The Aeschylus (17 page)

The sad thing was, he couldn't remember what life had been like outside these walls. He didn't have a wife, didn't have any pets, didn't have a three-story mansion in the suburbs. What he had was a string of experiences, the
between
, as he thought of it. The vacations, the club life, the girls, and the money... the privileges of being a well-paid specialist with no ties. But his real life was here. Now, his friends were dead. His coworkers were dead. His work—weeks worth of crude analysis and data planning—so much dust in the wind.

He clapped his hands to his head and rocked back forth, waiting for the door to burst open, waiting for gunfire to come blasting into the room and make the decision for him. That, at least, would be quick. It would be quicker than letting his wound fester, letting the stuff seep into it until he was driven mad like the rest. But he found he couldn't sit still. He went to the door and tried it.
Still jammed
. Looking sideways, he caught sight of himself in a mirror over one of the freezer units. His cheeks were sunken, but maybe the bandage on his head didn't look so bad after all.

“You're still you,” he said to his reflection. “You're still you, and you're still gorgeous, baby.” He smiled his winning smile, the one that had charmed so many young Rio girls out of their panties. All his teeth were still in his head, perfect and white.

No... he was getting distracted.
A way out
, that's what he needed.

Moving to the cabinets, he began to rummage for matches. He was about to give up when he spied something small and red in one corner. He grabbed it, slapping it like an ape until he found the power switch. The beam flickered to life, the batteries still good. “Yay and verily, the gods do smile upon this mortal.”
Stop it
, he thought.
You're losing it. You're going nuts
. He spied himself in the mirror again. “Bonkers!” he declared. “Off your rocker. Completely bat-shit. Totally Section Eight, Leonard!” He tittered, the sound coming from somewhere deep he couldn't control.

Dropping to his stomach, he shined the flashlight
underneath the door, spying what looked like four thin columns. At first, he couldn't figure out what it meant, but then, he made the connection: it was a chair. Someone had placed a chair on the other side to block the door. If he had been asked a week ago, he would have thought that trick only worked in the movies, but he guessed now, that would have made him look like a horse's ass. It was blocking him in here as tight as a lock and key.

But maybe not that tight.

He went to the huge row of sinks, thankful he had ended up in a kitchen and not in a bedroom or bathroom. The kitchen was quite large, as it was on most of the newer rigs. It had a walk-in pantry, dishwashers, rows of sinks, shelves of plates... and utensils. Yes,
utensils
. He spied several massive cutting boards, and above them, a line of butcher's knives. He grabbed the largest handle and unsheathed an instrument fit to remove the head of a pig. Holding it made him wonder if he could bring himself to stick into one of the men who had put him here. He thought so, but he didn't know. Gideon had been in exactly one fight in his entire life, when he was ten, and he had lost. Little Jimmy Taggert had beaten the crap out of him in front of God and everyone, and he'd never had occasion to tangle since. Even so, he was smart, and he had managed to stay alive. Smart guys always won in the long run, didn't they? Shit, his take-home was twice what the drillers made, three times what the roughnecks pulled, and he wasn't afraid to tell anyone who would listen.

On his stomach, he thrust the blade under the door, aiming for the closest chair leg. The problem was, he couldn't see and stab at the same time. He'd have to keep poking until he got it right. But what did he have to lose? He stabbed four times. Five. And then, on the sixth time, the tip hit something solid.

He felt the chair move. “Jackpot!”

After a few moments of wiggling, it didn't topple. It jostled and lay still, jammed with its back beneath the handle.

“Oh, come on. Come on, don't do this to me!” Without an ounce of forethought, Gideon jumped up and kicked the door. “Goddammit, open! Open! I told you to fucking open!”

He heard a bang and stopped. There was something out there. Two seconds later, he grabbed the knife and held it to his chest, waiting. Then he realized what it had been. It was the chair. It must have fallen.
It must have!

It was another minute before he could bring himself to try the handle again, but when he did, it turned effortlessly under his grip. The door swung open. On the other side, he could see the corpse of the chair, now fallen on its side. He laughed, and this time, it didn't sound crazy at all.

All at once, a floodlight blasted into his eyes. A form stepped in front of him, a huge, hulking form.

