Kronos (29 page)

As soon as her capacity to move was completely eliminated, the inward clutch stopped—locked in place—surrounding her on all sides by tight walls of flesh. Her breathing quickened as her lungs failed to fill to full capacity. Her eyes widened as thoughts of asphyxiation surged through her wearying mind. As her panicked breaths quickened, glowing orbs filled her vision and her fingertips tingled. An agonizing roar slammed through the tight chamber, so loud that her teeth vibrated within her clenched jaw. The beast was hurt. For a moment Giona had felt sad for the creature, but then the tingling in her hands moved to her head.

It seemed only a moment had passed, but the next sensation Giona had was of being free from the crushing grasp. She’d passed out again. Upon waking, she sat on the floor, shivering not with cold, for the innards of the monster were quite warm, but with absolute dread. She’d unwittingly entered an alien world where logic and human senses became useless.

Exhaustion took over Giona’s cross-legged form, and her rocking slowed. She slipped back and leaned against the soft chamber wall. The flesh that met her body gave some and gathered around her back like a cushioned chaise. She closed her eyes—they were no good to her anyway—and tried to think about something happy.

But she became distracted by a sensation on the back of her head. The cushion of flesh behind her head pulsed up and down. The movement wasn’t violent, merely a repeated rising and falling. With each pulse, she felt more energized.

As though waking from a dream, Giona found her thoughts coming more easily. She realized that the palpitating behind her head came from a massive artery, pulsing blood from the creature’s heart to some other organ. Giona’s mind fought to gain some understanding of her new environment. Her fear ebbed slightly as reason began to take over. She’d been smart—scratch that—brilliant, before being consumed by this beast, but had since been reduced to a mindless prey animal. She longed for a return of her old self.

As Giona’s curiosity climbed to the surface of her consciousness, she turned and placed a hand on the artery. It was ten inches from top to bottom and, she imagined, stretched the length of her prison. She pondered the meaning of her mental revival and remembered that some blood vessels, the arteries, weren’t merely the mass transit system for white and red blood cells, they also transported oxygen. She leaned in close to the throbbing vessel, which she could feel pulse with every thud of the beast’s heart, and took a deep breath. The air smelled and tasted of coppery fish, but the surge of energy she received confirmed that oxygen was entering into the chamber by osmosis through the giant artery. Her life-support system. Without it, she would have died long ago.

But how long could she survive? She had no water, no food, and her body suffered for that absence already. Between the constant hammering pain in her skull and the agonizing knot in her gut, death couldn’t be far off. All the oxygen in the world couldn’t keep her from starving.

An odd thought struck Giona. What if the creature wanted her to live? It certainly seemed that way. That the chamber existed at all was strange in the extreme, but she’d also been physically protected during the attack. It might have been uncomfortable to the point of her losing consciousness, but Giona knew that without the firm grip of those walls, she would have been beaten to a pulp. And now she’d discovered an oxygen supply.

Giona lit her watch, feeling emboldened, and found her way to the oversized sphincter. Her nose crinkled with disgust at what she was about to do. She extinguished the watch light and pounded on the coiled muscle. “Let me out!”

Emotions Giona thought she’d buried beyond reach resurfaced. She pounded with both fists, screaming. “Let me out! Let me out!”

Tears broke free.

“Please, God, let me out!”

Giona sobbed and unclenched her fists to cover her face with her palms. When her sobs died to a whimper, she sighed. “At least give me something to eat.”

A subtle change in direction caused Giona to slip back away from the fleshy spiral of muscle. The beast was rising. She could also tell by the rapidity of the chamber’s undulation that it was speeding up.

Before Giona could wonder what would happen next, the sphincter burst open. A blast of cool, salty sweet air burst into the chamber, knocking Giona farther back. When she regained her balance, she realized she could see. A cool white glow lit the chamber from above. She looked past the opening, past the silhouettes of dagger teeth, and saw something she believed her eyes would never gaze upon again—the moon.

An instant later, the moon and its light were gone. A roar like thunder filled the void and rushed toward her. A torrent of water surged into the chamber and slammed her against the doughy back wall. As the space filled with water, covering her head, Giona found herself thinking about the cool air and glowing moon. If they were the last things she experienced before drowning, at least the creature had given her that final joy.

