New Year Island (77 page)

On the seventh shot, the lock gave way. The steel doors swung open a few centimeters. Raising a foot, he kicked them wide.

He smelled blood.

The gallery beyond the doors looked like a cross between an operating room and an abattoir. A sense of urgency drove him forward. Sweeping the space with his gun, he moved inside.

A row of eviscerated seal carcasses hung on hooks from the rocky ceiling. He pushed past them, bumping some and setting them swinging.

Piles of black wet suits overflowed from a stack of storage crates.

A half-stuffed wet suit lay on a stainless steel morgue table. The table’s wheels were locked to prevent it from rolling. Dark liquid dripped into the fluid tray beneath.

Three other tables lay nearby. Unoccupied now.

His throat tightened. Brent had stitched Jordan’s face on one of these cold steel morgue tables. He had changed her into her wedding dress here.

Juan turned away.

He paused briefly to pick up something that looked like a handheld power drill—a thick gray plastic pistol shape with a trigger, and a heavy battery built into the butt of the grip. Instead of a drill bit, a thick six-inch cylinder projected like the suppressor on a silenced pistol.

Captive bolt gun.

Juan recognized the device, normally used to stun cattle for slaughter. The steel bolt penetrated the skull with shattering force to destroy the brain. This was what Brent had used on his silent nightly seal hunts… and on Jacob.

Juan’s fist tightened on the handle and his lips pulled back from his teeth as he imagined holding it to Brent’s forehead and pulling the trigger.

Maybe his own forehead right afterward, too.
Oblivion. An end. Peace.

He pictured Camilla’s face. She would be disappointed in him right now.

Putting the bolt gun down, he wiped his fingers on his wet suit and moved on.

A steel sink with high gooseneck faucet hose stood next to a wall, alongside its pressure tank and pump.

A chain saw rested on a length of steel counter, next to a black rubber butcher’s apron and curved acrylic face shield.

Juan moved past, taking it all in with rapid glances, seeing nothing useful.

He knew he didn’t have much time.

Brent would have an endgame in mind, and events were moving rapidly toward some unknown conclusion. To save Camilla and the others from whatever fate Brent had planned for them all, Juan would have to move even faster.

The tunnel continued on the other side of the operating room. He could hear the faint hum of generators ahead. Raising the gun, he moved into the circular chamber that lay just beyond.

The uneven ceiling of this second cave was much higher than the first. Aquamarine light filtered from cracks ten meters overhead, projecting in diagonal rays like sunbeams through the stained-glass windows of a church. Tendrils of kelp dangled from the ceiling, drying in the air.

A row of dehumidifiers sat along the wall to his right, next to a humming yellow Honda generator. A double-wide server rack, dense with computer and network equipment and hanging loops of Cat-6 network cabling, stretched the length of the left wall. Blinking green and amber lights winked in a chaos of shifting patterns above the row of portable generators that lined the rack’s base.

Just ahead, an array of six wide-screen computer monitors, two high and three wide, dominated the room. The monitors lined a long stainless steel desk that also supported a wireless aluminum keyboard and track pad.

A mesh-backed Aeron office chair sat in front of the desk.

Juan knew he had found Brent’s office. This was where the doctor spent the night shift.

He crossed the floor rapidly. A plastic crate of foil-wrapped Powerbar energy bars sat near his feet. He shoved it aside with his toe as he passed.

Next to the monitors, shiny chrome nozzles and stainless steel gleamed from a high-end espresso machine.

Stopping in front of the desk, he shrugged the scuba rebreather from his shoulders and dropped it against the wall. He slid into the chair.

A framed certificate hung from the rocky wall above the monitors. Glancing at the prestigious-looking diploma—Johns Hopkins School of Medicine—Juan smirked.

A framed photograph sat next the keyboard. His smirk faded. A younger Brent smiled at him, one arm around a teenager Juan recognized from Julian’s first profile: Brent’s son Jonathan. Brent’s wife, Mary, stood in front of them both, beaming.

