The Tide (Tide Series Book 1) (13 page)

Her last real conversation with Glenn had been about their relationship. She’d told him they couldn’t maintain anything more than a friendship when their jobs required them to be one hundred percent focused. Hell, their lives depended on them eschewing all other thoughts than the tasks at hand. He needed to be a Hunter; she needed to be a chief medical officer. There was no room for the intimacy they’d shared, physical or otherwise.

Yet she found herself missing his touch, missing the long conversations into the early morning hours. They’d only let the relationship simmer for a few weeks before calling it quits. But it had been more than long enough to burn those memories into Lauren’s mind. She shook the thoughts from her head, once again cursing herself for being distracted from her job.

Behind the protective plastic sheets, Alden Jorgenson waited by the control panel for the crane system. The cables grew taught, and Dom’s voice came over the radio. “We’re secure. Pull us up.”

The motor whined as the winch wound the cable. Sweat trickled down Lauren’s forehead as she wondered what awaited her. Dom had reported wounds across Scott’s abdomen, yet it wasn’t the injuries that worried her. She and Peter could suture his lacerations and stem the internal bleeding. It was what she couldn’t see that scared her—the microscopic viruses or bacteria potentially circulating in his bloodstream.

The first Zodiac appeared at the door to the cargo bay as the crane jolted to a stop. Alden signaled to Lauren, and she rushed toward the Hunters. Peter ran behind her with one of the stretchers. Two of the Hunters hoisted Scott’s body onto the stretcher. Then Lauren and Peter rushed him into the decontamination chamber. Overhead nozzles hissed to life in a shower of disinfectants. After a moment, the second door to the chamber unlocked and led into the isolation ward of the medical bay.

They pushed Scott past the beds they’d set up in the quarantine space. Peter tore off the rest of Scott’s biohazard suit and cut away the fatigues underneath. Dried blood clung to Scott’s chest. A deep tear in his abdomen appeared to reach the peritoneum—the lining around his abdominal cavity—but based on a cursory investigation, Lauren didn’t think any punctures or cuts had reached the Hunter’s internal organs. She dabbed a spot on Scott’s left hand with disinfectant and inserted an IV line. She then administered an anesthetic. Peter used a suction tip to clear the blood and better examine the wounds. Most of the blood he cleaned away seemed to be coagulating already.

Lauren probed Scott’s tissues with a grim fascination. The bleeding seemed to have stopped on its own, which was unusual. “Peter, what the heck is going on?” she asked, leaning in closer to see the granular tissue that had formed near the wound. It looked almost like scar tissue, but it was two or three days too early for it to be forming. To add to the mystery, the tissue was
yellow
, not red.

Peter held a prepackaged suture in one hand, preparing to open the seal of the sterilized pouch. “What is it?”

“Is this...scar tissue?”

“Already?”

“That doesn’t make sense, right?”

Peter shook his head. “I was thinking the exact same thing.”

“Should we cut it away before proceeding?” Lauren asked, suddenly unsure.

Peter furrowed his brow and framed the question back at her. “What do you think?”

Lauren hesitated. If the scar tissue was all that was holding back the bleeding, then removing it might cause it to start again. Then again, given what they’d seen on the video from the platform...what if Scott had been exposed? She grabbed a pair of forceps and took a sample of the tissue, just in case. “I think it’s safer to remove it,” she said.

“Even at the risk of causing excess bleeding?”

“Bleeding you can fix. But those bony protrusions on those people aboard the IBSL? I’m not sure how to deal with that.”

Lauren deposited the piece of tissue in a small plastic vial to examine later. She wondered what she’d find after running it through a battery of genetic sequencing tests and microscopy, but for now her scientific endeavors would have to be put on hold.

“Shit,” Peter said. Blood began to seep from one of Scott’s wounds and poured over the man’s bare stomach.

Lauren lowered a small probe to the cut. She clicked the trigger, and the electrocauterizing device burned the ends of the vessels, effectively closing them. The bleeding ceased, and Peter returned to suturing the wound.

