Tether

by Jeremy Robinson

  I brace myself for heartbreak. I have a sense that what she’s about to say will be profound. Last words meant to motivate me. To spur me on to whatever finish line we might be running toward. “Get your fucking ass in the back.”

  I hesitate, caught between obedience and a smile.

  “NOW.”

  I stand as the plane’s downward angle increases. I rest a hand on Rain’s shoulder. She smiles at me, and then…I leave.

  The distance to the plane’s rear seats is just thirty feet, but it’s more of a climb than a walk, as our angle of descent increases.

  I clutch seat backs, dragging myself past Reggie, Bjorn, and Garcia, who are all seated in the front half of the passenger’s section.

  Desperate and frightened eyes watch my progress. Bjorn looks broken. Reggie mostly looks pissed. Garcia seems resigned to her fate and is still capable of offering me a ‘Nice knowing you’ nod.

  I push myself into the rear-most seat, facing the cockpit. Through the open door, I see the flashing lake through the windshield, Dragonfish pursuing us toward the depths, and Rain, pulling back even harder now.

  The plane starts to level out.

  She was using the speed of our descent to keep Dragonfish at bay.

  I’m pressed into my seat as my body wants to keep falling, but the plane streaks forward instead of nose down. In the rearview, Dragonfish misses us and plunges into the depths.

  A burst of flame outside the window draws my attention. The engine on the damaged wing has exploded.

  Shit. Shit, shit, shit.

  My buckle snaps into place, just in time to keep me from sprawling forward, as Rain rapidly decelerates—no doubt trying to keep us from pancaking into the lake. At this speed it would be like driving a car into a concrete wall.

  The plane groans.

  Bjorn shouts in either despair or pain.

  Something explodes.

  And then—nothing.

  30

  I wake to the sound of voices—Bjorn’s indiscernible whimpering and Reggie in a hushed, one-sided conversation.

  “You have our coordinates?” she says. “Good, good. Make it fast.”

  I open my eyes in time to see her tuck her phone into her pants pocket.

  “You’re awake,” she says, upon seeing me. “Can you move?”

  My chest aches like I’ve been stomped on by an elephant, but I’m breathing and all my appendages can move. “I’m okay,” I say, wincing as an intense flare of pain radiates from my right side. Broken ribs, I think. Hopefully just bruised. You’ll live. Just push past the pain.

  I grunt as I unbuckle and twist out of the belt.

  My legs wobble when I stand, but I manage to move down the plane’s aisle, holding onto seatbacks. “You called for help?” I ask, unable to imagine anyone brave enough to risk death by ghost kaiju to save us. The Coast Guard must have a station in the Chicago area, and probably routinely rescue people from the depths, but this…

  They’ve already got their hands full. How many people need rescuing on the mainland? Thousands? Hundreds of thousands? Why would they come after the four of us?

  I crouch beside an unconscious Garcia, intensely aware that the cockpit is dark. Rain’s glow is missing. Every ounce of my body wants to go to her. To see if she survived, but Garcia is here because of me. I need to make sure she’s okay first.

  When I put my fingers on her neck to check for a pulse, she flinches awake.

  “You’re okay,” I tell her. “We’re on the ground.” It’s then that I feel the steady warble of the plane beneath my feet. “Well, in the water.”

  The panic in Garcia’s eyes fades fast. She squeezes various body parts, doing a self-check. Despite being in obvious pain, she declares, “I’m good,” and unbuckles. “What’s our situation?”

  “We’re a mile out and going down,” Reggie says, helping Bjorn to his feet. The man is broken, emotionally more than physically. “Rescue ETA in five minutes.”

  The plane tilts forward. The lake gurgles in through the cockpit.

  I slosh through the ankle-deep water, entering the dark cockpit. By the time I reach Rain’s side, the water is knee deep.

  “Open the door,” Reggie says to Garcia, somehow still calm. “Before outside pressure seals us in.”

  I check Rain’s pulse. It’s faint, but steady. Alive, but unconscious. Probably injured, but I have no way to assess that, and honestly, even if her neck is broken, I have to move her.

  “Not until they’re with us,” Garcia says.

