Juan shook off his hand, ignoring him, and lay down at the end of the dock. He reached an arm into the water, shoulder deep, fishing around by touch, and pulled a six-foot loop of steel chain out of the water. He stood up, dropping it on the deck. It lay in a puddle of water, glinting in the sun, its shiny two-inch links solid and heavy-looking. Camilla stared at them as the others crowded the dock behind her.
“Brand-new,” she said. “This was put there recently.”
Juan nodded. “No tarnish at all. I felt an eyebolt under the dock, too.”
“The end of the chain probably had a hook on it, hanging from that,” she said. “Whoever did this would have needed only a few seconds to reach underneath, grab the hook, and connect it to the engine’s frame. It hung out of sight in the water until the boat ran out the full length of the chain—”
“‘Whoever did this’?” Jacob thrust himself forward again, leveling a finger at her. “Don’t try to deny it. It was you people!”
Stomach tight, Camilla looked at them all. “He’s right. One of us did it. There’s no one else here. But Mason was—” …with me the whole time, she was going to say, but Brent held up his hand, cutting her off.
“Before we all start accusing each other again,” he said, “I’d like you all to remember what happened last time someone thought that was a good idea.”
Veronica’s face darkened. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I’m getting pretty tired of treating serious injuries under these conditions. We should focus on getting rescued and let the police sort out who did what.” Brent dusted his hands together, looking at the scientists. “How long until you’re missed? How soon will your colleagues come looking for you?”
Jacob turned to look at the other two scientists. Dmitry sat on the edge of the dock, breathing heavily. He shook his head. Camilla watched Heather’s face blanch. No way. It couldn’t be…
“Uh, yeah,” Jacob said. “We… well, we…”
“Nobody knows we’re here,” Heather said. “Normally, we’re here for a couple of weeks in December, but this year, at the last minute, we got told to stay home. Then we heard about a reality show being shot out here, and we wanted to make sure our research was safe and the animals weren’t being bothered.”
The look on her face made Camilla’s cheeks feel hot. She looked down at the ground.
“Nobody knows we’re here,” Jacob said. “Oh fuck, nobody knows we’re out here.”
Brent sagged. “Then we have a real problem.”
CHAPTER 101
“So let me get this right,” Jacob said, rubbing his beard. “You’ve all been here for five days, on your own, doing whatever stupid shit some guy on this TV screen tells you to?”
Camilla closed her eyes and nodded. “It sounds so dumb now.”
“Yeah. Darwin-award-level dumb.”
Blank now, the monitor screen stared from the wall above the fireplace, mocking them all. The entire group, including the three new arrivals, had gathered in the central room of the Victorian house. Jacob paced back and forth, asking questions, and Camilla didn’t like the answers she had for him.
“What happened to your face, by the way?” he asked.
“Everyone’s under a lot of strain,” she said. “Some of us aren’t handling it too well.”
“I don’t get it.” Heather looked from Camilla to Mason, to Veronica, to Brent, taking in all their injuries. “You did this to each other?”
The worst part was, Camilla could see it all from the scientists’ perspective. She felt again the rattling impact of Mason’s body striking the ground with her arms wrapped around his shins, and her face tightened in shame. They all had crossed the line and let things get out of control, allowing themselves to be manipulated by Julian.
They had done this to themselves, really.
She heard little Avery again, wishing he were dead, and her eyes prickled. She had come here for the best of reasons, but she had done things she knew were wrong, and she had rationalized them to herself. And now people were hurt. Now Lauren was dead.
Heather stared at her. “I mean, what kind of people do this?”
Camilla crossed her arms and stared at the floorboards. “I can see how it looks—”
“Look,” Brent said. “I’m a doctor. Stop with the petty judgments for a minute and listen to me. You three don’t have the full picture. We’ve got two people upstairs who are seriously injured. I’ve sedated them, but we’ve got to get them to a hospital right away. And earlier today, a woman was killed trying to reach the mainland.”
“She drowned?” Jacob asked.
Brent shook his head. “One of your research subjects ate her.”
Heather’s face changed. She turned to Camilla and cupped a hand over her mouth. “You said that. I remember now, but in all the confusion, I—”
“Who saw it?” Jacob asked. “Did you see any distinguishing marks? Scars? On the shark that attacked her?”
“Jacob!” Heather gasped.
Brent shook his head, a disgusted expression on his face. “Try your phones,” he said. “Let’s hope they work—none of ours can get a signal.”
“Nonsense. Mine works fine here.” Jacob pulled out a phone and looked at the screen. He frowned. “Well, it always did before.”
“They’re jamming the signals,” Camilla said. “We’re cut off.”
“But why?” Jacob asked.
“Julian, the host, told us we’d be isolated for two weeks.” Something else was bothering her now—something they needed to do right away, but she couldn’t quite remember what it was.
