Adrift (Book 1) (14 page)

"Oh, shit. I see Phil."

"Where?" Edgar snapped. By his estimation, he and Seb had already been searching through the area surrounding the Climate Control Centre for more than four minutes. It had felt like four lifetimes, and it was
definitely
taking too long.

On several occasions, they had been forced to pause when they heard mumbling or footsteps nearby. Voices in the dark. Maintenance staff who were stumbling around, oblivious to the two men with nightvision goggles, but each time Edgar and Seb were forced to wait for them to move on, vital seconds ticked away.

There was no sign of Herb or Phil, and Edgar had been almost ready to give up the search for his brothers when Seb spoke.

"Ahead and left, between those pipes," Seb said. He pointed, and Edgar followed the direction indicated by Seb's ghostly green arm.

It was Phil all right, and as Edgar approached, he saw instantly that his brother had taken a beating. Even with the blurred view offered up by the goggles, he could see the split lip, and the dark stain of blood that bloomed beneath Phil's nose. One of Phil's eyes was swollen almost completely shut.

He wasn't moving.

Edgar dropped into a low crouch next to Phil's prone body, and put an ear to his brother's face. He heard breathing; a wet rattling that told him that Phil's mouth was full of blood, or maybe his nose was broken.

He shook Phil gently, and was just wondering if he had it in him to slap his comatose brother when Phil's good eye blinked open and he flinched.

It took Edgar a moment to understand that Phil couldn't see him.

"It's Ed," he said softly. "And Seb. Can you move?"

"You did it. You fucking set it off." Phil tried to spit the words out venomously, but they dissolved into a low moan. He coughed and spat out a mouthful of blood onto the floor next to him, and Edgar thought he heard a couple of teeth rattling out with it.

"I told you to come back in five minutes," Edgar said stiffly. "You didn't."

"I was trying to get our
brother
, you fucking prick."

Edgar flinched in surprise. Phil didn't talk much; never had. He couldn't remember when he had last heard Phil raise his voice in anger; maybe
never
.

Edgar felt his blood temperature rising, but he forced himself to let it go. Losing his temper with Herb had led to serious problems, and there just wasn't time to go through it with Phil.

"And where is he? What the hell happened, Phil?"

Phil shook his head miserably.

"There was a guy," he said. "Dressed in a security uniform. He had Herb down on the floor when I found him. I was dealing with the situation. Right up until the fucking lights went out."

"And what happened then?" Edgar asked.

"Take a look at my face, bro.
That's
what happened then. Herb's on the floor somewhere behind me. Propped up against one of the pipes."

Edgar waved at Seb to go and check the direction Phil pointed out, and he pulled out a pair of goggles, placing them into Phil's hand.

"They work," Edgar said. "Can you move?"

Phil grunted and held out a hand. Edgar grabbed it and pulled him to his feet. Phil stood for a moment, wobbling a little, and then slipped on the goggles, wincing at the pain as the plastic hit the bridge of his nose.

"I can walk," he said. "My pride took the biggest beating. Little guy, but he sure could throw a punch."

"Good," Edgar said. "The package is being delivered right now. We have to get to the top deck in fifteen minutes, at most."

"Great," Phil said miserably. "Remind me never to take a cruise with you again, Ed."

Ed chuckled grimly, and turned to face Seb.

"Got a problem," Seb said.

Edgar grimaced.

"Herb's not there," he said. It wasn't a question.
Of course
Herb wasn't there.

"You got it," Seb replied. "I guess this security guy took him."

A swollen silence fell over the three brothers. Edgar knew what they were all thinking; and knew that he would be the only one to say it. He had to play the bad guy, same as always.

"Then we leave him," Edgar said, biting back on the tremble he heard in his own voice. His little brother, little pain-in-the-arse Herb.

He would never see him again.

"Ed, we can't—"

"We
will
," Edgar snapped, "because we have to. I told Herb to stick with me. I told him I'd get us out. He fucking blew it. He could be anywhere on this ship by now. There's no chance of us finding him, and our ride is leaving in fifteen minutes. You both know what happens if we miss our window."

Edgar let the words settle for a moment, giving his brothers ample time to picture the result of them not getting to the extraction point in time. He played the images in his own mind, letting his imagination run all the way back to the room behind the black door in Brighton, and he shuddered involuntarily.

"Shit," Phil spat bitterly. "So much for us getting out of this clean."

Edgar barked a harsh laugh.

"Is that what you guys were hoping for? No wonder you've all been so damn jumpy. You came into this with unrealistic expectations. Getting out at all is a victory. Getting out
clean
was never an option."

The words echoed in the darkness for a brief moment, until Edgar turned for the exit, and the stairs beyond.

They had to travel up over a dozen decks. Most of it could be navigated via a single winding stairway, but when they reached deck twelve, they would have to move out among the passengers until they found another staircase that could take them up to the top of the ship. They would be like ghosts in the darkness, flitting between the frightened people unseen.

Soon, the Oceanus would be full of ghosts, but Edgar would be damned if he was sticking around to see it. He'd already seen enough.