  I unbuckle Rain, and pull her up into my arms. “Thank God, you’re light.” I let out a little chuckle as I hoist her into my arms, grunting when my elbow pushes against my ribs. “You’re light. Get it?”

  “If you don’t open it now,” Reggie complains, “we’ll be sealed inside.”

  I step out of the cockpit with Rain in my arms. “Go.”

  Garcia pops the side door and has to shove against an onrush of six-inch-deep water to get it open.

  “Step aside,” Reggie says, and for a moment, I think she’s been overcome by a primitive instinct to self-preserve at all costs. But then she tosses something into the water and yanks a cord. An octagonal life raft expands with a hiss of gas, growing to its full size in seconds.

  Wind and waves quickly tug the raft away from us. Garcia dives for it, landing half in the water. She yanks herself up over the side, her actions stuttering, lit by the strobe-light sky. Then she’s up, thin rope in hand. She tosses the line to the door, where Reggie catches it.

  “Help me!” she shouts at Bjorn, who flinches, but then lends his muscle to tug the raft back in.

  Rushing water roils through the shattered windows, flowing past my legs.

  Reggie all but shoves Bjorn into the life raft, when it bumps against the sinking plane. Then she follows him out into the whipping winds and the lake spray. She turns around and reaches for Rain. “Give her to me!” Her eyes dart to the side. “Hurry!”

  Knowing something bad is coming our way, I deposit Rain in the raft and then wait a moment, while Garcia and Reggie pull her away from the edge.

  “It’s coming!” Bjorn shouts, eyes turning slightly up.

  It’s the kaiju, I think. Despite Rain’s light being extinguished, they’re still coming for us. Which means this life raft isn’t going to be nearly enough, and Reggie’s rescue will come four minutes too late.

  But I’ll do what I can to live as long as I can. I owe my wife that much.

  I’m about to dive out of the plane when it lurches down. Water strikes my chest, shoving me back inside the plane. I bump off the plush leather chairs on my way back, stopping when I’m slammed into a cabinet at the plane’s rear end.

  Fluid coughs from my lungs as I surface, treading water in a plane that is now nose down, held aloft by the air bubble allowing me to breathe. Cabinets and drawers open, vomiting their contents into the water. I’m about to dive down and swim for the exit when the diffuse light of lightning slips through the water and the windows, illuminating the debris in the water. The flare lasts just a moment, but it’s enough for me to spot a familiar logo on fancy letterhead.

  SpecTek.

  “What the—” The rest of my revolt is cut short when water surges into my mouth and rises up over my head. The plane is going down.

  I spin around in the water, plant my feet against the back wall, and shove off, ascending a little faster than the plane is going down. Hands on the door frame, I pull myself from the wreck and launch off it.

  Above me, the world is a lightshow. Lightning, distorted by the water, flashes blue and purple, mesmerizing. I hover there, my body freed from gravity, the pain in my ribs reduced. The abyss is peaceful. For a moment, I let go of my fear, and anger, and questions.

  I wish you were here, I think to my dead wife. Well, not here. But, with me. You know what I mean.

  I smile, knowing she would be smiling, too. Even when she was upset, me fumbling for words lightened her mood. I can write all
day, but speaking coherently, including my inner dialogue, is sometimes a challenge.

  My lungs remind me I need to breathe. I focus on the octagonal silhouette and kick for the surface.

  Ten feet from the air, I stop swimming. Something is wrong. Like the world has turned upside down. I’ve been swimming toward the light, but now it’s above and below me.

  I look down.

  Swirling blue water resolves into lines of energy that form a shape. A body. Dragonfish is here, in the water with me, and it is just as graceful in the deep as it is in the heights. Far below, its coiling body turns in my direction, its wild eyes locked on me—or is it the life raft?

  Rain might be unconscious, but some kind of residue, or perhaps memory of where the glow and its attraction came from, still guides the monster toward her. I felt its desire to go home. Saw the places it felt at home—which makes no sense to me—and I remember how strong Rain’s pull felt during my out-of-body experience.

  A plan formulates, and I kick for the surface again, this time frantic and seconds away from drowning.

