Triton (22 page)

The screen flickered—and then a shape resolved itself clearly on the monitor. The image sent needles through her skin.

“What is
that?
” Brynn muttered.

“That don’t look like no asteroid,” said Cedar.

Naomi gaped at the monitor. The
Cypress
was floating over a vast triangular wedge. A perfect triangle. As she watched, the submerged hulk crept beneath them, filling the entire sonar screen. And Cedar was right; asteroids didn’t look like that. Nor did underwater seascape. Sonar picked up peaks and valleys on the seafloor, schools of fish, random patches of cold water. Not this . . . not an equilateral triangle, not perfect symmetry, not straight lines. Never straight lines.

Signatures like that belonged to manmade objects. To structures.

To ships.

Warm fog whistled
past Jake out on the bridge’s wings, which jutted out over the water. With a crack, the ten thousand watt metal halide searchlight ignited and lit up the fog like daytime. The lamp’s electrical hum tugged at the hairs on his forearm. Shielding his eyes from the glare, he dragged the trashcan-sized light around on its mount and angled the beam into the pitch black water.

The blue light splintered off waves and penetrated thirty feet into the murk—where it struck a solid surface. Not sand, though. A hull. A perfectly flat, gently sloping hull . . . right below their keel.

The submerged face rose as the cruise ship moved forward. He swiveled the floodlight astern. The beam’s white-hot glare torched a path through the water, illuminating more of the giant structure underneath them. Still no sign of its edges, though; it extended beyond the range of the searchlight.

He swung the beam forward, but the light melted in a blue haze. Where the object broke the surface—if it ever did—was hidden in the fog.

He pointed the searchlight straight down and leaned over the railing. He could just make out a texture on the submerged surface. It almost looked like—

No, it wasn’t possible.

His walkie-talkie crackled with Naomi’s voice. “See anything Jake?”

He unclipped his radio. “Just a big ass slab underneath us. I’m going to head down to the bow, see if I can get a better view.”

Light acted weird underwater. An optical illusion . . . that was all he’d seen.

“It’s huge,” Naomi
whispered. The depth gauge now read forty feet; it was right under their keel. Yet the
Cypress
still drifted forward at six knots. “We’re going to hit it.”

“What if we dropped the anchor?” said Brynn. “Would that stop us?”

The anchor
. Naomi flung herself to the Machine Automation System, but Cedar’s hand closed on hers.

“Do you want to save this ship?” His pale eyes gleamed in the darkness. “Don’t drop the anchor. At this speed, the chain will snap right off. If it
does
hold, the ship’s inertia will drive the bow down into the water and crack the hull open on whatever’s down there. Just give it time.” He squeezed her hand.

She nodded, and pulled back from the controls. Her gaze jerked back to the navigation system. Five feet now, according to the depth sounder. Speed of four knots, but slowing. Alarms blared.

Three feet.

Two feet.

Inches . . .

She braced herself for the impact.

Jake burst out
the stairwell onto the bow and sprinted across the helipad. His shoes squeaked on the slick deck, and his footsteps faded into the fog. He collided with the railing and leaned out as far as he dared, peering down into the black ocean, which radiated heat.

From half the height of the bridge, he could see much better. Under the searchlight’s blaze—which he’d left on—the texture was obvious.

It couldn’t have been any more obvious.

“Huh?” he muttered to himself, his spine prickling.

His radio crackled. “Speed zero knots,” said Naomi. “Now reversing. We’re in the clear. Jake, what do you see?”

He raised the radio to his mouth, still in disbelief. “Something can’t be right about this,” he said. “All I see is wood. It’s made of
wood
.”

“Wood?” Naomi repeated dully, equally dumbfounded. “It can’t be wood.”

“I can see the goddamn knots on the planks,” he said. Below him, the water changed direction, drifted forward; the ship was backing up—

The deck creaked behind him.

He spun around, a cold wind biting at his neck. Visibility had dropped to less than fifty feet. He couldn’t even see the stairwell. He scanned the impenetrable fog, saw nothing.

A patter of footsteps pricked his ears. His heart thumped. Someone else was out on the bow with him.

“Is one of you down here?” he radioed, his voice unsteady.

