Degrees of Wrong (20 page)

“Yes. Completely.”
Also, I’m a ninja spy.

“Hmm. This sounds very much like a challenge, Dr. Morgan.”

Oh good grief. Of all the misguided… “Only
you
would think so,” I accused. “You think the simple act of warming up on the virtual jogger is a challenge to race.”

He snickered into the darkness.

“It’s not funny,” I muttered.

“I accept your challenge,” he said pleasantly.

“It is
not
a challenge!” I yelled louder than was really necessary in such close quarters. I crossed my arms and slumped in the seat. The man was beyond infuriating.

“I can hear you pouting, you know.”

“I can hear you smirking.” I hoped he couldn’t hear me biting my lip.

He chuckled. “You don’t need to be so nervous, Elyse, love. I’ve already promised the safe passage of your virtue on our little outing, remember?”

“Yes, well, we both know how well you keep up your end of verbal agreements, Nicoli Marek. Stop laughing.”

I could hear him smile into the darkness. “There’s no need to worry unnecessarily about it this evening, love. You have all week at the beach house to devise ways to keep me at bay, remember?”

I froze. I’d be at his complete mercy for a solid week. No witnesses, no cadet-constructed grapevine to force propriety onto him. And Dr. Folsom would be there to throw us together at every waking moment.
Do not let her out of your sight
, Ralph had told him. I was in heaps and heaps of trouble.

“Elyse? Shall I change the subject? Let’s see… Have you said your goodbyes yet?”

I welcomed this—sorely disguised—distraction. He was right—there’d be plenty of time to prepare an escape plan. Six hours separated me from our departure. I wouldn’t squander them with sleep.

“My goodbyes?”

“Yes, to your little cadet friend. What is her name? Ivory?”

I giggled, relaxing. “Ebony. Yes, I spoke with her this morning before she left. I wished her well.”

The furlough wasn’t so much a rest as it was a stop to exchange trained cadets for some green ones. Before Ebony’s transfer, we exchanged our best wishes in the transport halls. Stanley had followed closely behind her, exaggerating his salute to me as he entered the transport room. Neither had questioned my orders to stay aboard the
Bellator
. By now, all the cadets would have been deployed.

“What about that redheaded one?” he asked, wary.

“Liz? She is
not
my friend.”

“Good. I swear that girl’s an undercover reporter,” he blurted.

I laughed outright. “I know exactly what you mean.”

“I’m certain she was Lt. Sheldon’s informant. The one who told her that fantastic story about your attacking Frank.”

“Oh! Speaking of Lt. Sheldon and fantastic stories—”

“I’d rather not.”

“No, Nicoli. I want an answer. I’ve given you far and away more answers tonight than you really deserved. She’s the one who spread those awful rumors about you and me.”

“It was her. That’s why I’ve had her transferred from the ship. She won’t be returning after the furlough.”

“Oh,” I said, unable to think of anything more appropriate to say. “Will you miss—?”

The pod rocked violently, and I almost climbed onto his lap in terror.

He chuckled softly, gently unwound my arms from his neck and placed them into my own lap. “You’ll have to do better than that, love. That could literally be considered throwing yourself at me. Another move like that, and my promise about your virtue might not stick.”

“Wh-what was that?” I spluttered. Something had just happened to this transport pod. Something big.

The lights outside the cabin flipped on. The most enormous eye I’d ever seen stared into the pod, like a giant peering into a keyhole—and we were the keyhole. I stifled the urge to climb into the captain’s lap, to climb into the backseat, to climb
anywhere
. But the yellow iris would find me on his lap, in the backseat, anywhere. The pupil alone was as big as my head.

“Is—is that—a giant—?”

“Squid? Yes. It’s what I brought you here to see. Dr. Folsom thought you might enjoy this little secret of ours.”

“Secret?” I squeaked.

“Yes. They’re supposed to be extinct, the last one dying in captivity in 2024. We found this one in the area last year, and when our tracking devices picked it up again this afternoon, she asked me to take you to see it. We haven’t documented it officially. We’ve placed a request to the UOC for a marine biologist to come out here to inspect it. We want to make sure it’s not a completely different species.”

“Are they mean?”

“All squids are mean, in general. But this particular one seems to be curious. Sometimes he’s not very nice and rocks the pod, or attacks it with his beak.”

“It doesn’t crack the pod?” I remembered reading that squids had sharp, birdlike beaks.

“No. I told you, this isn’t a recreational boat, Elyse.”

For that I was—again—thankful. “How big is he?” I asked, unable to look away from its intrusive glare.

“We haven’t been able to officially measure him, like I said, but we believe he’s about one hundred sixty feet. His eye alone is three and a half feet in circumference. If our estimates are correct, he would be the largest documented squid in history.”

“You’re not supposed to be telling me this,” I guessed.

“Nope. I told you another secret. That one’s going to cost you.” He laughed.

“I don’t want to play this game anymore.” I crossed my arms.

“We don’t have to play any games, if you don’t want to,” he murmured in my ear. “You could just give in.”

I felt the warmth of his breath on my neck and scooted away from him, even before the goose bumps showed up. He chuckled softly but didn’t pursue.

I licked lips gone dry and concentrated on the glass shield over us. Large suction cups covered it, each one containing a serrated, hooklike appendage that made eerie scraping sounds on the glass.

“He wants to eat us,” I said.

“Yes,” he agreed. “But he’ll be disappointed, as he always is. He’ll lose interest soon and leave.”

“Why hasn’t he flipped us over yet? He seems big enough to at least do that.”

“I’ve anchored us into the sea floor. The pod injects long metal rods into the ground, and when they’ve reached an appropriate depth, they span out into an umbrellalike shape, making it virtually impossible for us to be uprooted.”

