The Ocean Dark

by Christopher Golden

  “To continue…I’m sorry, which one of you is Agent Turcotte?”

  “I’m Special Agent Turcotte.”

  Just the one she’d thought. He sat up straighter in his chair. It did not escape her notice that he had corrected her use of his title. Alena was surprised that he hadn’t gone so far as to use his full title of Supervisory Special Agent in Charge, but apparently he was at least self-aware enough to know how foolish that would have looked. She would have to keep him close, try to make him feel important, bend him to her own purposes. Or she would have to keep him out of it entirely. Attitude would cost lives.

  “With apologies, Special Agent Turcotte, that goes for the FBI as well. No record of the Antoinette, case files expunged, etcetera.”

  His face darkened and Alena saw the bitterness start to spread to the other three FBI agents in the room. The least affected seemed to be the man wearing a sling on his left arm, his face badly bruised from some kind of altercation. That had to be Agent Hart, who had survived the previous night’s horrors.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know you have all worked hard on this case. But at the end of the day, every single person in this room—military, law enforcement, or civilian—works for the same employer, the United States government. Trust me when I say that making this case vanish will have a positive rather than negative impact on your career and future prospects, and that you will have the personal satisfaction of having dealt with a threat to human life and potentially National Security.”

  That seemed to settle them down, so she forged ahead.

  “The only record of this operation will be my own reports to my superiors. In order to reassure you, I am willing to allow Captains Rouleau and Siebalt and Special Agent Turcotte to review those reports before they are submitted.”

  Even Turcotte gave a grudging nod at that.

  “This is going to be the strangest and probably the most dangerous day of your lives, with the exception of Agent Hart, who has already lived his,” Alena said. They all sat a bit straighter, ready for the challenge or at least curious. “In extreme situations, I am empowered to extend limited Intelligence clearance to anyone who I determine is vital to the success of an operation. I am extending that clearance to everyone in this room, effective immediately. When we’re done here, you will not leave without providing your identification to David.”

  She nodded toward him, and David raised a hand in a semi-wave without ever looking up from the laptop. He tapped away at the keyboard.

  “Dr. David Boudreau,” she went on, indicating him again. “Nepotism at its finest. Yes, my grandson, but also smarter than anyone else in the room, myself included, and the only other person involved in this operation aside from myself who has encountered these particular bio-forms before.”

  A rumble of voices filled the room, mutters of surprise and astonished whispers.

  “Excuse me,” Agent Hart said. He wore a look of amazement that turned his handsome face boyish. “You’ve seen the sirens before?”

  Alena arched an eyebrow. “Sirens? Ah, the bio-forms. Clever, but please don’t think for a moment that these creatures are anything but an unknown species of marine life. As Dr. Ernst will tell you, they are unusual, dangerous, even terrifying, but they are hardly unnatural. Their ‘song,’ if you’d like to pursue the siren metaphor, is not dissimilar from bats’ echolocation, aiding their sensory perception when out of the water.”

  She started to go on, but Agent Hart interrupted again. All eyes were now on him and the room seemed to have grown smaller.

  “Wait. Seriously,” he said, growing agitated. The one female FBI agent in the room, who Alena presumed must be his partner, put a hand on his arm, but Hart ignored her. “’Hardly unnatural?’ They’re underwater vampires, for fuck’s sake. They burn in sunlight.”

  Alena frowned. She had gauged the potential problem that Turcotte might represent, but had not counted on Agent Hart posing difficulties. She knew the trauma he had been through, and she could see how shaken it had left him, but she had no time to comfort him.

  “Sarah?” she said.

  Professor Ernst stood. Attractive in a disheveled, academic sort of way, Sarah Ernst was forty-seven, her hair dyed an auburn just close enough to be red to be serious and daring in equal turns.

