“So why didn’t it shoot any of the others off? Miller, Martin, any of those guys?”
“Two reasons. First, it would have had to fight through more people to get to the tubes at that point. And second, it’s not dumb: It knew operating the tubes would give away its presence and location. It still was trying to be covert at that point. But in this case it had the opportunity and no reason not to take it.”
“It was sort of sending a message, then? ‘Get off my ship’?”
Larsen’s determination and enthusiasm were palpable.
“Not consciously. But that’s what it’s feeling, I think. For whatever reason, sole ownership of the Dragon is important to it. We could speculate for hours about that. Maybe it feels like a conqueror and the sub is its spoils after killing the crew. Or maybe it sees this as its own private world, and we have intruded into it. Honestly, I think the least-likely explanation is that it has some definite plan for the boat and we’re preventing it from carrying out that plan.”
“It wants us off,” Larsen said, still wondrous. “And how can we use that against it?”
“We could-”
“A classic trap,” he interrupted. “We know what you want. We’ll offer it to you. We’ll kill you when you try to get it.”
“Be careful. The Serpent is not stupid. You don’t want to underestimate this thing just because its head isn’t screwed on straight.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know.” Larsen wasn’t listening to me, though, I could tell. His mind was whirling with plans for the Serpent’s demise.
“Hey.” The voice from the other end of the room was weak and marbled with pain. Campbell was in an awkward, sideways crouch on the other side of the open hatch, his injured leg stuck straight out down the hallway.
“Jesus, Campbell, what the hell are you doing?”
“Get back in bed!”
Larsen and I had both yelled at him at the same time, our words tangling.
“I will.” He sounded like he was about to keel over. “But… but I found something.”
“Found something? What the fuck are you… Reyes! Get him back in the captain’s quarters.”
As the SEAL moved to comply, Campbell kept speaking, somehow injecting some urgency into his deflated voice.
“OK. I’ll go back. But come… come with me. You need to see this.” He disappeared behind Reyes as the other man pulled himself through the hatch and into the next compartment.
“You know what he’s talking about?” Larsen asked me, standing.
“Not a clue. He might just be hallucinating, in shock. Or…”
“What?”
“Or he might be having some brain issues. Swelling, as I mentioned before.”
“Fuck.” Larsen stood there, staring at the doorway.
“That would be a big problem,” I said. “But he also might have something to tell us. I’m going to go talk to him, at least to see whether there’s anything else wrong.”
But Larsen began walking before I did, arriving at the door in four or five purposeful strides.
“Let’s go,” he said as he went.
Campbell was resituating himself in the captain’s bunk when we walked into the room. It was crowded. Larsen, Reyes and I couldn’t do much more than stand there without bumping into one another. Reyes rubbed at the tattoo on his neck as he regarded Campbell.
“Reyes, get back to the control room,” Larsen said, and sat down at the captain’s desk as the SEAL left.
Campbell had found a notebook, one that I recognized.
“Hey, where did you get that?” I asked. He had a bullet hole in his leg, but that didn’t mean I’d excuse him for rummaging around in my stuff.
“Your bag. It was blank. I just needed something to write on.” He coughed. “Actually, I didn’t go get it. Ridder did, when he brought me these.”
He waved a sheaf of papers, which I also recognized. It was the report on the Serpent.
“You shouldn’t be reading, Brandon,” I said, moving to take both away from him. “You’ve got a concussion, and the best thing your eyes can look at is the ceiling.”
Campbell pulled the report and notebook to his body and warded me off with his other hand. “No, this is important. I’m not going to just fucking lie here while my friends are getting killed.” His voice swelled, incongruent with his pale face and blood-soaked bandages.
I felt a hand on my arm. “I’ll take responsibility for this,” Larsen said as he gestured me back from the bed. “I want to hear what he has to say.”
“So do I. But I don’t want him to worsen his injuries, either,” I said, remaining where I was. “You tell us what you found, and then you give those papers to me. Larsen may be your commander, but I’m your doctor, and you’ll be in a lot worse shape if you don’t follow my orders.”
Larsen removed his hand. “I agree. Tell us what’s on your mind. But I don’t want to see you out of this bed again until we’re in port.”
Campbell lay back on the pillow, staring at the ceiling for a moment. He seemed drained by the discussion. But after taking a deep breath, he opened the notebook.
“It’s like this. I wanted to read more about the Serpent, see if there was anything else in there that would help us fight it.” I remembered thinking the same thing, casting about for some advantage we could cling to. “So I just started translating as best I could, writing down everything. It’s easier that way, helps put together the context a little better.”
“You translated the whole thing?” Larsen asked.
“No way I could do that. It would take hours. Days, maybe. But I started in the places where we already found useful information. And I saw we made a big mistake.”
Even though I had no idea what he was going to say next, I felt cold. Giving any edge to the Serpent, no matter how small our miscalculation had been, was suicidal.
Campbell must have seen something in my face. “I know. It makes you feel like… like something horrible is waiting. Something we should have seen, but didn’t.”
I found myself unable to say anything. I just wanted to hear the bad news, whatever it was, so I could face it instead of just fearing it.
The SEAL propped himself up a little higher, wincing.
“But it’s not as bad as it could be. As far as I can tell, we know what the
Serpent’s true capabilities are. We weren’t wrong about those. The problem is, the Serpent isn’t what we think it is.”
Another inadvertent shiver fluttered through my body.
“Then what is it?” Larsen asked. “Animal? Vegetable? Mineral?”
“Uh-uh. None of the above. We assumed it was a person who had been modified and improved. Well, that’s not right. The Serpent is a virus.”
“A virus.” This new piece of information wasn’t quite registering in my brain.
“Yeah,” he continued. “It’s a disease, a man-made bug that alters the genes of its host. That’s what the Dragon was sent to pick up, and that’s what was stored in the locker on the lower deck.”
“And it got loose,” Larsen asked, all the sureness of command drained from his voice.
The three of us were silent for a few moments, lost in our thoughts. My voice punched through the tranquility, surprising me. “It infected someone on the Dragon. The crew tried to fight it off. Everyone died, but one crewman tried to surface the ship. That’s how desperate he was to survive. But Lee knew-because the captain had told him-what would happen if the virus got loose. He couldn’t take that chance.”
“It’s still here on the boat. Oh, shit. Motherfuck. We’re all infected,” Larsen said. I couldn’t tell whether he was angry or overcome by anxiety.
“Not necessarily.” This was again in my professional sphere, a monster I had slain before. “Depends on the vectors by which it spreads. And I’ll bet that’s in the report. See anything in there, Campbell?”