  I breach the surface with a gasp, sucking in air with all the grace of a howler monkey. Hooked and desperate fingers squeak over the raft’s water-slick surface. Stars weave patterns in my vision, as I attempt to take a second breath, but I find my muscles are too weak to fight the water and the weight of my soaked clothing.

  I scrabble for a handhold, but find nothing.

  Then one finds me.

  Garcia’s hands lock onto my wrists. “I got you!”

  “Better hurry,” Reggie shouts, as the depths around us begin glowing.

  Garcia leans over to pull me up and sees the luminous water. “Hell…” With a grunt, she yanks me into the raft.

  I flop to the wet floor, gasping for air the way a fish gasps for water. It feels like I’ve been tossed onto a tumultuous waterbed, each wave-driven thump keeping me from sucking in the air I need to speak. When I find my voice, it comes out as a croak. “Hold on to her!”

  I wrap my arms around Rain, holding on tight, hoping that if everyone is in contact with Rain, and Dragonfish passes through us, Rain will somehow be able to anchor us in the land of the living—even though she’s unconscious. When no one joins me, curiosity pulls my attention up.

  “Oh,” I say, looking at the fifty-foot-tall wave rushing toward us. Behind it, Brute and Dalí continue their charge through the lake. As the water beneath us rises, displaced by Dragonfish’s body—fully present in the physical world for the moment—the light surrounding us intensifies.

  We are at the confluence of life and death, surrounded by giant monsters, water to drown in, and lightning to cook us.

  And in that moment, I hear Morgan in my memory.

  Baby, you can do it. You can live. You can be bold. You don’t need me. Never have.

  I did need her. Still do. But I understand what she meant. Without her, I am less, but I’m not nothing, and I can be more.

  I reach out for the rope around the inside of the life raft, take hold and haul myself and Rain to the edge. Arms wrapped around the rope, legs gripping Rain under her arms and around her waist, I try to channel all the strength I would feel if Morgan were here with me.

  And then, confluence becomes collision.

  31

  Physics saves us. Or at least delays our inevitable demise.

  Water displaced by the rising leviathan lifts us skyward, while gravity says, ‘Fuck that,’ and yanks us down the steep wall of water. By the time the onrushing wave reaches us, we are perfectly poised to surf its sloped surface. Instead of being flung or flipped, we slide up the crest and are carried out of Dragonfish’s reach.

  The behemoth, fully in the real world now, explodes out of the lake, its open jaws snapping closed in the spot we’d been just seconds before. Its ever-surprised, small-pupiled eye tracks us as we’re propelled away.

  We’re canted at a sixty-degree angle. I can look forward and straight up. Dragonfish rises into the sky. Its long body slides upward into the lightning, rising up and above the fifty-foot wave carrying us. For a moment, I think it’s going airborne again, but then its radiant body arcs toward us, breaching like a whale.

  There is nothing I can do to speed our retreat, so I just hold on and watch the giant topple toward us.

  Bugged-out eyes locked on us, jaws open wide in a sickly grin, Dragonfish lets out a bellow that hurts like hell. I nearly let go of the rope to cover my ears, but I resist the pain. If I let go, Rain and I will die in the abyss.

  As the fast-moving wave whisks us away from Dragonfish, its bulging eye widens further. It’s just realized the same thing I have: it’s going to miss.

  I really want to flip the thing the bird, but I decide to never let go of this rope. When Dragonfish hits the water with its untold tonnage, the wave carrying us is going to grow bigger and faster. It might not crush us, but the creature is still ensuring our demise.

  Then again… its body flickers from solid to translucent, just as the bulk of it crashes down. I’m not sure how far into the depths it plunges, but it fails to displace any more water. Our insane water park ride keeps plugging along, though, carrying us out into the middle of Lake Michigan.

  As the wave moves farther from shore, it changes shape, stretching out into a faster moving, yet shorter wave. For a moment, we accelerate, but then the wave slips beneath the raft and carries on without us. As we slide down the back side, our speed rapidly decreases and then stops.

  We spin in the flat water of the wave’s wake. I stare up at the tumultuous sky, catching my breath.

