The Raven (A Jane Harper Horror Novel) (18 page)

“Nate…” I whisper.

The kid’s eye is gone. All that remains is the clear membrane that used to house it. A clear fluid now fills the orb, and within that fluid wriggles a single, white parasite.

The kid’s face reflects abject fear. “What is it? Why are you looking at me like that?
I see you, Jane Harper.
”

I stride forward, filled with rage, not because I’m face-to-face with a parasite that knows my name but because of what it did to Nate, and what I know his fate is going to be. I should probably shoot him here and now, but I can’t bring myself to do it.

Nate backs away from me, but he doesn’t seem to have full control over his limbs now. “Jane. What’s happening? What are you doing? Wait. Wait!”

When I reach the kid, I turn the grenade launcher around and slam the butt of the weapon into his forehead. He crumples to the floor, unconscious.

The crew gathers around.

“Why didn’t you kill him?” Helena asks. I don’t get the sense that she wanted me to kill him, just that she’s confused why I didn’t.

I frown. She’s not going to like the answer. “For the same reason Jakob didn’t immediately kill the Draugr he found in the mountains.” I look her in the eyes. “We need answers.”

Y
ou’re not really going to go through with this,” Helena says. She’s put herself between the mess hall door and me, Jakob, and Klein. Willem and Talbot are on the bridge, keeping watch. Helena was supposed to be with them, but it seems her conscience has gotten the best of her.

I glance past her wide shoulders and see Nate strapped down to a table. It’s a horrible sight; I’ll admit it. He’s still unconscious, and his face is coated with dry blood from where I struck him. His arms are pulled up and tied to the table legs, as are his feet. Two thick ropes at his waist and chest bind his body to the table.

“It’s necessary,” Jakob says.

“I don’t believe that,” she replies. “If we start torturing people, are we any better?”

My patience evaporates. “Helena, I like you, but you need to open your eyes. We’re not thugs or terrorists or even ‘the man,’” I say with some air quotes.

“I work for the man,” Klein says.

I thrust an index finger at him without looking. “Shut up, Klein. We’re not doing this for kicks. What happens in this room will probably join my fresh collection of nightmares for the next few years. Maybe forever. I really don’t want to go into this room. I don’t want to talk to Nate or see that thing in his eye. I don’t want
any of this to be real. But it is. It’s fucked up, but this is the world now, even if the world doesn’t yet know about it. But they will. If these parasitic assholes take the fight to mainland Greenland, we’re going to have fifty-eight thousand Draugar to deal with. And when the bloodbath ends—if it ends—everyone you know and love will be dead or worse.

“I’m going into this room. Right now. And I’m going to do what needs to be done so we can avoid that happening.” I step up close to her and crane my head up to stare her in the eyes. I’m dwarfed by her size. It’s a real-life Hulk Hogan–versus–Andre the Giant moment. But there are no body slams or chest slaps. She just frowns and steps to the side. I’m not sure if it’s because she’s taken my explanation to heart or if she just doesn’t feel like crushing me. Either way works for me, though a small part of me wishes she’d beaten me to a pulp so I wouldn’t have to take part in this interrogation.

Jakob and Klein follow me into the room. Klein turns and closes the door, blocking out Helena’s scowl. Nate hasn’t regained consciousness yet, so we gather by his feet, where Jakob is rubbing his thumb across the edge of a knife.

My imagination gets the best of me, and I picture the blade being used against Nate, who has really done nothing to harm us. “Jakob,” I say, “if I’m understanding this right, the parasite doesn’t give answers in response to pain, the pain simply helps center, or bring back, the mind of the host.”

“That is how it seemed to work, yes,” he says.

“So as long as we’re talking to Nate, we don’t need that.”

He nods.

“Then put it away until we do,” I say. “Our job isn’t to terrify Nate.”

Jakob closes the folding knife and slips it into his pocket.

Klein walks to Nate’s head. “I’d like to make a few points before we start. I may not be running around the globe shooting people, but I am a spy. And a good one. From what you said”—he points at me—“Nate might just have one parasite inside him, currently located in his eye. But it’s shown it has at least partial control over his body and speech, though the kid doesn’t seem aware of it. The really worrisome part is that while Nate has just one parasite inside him, it seems clear that it is still part of the collective.”

