SecondWorld (4 page)

The facility was a forty-three-foot long, nine-foot in diameter, eighty-ton cylindrical steel chamber separated into two different compartments, each with its own air-pressure system and life support. There were living quarters for sleeping and eating, and labs for work. At the far end, off the lab, was a wet porch with an open moon pool for entering the ocean. Miller had all of this to himself, plus—and this was the best part—not a peep from the outside world for three days.

It’s not that he didn’t like people. It’s just that people liked to talk, and after his first day aboard he had decided the break would be good for him. Quiet was bliss. Years of pent-up tension he hadn’t realized he carried began to melt away. So when the NOAA staff stopped checking in on their laboratory, he didn’t think twice about why. Instead, he allowed himself to undergo an emotional readjustment. He went over years of cases, of killers caught, of terrorists exposed, and the few who had slipped away. Then he moved farther back, to the SEALs, and the event that had etched a long scar into his leg and left a little girl dead. The tragedy ended his career with the SEALs, but down here, fifty feet beneath the surface of the ocean, he thought he might finally make peace with his past.

After he finished the movie.

Finished relieving himself, Miller hustled back to his seat without washing his hands. Why bother? Urine was sterile. More important, no one was here to judge him. He’d let his appearance slide over the past week, as well. His black hair was uncombed, his face unshaven. Thanks to his half-Jewish, half-Italian ancestry, Miller’s week’s worth of facial hair was damn near a beard now.

The chair beneath him groaned as he leaned back and propped his legs up on a work desk. With the remote back in his hand, he waited, held his breath, and listened.

Silence.

Wonderful silence.

No worried NOAA voices. No traffic. No cell phone calls. He thought about telling the director that the time off had convinced him to retire. Sure, he was only thirty-nine, but life without responsibility was fun. He held out the remote, positioned his thumb over the Play button, and—

Thunk!

The noise wasn’t loud, but was so unexpected that Miller flinched, lost his balance, and toppled over. He struck his head hard on the metal floor.

“Son of a bitch!”

He lay there for a moment, wondering exactly how he’d ended up on the floor, and then felt the back of his head. One area, the size of an apple, was swollen, pulsing with pain, but there was no blood. He wouldn’t need stitches, which was good because he couldn’t get them here. In fact, if there was any kind of emergency, he was pretty much screwed. A nine-mile boat ride, and a fifty-foot dive, did not make for an easy 911 rescue.

He was on his own.

With a sigh, he rolled his head to the side and caught his reflection in the polished stainless steel base of a workbench. He grunted at the sight of himself. He flashed what he thought was a winning smile, sharpening the fine spread of crow’s-feet around his blue eyes, but his current disheveled appearance hid his good looks. He hadn’t seen himself look this bad since just after …

He pushed the images from his mind, still not fully prepared to deal with his past—not with a movie to finish, and a mysterious noise needing investigating.

He sat up. Pain surged through his head twice, following the rhythm of his heartbeat, and then faded away. When he stood, the pain rose up again, but only momentarily. Shuffling over to the fridge to grab an ice pack, he passed by the small bedroom containing six bunks, three on each side, with a large viewing portal between them. He stopped suddenly, his eyes focusing on the glass portal.

Something wasn’t right.

It was a fish, not an uncommon sight, but something was odd about this one. Its movements were all wrong. He squeezed between the beds to get a better look.

Thunk!

The fish was back, this time smacking hard against the window.

Miller blinked a couple times. The fish, a black grouper, wasn’t moving on its own. The ocean’s currents were pushing it up against the hull.

Well, that’s damn annoying.

He was about to head back to the fridge when something else flitted by the window. It looked like a large piece of fish food. This time, Miller focused on the water beyond the dead fish. There were other fish out there—scores of them—and they zipped through the water in a miniature feeding frenzy. The fish, normally concealed by the reef that Aquarius had been built to study, had come out of hiding, drawn by what looked like a Jolly Green Giant–sized handful of TetraMin. Most of the fish snatched up the flakes with gaping mouths, then spit the reddish stuff back out. If they were smart, anyway. Many fish, dumb enough to swallow the “fish food,” floated belly-up. Poisoned.

Not seeing any large green legs in the vicinity, Miller searched his mind for answers and came up with only one—some jerks were
actually
dumping waste on top of the research station. Not only were they polluting and killing wildlife, they were also ruining his vacation.
Why couldn’t you have waited just a few more days?
He was as pissed at these polluters as he was at the terrorists he helped track, and a piece of his mind was just the beginning of what he was going to give them.

Miller ran to the wet porch and hastily pulled on a full tank of air, dive fins, and a mask. In these tropical waters, he didn’t need a wet suit, plus he was already dressed only in shorts—another perk of solitary living on board Aquarius.

He slid into the water and took in the scene around him. The flakes were falling everywhere. Fish, thousands of them, were either eating eagerly, twitching in violent death throes, or already dead. A few small white-tip sharks picked off the twitchers in the distance. The sharks didn’t pose much of a threat, but he would have to watch out for tigers and bulls. All this action could draw their attention, which meant he could easily be mistaken for one of the twitchers—not that tiger sharks cared. He could be a car and they’d still take a bite.

He kicked out from under the Aquarius cylinder and looked up. What he saw made no sense.

The normally blue surface of the ocean …

… was red.

4

Miller scanned the fuchsia waves above, looking for some sign of dumping—a thicker plume of material, for example, or better yet, a ship’s hull. When he found what he was looking for, he intended to rise from the depths like the Kraken and bring a world of hurt to the people responsible. But he could see nothing to direct his anger toward, just an endless sea of red. Visibility had been cut in half, not just by the fog falling from above, but because much of the sun’s light was being blocked by the maroon film covering the ocean’s surface.