“Stay back!” he yelled, swinging the knife. “Stay back or I'll cut you!”

Something grabbed his wrist and then punched him in the nose. The blade clanked to the floor and he dropped to one knee, bleeding. As the form stepped into the light, he realized it was not one of the Argentinians. The idea that he might live seized him, and he threw both arms into the air. Gideon saw no irony in the fact that this was almost the exact behavior he had exhibited when little Jimmy had beaten him senseless all those years ago.

“Don't,” he cried. “I give up. I give up!”

When they arrived back at the center of the platform, Mason looked at the newcomer curiously. A faded gray suit and soggy black hair slapped onto a man too tall for his weight. Mason put him at six feet and a buck fifty—a good size for a boxer maybe, but not for a corporate suit. He was too lanky, all knees and elbows with no substance between. He might have been good-looking in a scrawny kind of way once, but it was hard to tell.

“What's your name, son?”

“Uh, Grey,” he stammered. “Gideon Grey.” And then, “Doctor Gideon Grey.”

“Are you all right?”

The man looked around at the squad of mercenaries surrounding him on the deck. “Yes. Yes, thank you. I think so. But we have to get out of here.”

Mason offered his canteen. “In a bit. Take this.”

“We have to get out of here, now! Now!”

Mason put his hands on the man's shoulders and forced him down onto a crate. He could feel the bones under his fingers and thought how easily he could snap them. Gideon must have felt it too, because he shut his mouth.

“Calle, if you would, please?”

Melvin jabbed a syringe into the man's shoulder. Gideon's demeanor didn't change, but his breathing slowed, and when Mason was sure he wasn't going to get up and run, he took his hands away. When Mason offered the canteen a second time, the man took it.

“Thank you.”

The others were supposed to be maintaining a perimeter around the top deck, but they circled close now, listening. Even Nicholas had gotten up on one leg to have a look.

Answers
, Mason thought again, biting his lip. “All right, listen up. Me and the good doctor are going to have a conversation here. But I want the rest of you on mission. We came here to do a job, and we're only half done.”

“What the hell is going on here?” St. Croix asked.

“Yeah, we're in some weird shit, boss,” Calle added, patching up the doctor's arm.

“You have a right to know what the hell is going on, and I'm going to find out. But we need to stay on guard.”

“On guard?” Calle said. “Shit, boss. We don't even know what the hell we're guarding against.”

Hal spat on the deck. “He's right, sir. We don't know what we got here. What we do got is about twenty bodies out of two fifty. I don't know what the hell happened to the rest, but I ain't ever seen anything like it.”

Mason looked at Jin and Christian. They only stared back, a little more disciplined than the rest, but their eyes told the
same story.

“So what are we gonna do, Mason?” Melvin asked. “I say we curb stomp this motherfucker until we start getting some goddamn—”

Mason lunged forward, his hand closing around Calle's throat. “That's 'Team Leader Bruhbaker' to you, boy. And the next words out of that stinking rot-gut hole of yours better be 'what are my orders, sir?' Do you get me?”

Melvin struggled for a moment, and Mason squeezed. He could see the man's eyes bulging, his glasses skewing off of one ear.

“
Sir
,” Melvin said, spittle dripping from his mouth. “
What are my orders... sir?
”

Mason looked back at the rest of the group, his free hand dropping to the survival knife on his belt of its own accord. Were any of them moving? He thought not. They weren't that far gone. He was their commander, and by Christ, they would listen.

“I know this isn't what we were expecting,” he said, tossing Melvin aside, “but that's all the more reason to hold it together. Now this ain't the worst shit we've been in, and since most of you guys were out east in the sandbox, I know it ain't the worst you've seen either. We're still in the dark, but intelligence isn't part of our job. Securing the platform is our job, and I intend to see that through.” He nodded towards the doctor. “Now, me and the doc here are going to chat, and we may get to the bottom of this yet, but in the meantime, we don't get sloppy. We can't
afford
to get sloppy. Our lives depend on us working as a unit. Right? Jesus Christ guys, that's been drilled into your head since basic.”