Sonofabitch, he’s right.
Nate might be unconscious, but I have no doubt the parasite is still wriggling around beneath his closed eye. The kid might not be aware of what’s going on, but the parasite is likely still monitoring his senses. Which means it’s hearing us now, which means—“They’re listening to us.”

Klein nods. “Unless we kill the kid, toss him overboard, or lock him in a soundproof room, everything he hears, sees, smells, feels, or tastes is going straight to
them
. He’s the ultimate bug. And I’m fairly certain he was
meant
to be a bug. Maybe not specifically for us, but for whoever came along and picked up his distress signal.”

“You’re sure?” Jakob asks.

“I wouldn’t be if it weren’t for the coordinated attack,” Klein says. “The only way the Draugar whales could have known Jane and Willem were out of ammunition is if Nate saw this, understood it with his human mind, and then the parasite communicated the information with the collective, allowing them to seamlessly, precisely, and effectively assault the ship in a way we could not defend against.”

“He’s right,” I say. “Nate was watching us from the wheelhouse roof. He could see everything.”

“
They
could see everything,” Klein says. “Just as easily as they can hear us, even now. So if it speaks through him, we’re not talking to a single parasite. We’re talking to the hive mind.”

“To the Queen,” I say. “Or one of the remaining two.”

“I’m not sure how they’re connected,” Klein says. “Nate is physically close to the three whales below us, so that’s the initial connection, and they surely contain thousands, if not millions of parasites each, which makes them sizable amplifiers. But there’s no way to know their range. Maybe the three whales are enough. Maybe there are other creatures between us and the Queen.”

“Or maybe the Queen is in one of the whales,” I say. It’s a horrible thought, but quite possible.

“Or that,” Klein agrees. “The point is, we’re interrogating them, not the other way around.”

In other words, don’t reveal anything of strategic importance, like the fact that the prop foul didn’t get too tight and that to free ourselves all we need to do is reverse the engine. “Got it,” I say. “Now let’s wake him up and get this over with.”

“
I am awake
,” Nate says, but it’s not his voice. His clear eye pops open. I still expect there to be a human eye there, glancing around at each of us, but the clear orb doesn’t shift. The worm inside it does.

“What do you want?” I ask it.

The tiny parasite wriggles in my direction. I can see its two tiny black eyes.

“To live,” it says. “Same as you.”

This time, the voice is more like Nate’s. It’s learning his speech pattern, mimicking his inflections and accent.

“Bullshit,” I say. “Why are you here?”

“We have the right,” it says. “BT-dubs, we were here first.”

Could it be true? Did these parasites evolve before the human race? Doesn’t matter
, I decide. I can’t trust anything the parasite says.
Don’t get distracted, Jane.
“Nate. Can you hear me, Nate?”

“Aww, Jane, don’t you effing like me anymore?”

The voice of my friend Jenny hits me like a punch to the nuts, if I had them. I step back, the hairs on my arms standing upright.

“Not your most Van Helsing moment,” the thing says, still duplicating Jenny’s voice and speech pattern. “Cool that you kept the cloak, though.”

I unbutton the cloak and toss it into a chair, suddenly repulsed by it. My repulsion gets filtered through a lifetime of hard-knock lessons combined with a genetic disposition for fight rather than flight, both supplied by the Colonel, and comes out as violence. I step forward, saying, “I want to speak to Nathaniel!” Then I slug him in the shoulder.

Nate’s other eye pops open, and his body bends against the rope holding him down as a shout of surprise and pain erupts from his lips. Now that the shock’s worn off and he realizes he can’t move, his breathing quickens. If we had a heart monitor, I’m sure we’d see his pulse skyrocketing.

“It’s okay, kid,” I say, despite things being decidedly
not
okay.

His good eye rotates toward me. “Jane! What’s happening? Why can’t I move?”

“It’s for your own good, Nate,” I say. “You’re going to have to trust me.”

“You…you hit me,” he says, remembering. “Why did you—
you’re wasting your time, Jane
—hit me? Who said that?”

He looks around the room, seeing Klein and Jakob, but somehow knows it wasn’t either of them who spoke. “Is there someone else in—
it will be easier if you don’t fight
—room?” Nate freezes, going still. “Dubs…that was me, wasn’t it?”