  “Dr. Ernst is a former M.I.T. professor with PhD’s in astrobiology and marine biology. She’s been part of my team for three years.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Boudreau,” Ernst said. She looked out over those gathered in the room, then focused on Hart. Alena had taught her well. Crisis management was often about personnel management. “Let’s get this clear right up front. There is no evidence that anything remotely resembling horror movie vampires exists, or ever existed.”

  Professor Ernst smiled and they all seemed to relax. “Based upon the records I’ve read of the prior encounter with these…with the ‘sirens,’ the best reference point I can provide is a rare skin condition called xeroderma pigmentosum, in which the flesh is not protected from ultraviolet light and is therefore burned. With a lack of pigment, UV light damages DNA, causing cellular mutation that—in such cases—can cause the skin to burn or blacken. As the cells divide, the mutation spreads, and so does this burning effect. What happens with these creatures is obviously a radical example of this phenomenon—“

  “They don’t just blacken,” Agent Hart interrupted. “They catch fire.”

  Ernst nodded. “So I’m told. Right now, I’m theorizing the presence of crystalline proteins in the skin that will burn on exposure to sunlight. Look, honestly, if I had read about the existence of these things, I would never have believed it. But there have been many things found in the ocean that nobody expected. And obviously, presented with them as a reality, I can only theorize until I have one of them to study. One thing I’m confident of, though…” She smiled. “There’s no such thing as vampires.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Ernst,” Alena said as the woman sat down. Then she gestured to the slender African-American man beside Ernst. “The final member of my team is Dr. Paul Ridge, whom I stole from the geology department at Northwestern. Thanks to his experience with primordial cave formations, I needed him more than his students did.”

  Professor Ridge waved a hand to identify himself, then cast an expectant look at Alena, silently urging her to move on. Ridge didn’t like the spotlight at all.

  “Now, normally I would have to mislead you about the nature of my employment, but this is a crisis management scenario, so there’s to be no bullshit.” Nobody flinched at her profanity and she nodded her approval. They weren’t looking at her like an aging civilian anymore. “I’m a specialist in extraordinary discoveries. That’s the best way to describe it. It’s much more interesting than ‘analyst,’ which is the word I use when I want to bore people into not wondering about me anymore. My team is an under-the-radar division of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which is part of the D.O.D.

  “Beyond that, all you need to know at the moment is this: the U.S. government has had two prior encounters with life-forms that sound substantially similar to what the crew of the Antoinette encountered on the island, and both of them were also island-based infestations. The first habitat was off the eastern coast of Africa and was eradicated. That was in 1967. Fishermen discovered the second habitat in the South Pacific only seven years ago. I was involved with both cases.

  “As you can see, I survived. Both habitats were destroyed, along with their inhabitants. The sun will kill them, as you know, but so will firepower. Seven years ago, we tried to put to use lessons I learned in ’67, but failed.”

  “Failed how?” Captain Siebalt asked, genuinely curious.

  “Our job is twofold—destroy the threat, and learn everything we can about it. Most of my team died in ’67 because we focused more on acquiring a research subject than on containing the threat. This time, things will be done differently. We will bring one of these things home to study, but eradication is our first priori
ty.”

  “You want to bring one of these things back alive?” Agent Voss asked. “If you’ve seen these things, then you must know—“

  Alena held up both hands to forestall any further interruption. “It won’t be easy, of course. In order to fulfill that part of the mission, we will have to catch one in the dark. I’d prefer a living one, but a dead one will do. That means bagging one and then keeping it out of the sunlight long enough to get it back here and locked away in the dark. Just keep that in mind. If it helps, tell your people that there will be a reward for the first person to bring me—“

  “Absolutely not!” Captain Rouleau said.

  Alena narrowed her eyes. The old Coast Guard officer had reddened, either with anger or embarrassment.

  “Captain?” she said.

  “Pardon me, Dr. Boudreau,” Captain Rouleau said, “but that sort of thing leads to competition, which is a distraction that could get good men and women killed.”