A large coffee mug sat on the desk—a child’s hobby project painted in bright happy colors, now faded and chipped. Large, uneven letters wrapped around the mug: a child’s handwriting, saying, “World’s Greatest Dad.”

Another framed photograph sat nearby: Jordan’s dazzling smile, laughing as she leaned over Jonathan from behind, her arms clasped around his shoulders.

The crushing bands tightened around Juan’s chest again. He turned away from Jordan’s picture and tapped the track pad on the desk before him.

Six monitor screens brightened, filling the room with their glow.

Two were divided into grids of smaller video windows—live shots of different places around the island, indoors and outdoors. In one, he could see himself from the side, leaning toward the monitors. In another window, his own face loomed large, staring out at him—no doubt from the camera atop the monitor.

In a third, he could see Camilla’s eager face looking at him. Mason and Dmitry stood beside her. Behind them, Brent glared from his spread-armed position, crucified on the wheel. But where was JT? Juan couldn’t see him.

He looked at the remaining monitors. Video editing software ran on one, displaying thumbnail clips of the work in progress: snippets from their ten days on the island, scenes from each of the games. One small preview window showed a great white shark exploding from the surface over and over, with Lauren in its jaws. In another, Jordan balanced on one leg, aiming the speargun at a cringing version of himself.

Seeing it sent Juan’s thoughts back to the cattle bolt gun in the next room. An end to the pain.

The Glock strapped to his thigh would get the job done just as well.

He looked away.

The next monitor displayed a directory folder listing dozens of video files:

Camilla Profile.mp4

JT Profile.mp4

Natalie Profile.mp4

Lauren Profile.mp4

…

Juan scrolled down the list.

…

Shipboard Welcome.mp4

Seal Roundup Intro.mp4

Seal Roundup.mp4

Seal Roundup – penalty.mp4

Scavenger Hunt Intro.mp4

Scavenger Hunt – serious injury.mp4

Scavenger Hunt – fatality.mp4

Scavenger Hunt – multiple fatalities.mp4

Capture the Flag Intro.mp4

Capture the Flag – incomplete.mp4

Capture the Flag – serious injury.mp4

Capture the Flag – fatalities.mp4

…

Narrowing his eyes, he scrolled down to the bottom.

…

Julian’s Posthumous Accusation.mp4

Most Dangerous Game – Jordan dead.mp4

Most Dangerous Game – Jordan injured.mp4

Most Dangerous Game – Jordan victory.mp4

Closing Ceremonies – the Fog Signal.mp4

Juan looked at the last entry. Sounding the fog signal would have certainly meant their deaths. But what would the signal have triggered? Poison gas? A cloud of some deadly virus or disease, released into the air?

Turning to the last monitor, he could see a file transfer in progress. The progress bar filled while a digital timer counted down the remaining seconds:

0:06… 0:05… 0:04… 0:03… 0:02… 0:01… 0:00

UPLOAD COMPLETE

He tapped the keyboard, and a password dialog appeared. Locked.

Motion on another monitor caught his eye.

He swiveled the chair toward it, and his stomach clenched.

In one of the live video windows, JT and Veronica circled at the bottom of the cistern, locked in deadly combat.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the last monitor blink. Its display changed. Swinging back to stare at it, he felt tension tighten every muscle of his body.

LIVE TRANSMISSION

0:00… 0:01… 0:02… 0:03… 0:04… 0:05…

With a countdown, at least you knew how long you had. But with the seconds ticking
upward
now, there was no way to tell. He raised his face toward the monitor where Camilla, Mason, and Dmitry stared back at him. He waved them aside impatiently, and they stepped away so he could see Brent’s face.

Brent grinned malevolently at him. His expression told Juan everything he needed to know.

Endgame. This was it. They were all about to die.

Juan thrust the chair away from the desk and stood. What he was looking for—the answer to his final question—had to be here somewhere. He turned a circle, focused intently on the rock walls around him. Then he crossed the floor to stand in front of the rack of computer servers and network equipment.

He had never seen computer racks mounted like this before, flush against a wall. There was a reason you didn’t do it that way: overheating. Without air circulation from behind, the servers would generate enough heat to fry themselves.

