Bo Pan nodded. “Yes. You are right. It would just cause too many problems. They don’t know what is going on, so it is not worth the risk. We will dock and I will leave.”
Which brought up another problem — Steve wanted to be as far away from Bo Pan as possible.
“Am I supposed to go with you?”
“No. You will return to your parents.”
Steve was going home. In a day, maybe a little more, he’d be sitting at the restaurant, eating his father’s cooking. Could it be true?
Bo Pan smiled a grandfather’s smile. “I am sorry you can’t come with me right now. Soon enough, however, you will be welcomed in China as a hero.”
The old man thought Steve still wanted glory, when all Steve wanted to do was hide and forget this had ever happened.
“Okay,” Steve said. “I understand.”
Bo Pan took out his cell phone. He awkwardly typed in a message, one slow thumb at a time. He sent the message, yawned, then put the phone away.
“I have arranged transportation,” he said. “Four men will be waiting for us when we arrive at the dock to help us with the Platypus. A truck will take you and your machine back to Benton Harbor.”
Four men? The Platypus wasn’t that heavy. Steve and Bo Pan could move it on their own — crate and all — and had done so many times.
Bo Pan rubbed his face. He sat on his bunk, laid his head on the pillow.
“I am going to sleep,” he said. “Don’t make noise.”
The old man started snoring almost immediately.
Steve tried to stay calm. He felt a fever coming on, but he didn’t have time to get sick. He was probably safe. Probably. Bo Pan still needed him; just because they’d found one alien artifact didn’t mean there weren’t more on the bottom of Lake Michigan, and only Steve and his Platypus could recover those artifacts if they were discovered.
But Bo Pan didn’t need Cooper, Jeff or José.
Steve stared at Bo Pan for a few minutes, made sure the man was actually asleep. Then, he sat down at his little table. His fingers started working the laptop’s keys: quietly, so quietly.
The storm outside was finally dying down. They would be in Chicago in a few hours.
He had to act fast.
KNOCKIN’ AT THE DOOR
Heat.
She felt it through her biosafety suit. Angry wind scattered loose papers across the crumbling asphalt and the cracked bricks that made up the road’s surface. At the end of the street, she could see the wide Detroit River — steam rose up from it, heavy steam, because the water was boiling. Abandoned buildings on either side of the street seemed to sag slightly, like they were exhausted, like the heat had taken the masonry and paint to just a few degrees below the melting point.
This wasn’t right. Why was it so hot? The bomb hadn’t hit yet.
She started to sweat suddenly, not in droplets but in buckets that poured off her, dripped down to fill the boots of her sealed suit.
Sweat pooled around her ankles… her shins… her knees.
Her hands shot to the back of her neck, clawing at the helmet’s release clasps. Sweat pooled to her thighs.
If she drowned in her dream, would she ever wake up again?
Gloved fingers searched for the clasps, darted back and forth, hunting desperately… but there were no clasps.
Sweat rose past her belly button.
“Hey, Margo.”
She stopped moving, looked out the curved visor to the huge man who had suddenly appeared before her. Dirty-blond hair hung in front of his electric-blue eyes, even down past that winning smile.
“Hey,” she said.
The sweat tickled the base of her throat.
“I got Chelsea,” he said. His smile faded. “The voices have finally stopped, but… I don’t think I’m doing so good. I’ve got those things inside of me.”
She started to tell him that she didn’t care, that she really didn’t give a fuck about his goddamn problems, but when she opened her mouth to speak, it filled with the hot, salty taste of her own sweat.
The level rose to her nose.
Perry reached out a hand. A triangle point pushed the skin of his palm into a pyramid shape, its blue color dulled by his nearly translucent flesh.
The sweat rose above her eyes, stung them, turned Perry into a shimmering vision.
Margaret heard a squelching sound, felt something hit her visor. She couldn’t see Perry — all she saw was a wiggling, bluish-black creature: an inch-high pyramid with tentacle-legs twice as long as the body, plastered to her visor like a still-twitching bug splattered on a windshield.
The legs squirmed, spreading Perry’s blood across the clear surface.
Margaret’s lungs screamed at her: breathe, you have to breathe!
The hatchling’s tentacles wrapped around the back of her helmet. The triangular bottom of the pyramid body had little teeth that sank into the visor’s plastic, bit and pulled and ripped.
It tore open a hole. The sweat started to lower. She felt it drop to her forehead, then her eyes. She blinked away the sting, holding on desperately, waiting for it to drop below her nose.
When it did, Margaret drew in a gasping breath.
The hatchling scurried down her suit. It hit the ground and ran for the sagging buildings.
Perry’s smile returned.
“It hurts,” he said. “Bad. I think they’re moving to the brain. Margaret, I don’t want you to lose control.”
“You won’t,” she said, the words familiar and automatic even though so much of the dream had changed. “They won’t have time.”
Perry’s smile widened. “I didn’t say my brain.” He put his hands on her shoulders, gave them a brotherly squeeze. “I said yours.”
She heard a banging. Not the whistle of a bomb, not this time, but rather a banging as if someone had a gong and was hammering the whole city at once, bang-bang-bang.
“Somebody knockin’ at the door,” Perry said. “Do me a favor, open the door, and let ’em in.”
Bang-bang-bang!
Margaret sat up, aching muscles voicing their complaint before they started shivering, shaking so bad that her back hurt and her teeth clacked. Her head throbbed. She needed water. Her throat felt so dry, so sore.
Her dream was always the same — why had it changed?
The sweat filling her suit… just like the icy lake water had done when she fell out of the Brashear. Her brain had brought the real-life trauma into the dream. And what Perry had said, that was just a reflection of her own fear of infection.
That was why.
That had to be why.
Her dream suddenly came to life again as the same bang-bang-bang sound made her jump.
No, not bang-bang-bang… a knock-knock-knock.
“Doctor Montoya?”
Klimas, calling through the door.
“Oh, sorry,” she said. “Come in.”
The door opened. He leaned in, beady eyes staring, smile playing at the corners of his mouth.
“Ah, you’re dressed,” he said. “That saves some awkwardness. It’s time for your third test.”