Degrees of Wrong (18 page)

“You’re making my life very difficult right now,” he mused. “You well know how Dr. Folsom can be when she doesn’t get her way.”

Yes, yes I did. And it suited me just fine. “That doesn’t sound like my problem.” I made a display of giving it more consideration, then reiterated, “Nope, definitely not my problem.” Besides, the idea of working out sans Nicoli seemed too peaceful a temptation to pass up.

“I need you to cooperate.”

“I am absolutely not going.”

“Not even for one of these?” He offered his open hand, revealing a little gold-wrapped jewel I knew to contain dark chocolate and caramel.

“Where did you get that?” Had he gone through my things? Had Dr. Folsom shown him my hidden stash? Well, stash
es
?

“I ordered twenty-
one
pounds.”

I stared at the bribe in his hand, the shiny little morsel so alluring, even in this horrible gymnasium lighting. “I am not some treat-trained pet,” I informed him as I snatched it from his hand and strode to the door. “I’ll meet you there in ten minutes.”

“What a splendid weakness you have.” He laughed.

It did not warrant comment.

I dropped off my water bottle and towel in my room, chewing my chocolate prize as I approached the elevator. I felt a bit relieved for the change of pace—especially since the evening wouldn’t end with me breathless, sweaty and, well, a loser.

He waited for me at the end of the transport hall. I followed him into one of the transport rooms, where he had prepared a smaller pod—a four-seater—for our excursion. With an agile hop, he landed in the pod and reached his hand out to help me in. The intimacy screamed at me, and I hesitated.

“Dr. Folsom’s not coming?”

“No. Just me and you.”

I bit my lip. “Why don’t you just tell me what it is? You could tell Dr. Folsom I went, and I would corroborate your story. She wouldn’t have to know the difference.” I shoved my hands in my pockets to keep from fidgeting. Now was not the time to show weakness. Again.

His hand fell. “Don’t you trust me?”

Implicitly. “No.”

He laughed and held out his hand again. “Don’t worry. Your virtue is safe with me.” He smiled with the cliché.

I eyed his hand long enough for him to be insulted. The reasonable part of me demanded that I turn, run from the transport room. The curious, irresponsible and admittedly larger part of me wondered why I wasn’t already seated and strapped in. I took his hand.

He used it to pull me closer, and when close enough, his arm encircled my waist. He lifted me in with ease, as if I didn’t consume three thousand calories of chocolate per day. When my feet met with pod, I scrambled away from his disorienting touch.

He seated himself in the conductor’s spot, and I strapped myself next to him. He maneuvered the controls with a seasoned finesse. Within seconds, the glass shield closed around us and the room filled with water. The lights dimmed, the controls the only illumination in the cabin.

“When the floor opens, we’ll drop out,” he said.

Despite my expectation of it, my stomach fluttered with the sense of lost gravity when we dropped, and I gasped. I heard his soft chuckle but wouldn’t satisfy him with a dirty look.

He negotiated the pitch black without the spotlight, instead pulling up a screen which appeared to be a map of the ocean floor and surrounding sea structures.

Noticing my interest in it, he said, “This is an explored region of the ocean. When a defined area has been thoroughly explored, we work to put it into map form, for easier navigation.”

“Ah. And how much is mapped out?”

“When the UOC first began its exploration, only roughly fifteen percent of the oceans of the world had been explored, and only twenty percent of that had ever been officially documented. Now, we’ve covered about thirty-five percent of the oceans. It may seem slow-moving.” He shrugged.

“Not at all. It’s a huge undertaking.”

“Very. That’s why the UN decided to place less emphasis on space exploration and concentrate their efforts right here at home. They haven’t regretted it.”

“No,” I agreed. “They haven’t.”

In fact, it had paid off richly. In the past fifty years, they found oil pockets scattered throughout the ocean floors of the earth, containing enough of the fuel to sustain the entire population for hundreds of years. Although, due to the developments in technology—and the use of hydrogen-powered
everything
—the demand for oil had dissipated to almost nonexistence. Still, because of these massive discoveries, more funds were shoveled toward the UOC to see what else they could find—and to protect the assets already detected. At least, that was Dr. Folsom’s rendition.

“So, is it useless to ask where we’re going?” I turned around in my seat, surprised to find the outline of the massive
Bellator
was no longer visible.

“You’ll see. We’re almost there.”

Without warning, fireworks appeared. Everywhere. I shook my head, peered closer—fireworks couldn’t exist down here. All around us, a soup of illuminated marine life exploded into color.

Purples, blues and fluorescent whites glowed in the water in forms large and small, creating an orchestrated symphony for the eyes. Some seemed to move with the ocean current, while others displayed rigid control of their flighty, harmonic movements. Tiny, indiscernible dots and larger silvery fish and even eellike creatures flitted about the cabin, all glowing with different colors and at different intensities.

“Breathtaking.” I had seen pictures of this, but the images fell marginally short of seeing this miraculous display firsthand.

“Yes. They responded to the movement of the pod. It’s a chemical reaction called—”

“Bioluminescence,” I said, still in a state of awe.

He chuckled. “Yes. ‘I forgot you’re a genius of some sort’,” he quoted me.

The pod shuddered, and the glowing forms disappeared for a moment as the muck stirred up from our landing encompassed them.

“Are we on the bottom?” I asked nervously.

“Yes. Don’t worry, we’ll be fine.”

“How—how far down are we?”

“About two thousands meters.”

“We’re over a mile deep?” Could he hear my heart beat—hear it
skip
beats? I thought I could.

“You need to trust me, Elyse. I wouldn’t let anything happen to you. I’ve done this countless times. This isn’t even close to the crush depths of these pods.”

“Crush depth? What is that?”

