Exodus 2022 (7 page)

“We don’t know,” said Beck. “We’re working on it.”

Kate nodded toward Phelps. “He’s part of your team now. What does the high-priced neuroscientist have to say?”

Phelps laughed. “This is a new one on me.”

He stepped toward the screens. “If it were just a psychosomatic response to stimuli, I’d suspect a drug. A toxin. But the same—or virtually the same—hallucination across four individuals? I’ve never heard of anything like it.”

Phelps turned to the monitors displaying the brain scans and tapped on the anomaly he’d identified earlier, the mass wedged between the caudate nucleus and the occipital lobe. “And then there’s this little mystery.”

Edelstein said, “Why would this tumor—or whatever it is—cause these guys to imagine a dead child?”

 “We suspect,” Beck replied, “that the grief hallucination is a sort of…icebreaker.”

“A what?” said Kate.

Beck said, “Because here’s the thing. The part I haven’t shared with you yet. All of this stuff with the kids, all of the anguish and suffering…it’s just what’s on the surface. The thought captures uncovered a mother lode of material below that.”

He gestured at the bank of monitors. “It’s like these guys ran into a high-tension power line, only instead of filling up with electricity, their heads filled up with thoughts. Filled to bursting. The dead kid is on the surface, but there’s an ocean of other stuff under that.”

“What kind of stuff?” asked Phelps.

“Ah,” said Beck. “This is where it gets really interesting.” He nodded at Brandon, and fresh images filled the massive center screen.

“WHAT IN THE WORLD?”
said Kate.

On the screen hovered a phosphorescent tube, or chamber. Veil-thin. Delicate. Emerald green. The structure had a wide, gaping mouth and a long, tapering body, like a horn of plenty.

The broad open mouth of the object undulated gently. Rhythmically. Like a jellyfish drifting in the current. The walls of the structure glowed softly, but the area surrounding the strange object was dark, as if the tube, or chamber, or whatever it was, were floating in deep space, illuminated only by its own faint inner light. The image had a grainy, raw appearance, like a video transmission from one of the early Mars rovers.

The group stared in silence. 

“This thought,” Beck said finally, “this…memory, was identical in all of the victims.”

“Well, what is it?” asked Kate. She stepped closer to the screen. “What are we looking at?”

“We don’t know yet. But the data files are immense. And we haven’t even cataloged everything yet. Whittaker’s thoughts are the most complete. The downloads include an abundance of views. And the detail is good.”

“But I don’t understand,” said Kate. “They were all screaming about a kid.”

“Like I said,” Beck replied, “the kid, the grief, was on the surface. Raw and painful. The first thing to hit them when they touched the metaphorical power line.” He turned to the chamber images hovering before them. “This landed one level down—in their subconsciouses. The men may not even have been aware of this. None of them said anything about it.”

Brandon toggled between different views and angles, close-ups and wide shots.

The close-ups of the gently arcing “bell” or mouth of the structure revealed a lithe, opalescent wall that appeared to move and flow, and a dense latticework of glowing lines, thin as spider silk. The lines—there were thousands of them—ran like phosphorescent tracks from the outermost fringe of the bell into the heart of the tunnel.

The structure was unlike anything any of them had ever seen. It floated silently before them, looking like a cross between a living thing—an amorphous, liquid organism—and a fantastically exotic piece of architecture, a building designed and constructed without concern for the laws of gravity.

 “Dead kids. Unbearable grief. And…this,” said Kate, nodding at the giant screen. “That’s one hell of an hallucination.”

“I’d like to see all of the thought captures,” said Phelps, “or at least what’s been cataloged to date.”

“Of course,” said Beck.

“And,” said Phelps, “I have to say, I agree with your sister that you need to open this up. Bring in other experts. Share this with the authorities.”

Beck said nothing.

“The captures are elaborate,” Phelps continued. “Complex. Unprecedented. And you say we’ve only seen a fraction. On top of that, and more importantly, this…phenomenon is lethal. Three guys dead—that you’ve identified. A new case this morning. What if there’s another tomorrow? What if there are five more? What if—”

“Can you zoom in on this section, please?” It was Edelstein, and she was standing in front of a close-up of the chamber mouth. A low angle.