“We’re all here,” said Naomi. “Still up on the bridge. Me, Brynn, and Cedar.”

A wave of chills swept over his skin. He had broken his own rule about never going off alone. As if on cue, a thick pocket of fog rushed over him, plunging visibility down to twenty feet, then ten. Then five. He reached forward, could barely see his own fingertips.

Freezing air lashed his skin, raised goose bumps, and he felt a spray of salt; a cold wind was blowing through the fog, condensing the humidity into mist, thickening it.

He tiptoed forward, his hand outstretched, probing the darkness. He had to get back to the bridge. The salty breeze moaned in his ear, and in it, he heard the hiss of breathing.

Right in front of him, not ten feet away, something crept toward him, stalking him.

“There’s something else down here,” he whispered frantically into his radio. “I think it’s one of the nephilim—”

Then it stepped out of the fog, and he screamed.

On the bridge
, they all heard Jake’s scream. Cedar grabbed his radio. “Jake, come in!” he shouted. “Jake?”

No answer.

His sister watched him, wide-eyed and terrified.

“Jake, answer me,” he said, skin prickling.
I think it’s one of the nephilim
.

Naomi called on her own radio. “Jake, are you alright?”

Nothing.

They had backed up the ship, and now the depth gauge read a much more comfortable sixty feet. She throttled down to neutral.

Cedar squeezed his radio again. “Jake, get your ass back up to the bridge.” He released the talk button, and listened. The silence stretched on for seconds, unbroken. He set down his radio and muttered, “And then there were three.”

Next to him, Brynn whimpered.

Their radios crackled with a burst of static, and then they heard him.

“Jake here, receiving you loud and clear,” he said. “We’ve—uh—got a surprise visitor down here.”

Cedar snatched up his radio. “One of
them?
”

“That’s a negative.”

“Then why’d you scream like a little girl?”

“She startled me.”

“
She?
”

“Sky. She’s back.”

The words registered in his stomach like bubbles of champagne. “What’d you guys do, kiss and make out for five minutes?”

“She’s saving that for you, bud.”

A few minutes later, Sky burst onto the bridge, followed by Jake. Immediately, her gaze flicked to Cedar—and she halted

He straightened up at the console. “Yo.”

“Hey.” Her eyes stayed fixed on his.

Neither budged, and a tense silence followed. Somewhere in his peripherals, there were three other people talking excitedly at the same time; he didn’t hear a word, though. His focus was on her.

She looked terrible: eyes sunken and bloodshot, damp hair matted to her scalp, clothes wet and soiled—in other words, the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen.

He remembered the note they’d left off on, his coldness toward her, none of which he’d intended. The memory broke his spell, and he strode forward and threw his arms around her.

She squeezed him back and whispered in his ear, “I missed you.”

He pulled back and scanned her for injuries, terrified of what they might have done to her. But her skin was flawless. In fact, come to think of it—

His gaze froze on her thigh. “Sky, your cut . . .”

“What about it?” She glanced down, and her eyes widened, apparently just as surprised as he.

He knelt and ran his finger across her skin. “It’s healed. Not even a scar.”

“I think I was repaired by that thing.” She pointed over the bow, at the hulk lurking beneath the waves. “What are we calling it?”

“Why don’t we call it what NASA called it; they’re the ones who discovered it, right?” said Naomi.

“And what’s that?” said Cedar.

“The Triton.”

Electromagnetic Pulse

“Anchor’s away!” Brynn
called from her vantage point on the wings the moment the anchor crashed into the waves. Sixty feet of chain slurped into the water before the anchor landed on the submerged wooden surface.

When she got back to the main part of the bridge, Naomi had reversed the cruise ship and Cedar and his new girlfriend had left to work on their “project.” The anchor chain pulled taut, and the bow groaned and sank a few inches. The deck swayed underfoot.

“Well, it’s caught on something,” said Naomi. “We’re anchored.”

Outside, the wind had blown away most of the fog. Whitecaps flashed in the darkness. Jake stood at the window, watching the ocean churn.

“Now what?” said Brynn.

“We wait until morning,” said Naomi. “Once it’s light out, we’ll have a look at what’s down there. Right now, we should all get some sleep.”

