It had taken a handful of minutes for one of the operation’s other ships, a metal-hulled military vessel, to come alongside and execute a rescue. Only David and two members of the Gryphon’s crew had survived. The creatures had killed the rest, and the schooner vanished under the waves. In his nightmares, David sometimes hung from a rescue line, white shapes flashing in the water below, and saw his own pale, dead features staring back up at him.
There were no wooden-hulled vessels on the current operation.
Yet that did not make David feel safe. Out here, with the things so close, he could never feel safe. Not with the sun shining, and no matter how far they kept offshore. The only way for him to ever feel safe, he knew, would be to destroy them all.
The sailor outside the door stepped in, knocking on the frame. “Dr. Boudreau. Lieutenant Stone says you’re to come with me. We’ve found them.”
The FBI agents all turned at once. Turcotte lifted his weapon and led the way. David nodded to him and then fell in behind them as they followed the female sailor through a narrow corridor, up a small flight of metal stairs, and down the other side. He knew he ought to be leading. Without Alena around, he had authority over all of these people. But David believed in letting people do their jobs without interfering — especially when those people were carrying guns and grudges.
Lieutenant Stone waited for them just inside a boiler room. David quick-counted eight other sailors, and every single one of them had an assault rifle raised and pointed at the darkness deeper into the room. If David had thought the pipes elsewhere in the ship breathed, then these must have been the Antoinette’s lungs. Mist from the gas canisters hazed the air and the only illumination came from amber emergency lights spaced at intervals along the ceiling.
Stone tapped his gas mask, indicating that they should switch back over to channel three — which they had left so that their conversation about the dead FBI agents would be private.
“The creatures are alive, but very much out of commission,” the lieutenant said. “Some movement, but we’re guessing it’s involuntary.”
“That could be a dangerous guess,” Agent Voss said.
Stone shook his head. “If they were playing possum, they’d have attacked by now. Dr. Boudreau, my team is bagging one now. Are you still planning to use one of the containers for transport?”
David felt breathless and was tempted to take off his mask. He needed to be outside, up on deck, to breathe fresh air. But more than that, he needed to see.
“Yes,” he said, moving forward, not even looking at Lieutenant Stone anymore. “Captain Siebalt’s confirmed that one of the Hillstrom’s choppers will be able to transport it ship to ship.”
He kept walking. Two of the sailors turned toward him in apparent alarm, raising the barrels of their weapons toward the ceiling to avoid shooting him.
“Hang on,” Stone said, blocking his path. “What are you doing?”
David could feel them all looking at him then — the three FBI agents as well as the armed men and women under Stone’s command.
“You said they were unconscious.”
“As far as we can tell,” Stone hedged.
“I want to see them, Lieutenant.”
“And you’ll get your chance when we get one of them into a lab on the Hillstrom. Until then, I have my orders, Doctor.”
David spent most of his life on a happily even keel. Now anger flared in him. How long had he studied the cases from Indonesia and the South Pacific? How long had he theorized the existence of other such islands and searched for proof? He wanted answers, and he needed to see these things up close.
“Stand down, Lieutenant Stone. You take your orders from Captain Siebalt, and right now, he takes his orders from the DOD. So get out of my way.”
Even through the gas mask’s plastic face screen, David saw how much he had pissed off Stone, and he understood why. Speaking that way to the man in front of his team had been a terrible idea, but David had only one concern right now and it wasn’t mollifying Stone’s hurt feelings.
“Yes, sir,” the lieutenant said in icy tones, stepping aside.
David strode forward, moving between two rows of boilers until he saw another sailor, back to him, weapon aimed at something on the ground.
“Yerardi, let Dr. Boudreau pass,” Lieutenant Stone called.
The sailor, Yerardi, glanced over his shoulder, spotted David, and slid out of the way. David silently thanked him, but his focus remained on the amber darkness ahead. Other sailors, masks strapped to their faces, had taken up similar positions in and around several of the boilers, aiming weapons at pale figures whose flesh gleamed like mother-of-pearl in the weird emergency light.
Remarkable. How many thousands of years had it taken for these things to evolve? How long had they remained hibernating in the guts of volcanoes before something — time or climate change, weather or earth tremor — had set them free? They were amphibious creatures, which explained the evolution of arms and hands in spite of their otherwise marine attributes. But how had they survived so long? Had these particular creatures lived for thousands of years, or had they been spawning down there in the subterranean volcanic chambers all this time?
They might well represent the greatest scientific find in centuries. Yet whatever research David might do, whatever discoveries he might make, could only be shared with the Department of Defense as they tried to figure out whether they could benefit from further knowledge of the creatures. The irony pained him deeply.
Two sailors hefted what looked to be a black body bag off the floor and started shuffling toward him. David stepped out of the way to let them pass, well aware of the burden they carried, wondering if it would remain unconscious long enough for them to lock it in one of the massive steel containers up on the deck.
He crouched to get a closer look at the siren nearest Yerardi. The suckers all over the thing’s hands and serpentine lower body pouted open and shut like tiny mouths, searching for sustenance. David wondered if that had anything to do with how they breathed, but he knew those questions were best left to Dr. Ernst.
“Amazing,” he whispered.
With a last glance at the creatures sprawled on the floor and the masked sailors standing watch over them, he rose and turned to follow the strange procession. Lieutenant Stone walked beside the men carrying the body bag. When their grotesque little parade reached the eight sailors standing guard at the front of the boiler room and the three agitated FBI agents, Stone turned to one of the sailors.
“Bring it up to Corriveau. He’s got a container prepped,” the lieutenant said.
The sailor shouldered his weapon and saluted. “Yes, sir.”
“What about the others, Lieutenant?” asked another sailor, a bald man with charcoal-black skin. “Do we seal them in?”
Stone glanced at David. “What do you say, Dr. Boudreau? I know my orders. Do I get to carry them out?”
His tone dripped sarcasm, but the question lingered for a moment. David looked at Turcotte, then at Voss and O’Connell, before turning back to Lieutenant Stone.
“Are the charges set?”
“Yes, sir,” Stone replied with a nod. “Throughout the accommodations block and all along the hull. She won’t just sink, Doctor. She’ll be wreckage and debris.”