The physics of the explanation were sound, and I began to relax, easily entertained by this underwater spectacle. The monster disappeared for a while but returned twice, each time testing its beak and suckers against the anchored sturdiness of the pod, trying to crack us open as if we were a giant, delectable shellfish. We both seemed to enjoy the silence, and despite Nicoli’s recently acquired mission, I felt at ease with him in the confines of the pod.

After it was apparent the huge eye would not return a third time, Nicoli said, “Let’s head home.”

He retracted the rods, and the pod made a gradual ascension from the ocean floor. The fireworks started anew, impressing me all over again. The rest of the ride home was quiet, and I took the opportunity to review the evening’s revelations.

After the water drained from the transport room, he lifted me out of the pod. I took care not to look at him as I found my footing and stepped away from him.

“I’ll have to bid you a good evening from here, Dr. Morgan. I have a few things to do in the transport hall before we depart in the morning.”

“Good night, then,” I said, and showed myself out of the room. I walked down the hall in a trance, the evening mulling over and over in my mind.

Nicoli was engaged. He was engaged to a stranger whom he did not love. He was engaged to a stranger whom he did not love in order to strengthen his father’s political alliances. An idea which I detested. And because I detested it so
fiercely
, I had inadvertently challenged the world’s most irresistible man to a match of resistance.

Also, I had accidentally seduced one Lt. Frank Horan.

In summary, I concluded my intelligence to be deficient, at best. And by the end of the week, I’d wager my sanity would be too.

Chapter Ten

I couldn’t sleep. May not ever sleep again, in fact. After almost two hours of not even bothering to toss and turn, I threw off the covers, wrapped them around my shoulders and headed to the elevator. I felt my drab pajamas were adequate attire for reading in the lab. Even with a full crew, the lateness of the hour—or earliness of the morning—negated any chance of running into anyone. Still, the ship felt empty without its cadets, the halls carrying only an echo of the activity here just hours before.

I didn’t bother turning on the lights in the lab. The light from my computer illuminated a small portion of the room, and I folded myself into the chair, burrowing into the covers. I picked up where I’d left off combing through the onslaught of information, looking for survivors. I felt the hope being sucked from me as I read experiment after experiment, test after test. Despair pawed at me with each entry reporting another failure.

I found hospital records where the patients’ names had been omitted. Each case number represented a flesh-and-blood person who’d gone through the motions of a normal day just four days before they had died. Case Number 693 could have been named Mary. She could have had children. They could have been Case Numbers 694 and 695. She might have given them a hard time about brushing their teeth four days before their little bodies gave in.

I shivered, even in the warmth of the blankets.

“What are you doing? Why did you leave your room?” a rough, masculine voice called from the door.

I looked up to see Nicoli standing in the doorway, also in his pajama pants, but shirtless and barefoot. He leaned against the threshold, black hair tousled, his arms crossed, regarding me with what appeared to be irritation. He’d been sleeping. Soundly.

And then it occurred to me why he was there. Why he was unfailingly everywhere I went on this ship. “Ah, I see. You’re tracking me somehow. Wherever I go.”

He didn’t answer. He strode in the door and ran his fingers through his upset hair. I tried not to find it endearing. He pulled a chair up, propped his bare, behemoth feet on the desk next to my computer and leaned back, stretching his muscled arms behind his head.

“Well,” I continued, “I don’t
think
you’ve had the opportunity to implant a device inside my body, but my clothes could definitely sustain a—”

He rolled his eyes. “Any time you enter or exit a doorway, your eyes are scanned, giving me your location.”

“So, if I close my eyes when I leave…?”

“Be serious.”

I tried not to giggle. I knew he was irritable when he first woke up. “And you’re tracking me because…?”

“Because I am responsible for you while you are on my ship.” Again, a rolling of the eyes. “So? Why are we awake right now? Where’s the fire?”

“Are you so sure that you’re awake, Nicoli? Because if you were fully awake, you would know better than to use that tone with me.”

He sighed dramatically. And then, a little more politely, “My apologies, Doctor. I suppose I should just be thankful that you don’t sleepwalk.”

I made a mental note to start sleepwalking as soon as we returned to the ship in a week. “So. That’s how you always know when I’m going to the gym.”

He grinned slightly. It was the best he could do in his state of slumber. “How long are we staying here?” he asked groggily.

“Why do you have to stay? You can see that I’m perfectly fine. I’m just going through these files.”

He leaned back in the chair and shut his eyes. “Take all the time you need, Doc.” He yawned. “Just wake me up when you leave.”

“Why do you have to stay? Nicoli? Nicoli?”

“Huh.” He didn’t open his eyes.

“Nothing.” I didn’t figure he was hurting anything, unconscious and all. I did, though, cover him up with one of my blankets to keep from gawking at him in his state of undress.

I tore my mesmerized stare from the sleeping anomaly beside me and started to skim through the hospital records again. Hospital after hospital, case after case. I began to doubt the usefulness of requesting the files after all—until I came across a journal entry that just shouldn’t have been there. I recognized the stationery-type page as soon as I saw it. It belonged to the French doctor who’d contracted the virus, along with his family. The handwriting was not the Frenchman’s, but I did recognize the name
Belle
in the entry.

I glanced at Nicoli, biting my lip in indecision. I didn’t want to wake him but couldn’t overlook the fact that this journal entry was written in French. As I leaned over to him, I wondered if I ever really was a patient person to begin with, or if I’d developed impatience alongside my temper when I boarded the ship. I resolved to think on it further. Later.

“Nicoli,” I whispered, nudging his shoulder.

Nothing.

“Nicoli,” I said a little louder, shaking a little harder.