“I would think it would be self-explanatory.”

I gulped. “What kind of pressure can the pod withhold?”

“That’s top secret.” He winked. Then he saw that I wouldn’t be placated. “Look, we’ve taken pods similar to this to the ocean’s deepest point.”

“The Mariana Trench?” I asked, incredulous.

“We’ve taken it there too.”

“The Mariana Trench isn’t the deepest point?” I was sure I’d studied that somewhere. Not prone to forgetting statistics, I remembered reading the Mariana Trench was some eleven thousand meters deep. If he had meant to distract me, it worked.

He shook his head.

“What’s the deepest point?”

“The Mariana Trench is, as far as the textbooks are concerned. Between you and me though, we’ve found a point deeper than that. Much deeper.”

“Where? Where is it?” Was he deliberately feeding me tidbits at a time?

“Sorry, Doc.” He stretched out in his seat, resting his head on his interlaced hands behind him. I noticed he never bothered to buckle in. “Top secret. Unless…” His rakish grin was illuminated by the gentle glow of an inquisitive jellyfish.

I decided his playfulness was detrimental to my pulse. Even more so than being over a mile below the ocean’s surface.

“Unless?” I asked, impatient for a variety of reasons.

“Unless you have a secret to tell me. You know, an
exchange
.”

I huffed. “I don’t have any secrets.” I could realistically be the most uninteresting person on the planet.

“No?” He feigned disappointment. “That’s too bad. I know a secret about
you
.”

“No, you don’t.” But Nicoli was always too sure of himself to be mistaken. It was an annoying quality.

“Oh yes, I do. It’s about you and someone else.”

Good grief, the man was infuriating. I unbuckled and stretched out just as he did, amid his snickers. I didn’t know how he made sitting like that appear comfortable. The bench was hard and inhospitable, and I was too short to stretch my legs out as far as he did.

After I was a tolerable degree of uncomfortable, I said, “I already told you. I don’t have any secrets. So I don’t have anything to exchange.”

He thought for a moment. “Well then, you can answer some questions, in exchange for a secret.”

“Questions about what?”

“About you, of course.” He rolled his eyes.

I considered that. I didn’t have anything to hide really, so what he expected to gain from this game seemed obscure. This game, however, would have rules. “I will answer one question, in exchange for one secret.”

“Two for one,” he countered. “Secrets are more valuable than questions.”

“Deal. Ask away.” I needed to work on my negotiation skills.

“The reason you’ve spent so much time researching the virus. Is it because your parents died from it?”

The question took me off guard. “Uh, yes. How—how did you know my parents died from it?” I shouldn’t have been so shocked. Dr. Folsom probably told him.

He shrugged. “I read it in your file.”

I shot erect in my seat. “I have a
file
?”

He nodded, seeming alarmed at the change in demeanor.

“What else is in this file?”

“Everything, actually. You shouldn’t be so angry about it. Everyone on board has a file.”

“Do you have a file, Nicoli? Can I go rummage through it?”

“I do have a file, Elyse. My file is confidential. No files on my ship are confidential to
me
,” he added when I raised my brow.

The illumination around us faded to nothing, presumably because the pod had stopped moving. He shut off the control panel so we sat in complete darkness.

The pitch black enhanced my other senses. While I couldn’t see him, I could definitely smell him—his clean, masculine scent almost intoxicated me from across the cabin. Standard-issue soap couldn’t smell that good. Also, his body emanated an appealing warmth considering the temperature in the pod had plummeted the deeper we descended.

I leaned away from him, trying to remember that I had a file and that I was upset about it. “Why bother with the questions then? You can just go read it in my file.”

“I’ve read your file. Thoroughly. That’s why I have questions.”

I cringed internally. I
had
promised to answer his questions. True, he hadn’t disclosed that I had a file, but that didn’t preclude my agreement to answer. He just had an advantage over me.
The usual scenario
, I admitted. “Fine. Next question.”

“How did they get it? The Black Death, I mean. You don’t have to answer this one, if it’s too difficult.”

I could sense that he didn’t want any tears on his hands. I lifted my chin in determination, wishing this information had been included in my file. “We were on vacation. Well, I was on vacation, and my father was on business, a traveling guest speaker at a seminar in Portugal. He was conducting a talk geared toward undergraduates about multicellular parasites. My mother always joined him on his travels. Anyway, after the seminar, they attended the reception, a chance for the audience to ask questions, a get-to-know-the-speakers type thing.

“I wasn’t there. I stayed at the hotel, but my mother went with him to hear his talk. She always helped him write his lectures, and afterward she’d offer some positive criticism. He hated that.” I smiled. “A group of five terrorists attended, posing as students. They had infected themselves with the virus the day before. They worked the room, making contact with as many people as they could. My father was the first to recognize something amiss. He spoke to one of the young men and noticed a small drop of blood seeping from his nose, noticed the sweat beading on his forehead, his nervous demeanor.

“He immediately called for help. The authorities sealed off the room, but four of the young men escaped. Their bodies were found later after they succumbed to the illness. The one they detained, the one who had spoken to my father, wouldn’t give them any information.

“Efforts were made to treat everyone exposed, including my parents. They, of course, wouldn’t let me near them. One of my father’s connections arranged for them to stay together at the hospital in the city. The hospital quarantined an entire floor for the disease, and my parents secured a room with a plate-glass wall separating me from them.

“For two days, I watched them die. Occasionally, one or both of them would look up and smile at me, probably to reassure me. They couldn’t have known how horrible they looked, that their fragile smiles and pale faces almost gutted me. I just hope that when they did make the effort to look up, they saw what they needed to. That I was strong or brave or sad. Whatever they needed me to be, I hope that’s what they saw.”