MELT: A Psychological Thriller (45 page)

It probably wouldn’t work in high seas, but it had worked so far.

Megan looked over her right shoulder and saw two other towers protruding up from the deck of the modified ship. Both towers had the same counterweight arrangements.

More chambers? More abductees? How many people are they torturing on this ship?

Megan imagined other terrified victims. She imagined acid-corroded faces, electrocutions, toxin-induced fits that caused people to bash their own brains out. God only knew what other horrors they’d invented. Probably things she couldn't even imagine.

The chain weighed heavily on her wrist.

Maybe they turned on each other, like we did.

She turned her face away, looking over her other shoulder.

Land.

Just two or three kilometers away. She could easily swim that far.

But I couldn’t swim wearing a shackle. It would drown me.

She called down, 'You murdered my friends!'

‘No, Megan. We're not monsters.’

‘You were punishing us!’ Megan shouted. ‘You were punishing us for what humans have done to the Earth! For what we’ve done to each other.’

The woman put both of her hands on the ladder as though trying to make contact with Megan through the thick steel.

‘We're trying to save our entire species, Megan. Their sacrifice will save millions of lives.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Climate change, Megan. You’ve been lied to. It isn’t what you’ve been led to believe. It’s not a process. It’s not slow. It’s an event. It’s about to accelerate rapidly. More rapidly than you can imagine. In the next twelve months, civilization as you know it will collapse.’

‘Collapse? From climate change?’

‘Global warming is just the burning fuse, Megan. It’s just the precursor. The real catastrophe is barely months away now. The real catastrophe will start when every crop in the world fails and seven billion people start running out of food. Once the disease outbreaks begin, we’re going to witness entire nations collapsing or going up in flames. We’ll see riots so large they’re visible from space, Megan.’

Megan struggled to absorb what she was hearing.

‘You’re insane,’ she yelled down at the woman. ‘How is torturing us going to save anyone! If this is true, you should be telling people!’

The woman shook her head. ‘We need to know what to prepare for, Megan. We can’t predict how people will react when their entire world begins to crumble apart. That’s why we needed to study you. You were thrust into a world with limited resources that collapsed around you. We saw your confusion. We saw you rally. We saw who gave up and who endured. We saw you turn on each other. We pushed you as hard as we could. We need to know how people will react when the entire world is faced with the same level of suffering you just experienced. We need to know what will happen. What kind of people will survive? Who will be left to work with? This experiment is teaching us. We recorded it all.’

Megan had never heard anything more absurd in her life.

‘That’s crazy!’ she yelled. ‘Torturing the seven of us won’t show you how the world will react! What happened in that chamber is nothing like the outside world!’

The woman nodded.

‘This isn’t our only experiment, Megan. This isn’t our only ship. Our scientists say these studies are vital. We can only pray they are right.’

Alex was right
, thought Megan.
The chamber was a model of the outside world. But it wasn’t just testing us about the past; it was helping these lunatics try to predict the future.

‘So you weren’t punishing us?’

‘No.’

‘But what about our bottles? Our secrets?’

‘They were just catalysts to speed up the experiment, Megan. During the collapse there will be conflict. Distrust. Paranoia. Violence. We planted the secrets in the ice to challenge your group’s cohesion. We needed to witness if you would put the past behind you and work together or turn on each other. Everyone has secrets, Megan. Everyone. Your group had some darker secrets than usual, so I can understand why you thought this was punishment, but we only used them to speed things along. It provided us invaluable data.’

Alex was right about that too,
thought Megan.
The secrets were just there to cause conflict.

Megan had only one question left. She felt like she was asking for the entire group.

‘Then why did you choose us?’ she yelled. ‘Why me? Why any of us? We were all just normal people!’

‘The entire world is made up of normal people, Megan. It’s normal people who will shape the world when everything falls apart.’

Megan took a moment to comprehend.

‘Wait — we were chosen because we were normal? That’s it? That’s all? Normal?’

The woman nodded.

Megan’s anger was building with every insane answer from this woman’s mouth.

‘What gives you the right to do this?’ Megan yelled. ‘Who even are you people? You should all be in jail. You should be the ones locked inside these chambers, not us!’