Water suddenly cleared from her face. She took a gulp of air. In moments her whole head emerged from the water, then her torso, thighs, and knees. As the water continued to course out through some unseen drain, Giona lit her watch. The water-covered floor shivered, alive with movement. She could feel tiny bodies flicking against her feet. Thrashing water echoed through the small chamber, filling Giona’s ears with an unceasing static hiss. Needing to know whether or not she should be petrified, Giona aimed her camera down, closed her eyes, and snapped a picture. Even with her eyes clenched shut; she saw the bright flash through her eyelids as a pink glow. She blinked her eyes open and looked at the camera’s viewscreen. Then gasped. The reflection was brilliant, but the image revealed a mass of silver-bodied herring.

Fish!

Food!
Giona’s mind shouted.

Giona dropped the camera and fell to her knees. She completely forgot that she didn’t like sushi and began grasping the small fish in her hands. With a savagery long tamed by civilization but unleashed through starvation, Giona ripped into the fish, swallowing chunks of flesh, not knowing or caring whether the juices running down her chin were blood or bile. She ate for minutes, until sated, then slumped against the oxygen-supplying artery.

She was breathing.

She was sustained.

She was alive.

“Thank you,” she muttered, but to whom she was talking, she had no idea.

44

The Titan

Atticus slapped Andrea gently on the cheek. She roused from unconsciousness with a grunt and blinked at the brightness assaulting her unadjusted eyes. She immediately recognized where they were. “Not again.”

“Welcome back sleepyhead,” Atticus forced a smile, knowing it would do little to keep Andrea from quickly realizing their predicament. Atticus had been awake for an hour. He’d tried to rouse Andrea three times, but the drugs she’d been given had had a stronger effect on her smaller body.

As he’d sat in the room, guarding Andrea’s inanimate form, he’d tried to distract himself with thoughts of his family: Mom, Dad and, Conner. Was Dad still in the hospital? Was Conner still waiting for him at home? But the thoughts came and went in a haze. He struggled to come up with some kind of escape plan, but his mind had been unable to concentrate.

With Andrea awake, he felt a part of his mind refocus, but he was no closer to coming up with a useful strategy. He stood on wobbly legs and sat next to her on the wooden bench. His body sagged. “Hell of a first date.”

“Second date,” Andrea said. “Our first included you jumping from a hospital window and scaling down the side of the building like Spider-Man.”

A slight smile crept onto Atticus’s face. He couldn’t imagine ever having the energy to pull off a stunt like that. “I’m far from a superhero.”

Andrea rested her head on his shoulder while rubbing one of her temples with her fingers, fighting off the same blazing headache still hammering Atticus. “Well, you’re
my
hero.”

“You won’t think so when that door opens and the only thing I can do to defend you is shout obscenities.”

She slid an arm up around his back and patted gently. “They’ve got bigger fish to fry…much bigger fish. I’m sure they’ve forgotten about us for now.”

A resounding
clunk
signified that the brig door was being unlocked.

“Or not…” Andrea said as she did her best to stand. Atticus could see she wouldn’t go down without a fight, and he’d be damned if she would have to fight alone. He stood and nearly collapsed as the world momentarily fizzled to black. His vision returned just as the white door swung open to reveal a black specter.

“O’Shea?” Atticus said, not trusting his eyes.

O’Shea bowed. “At your service.” He quickly handed them bottles of water. They twisted off the caps in an instant and chugged down the cool liquid.

After finishing their drinks, O’Shea handed Atticus his dive knife and .357. “I was able to get these, but I’m afraid your other weapons have been impounded, or in some cases, dispersed among the crew.”

Atticus checked the .357. It held six rounds. Not exactly enough to combat the entire crew of the
Titan
if it came to that, but if his aim was true, six shots would be enough to incapacitate six people—permanently—and do a fairly good job of intimidating the rest of the crew. The knife, on the other hand, would never run dry. And in his previous experience with the SEALs, it had ended the lives of more enemies than any other weapon he’d used. SEALs often relied on stealth, and nothing attracted less attention than a blade. Atticus slid the .357 into his belt and was about pocket the knife when O’Shea suddenly turned pale.