Grabbing the upper corner of the rack, Juan pulled, ignoring the pain that shot through his torso as he put all his weight into it. The racks pulled free from the rock and toppled, crashing to the ground in a burst of sparks. Four of the monitor screens above Brent’s desk went dark. Juan stepped over loops of blue cable to stare into the gaping cave gallery beyond. He could hear something hissing back there.

Fluorescent tubing illuminated a large space. Multiple geological faults had come together under the island here, he knew. In some past era, water had flowed freely, widening the spaces. The gallery was vast, dozens of meters wide, fading into darkness in the distance. Irregular columns and pillars of rock held up the roof. The ceiling hung low in places, rising high in others. Juan saw fossils embedded in the rocky columns—shells, fish skeletons, even sharks’ teeth—but he barely noticed them.

Cylindrical tanks ringed the columns, held against them by shiny metal straps. The two-meter cylinders were painted blue, gray, and green. The diamond-shaped labels on the nearest tanks read “Oxygen,” “Nitrous Oxide,” “Diethyl Ether.” Medical gases. Shorter, squatter cylinders sat below, resting on the floor: propane tanks. Already he could smell something sweet hissing into the air.

There were dozens of the tanks. Hundreds of them, stretching into the distance, belted to the pillars of rock. Juan looked up at the uneven ceiling. Camilla, Dmitry, and Mason were directly overhead, unaware of the terrible trap that lay below their feet. Only a thin crust of rock and concrete separated them from certain death.

The fog whistle would have detonated the tanks, he was sure. It would have brought down half the island. But Brent would also have another way of detonating them, even tied up as he was.

Sound.

Microphones, programmed to recognize the fog signal. No doubt they would also listen for a key phrase, one Brent could say anytime, that would also function as a trigger.

He would say it very soon.

Time was running out. They were all going to die here.

Juan closed his eyes.

He knew what he had to do.

It was the only thing someone in this situation
could
do.

C
amilla brought her face close to the monitor screen, frowning. Juan had stepped back into view to look directly at her. There was something new in his face, in his body language, that caused her to tense up. Juan’s characteristic reserve was gone. His composure had been shattered.

She stared into his eyes, seeing sadness. Regret.

“No.” A little laugh of disbelief escaped from her lips. She shook her head. “No, you
can’t,
Juan.”

His chest heaving with suppressed emotion, he stepped closer to the monitor and raised a hand. He held it up, palm out.

Saying good-bye.

“No, no,
no
!” Slapping her hand onto the screen, Camilla covered his palm with hers, trying to hold him in place. She shook her head vigorously, imploring him with her eyes. “No,
please
don’t do this.”

From behind the illusion of their joined hands, he pressed his face nearer, and his eyes held hers in inconsolable, mute sorrow. Then his gaze flicked over her shoulder toward Mason, and his eyes hardened briefly. She understood all too well what he was telling Mason:
Take good care of her.

Juan didn’t
know
.

She pounded the monitor with her fist. “No! You
can’t
leave me here!”

Shoulders heaving, he stared at her without looking away, as if he were trying to burn her face into his memory forever.

Camilla tried to laugh, but it turned into a sob.

The raw pain in his eyes held her transfixed.

She pounded the screen again, hurting her hand, not caring. She brought her other fist up to beat the screen, too. Her legs went weak and wobbly.

Juan was abandoning her.

Just like her parents had abandoned her.

One hand upraised in farewell, he watched her with bottomless unhappiness.

She hammered the screen with both fists.
Don’t look at me like that.

He raised his stare toward Brent, and his face twisted in bitter anger. She wasn’t sure whom the hate in his eyes was directed at: Brent or himself.

Tears streamed down her cheeks, but she didn’t care. She pounded the screen.

“I believed in you, Juan!” she screamed at him. “I
believed
in you!”

He raised his other hand, clutching something that dangled from his fist.

Hyperventilating, she splayed her fingers against the screen and pressed her face closer, trying to see what he held. It looked like a bundle of cables.

Juan’s eyes narrowed, staring past her, at Brent again. Then he jerked his fist, yanking violently at the cables.