I place a hand on his arm. “You have one of them in you.”

His eye locks on me. “Am I…dead?”

That’s actually a really good question, because it doesn’t seem like it. His mind is compromised, without a doubt, but he seems to be sharing control, and I seriously doubt the parasite has made any changes to his body. Despite being infected, he might still be fully human and alive. Which creates a sort of moral dilemma.

“Jakob, the man you…spoke to before. He was…”

“Draugr,” he confirms. “Not like this.”

He understands the conundrum. What are we willing to do to somebody who isn’t yet against us? Maybe it will be easier, I think, now that Nate knows.

“Nate, you’re infected, but it’s just one parasite,” I tell him. “You’re still alive. Still human. And in control.”

“Can you get it out?” he asks.

“Not yet,” I say, though I have no idea if such a thing is possible. “But I need you to listen. With your thoughts. Hear them, Nate.”

“Hear who?”

“The hive mind,” I say. “The collective consciousness. Whatever you want to call it.”

“Like Locutus,” he says.

I remember the
Star Trek
episode where Picard became one with the Borg collective mind. Truth really is stranger than fiction. “Yes. Like Locutus.”

The kid closes his eye and relaxes. The clear eye remains open. I can feel the worm looking at me, and it takes all my strength to not reach out and rip the orb from his skull.

“I hear them,” he says. “I think I…what?” Then he starts laughing. The cackle rolls through several different voices, and I feel like I’m performing an exorcism. It’s really not all that different. I’m
speaking to a nonhuman entity that has taken over the body of a man. Maybe exorcism stories are really parasitic infections?

The laugh stops abruptly with a gasp. Nate’s eye opens wide. His face twists with an expression of pain. What the hell happened?

“My leg,” Nate says. “It hurts!”

I look down and find that Jakob has stabbed Nate’s calf. It’s not a deep or mortal wound, but it must hurt like hell.

I lean in close to Nate’s head. “Ignore the pain,” I tell him. “Listen to the voices. Tell me what they want!”

He grinds his teeth. “You, Jane Harper! We want you.”

It’s trying to throw me. Distract me. “Nate! Tell me what they want!”

Jakob twists the knife, eliciting a scream that can probably be heard on the bridge.

Nate returns for a moment. I can see it when his forehead screws up. “Host!” he screams. “Host! They want the host!”

The door bursts open. Helena storms in, looking ready to bust skulls. But the interview is over. Nate’s body goes limp. He’s unconscious again. But I don’t think it’s from the pain. I think we were getting close to something. The parasite switched him off. I suspect we could start again, bring Nate back with another dose of pain, but I don’t think that’s going to happen with Helena in the room.

Her eyes glance at Nate’s placid face, then down to the wound on his leg and the knife in Jakob’s hand. I’m sure we’re about to get a lecture, but instead she says, “Willem sent me. Something is on the radar. Something large.”

“Another whale?” Jakob asks.

“Bigger,” she says. “Much bigger.”

A
fter a quick double check of Nate’s bonds to make sure escape is impossible, we shut off the lights and close the door to limit what he can sense. I don’t feel comfortable leaving him down here alone, but Helena insists that Willem wants everyone on the bridge.

Part of me suspects that Willem just asked for Jakob, and that Helena is using the request as a way to pull us away from the dirty business of extracting information from Nate. But when my leg starts hurting and my walk becomes a limp, the giantess wraps an arm around me and says, “Lean on me,” so I decide to cut her some slack. Having a moral compass on board is probably a good thing anyway. History is full of good causes that become distorted into atrocities.

I half expect to see an army of whales filling the ocean when we arrive on the bridge, but there’s nothing but blue skies and calm waters all the way to the horizon. If it weren’t for the fact that we were being carried to our collective doom by three zombie blue whales, it’d be a nice day to get sun on the deck. Of course, the chilly air kind of kills that, too.

Willem’s face, however, reveals that not everything is hunky-dory on the USS
Raven
. I look for Talbot but don’t see him.

“What is it?” Jakob asks.

“Better if you come and see,” he says, stepping aside so we can see the radar screen. As the radar starts a new three-hundred-sixty-degree sweep of the surrounding eleven miles, a large portion of the top of the screen turns green.