“Why would you agree to this craziness?” Jacob asked.
She looked away, not wanting to answer.
Brent spoke for her. “The grand prize is a substantial sum.”
“How much money?” Jacob sounded angry. “How much money did they promise you, to ruin decades of conservation and scientific progress here?”
“Five million dollars.”
“Five million? five…” Jacob’s eyes flickered in rapid-fire blinks. “Fuck you people. Seriously. We have to scrounge every year for pennies to keep our research going, because nobody seems to understand how important it is, but they have no problem paying a bunch of idiots five million dollars to kill themselves on TV—”
“Please, Jacob,” Heather said. “Their friend died—”
“The gasoline,” Camilla said, uncrossing her arms and straightening as she realized what was gnawing at her. Whoever Julian’s spy among them was, he or she would know about the plan to send a signal. It would be easy to sneak away. “We need to go get it out of the shed righ
t now. We need to keep an eye on it and make sure nothing happens to it before it’s dark enough.”
“Dark enough?” Jacob asked. “Dark enough for what?”
• • •
“I can’t let you do this,” Jacob said, jogging alongside Juan and Mason. “There’s been too much damage already.”
Mason patted Jacob on the arm and grinned at him. Juan ignored him completely.
Camilla led everyone across the open ground toward the storage shed. Juan pulled open the shed door, and he and Mason went inside. As the shadows deepened and lengthened around them all, the others gathered in a wide semicircle outside the doorway.
A moment later, Juan was back empty-handed. Camilla felt the familiar sinking in the pit of her stomach again as he leaned against the shed wall with his hands in his pockets, eyeing them all, not saying anything. She could smell gasoline.
Mason stepped out of the shed, holding a large red gasoline can out in front of him by one fingertip. He tossed it the ground, where it landed with a hollow thunk. “Okay, this isn’t funny anymore. Who has something to share with the class? Speak up.”
“Cute,” Veronica said, stalking forward. “You probably did it yourself—”
“Veronica,” Brent rumbled.
“He hasn’t been out of my sight all afternoon,” Camilla said, stepping between her and Mason. “He couldn’t have chained their boat, either.”
Veronica speared her with that pale-silver stare. “Maybe both of you did it, then.”
“It could have happened hours ago,” Juan said. “Before we even talked about a signal fire.”
“And you were the first to think of that, weren’t you?” Veronica’s voice was dark velvet, rich with insinuation. She turned back to Camilla. “Or was that you?”
The back of Camilla’s neck tensed. Her belly tightened. She had seen what Veronica was capable of.
“Or maybe I did it,” Brent said. “Or even Natalie here. The point is, it could be anyone. Let’s go inside, put our heads together, and see if we can come up with some answers that make sense.”
CHAPTER 102
“Let’s start at the beginning,” Brent said. “None of us went looking for this. Vita Brevis came to us. What made them choose us specifically?”
The seven contestants sat in a wide circle on the floor in the great room of the Victorian house—the red team’s former quarters. It was nearly dark, and the temperature was dropping. Lauren’s LED camping lamp sat in the center of the floor.
Camilla could see their breath: small puffs of vapor that glowed in the lamplight before vanishing. She rubbed her arms, trying to shake off the chill, which seemed to come from deep inside her rather than the cold air. Her heart thudded in dread as she considered what she would have to tell the others: her most private secret. She didn’t want to talk about this—she had even dumped Dean for digging into her past behind her back. But she had to set aside her personal discomfort now. The others needed to know.
At least the three scientists weren’t with them—that would have made it worse. But they had taken the other lantern to the science station, to gather and protect their work.
Camilla took a deep breath. “Brent’s right. Why we were selected—I think that’s the key to understanding this.”
The camping light threw shadows across the faces of her fellow contestants, distorting them and making expressions unreadable. Like kids on a campout holding flashlights under their chins and telling scary stories. She shivered, looking from face to face. One of them knew what she was going to say already. But which one?
Mason spoke, sounding oddly serious. “The night before we were dropped off, on the ship, I noticed something unusual. Nobody made any calls telling loved ones, friends, or roommates what they were doing. That seems unlikely for an entire group of ten people. I don’t have any family that would want to hear from me, but the rest of you?”
Camilla shook her head and looked at the floor. “Where are you going with this, Mason?”
“Listen, it’s got to be said, so I’m saying it.” The lantern’s white light reflected from his broken glasses, making his eyes invisible. “We need to at least acknowledge a possibility here. This whole ‘reality show’ thing”—he air-quoted it with two fingers of each hand—”may not be exactly what we’ve been led to believe.”
“Meaning what?”
He waved a hand. “Call me morbid, but ask yourselves this question: what kind of reality show wouldn’t immediately pull the plug after contestants maimed each other, and one died in a horrible accident—maybe even live on camera, given the high-tech setup here?”