  She let out a breath, nodding. “I’m sorry, Captain. You’re right, of course.”

  “Besides, Navy sailors don’t need a reward to motivate them,” Captain Siebalt added, glancing sidelong at her from his place at the table. “If there’s any way to bring one of those things back whole, you’ll get one.”

  “That’s all I can ask,” Alena said. She glanced over at her grandson, who had paused and looked up from his laptop. “David, anything to contribute before we continue?”

  He gave her his typical insouciant smile and scratched at his chin. “Only that you’ve been at this nearly ten minutes already. Tick, tick, Alena.”

  Little shit, she thought, with all the love in her heart. She couldn’t help but chuckle, though she knew it would be her last for a while.

  “All right,” she said, turning to look at them all again. At Captain Siebalt and his officers to her left at the long table, at Captain Rouleau and his people, at the FBI agents who had more invested in this situation than any of them.

  “What we’ve got ahead of us is little more than carefully executed destruction and extermination. You’ve all been drafted for pest control. These things can’t be allowed to continue to thrive, and certainly can’t be permitted to breed and spread.

  “So here’s the plan…”

  ~68~

  “You’re not going to throw me overboard, are you?” Tori asked, attempting a smile.

  The serious little FBI guy, Nadeau, shook his head. “I don’t think that’s on the agenda. At least not today.”

  So he did have a sense of humor. It was just buried underneath an intense expression and the air of purpose that swept them both along the corridor and up the stairs. They passed an open door leading out on deck and the warm breeze helped her feel more awake and alert. But Agent Nadeau opened an inner door and Tori reluctantly passed through it.

  She had started to feel a little claustrophobic in the room they’d given her--not because of its size, but because they would not allow her to leave. If she had to use the bathroom, one of the Coast Guard seamen would accompany her and wait outside the door, but otherwise she remained a prisoner. After Josh had visited her, she had tried to rest, but as tired as she was, she only fidgeted and tossed and finally sat up again.

  Nadeau’s mysterious arrival had been a blessing.

  “You still won’t tell me where you’re taking me?”

  The agent preceded her down the hall, oblivious to any danger of attack from behind. She might be in custody, but obviously they didn’t perceive her as much of a threat. Maybe that was because of Josh, or maybe it was because, even if she did try to get the jump on Nadeau and make a break for it, she didn’t have anywhere to run.

  “I’m taking you to a meeting,” he said.

  “About what?”

  “Something to do with the operation, obviously. Beyond that, I have no idea, and wouldn’t be able to tell you if I did. Can you stop asking now?”

  Tori understood Nadeau’s shtick now: cranky guy. Apparently he thought it was part of his charm.

  He led her up another inner flight of stairs and then back toward starboard to a door flanked by yet another pair of seamen in the uniform of the U.S. Coast Guard. One of them rapped on the metal door and then unlatched it, swinging it open for them to enter.

  “Very Chamber of Secrets,” she said.

  But the room surprised her. Instead of the dreary, cheerless cell she had anticipated, she found herself in a small rec room a bit like those on board the Antoinette. Windows on the starboard wall let air and sunlight in and the smell of popcorn swirled on the breeze. Someone had used the microwave to pop some recently, but Tori doubted it was anyone in the room. She knew all but one of them, and she thought they had better things to do.

  There were three FBI agents in the room—Josh, Rachael Voss, and the asshole Turcotte—and now Nadeau made four. Turcotte stood by one of the windows and did not even glance up when she and Nadeau entered and the door clanged shut behind them. The only person she did not recognize was a beautiful older woman with silver hair, whom she gauged at about sixty. The woman was dressed all in black and looked both stylish and serious, but she nodded to Tori, almost friendly.

  “Please, Miss Austin,” the woman said. “Take a seat.”

  In her current circumstances, she knew she shouldn’t be making snap judgments, but Tori liked her immediately. Nobody else in the room had bothered to sit, but Tori went to one of the chairs around a round card table and slid into it, forcing herself not to even glance at Josh.