“What are you doing here, Father?” The voice wasn’t familiar to Atticus. It must be one of the many crew members Atticus had yet to meet.

“Just making sure our prisoners are well cared for,” O’Shea said, doing his best to sound cool and collected.

“Is that so?” O’Shea tumbled into the brig, shoved from behind. A tall man carrying an H&K UMP submachine gun followed him in. The man’s lanky body showed a dark tan. Patchy stubble coated his face, giving him the look of a sixteen-year-old trying to grow his first beard. But the ferocious gleam in his deep-set, hazel eyes told Atticus the man’s innocence had died a long time ago. He suspected that most every man on the
Titan
’s crew had either been a criminal before being hired, or at the very least, had become one since.

The man positioned himself behind O’Shea and kept the UMP against his back. At that range, the .45mm rounds would blast straight through O’Shea and pepper the brig. The man was taking precautions.

Smart man,
Atticus thought. Some of his strength had returned since drinking the water. Atticus stood sideways to hide his right hand and hip. He let the dive knife slip down so that he was holding the razor-sharp blade between his fingers, which he suddenly realized, still shook from the effects of dehydration.

“Let me see what’s in your hands,” the guard said. Atticus and Andrea held up their emptied water bottles.

“They would have died in here without a drink,” O’Shea said, sounding as humanitarian as possible.

“Maybe that was the point,” the guard said.

“I do believe Remus wants them alive when he returns,” O’Shea said matter-of-factly.

The man considered this, and, while he did, O’Shea took the opportunity to roll his neck, stretching the muscles that were becoming tight with anxiety. In that moment, time slowed for Atticus. It’d been a lifetime since he had taken another man’s life, but he didn’t see how he could disarm the man without O’Shea’s being shot in the process. He also knew that the guard would soon discover that O’Shea had betrayed Trevor, and the brig would become a shooting gallery with no place to hide. Atticus’s vision narrowed. He saw nothing but the guard and O’Shea.

O’Shea’s head stretched one way, then the other. The guard spoke the words Atticus had been hoping for. “I want to see both hands.”

Atticus raised his knife hand so that the back side faced the guard, hiding the blade behind his palm and wrist. As he turned his palm toward the guard, Atticus gave his wrist a quick snap. No one saw the knife fly through the air, but a sickening sound like scissors cutting through thick fabric followed by a wet
pop
confirmed its passage to the man’s brain. His body fell in a slump behind O’Shea, who’d gone rigid, in mid-stretch as the reality of what had just happened dawned on him.

O’Shea spun quickly, looked down, and jumped back. “Wow!” he whispered.

“Sorry,” Atticus said to O’Shea. “I didn’t have a choice.”

O’Shea snapped out of his daze and looked to Atticus. He smiled. “You forget, I’m not a priest. And that man was a killer. He would have killed us all.”

Atticus felt relieved by O’Shea’s assessment. He took no pleasure in taking another man’s life. That there had been no other recourse eased his guilt. But he doubted the man’s death would be the last one on his hands before they escaped the
Titan.
The stakes had been raised again, but he doubted Trevor would enjoy these as much as those he set himself.

Atticus bent down to the dead guard, searching his body. He picked up the UMP and found two spare magazines. With twenty-five rounds each, the weapon improved their odds.

With a quick yank, Atticus extracted the dive knife from the man’s eye socket. After wiping the blade clean on the dead man’s pant leg, Atticus pocketed it and turned to Andrea.

Although she was a member of the U.S. military, she fought to save lives, not take them. She might have pulled a corpse or two from the water during her career, but she’d obviously never seen a man slain. Her eyes focused on the man’s head, where a pool of blood had collected in his deep-set eye socket.

Atticus gripped her shoulder. “Hey.”

She met his eyes.

“Don’t look at him,” Atticus said. “The nightmares will fade faster if you don’t look at his face.” He’d learned that from personal experience. While taking the UMP and retrieving his knife, Atticus hadn’t once looked at the man’s face.