Divya and Sean burst through the decontamination chamber with Brett on a stretcher. Miguel followed, his biohazard suit in tatters. Lauren’s heart stopped when she saw him. She imagined the pathogens and toxins that he must’ve been exposed to aboard the IBSL. While he hadn’t suffered any serious injuries, he too had to be quarantined to ensure he didn’t spread any unknown biological agents to the rest of the crew. The Hunter sat in one of the patient examination chairs in the isolation ward, and Lauren caught his gaze. He gave her a thumbs-up and waved her off, signaling for her to focus on Scott.

Divya and Sean rushed from the quarantine room and returned with a man in blue coveralls. Renee had radioed earlier about a man they’d found barricaded aboard the rig—this must’ve been him, the man the Hunters were calling “the mechanic.” As Divya bent over the mechanic to examine his head for wounds, Lauren’s thoughts turned once again to the Skulls. She wondered how many people had been affected by whatever biological weapon the IBSL developed on the oil rig. How many more would be affected by it? How many lives would need to be saved?

“Shit,” Peter said again, trying to staunch another bleeding laceration.

Once again, Lauren used the electrocauterizing probe to stop the flow of crimson liquid. She didn’t have the answers. All that mattered right now was trying to save the life in front of her.

***

A
fter the decon showers, Dom stepped into the main corridor of the
Huntress
. Jenna nodded at him as she passed, her lips drawn tight and her expression stern. Despite the foot traffic, the passage was void of the normal sounds of conversation and good-natured jokes between crew members. He’d told his Hunters they’d have half an hour to clean themselves up and gather in the mess hall. In the meantime, he would check with the communications specialists in the electronics workshop. If the data transfer had gone through before the IBSL went down, they should have a library full of data to explain what the hell he and his Hunters had just been through.

But that half hour wasn’t just for regrouping and data recovery. He needed a moment away from the demands of leadership. A moment to re-collect
himself
. He’d witnessed Brett die right at the mission’s start, and he’d led his men and women in anyway. Now he worried whether Lauren and Peter could fix Scott’s battered body. Miguel, too, might have been exposed to whatever had turned the rig’s inhabitants into the Skulls.

Hell, his entire crew might have been exposed to whatever unidentified agent was responsible. There was no way to know whether their positive pressure biohazard suits and decontamination procedures had been enough to keep them safe. The men and women aboard the
Huntress
trusted him, and he might have already led them to a fate worse than death. Dom pounded a fist against the bulkhead. The sound of thick flesh against steel resounded in the corridor.

Glenn paused outside his quarters with a book tucked under his arm. “You okay, Captain?”

“Fine,” Dom lied.

“I know you better than that. You’re not fine.”

Dom exhaled and rubbed his hand over his scalp. He shook his head. “I fucked up. We lost Brett, and we still don’t know what we encountered there.”

“But we will. We have the data now. That’s what matters. I would have made the same call. Besides, Brett knew what he was getting himself into. We all signed the same contract.”

Dom stiffened and looked his old friend in the eye. “You’re right, Glenn. Always the voice of reason.” He thought of his daughters back in Maryland. He considered the families of his crew along with the millions of others who would never know Brett or the cost he paid in a valiant effort to protect them. “We’re going to make damn sure we stop whoever was twisted enough to create those monsters on the IBSL. For Brett.”

“For Brett,” Glenn echoed.

Dom glanced at the book tucked under the former Green Beret’s arm. “What are you reading?”

“
Armor
.”

“Ah, yeah. John Steakley. Am I mistaken, or didn’t I see you read that before?”

Glenn nodded. “This time it’s in Cantonese. Gotta keep my language skills fresh.”

Dom smiled at that. He was lucky to have such an educated and professional crew. He nodded at Glenn and then continued to the electronics workshop. Monitors all across the room were alive with strings of code, videos, and images. All three of the communications specialists—Chao, Samantha, and Adam—paused behind their workstations. Each desk, full of computers and electronic equipment, was clearly marked by their respective personalities. Every pen, piece of paper, and wire on Chao’s desk was organized in perfect lines and kept orderly at all times. Discarded aluminum cans, most from some sort of sugary drink, lay across Samantha’s, along with crumpled pieces of paper and a tangle of cords. Adam looked up from behind a desk filled with figurines from
Watchmen
, the man’s favorite graphic novel.