Miller looked down. The normally sandy brown seabed was coated in the ruddy ash; the coral reef had been buried. Dying fish thrashed about, sending plumes of the foreign substance upward like dust.

How had he missed this? It couldn’t have just started. There was too much. He hadn’t been outside Aquarius for days, but had he really not bothered to look out one of the portals?

A ladyfish struck his side, its silver body twitching as the last of its neurons fired. He took the fish by the tail and pulled it closer; its body went rigid, giving way to death. Pulling its mouth open, he peered inside. Red sludge lined the dark cave, thick as paint. He checked the gills and found the same phenomenon.

His eyes darted back to the snowy scene of death surrounding him. Some fish and the sharks in the distance had taken to eating the recently dead instead of chasing after the poisonous flakes. Perhaps they would survive? He hoped so. A massive die-off in the Florida Keys would have a profound effect on the surrounding ecosystems, not to mention the many migratory species that passed through. A pod of blue whales had recently been spotted heading north. The red cloud, which looked like krill, would be absolutely irresistible to the one-hundred-foot giants.

A fluttering piece of red material, about the size of a corn flake, caught his eye. He reached out and caught it in his palm, then grasped it between two fingers. It was surprisingly firm. He squeezed and it broke apart. He rubbed his fingers together, releasing a bloodlike cloud as the material dissolved.

He took a deep breath from his regulator, tasting the metallic-flavored air, and let it out slowly, releasing a cascade of bubbles, which fled to the surface. His eyes followed them. He knew the answer to this mystery lay up there. The more he saw, however, the less he wanted to know what was happening.

But he had no choice.

He kicked hard, pumping his muscles, an action that ate up the air in his tank more quickly than would a leisurely swim. He checked the pressure gauge—still plenty of air remaining. This would most likely be a short dive, so he could take the risk. Besides, the wet porch was only fifty feet below and he could free dive that if he had to. Holding your breath for long periods of time is a handy talent to have as a SEAL, and one he had worked on over the years. The skill had yet to save his life, but he had a feeling it would, eventually.

As he neared the surface, the material grew dense, which meant it was definitely coming from above and not being pushed into the area by ocean currents. The material had to be coming from a boat, or a plane, or … Well, he didn’t want to consider the last possibility, and wouldn’t, until he confirmed it with his own eyes.

Through the haze he found the umbilical cord that connected Aquarius to its life support buoy, or LSB. The LSB supplied power and provided wireless communications and telemetry to the station and held air compressors, as well. It also made for a convenient viewing platform. While standing on top of the LSB, which was shaped like a super-sized yellow chess piece, Miller would be able to see from horizon to horizon. If someone was dumping this garbage, he’d spot them.

Approaching the buoy, Miller kicked harder, building speed so he could launch himself onto the platform. As he broke the surface, clumps of wet slime slid from his back and arms. A glob clung to his hair, but he paid it no attention. What he was seeing distracted him from doing anything else. He didn’t stand, remove his goggles, or take out his regulator. He simply gaped.

The world was red. As far as he could see, a crust, like refrigerated pudding, coated the surface of the ocean. There wasn’t a cloud to be seen, yet crimson flakes fell like snow from a sky that looked more purple than blue.

Heart beating hard, he stood up and looked in every direction. He spotted a sailboat off to the north, its sail limp as wilted lettuce, but nothing else caught his eye.

Miller tentatively held out a hand and caught another flake. Its surface felt rough and porous to his touch, like a petrified snowflake. Curious, he removed his regulator and placed the flake on his tongue. The flavor of blood struck him immediately. He gagged and spit several times, then took a deep, shaky breath. The air did no good. He felt winded, as though he’d just run a sprint.

He took another breath. His chest began to ache. He grew light-headed.

He took a third, deeper breath—

—and fell to his knees.

Was it poison? Could these flakes kill so quickly?

Spots danced in his vision as he realized the truth.

He was suffocating.

Drowning in the open air like a fish.

He shoved the regulator back into his mouth and breathed deeply, this time relishing the metallic-tasting air. He continued taking deep breaths until his head cleared and he felt relatively normal again. It wasn’t until then that he let his mind fill in the blanks.

He couldn’t breathe in the open air! What did it mean? What …

Oh shit!
Miller thought.
I can’t breathe because
 …
there’s no oxygen!

5

Miller shot up out of the water and into the wet porch, yanked out his regulator, and slipped out of his swim fins. During his frantic dive back to Aquarius he’d had time to run through some possibilities. This event could be local, regional, or—disastrously—global. All three scenarios were bad for him. With no oxygen in the air, rescue might be impossible.

If there was anyone left to rescue him.

He threw off his gear and raced to the computer terminal. He sat, still wet, in the computer chair, bouncing his legs while the system booted.

“C’mon, you son of a bitch. Start!” The computer’s typical thirty-second boot time felt like an eternity. When the desktop appeared, he was forced to wait as programs opened in the background and the wireless searched for a signal.

“Connect … connect…”

A message appeared at the bottom right of the screen.

NO WIRELESS NETWORKS DETECTED

“Shit!”

He opened the network window and clicked Reconnect.

The same message came up. He had no Internet. No e-mail. No webcam.

But the life support buoy had a radio antenna. He rolled across the floor and wiped the bachelor detritus—wrappers, empty bottles, crumbs—from its surface, and switched the radio on. He quickly set the radio to broadcast on all frequencies and held down the Transmit button.