There was something in front of one tiny section of the structure’s gracefully curving lower lip. Small randomly shaped protrusions. Bits of detritus backlit by the chamber’s eerie glow.

Brandon tapped his keyboard, and the magnification increased. He boosted the resolution, made some adjustments, zoomed in even more.

“Anthosactis,” said Edelstein. “In a whale fall. I’ll be damned.”

“Antho-what in a what?” asked Phelps.

“
Anthosactis pearseae
,” she replied. “It’s a type of anemone.”

Brandon fine-tuned the picture until they could all see what Edelstein was talking about. The anemones were small, white, and roughly cube-shaped. They appeared to be growing—flourishing—amid a vast pile of bones.

“Anthosactis is about the size of a human molar,” said Edelstein. “It even looks like a tooth.”

They stared. There were thousands of the little white cubes—each with a small tentacle on one side—covering the jumble of bones. Stuck to them.

Brandon switched to a different angle, an even lower perspective. Now they were looking through the bone garden, toward the phosphorescent chamber mouth. The chamber opening looked vast and alien. Glowing fibers along the base of the chamber connected it to the seafloor. Like anchor lines. Like tethers. Like the chamber might float away if the lines didn’t hold it secure.

Edelstein said, “Researchers discovered the species in Monterey Canyon, in 2007, twenty-five miles off the California coast, in about three-thousand meters of water. Living in a whale fall there, as well.”

“You’re talking about a dead whale?” said Phelps. “A whale skeleton?”

“Exactly.” Edelstein pointed at an image of gigantic vertebrae, snaking along the seafloor. “The flesh of an animal like this decomposes within weeks, but the bones can last a hundred years. As the bones break down, they release sulfur. And creatures, including this anemone, use that to make energy. Just like terrestrial plants use the sun.”

The group stared at the otherworldy scene: the bones, the eerie glow, the massive chamber mouth in the background. It was like something from a Salvador Dalí dreamscape.

 “Find a wider angle,” Beck said to Brandon.

“Yes, sir.”

Brandon skimmed through images. Dozens per second flashed on screen, a blur of colors and shapes. Then he found what he was looking for and the stream of pictures stopped. He adjusted the resolution and brought the image up. It was a wide shot: the chamber, head-on, hovering in the darkness, shimmering softly, like the entrance to a fantastical labyrinth. The whale bones were there, in the foreground, but barely noticeable—insignificant bumps, tiny silhouetted protrusions against the immensity of the chamber mouth.

“Even if the bones are from a small whale,” Phelps said quietly, “the chamber is—” his voice trailed off.

“Huge,” said Beck. “Big enough to house a Trident submarine. Or two.”

They stared in silence.

Kate shook her head. “Why would these images—any of this stuff—be in this guy’s brain? In his memories?”

“Like I was saying,” Phelps said, “you need to make some calls. Open this up and share what you’ve found. I can recommend some—”

“We’re not sharing anything,” said Beck.

They all looked at him.

“Not yet, anyway. There’s one final piece to this that you haven’t seen yet, something we found in the thought captures, in all three men.”

He looked at Kate. “It’s the reason, more than any other, that we’ve been holding here. Trying to puzzle this out.”

“What reason?”

A deep, resonant tone boomed from the speakers around them, like the lowest note on the deepest bass instrument.

Throom! Throom! Throom!

“Sound,” Beck replied. “We found sound with the images. Embedded in the thought captures.”

Kate waited for the strange noises to subside. For the reverberations to fade.

 “So there’s sound. With their memories, or hallucinations or whatever they are. So what?”

Beck turned to Brandon again. “Play the other recording.”

Brandon hit a button.

Throom! Throom! Throom!
echoed throughout the War Room once again.

“It’s the same sound,” said Kate.

“Yes,” said Beck. “But that one’s from the real world.”

They stared at him.

“The first series came from the thought captures. From inside the victim’s heads. The second set, from hydrophones in the Bering Sea. A NOAA research team noticed the sound first. Monitored it. Put it on their site to see if anyone could identify it. They have no idea what it is. Nobody does.

 “Doesn’t match anything in any database,” said Beck. “Nothing natural. Nothing man-made.”