Veronica snorted. “That’s ridiculous.”
“I hate to burst your bubble,” he said, “but I think we all need to keep an open mind. What if the reality show was a pretext, and this is what Julian intended all along? Am I the only one thinking this?”
“Oh god, Mason…” Camilla shook her head. “There really is something wrong with the way your mind works.”
“I agree,” Juan said, and she glanced up. “You sound paranoid.”
“But it can’t be a coincidence,” Mason said. “Think about it for a moment. They chose people who wouldn’t tell any—”
“No,” Camilla said. “There’s another reason they wanted us. I think we all have something else in common—something much more unusual.”
“You think you know why we’re here?” Veronica said, her voice harsh. “Then just say so. Why did they choose us?”
Camilla opened her mouth, but the words stuck in her throat. She couldn’t talk about it. She just couldn’t.
Thankfully, Brent spoke for her.
“What’s the most terrible experience of your life, Veronica?” he asked. “What defines who you are today? I think we’ve all got some idea, thanks to Julian’s nasty little profile. And we saw how you were able to handle JT.”
“Don’t you even—”
Brent raised a hand, silencing her. The light from the lantern lent him a terrible gravitas, making his face look ancient and forbidding.
“We’ve all heard a distorted version of my story,” he said. “And about JT’s last tour in Afghanistan. Lauren walked away from a climbing accident that cost two people their lives. In prison, child molesters usually don’t survive a month, but Travis did. He’s out on parole after a five-year sentence. Do you see the pattern here?”
Camilla found her voice.
“We’re survivors,” she said. “It’s what we have in common. Each of us is still alive because, at some point in the past, we’ve beaten incredible odds. That’s why they selected us.”
Brent nodded. “The seven-year survival rate for mesothelioma is less than five percent. I was diagnosed in 2004, and eight years later, here I am, alive and healthy, my cancer in full remission. But you said ‘we,’ Camilla, and I sensed something about you, too, when we first met. Tell us why you’re here.”
There was no turning back now. She looked into the lantern’s cold blue-white LED, its harsh light providing no warmth, no relief from the bleak sadness that washed over her. She stared at it so she wouldn’t have to see the faces of the other contestants as she spoke.
“I lost both my parents in the Loma Prieta earthquake when I was seven,” she said. “A two-story freeway collapsed in Oakland and our car was underneath. Somehow, I lived…”
Her voice was flat, affectless. Hearing it scared her. She had never told anyone this before, never let anyone get close enough to her to ask. Never.
“But I don’t remember any of it.” Why had she felt compelled to say that so quickly, the words tumbling out of her mouth? Why was her heart beating so fast? Was it really the truth, or was it only what she had convinced herself of?
“When I got older, someone told me I was trapped in the car for four days. It took rescuers that long to clear enough wreckage to find us and get me out. They had to cut me out of the car… Both my legs were broken.”
Her shins were aching now. Shuddering, Cam
illa hugged her knees and closed her eyes, hearing an echo of the tortured creak of metal that haunted her dreams. Metal tearing, then awful wet, sloppy sounds and her own horrified shrieks. She wanted to find a corner, curl up, and just go away for a while.
“You’ve known you were a survivor ever since you were a child,” Brent said. “Somebody else now… Juan. If we’re right, then why are you here?”
Camilla perked up at the sound of his name. Opening her eyes, she took a deep breath and forced herself to let go of her knees. She watched Juan with curiosity. Jordan sat at his side. He didn’t answer at first, and when he did his voice was low.
“I’d rather not talk about it. But it fits the pattern.”
“This isn’t group therapy,” Mason said. “We aren’t sharing because we’re caring. Nobody believes me, but I think Julian made sure—”
Veronica shushed him with an impatient gesture. “Why would you try to hide something?” she asked Juan.
He seemed to consider this. “That’s fair, I suppose. It’s meaningless to worry about concealing an unsavory past right now. I was born in another country, in South America. I grew up on the streets. Things were different there—or perhaps not so very different from our worst inner cities here. My neighborhood was poor, and gangs ruled everywhere. You had to join one because, if you tried to go it alone, you wouldn’t last a day.
“Gang life is the same wherever you are. It’s not glamorous. We had to do ugly things every day to survive, and I’m not proud of that. At nineteen, I saw a chance to get out, and I took it… but the past has a way of catching up with you.”
Camilla had never heard Juan speak that much before. She wished she could see his expression more clearly, but shadows painted the planes of his cheeks and turned his eye sockets into pools of inky blackness. The dark clothing made him almost invisible—a ghost in the corner of the room.
“One of my old gang found me a couple years later. I had made a new life for myself in Long Beach, working as a deckhand on a dive boat. He booked a charter under a false name. You can imagine my surprise when he came aboard, but he had a gun.”