Herb knew what he was getting himself into, and Herb was gone. Edgar loved his little brother, and he could feel the wave of grief washing around inside him, but there was no time to indulge himself in it. Not yet. He had to play the bad guy a little longer, or risk losing two more brothers.

"Let's go," he said in a brittle tone, and strode towards the exit.

*

Steven Vega kicked open the door to what he thought was one of the Oceanus' two small conference rooms on the deck below the park and paused for a moment until he was sure that the room was empty.

"Inside," he growled, and held the door open while the men followed Ledger's lighter into the dark room. Saunders and Ferguson brought up the rear, hauling the comatose man that Ledger had been dragging when he had stumbled across Vega and the others.

When they were all inside, Vega closed the doors behind them and, after a moment's consideration, slipped the barrel of his pistol through the door handles to form a rudimentary deadbolt. Any passengers stumbling into the room would doubtless come up with questions that Vega thought would be very difficult to answer.

In the dark space, the faces of the group of men gathered into a circle around the unconscious body. They almost looked spectral in the tiny sphere of light cast by the lighter.

"Turn that off," Vega said. "No point wasting the fuel."

After a moment, Ledger complied, and plunged the room into total darkness. Vega thought it might just have been the first time that Mark Ledger had done exactly as Vega had asked without kicking up a fuss.

"I think you'd better start explaining yourself, Ledger," Vega said. "You can start with why you're dragging an unconscious man around."

"Not exactly the hero's welcome I was expecting," Ledger said sardonically, and Vega sighed. For a moment there, he'd almost let himself believe that the situation developing on the Oceanus might have persuaded Mark Ledger to stop acting like a prick.

"Turns out there
was
a security issue down in Climate Control," Ledger said amiably. "Though, of course you knew that,
right
Steve?"

Vega said nothing.

"Anyway. Four men, dressed in engineering uniforms, hiding out in the vent system. It looked to me like they were building a device, and that device looked very much like a bomb."

Ledger paused, as though he expected Vega to snort his disbelief.

"Carry on," Vega said stiffly.

"I got out of there, and two of them came after me. I disabled them, and then the lights went out. I'm sure you've noticed."

Vega ignored the jibe.

"
You
disabled them? How?"

"With my fists."

Vega heard smugness in Ledger's tone, but also something else: a slight trembling as he spoke the words. He wasn't lying. Despite himself, Vega felt impressed, and was glad the suffocating darkness hid his face.

"What about the other two?"

"Didn't see them," Ledger said. "They weren't chasing. Figure they stayed back to make sure the bomb went off."

"EMP," Vega corrected.

"Yeah, that's what I figured. Can't think
why
, though. So I brought our sleeping friend along. I'm guessing he's got the answers. Before he passed out, he seemed willing to talk. Said I had to warn the captain and get him to send out a
mayday
. I’m guessing maybe it’s too late for that now."

Vega grunted. It was good work; exactly what he would have done in the same situation, though he could scarcely believe that Ledger had attacked and
disabled
two men. Didn't think he had it in him. There was no way in hell he was going to let Ledger know that, though.

"Any particular reason you didn't radio this in at the first sign of trouble?"

"I did," Ledger snapped. "
You
didn't respond."

Vega was about to call Ledger on that particular line of bullshit, when he remembered that he had left his radio in the office while he was in the CCTV monitoring room. He snapped his mouth shut.

He was about to suggest that they wake the man up and start asking questions when he heard it.

"You guys hear that?"

Ferguson's voice.

Vega didn't say anything for a moment. He tilted his head and focused on listening. Somewhere below the thundering of the blood in his veins and the breathing of the group of men in the conference room, he could hear another noise.

A noise that defied logic, and made a mockery of the fact that an EMP had been set off only moments earlier.

An engine.

Approaching fast.

Dan exited the security suite, dragged along by Katie's iron grip, and felt his head spinning.

What the hell am I doing here?

It had taken several minutes for Katie to locate the cupboard that she assured him held a number of flare guns. The distress signals were, she said, a matter of last resort. Outdated technology, given that the Oceanus had satellite phones and
wifi
.

When Dan asked her why she planned to send the flares up if there was another ship out there—a ship that she clearly believed carried people with hostile intentions, her answer chilled him.

"Because I need to be sure."

"Sure of what?"

"Sure that we’re not alone out here."

The security suite had an outer door that opened onto the deck at the bow of the ship, a narrow ledge behind a railing which constituted one of the few areas that it was impossible for the passengers to get to.

It was, she informed him, where the security staff took their coffee breaks, and some took lunch out there.

When the night air hit Dan, he crashed into the back of Katie, who had apparently stopped almost as soon as she stepped outside.

He didn't blame her.

It had been dark in the ship, of course, but there had nonetheless been some reassurance that at least he was in familiar surroundings. Safely encircled by walls and a ceiling. In a way, being inside the ship had been no different to waking up at night in a darkened room.

But when he saw the world outside the ship, Dan felt genome-deep paranoia clutching at him; a swirling, dizzying panic that made his stomach lurch.