Edelstein said, “Has NOAA pinpointed a location? A point of origin? Or have you?

“There appear to be multiple sources. All very deep. Spread across a huge area. Our hope is to find one we can reach, and check it out. Before anyone else.”

He looked at his companions and gestured at the screens. “These aren’t hallucinations. They’re messages.”

“Messages?”

“Messages. Transmissions. Thoughts and feelings and impressions foisted on these men, against their will. Without their knowledge. We don’t understand the mechanism yet, but that’s what happened. What
is
happening.”

“A message implies a sender,” said Edelstein. “Who’s the sender?”

“We don’t know. Not yet. What’s clear is that something touched these men. Entered their minds. Changed them.”

“
Killed
them,” said Phelps. “The first three, anyway.”

“Yes,” said Beck.

The room went quiet.

Beck said, “Something or someone is causing this. Something real. Something no one’s ever encountered before. We need to look into it.” He regarded Phelps and Edelstein. “I need your help. I need you to work with Dr. Ring and the rest of my team. We’ve gotten this far, but we need your expertise.”

He turned to his sister. “That is, unless you think it isn’t worth it. That Father would want us to just walk away.”

Kate spoke, all the venom gone from her voice, as if the wind had been knocked out of her. “I’ll talk to him,” she said.

KATE COLLECTED HER TROLL-LIKE
bodyguard at the entrance to the War Room and departed the
Arctic Marauder
. Beck watched her chopper lift off.

“There’s an update,” Collins said, in his most businesslike tone as he joined his boss in the sunlit hall adjacent to the helipad. “Joe Stanton is still on San Juan Island. Dodd spotted him in the ferry line, in Friday Harbor. We have some photos. He looks pretty messed up. And the woman with him looks exhausted. Hot as hell, but exhausted.”

Beck thought about it. “Where’s the
Northern Mercy
?”

Collins stepped to a monitor set into a wall and touched the screen. Pulled up maps. Scrolled through a couple.

“Thirty five miles south southwest of Tofino,” he said. “About to make for San Diego. Quick resupply there, then on to Panama.”

“Send it into the Straits. To the San Juans. Now.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And get Dodd and Drucker on the phone. Whichever one is watching Stanton this minute. I want to talk to them.”

JOE STANTON FORGOT
about the engagement ring he’d hidden in his pack until they were on the ferry, bound for Anacortes.

He and Ella had endured a long, though blessedly uneventful wait in the Friday Harbor car holding area, finally boarding the MV
Elwha
for the 7:55 p.m. sailing.

“A beer sounds good,” said Joe, as they climbed the stairs from the car deck to the passenger cabin.

The look on Ella’s face made him reconsider. “Right,” he said. “Alcohol with a head injury and hallucinations…probably not my best idea.”

“Hot tea?” Ella asked.

“Sure. Good. I’ll go grab us a seat.”

He found an empty booth near a window, sat down, and pulled a fleece jacket from his pack. That’s when he rediscovered the ring.

It was in a little box, inside a mesh compartment. Joe touched the package, but didn’t bring it out. 

He turned and watched Ella, standing in the galley checkout line. Even just glancing at Ella Tollefson made his heart jump, made him giddy and happy. Christmas morning kind of happy.

The woman was beautiful. The woman was smart. The—

Joe saw that at least three other guys in the bustling galley were ogling Ella. She hadn’t noticed. Or maybe she had and was just ignoring them.

Joe felt like standing up and saying, “Excuse me. Hey! She’s with me, okay? So just forget it.” 

Instead, he reached for the little box, turned it in his hand, and considered giving the ring to Ella here. On the boat. Tonight.

The idea died as quickly as it formed.

This isn’t the time. Or the place. The circumstances are too weird. She deserves better.

Joe realized, gloomily, that if the weekend had gone according to plan, they’d be having a romantic dinner somewhere on San Juan Island right now. They’d be drinking wine and laughing. If the weekend had gone according to plan, he’d be steering the conversation to their relationship. Telling Ella that he was madly, hopelessly in love with her. That he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her.

But things had not gone as planned, and now they were on the ferry, quitting their vacation early, heading for Seattle and a bunch of medical tests.