He scanned their faces and saw the words sink in. Some of them even looked embarrassed. That was good. Morale was an engineering marvel, like a bridge. When it held together, it was solid; when one column fell, the whole damned thing might collapse.

He nodded towards Hal. “McHalister!”

“Sir?”

“Get back to the helipad. I want to know what the hell happened to our Delta chopper. Jin Tae?”

“Aye?” Jin said.

“How's your arm?”

The man shrugged. “I'll live.”

“I want you to see if you can get the dish on this goddamned place up and running. We have no radio, no phones, and no way to talk to anyone on the outside. Think you can manage?”

“I'll have a look, but no promises.”

“Vy?”

“Yeah?” Christian said.

“Round up our guests. I want everyone back here in ten minutes, got it?”

The man nodded.

“St. Croix, you're with Jin. Give him what he needs. You got it?”

“Yeah, boss.”

Mason looked at the rest. Nicholas was still resting on his box. He supposed he'd have to stay. That left—

“Where you want me?” Calle asked. The usual laughter had gone out of his voice.

“You stay with me. But your job isn't to flap your mouth, do you get me?”

“Yes sir.”

“Good. Now Doc?”

Gideon looked up as if he had been oblivious. “Uh, yes?”

“You better start talking.”

When Christian returned with the civilians, they stared at the doctor as if they'd never seen his ilk before. The McCreedy woman looked like she wanted to start running her mouth straight off, but before she could, Gideon started to speak.

“It gets inside your head,” the doc said. “That's the way these things work, isn't it? Like the movies. But this is worse. You can trust me on that.”

“Are you saying this is a virus, Doc? Because if you are—”

The man was shaking his head. “Not a virus. A fungus. A blastocladiomycota. At least, that's what it looks like. It's not like any species I've ever seen. This thing is a work of art. It's a survivor. Like a cockroach of the detritivores. ”

“A what?” Melvin asked.

“A cockroach,” the man said, putting his fingers to his head and making antenna motions. It should have been ridiculous, but Mason felt his skin crawl. He hated bugs, had stomped every goddamned beetle and cockroach he'd seen since he was a kid. Comparing that stuff under The Aeschylus to one... it fit, somehow. The stuff crawled. He didn't know how that was possible since it stayed in one place, but the word fit. It
crawled
.

“I call it The Carrion,” Gideon said. “That's not right, exactly. It's more like a carrion feeder than a piece of meat, you understand?”

No one said anything.

“It's funny, because if you were to see it under a microscope, it looks crazy inefficient. Its sole purpose is to generate heat. Oh, and I have, by the way. Seen it under a microscope, I mean.”

“What kind of doctor are you?” Mason asked.

“An environmental microbiologist. I study the molecular content of crude. To determine purity and asset use. It's a precursor to the filtration process, the heating and separating of—”

“I get it,” Mason said, “and I don't give a shit. Why don't you tell me what I want to know.” It wasn't a question.

“What?”

“He means that bullshit down there. The Carrion, or whatever it is,” Melvin said.

“How dangerous is it?” the kid asked.

Mason looked at his crew irritatedly, then back at the man. “You managed to survive, Doctor Grey. Why don't you tell us about that?”

“There was a fire about two weeks ago. It was right after Whitman bought the farm. Do you remember?”

Mason's mind drifted back to the briefing reports. Hank Whitman was a rope access technician who had fallen out of his harness while scrubbing the damage ballasts. He had hit his head on the way down, crashed into the water, and drowned. The incident report was labeled as unrelated, but Mason had read it anyways. “I remember.”

“Right. Well, he fell off scrubbing the side of the steel supports on the lower level. What do you think he was scrubbing?”

“You don't mean—”

“It started small, just splotches on the supports. He went down there to get a closer look, and the next thing we knew, he was in the water. We didn't hear a scream. Nothing. Just the bang of him hitting the struts and the splash below. It took four guys to find him and haul him up. It was a hell of a mess.”

Mason looked at him skeptically. “So what are you telling me, Grey? That somehow, a fungus caused this guy to lose his footing? Or worse?”

When the doctor looked up, his eyes were dead. “Oh no, Mister Bruhbaker. Not The Carrion, not that time. It was either an accident, or one of the crew helped him on his way.”