With cloud cover blotting out the moon and stars, and the light that had spilled from the ship snuffed out, the darkness of the sea appeared almost supernatural.

Overhead, the sky rumbled loudly, making them both jump. The clouds had thickened, and from the sound of it, the storm that was brewing was going to erupt right over their heads.

For the moment, there was no lightning splitting the dark sky, and the result was that Dan could see
nothing
. Not a goddamned thing. Just inky blackness that made him feel disorientated and terrified. He froze in place as his lizard brain took control, ordering his muscles to seize. For several long moments, Dan stood like that, staring into a void that seemed to form just inches in front of his eyes.

Suddenly, it occurred to him just how very far away from safety he was, and how much he had taken the sea for granted. Humans, he thought, as he stared into the vast nothing, weren't supposed to be in a place like this.

Without the knowledge that there were walls around him, and mindful of the fact that somewhere very close there was a railing and a long drop to the freezing sea below, he felt paralysed by the darkness once more.

"Careful," Katie said in a breathless whisper, and the note of naked fear he heard in her words unnerved him almost as much as the vast emptiness.

"I can't see a damn thing," he said miserably, and felt a twinge of irritation at the whining tone of his own voice. Katie was frightened, too; he could hear it in her tone. No longer did Dan have a monopoly on fear. All of a sudden he felt embarrassed by his petulance. Something scary was happening on the Oceanus; something
actually
scary, not just
oh-no-Dan's-afraid-to-talk-to-strangers
scary. The young woman at his side was doing a great job of keeping a lid on her fear, presumably because she was a member of staff and he was a passenger. Her job demanded that she keep him safe.

He felt a stab of sympathy for her, and resolved to try to be less of a pain in Katie's butt. When it came to fear, after all, Dan outranked just about everybody. He should be able to help, not be a burden to her.

Katie was dragging him from place to place ostensibly because she wanted to keep him safe, but the truth, he suddenly realised, was that she did not want to be alone in the darkness, and for that he could not blame her.

What harm would it do to offer her some moral support? Elaine is safely locked in the cabin, and you'll be with her before you know it. She's probably still asleep.

Dan clamped his lips shut, and strained his eyes to see
anything
. He had never experienced such darkness in his entire life.

"Put your hands on my back," Katie said, and Dan frowned.

"What? Why?"

"Because I'm about to let this flare off, and I want to make damn sure you're not standing in front of me when I do."

Dan gulped, and stumbled forward with his arms outstretched until he felt Katie's shoulders. He rested his hands lightly on them, and felt a burning, squirming awkwardness at the oddly intimate contact.

"That's fine," Katie said. "Stay there. And squint. When I fire this, it's going to get real bright here for a second."

Katie wasn't kidding.

Moments later, the air around Dan hissed into brilliant, searing life as the flare rocketed up into the darkness, scorching a line against the black sky. Dan watched it fly, trying to catch his bearings a little at the brief sight of clouds tinged crimson.

The flare hung in the air for several long seconds before sputtering into darkness.

Dan squinted at the dying light, and saw nothing as it faded into darkness once more. Nothing except...

His eyes narrowed.

What was that?

Katie sighed impatiently.

"There’s nothing," she said, sounding almost disappointed. "Maybe the radar was just acting up after all."

"No, wait," Dan said. "Fire again. Same direction, but lower."

"You saw something?"

"I'm not sure. Maybe. Could just be my eyes playing tricks on me."

"Hmm."

Dan heard a click as Katie reloaded the flare gun, and his skin began to crawl. He
had
seen something. He was sure of it. With each passing second he became more certain that there had been a shape out there on the waves.

The air hissed again.

This time, the flare spat out low and flat across the ocean, and Dan watched the burning light reflected on the onyx waves as it passed over them, and then, as his eyes followed the burning trail of light, he saw it.

His eyes widened.

"Holy crap," Katie breathed as the flare's light died away.

"You saw it too," Dan said.

"A ship. Running without lights." The fear in her voice seemed to have been amplified.

"Maybe it got hit by the EMP, too," Dan said. "Maybe it's a solar storm after all?"

"I don't think so," Katie said. "From what the guy on the bridge told us, there was a vessel out there, but it was at the edge of radar range. For them to close the gap this quickly, they'd have to have power."

Dan felt like his head was beginning to ache from repeated attempts to understand problems that were beyond him.

"So what does that mean?"

Katie grabbed his arm, and he felt her nails digging into his flesh painfully. She dragged him back toward the open doorway that led back into the security suite.

"It means they don't want to be seen," she said, and Dan felt his stomach twist in fear.

They were just inside the security suite, and about to close the door on the darkness outside when suddenly that darkness disappeared, and was replaced by a single point of light.

Dan and Katie turned and stared at it. It was distant, and impossible to make out.

Until it rose into the sky and headed toward them.

After a few seconds, the sound of the engine was impossible to miss, and the source of the light could only be one thing.

A helicopter.

Incoming.

"Oh, shit," Katie whispered.