  She hadn’t forgiven him for lying to her, but as her anger had receded, she had begun to understand that he must be telling the truth. It couldn’t all have been pretense. He would never have risked losing his job for her. That implied that either she meant something to him, or he’d wanted her so badly he couldn’t control himself, or a little of both. And all of those options intrigued her, no matter how much it still stung.

  Tori watched him as he spoke quietly to Agent Plausky, loving his eyes and the line of his jaw, and feeling foolish to be thinking of such things in the midst of something so weird and awful.

  She rolled her eyes a little and started to turn away, then caught both Rachael Voss and the silver-haired woman watching her. The older woman seemed interested and amused, but Voss’s nostrils flared and her eyes narrowed in consternation. She had obviously seen something in the way Tori looked at Josh and didn’t approve.

  Someone rapped on the metal door. It was opened from outside and Tori blinked in surprise as Gabe Rio stepped into the room. The captain of the Antoinette looked ragged around the edges, with dark circles under his eyes, but he kept his chin high in defiance. No handcuffs, but they were obviously far more wary of him than they had been of her, for the broad-shouldered FBI agent who followed him into the room watched his every move. The seamen out in the hall closed and latched the door behind Gabe and the big agent.

  “Thanks, Mac,” Voss said to the big guy.

  When Gabe saw the agents gathered there, he sized them up and then walked toward the card table.

  “How you doing, Tori?” he asked, sliding into the chair beside her.

  “I’m all right. You holding up?”

  They both knew she wasn’t talking about his bandaged leg or the harrowing experience they had shared, but about Miguel’s death, and the revelation that his brother had been having an affair with Gabe’s wife.

  Gabe knocked his knuckles on the table. “I’m still here.”

  “And we’re glad you are,” the silver-haired woman said.

  The FBI agents all focused on her as if she were a judge calling the court to order. Even Turcotte pulled his attention from the window. He crossed his arms and leaned against the wall, body language saying volumes about his disapproval of this situation, whatever it might be.

  Since Tori and Gabe were sitting, the silver-haired woman joined them at the card table. The five FBI agents in the room remained standing, a few feet back, observing. None of them seemed particularly happy ab
out being there--not even Josh.

  “Miss Austin. Captain Rio. My name is Dr. Alena Boudreau and I am now in charge of all matters relating to this operation, including the events that transpired over the past twenty-four to forty-eight hours aboard the Antoinette and on the island.”

  As if in punctuation, a sudden roar filled the room. It took Tori a moment to realize the sound came from a helicopter that had just flown overhead.

  Turcotte glanced back at the window. “Four choppers,” he said, turning to look at Dr. Boudreau. “You’re not wasting any time.”

  For her part, Dr. Boudreau adopted a serious expression, but Tori had a feeling the woman was only indulging Turcotte.

  “The civilian helicopter will be returning to St. Croix in a couple of hours. They’re loaning us their services in the meantime.”

  Dr. Boudreau turned back to Tori and Gabe. “Let me make this short and sweet. I’ve read the statements you gave about the creatures…the sirens, as you call them…and what happened to your crew. I’m sure the last thing either of you wants is to ever set foot on that island again. However, that’s precisely what I’m asking.”

  Tori felt her mouth drop open and frigid air seemed to envelop her.

  “You’re crazy,” Gabe said. “Out of your mind, lady.”

  “You can’t possibly—“ Turcotte began.

  The woman shot him a dark look. “I have the authority to choose any team I want--to incorporate anyone, with any specialty, from any government agency, organization, or armed service, or to recruit any civilian who is necessary to the completion of the operation with which I am tasked. Do you want to argue this some more, Agent Turcotte, maybe give our people less time before nightfall, or can we get on with it?”

  The buzz of helicopters outside grew momentarily louder and then receded once more.