“Is it a good idea to be anchored to this thing?” Jake said, turning away from the windows. “I mean, if a rogue wave hits, I’d rather not be moored to a giant wooden iceberg.”

“We could try for safer water,” said Naomi, “but we might not have enough fuel to find the Triton again. We’re here now. I think it’s better to be anchored to this thing than risk being swept into it during the night.”

He nodded. “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.”

“Um—one problem guys,” said Brynn. “How do we get down there? I know the water’s warm and all that, but I’d rather not have to snorkel down to an underwater alien spaceship.”

“We’ll deal with all that in the morning,” said Naomi, “but I think I know just the thing.”

Down in the
flickering medical facility on deck two, Cedar opened the incubator and pulled out the three petri dishes: three cultures—two taken from Sky’s stab wound and one control.

In the lab’s fluorescent glare, all the dishes looked the same . . . exactly like they did the day they prepared the cultures two days ago.

Not a single organism growing.

“Let’s get these under a microscope,” said Sky, “but it doesn’t look like anything grew out.”

She slapped the petri dishes, one after another, onto the tray under a microscope and peered through the eyepiece. She swiveled each dish, scanning its entire surface.

“There’s nothing on here but agar,” she announced finally.

Cedar took a turn at the microscope, and confirmed the same unbroken expanse of orange agar jelly. A few dead cells—Sky’s skin cells—littered the barren landscape, but otherwise nothing had grown out. “So your cut wasn’t infected?”

“No, there’s
always
bacteria,” she said. “All over our bodies, on our skin, in out digestive tracts . . . everywhere. It’s called the human microbiota—there’s literally a coating of millions of strains of bacteria and fungus on every inch of our skin.
Something
should have grown out.”

“So . . . what are you saying? They took the bacteria too?”

She nodded.

“Shit. Could have seen that one coming from a mile away.” Cedar massaged his chin. “Sounds like they’re got themselves a neat little collection of earth species.”

Her gaze flicked to him. “You think they’re taking a sample?”

“Yeah, except when you take a sample, you take a few here and there, you don’t take the entire freaking planet.”

On the dark
bridge of the
Cypress
, Jake watched the ocean’s temper rise—waves sloshed angrily, the gusts whipped the crests into spray, rain pummeled the windows.

Yet an ominous silence hung on the bridge. Besides the instruments, the only light came from a dim reading lamp: Naomi, poring over the Bible behind him.

The violence on the ocean’s surface cloaked the vast structure lurking beneath their keel. Even the searchlight—still blazing from the wings—couldn’t probe its sixty foot depth.

Yet it was down there; their ship was anchored to it.

And Jake didn’t like it one bit.

He checked his cell phone. Still five hours to sunrise. Too much time, too much could happen.

In the aft
boarding area on deck two, Cedar followed Sky into the elevator. He threw a wistful glance backward. Five days ago, he had stepped off the gangway into this very same lobby with his dad and sister. It had been filled with people. He pressed the button for deck twelve—the bridge—and the door slid shut. The elevator’s ascent made his stomach plunge.

“I keep thinking there’s something waiting for us out there,” said Sky. “I get scared every time these elevators open.”

“Me too.”

An empty lobby greeted them on deck twelve, an endless hallway, plush and deserted. With a shy glance, Sky laced her fingers around his.

The gesture filled his stomach with butterflies, and he felt his cheeks flush, giddy as a schoolboy. Who would have known?

Jake let them back onto the bridge and sealed the blast door behind them. “Get some sleep, you two. We’re investigating the Triton in the morning.”

Naomi and Brynn were already sprawled out on the “girls” mattress, and Jake, as usual, had made his bed off to the side—which left a single mattress for Sky and Cedar.

Their gazes flicked together, and Cedar’s heart gave a nervous thud. He could see her blushing.

“Back to back?” she offered.

He nodded. “We’re all going to die anyway, right? Might as well make it fun.”

“What . . . the dying or sharing a mattress with me?”

“Obviously, the dying.” With a smirk, Cedar hauled the mattress into a corner so they could have some privacy, while Sky gathered pillows and blankets and piled them on.