  “Is it over?” Bjorn asks, lifting his head. His soaked long hair and beard give him a wet-dog kind of look. His glasses are missing. I feel bad for him, as he looks desperately hopeful for our hellish experience to be over.

  But he’s looking in the wrong direction.

  Dalí and Brute are just a mile off, sloshing through the lake to reach us. I don’t know if it’s good or bad, but every time they shift into fully tangible forms, they kick off another wave. In seconds we’ll be struck by the first of several thirty-foot waves that will continue pummeling us until we’re caught. They might carry us farther away, extending our lives by a minute or two, but they could also capsize us.

  My glass is officially half empty, but the optimist in me—squelched since Morgan’s death—whispers, You made it this far.

  While that’s true, I’m pretty sure the only thing optimism will accomplish is to make me slightly more disappointed in my fate, when my soul is sucked away. So I hold on tight, let the raft do its job, and repeat a mantra that feels more realistic than a lie: We’re going to die. We’re going to die. “We’re going to die,” I inadvertently shout, when the first wave strikes, lifting us up with stomach lurching force.

  We ascend the wave, quickly reaching its apex. For a moment, I’m vertical. My fingers burn as all of my weight, and Rain’s, tugs down. A finger slips, and then the raft falls backward. We drop twenty-feet before slapping against the wave’s upward angle. The impact knocks the air from my lungs, leaving me coughing, as the raft settles once more.

  “Just hang on,” I hear Garcia shout. She’s got one arm looped around the rope, using her free hand to haul Bjorn back to the edge. He must have lost his grip when we hit.

  Reggie is there, too, and she looks concerned. But not about Bjorn’s welfare. She’s not even watching his struggle. Instead, her eyes are on the sky, searching.

  Is she looking for Dragonfish? I wonder, but the flying kaiju hasn’t emerged from the depths yet.

  When I look at her again, the memory of what I discovered in the plane returns to the forefront of my mind. The plane doesn’t belong to her, I remind myself. It belongs to SpecTek.

  Reggie is a part of this.

  But the assassin, I argue.

  A ruse? Would he have killed us, or subdued us?

  What about Bjorn? Is he aligned with her? Garcia is certainly not, but what about the theoretical warlock? Is he genuinel
y her lover? Or is he another co-worker Morgan kept from me? How long was Reggie working with Morgan? Who hired whom?

  So many questions, but only one really sticks with me.

  “Why?” I shout over the wind.

  Reggie snaps out of her skyward vigil. The expression on her face is something like that of a teenage boy caught looking at the hosiery section of a Sears catalog. “What?”

  “Why did you lie to me?” I shout. “Why didn’t you tell me you were with SpecTek?”

  She freezes up a bit, face locked in place, trying not to give anything away. Then she resigns herself to the fact that I know. She almost looks relieved. “I wanted to tell you,” she says. “Honestly. But we needed to know—”

  A wave scoops us up, lifting the raft high, and then tosses it back down. Prepared for the impact this time, I brace for it, but I take the hit on my side.

  My ribs scream. I turn the pain into anger, into strength, tightening my grip on Rain, though I now wonder if it would be better for both of us to roll into the water and drown.

  “Know what?” I ask.

  “What she could do,” Reggie says, motioning to Rain. “And now…what you can do with her.”

  “You did this to her?” I ask.

  “I played a part, but it was Morgan—”

  “Don’t say her name,” I shout. “She would never be a part of this!”

  I turn to Dalí and Brute, now a half mile away and looming above us.

  “This wasn’t the plan,” Reggie says. “And she didn’t conduct the experiment; she fucked it up. That’s too harsh. Don’t make him angry. She sabotaged the experiment, Saul. That’s why she’s dead. That’s why five of my colleagues are dead. Why countless more in Boston and now Chicago are dead. So don’t give me any self-righteous bullshit about Morgan. She was brilliant, but she was also a—”

  Another wave strikes.

  When the raft reaches the top, we’re nearly thrown forward. If not for a gust of wind, we’d be upside down in the water, riding the same wave for a second time. Instead, we crash back down, my injured body taking another beating.