The woman waved to all the people behind her, waiting in their white suits and black masks. ‘We work for people with enough power and influence to know the truth. They don’t want to die. They don’t want their families to die. They have all agreed to do whatever it takes to secure their safety. It’s not a selfish motivation, Megan. We will help humanity rebuild before it’s thrust back into the dark ages. Can’t you see how important this is?’

Megan tried to imagine people with ‘power and influence’.
Does she mean the government? The President? The richest people in the world?

Probably all of the above. Everyone wants his family to survive.

The woman added, ‘The experiments have another purpose, Megan. They’re giving us survivors. They are giving us people like you who won’t ever again repeat the mistakes of the past. You will ride out the worst of the collapse in one of our safe locations. You might find yourself eating dinner with presidents. You will get to live in safety while the world falls apart. You’ve earned that.’

Megan pointed at the other towers. 'Who else survived?'

The woman shook her head. 'Just you, Megan. Only you this time. Very few survive, but they all teach us something. No one is wasted.’

‘It’s not just me,’ yelled Megan defiantly.  ‘Alex is still alive. He survived your trap.’

The woman shook her head. ‘He failed when he triggered that trap, Megan. We have no use for him. He’ll be gassed humanely. Just climb down away from the hatch.’

Megan’s arms were shaking from holding the ladder so long.

The woman signaled two men. 'Quickly, she needs the platform.'

'Wait,' called Megan, slapping her pocket with one hand. 'I need something.'

Megan climbed up again.

'No!' yelled the woman. 'Don’t go back in there! It's dangerous!'

Megan was already hauling herself through the hatch. She yelled back, 'The others left messages. I need them.'

Alex grabbed her arm to help her through.

Cold air was blowing down from the ceiling now, rapidly cooling the chamber. Alex was standing up. He looked unsteady, but he was up. Megan could see his mind racing.

‘How long do we have?’ he asked.

‘Long enough,’ said Megan. ‘Move back from the hatch. Stand behind it where they can’t see you.’

Megan scanned the chamber.

Where’s my bag? There it is.

From her bag she took her plastic sandwich container.

'Come out of there!' the woman demanded.

Megan activated her phone. She hadn't come back to get the messages. She'd come back to make one.

She lifted the phone to her lips and started recording.

'It's me, Dad. I'm still alive. I really miss you. I know you’ve been trying to find me, but you don’t have to worry anymore because I’m coming home now. I just have one thing left to do. I'll see you when I get there. I love you, Dad.’

Megan saved the file.

She put her phone in her plastic sandwich box, sealed it tight and then wedged it down the back of her shorts.

Without wasting a second, she sat on the floor and braced the shackle between her shoes.

She took three quick breaths. It was going to hurt, but she knew pain. This chamber had nearly frozen her to death. It had burnt her with acid. It had sliced chunks of her flesh and cartilage away. It had nearly cooked her alive. This chamber had taught Megan a lot about pain.

This shackle is coming off.

Right now.

Megan thrust at the restraint with her shoes.

The heavy iron compressed her hand.

Her wrist clicked.

Her knuckles crowded together, but couldn’t fit through the shackle.

Not without a bloody sacrifice.

The skin began tearing from her knuckles.

Megan pushed on through the pain, feeling the iron peel away her skin.

Her hand inched through the shackle by degrees until...

...clatter.

The shackle shot off. It flew through the hatchway and dragged the chain after it, clattering loudly against the ladder on its way down.

Megan didn’t even stop to check her injured hand. She was free from the chain and her hand still worked. That was essential for her plan.

The yelling from below sounded hostile now.

I don't have long.

But it wouldn’t take her long.

She’d made a promise to herself when Glen died. She intended to keep it.

She slid the artifact toward the hatchway, balancing it over the edge.

The woman squinted up at the hatchway. 'Don't make us sedate you, Megan.'

Megan called back, 'The others left you a message. I'm sending it down.'

She took a firm grip and then heaved up the tailfins.

The bomb slid through the hatchway like a torpedo leaving a submarine.

Alex slammed the hatch shut behind it.

Megan curled into a ball and covered her ears.

Her plan was simple.

Whatever sick minds designed these chambers had made them strong enough to confine the damage from an exploding bomb. Hopefully that same design offered protection
from an explosion
outside
the chamber.

With the hatch shut, Megan didn't hear when her tormenters started screaming.

She did, however, hear when they stopped.

Or rather, she felt it.

The explosion hit the chamber so hard that everything became airborne.