“Please tell me you got something,” Dom said.

The looks on their faces told him everything he needed to know.

“Christ. Nothing?” Anger at the futility of their mission poured through him, and he reminded himself not to put the blame on them.

Samantha pulled a hand through her black hair. “Look, we’re digging through this garbage that came through the transmission, but most of it’s pretty well encrypted. It’s like we’re sifting through a riverbed for gold.”

“We did find...
something
,” Chao said. He tapped on a keyboard and brought up a document on one of the monitors. “I’m not sure how helpful it is, but this says there was a proposal that went through DARPA and the CIA, something called the Amanojaku Project.”

“When?” Dom asked.

“1958, apparently,” Adam said, his deep baritone filling the room.

“That’s when DARPA was founded,” Dom said.

“Right.” Adam scratched at his lumberjack-worthy beard. “The project abstract mentions something about a protein complex, but that’s about all we’ve uncovered so far.”

“Did this protein create those Skulls?” Dom asked.

Samantha shrugged. “Maybe. But we can’t make any solid connections yet.”

Dom scratched the back of his head and paused. “
Amanojaku
sounds Japanese. Any idea what it means?”

“Heavenly evil spirit,” Adam replied with one raised eyebrow, his thick-rimmed glasses going askew with the gesture. “It’s a demon or demon-like creature from Japanese folklore that gets people to act on their darkest desires. Kind of like those cartoons where a devil’s sitting on your shoulder and whispering in your ear to do the wrong thing.”

“Interesting,” said Dom. “Anything else?”

The three techies shook their heads.

“I want you to keep digging through that data to see what you can salvage,” Dom said.

“Absolutely,” Samantha replied. “One thing I can definitely tell you: Whoever was in charge of the IBSL wanted this stuff to stay hidden. The designers of the firewalls, encryption, and intrusion detection systems did a hell of a job. We’re talking top-secret-US-government-keep-the-Chinese-out type of job.”

“I remember some cocky woman with tattoos once told me she was the best in the business,” Dom said.

Samantha cracked her knuckles, and the inked serpents and rose vines rippled with her forearm muscles. “You got it.”

“I’ll report back later. Let me know the moment you find something.” Dom thought he’d already seen the darkest side of humanity when he had been fighting terrorists and foreign governments peddling anthrax, loading scud missiles with botulinum toxin, or developing new strains of bubonic plague. But the agent that had turned the people on the IBSL into those Skulls made every other engineered bioweapon appear as harmless as the common cold.

If Adam was correct and this perverse research project had been named after a demon, Dom thought they’d chosen the name wisely. He couldn’t imagine a more frightening biological agent if it had come from the deepest bowels of hell.

––––––––

K
ara Holland, a first-year biology major at the University of Maryland, sat in her mother’s Volvo, staring out the passenger window. Her hand rested on the canvas bag she’d packed for the weekend. A light rain pattered on the glass and streamed off in long rivulets as they drove along Interstate 270, past the tall white cedars standing sentinel along the road. She dreamed of setting off into those woods. Just one weekend away from the University of Maryland and dilapidated College Park. One weekend out in the wilderness.

Out as far out as she could get.

In Maryland, the largest state park stretched a little over a thousand acres. It was hardly a drop in the ocean compared to the six million acres of Adirondack Park where her father used to take her and her sister hiking, camping, and fishing. On those weeklong expeditions, they sometimes went days without seeing another soul. And when she caught herself daydreaming in her Biology I or Introductory Sociology classes, she always recalled those days surrounded by the verdant foliage, songs of birds hidden in the branches, and the sweet scent of pollinating trees. Her father had been away on business trips more than she would have liked while she was growing up, and Kara treasured those wilderness trips with him.

“Thanks for coming home for the weekend,” Bethany said. “It’ll be nice having you around. Haven’t seen you since you started college.”

“That was just a few weeks ago.”

“I know, I know. But I’m your mom, right? Missing you and loving you is what I do.”

Kara chuckled and stared back out at the window. “Maybe we can go on a hike or something.”

“Sure, maybe,” Bethany said, though she didn’t sound convincing to Kara. “Are you still doing the Survivalist Club?”