Stiletto (39 page)

The creature is alive!
thought Odette.
That must be it!
The idea simultaneously thrilled and horrified her. Somehow, the creature had revived, and, presumably, it was not at all happy to find itself out of the water, strung up in a warehouse, and covered in a chemical skin with people crawling all over the inside and outside of it. It was an astounding development and would have been fascinating to observe from a suitable distance. At the moment, however, her first priority was trying to recall anything she had ever learned about blowholes.

Blowholes close, don’t they? They must, to prevent water getting in.
She’d already felt the flexing, but she wasn’t certain if it would close on them completely.
The Checquy will come,
she told herself.
We just need to wait
.
They’ll kill it, and they’ll come get us.

As long as they do it before our oxygen runs out.

And as long as it doesn’t break out of its chains and somehow get to the ocean.

And as long as they don’t try to kill it in some way that will also inconveniently kill us, like pumping electricity into it or blowing it up.

She thought for a moment of trying to use her spurs to see if her venom would slow the monster down.
Not likely, though,
she thought.
It’s much too big for my reservoirs to have any effect.
In addition, in the back of her mind was the unappealing idea that she might need to use her octopus venom on herself if things got too horrible.

She felt a rush of air buffet her feet and pass over her.
Is that them?
she thought. She looked back hopefully, but there was neither a flicker of light nor a burly, cheerful Checquy Pawn with the Jaws of Life and a sippy cup of gin and tonic. Then she squinted. It was difficult to tell with all the shaking, but it seemed like there was
less
darkness behind her than there had been before. She caught a glimpse of movement and for a moment thought that something was heading down the tunnel toward them. Then she realized that there was no more tunnel. The walls were pinching themselves together, closing up behind them.

Get away!
her brain ordered her.
GO!
She began writhing forward frantically, shoving her oxygen tank ahead of her until it bumped against Codman’s feet.

“Move!” Odette screamed.
“Move!”
He looked back at her, and then beyond her. His eyes widened, and he began moving forward as fast as he could. It wasn’t fast enough; there was no way it could be fast enough. Odette kept darting glances behind her, seeing that inexorable closing of the tube coming after them, gaining on them.

She scrabbled forward like a mad rat, shoving against the man in front of her; she watched the end of the tunnel come closer until it was an inch behind her and there was nowhere for her to go and so she flopped onto her back and heaved with all her strength against the cramped space, pulling her knees up to her chest to buy herself a little more room, an extra moment of not being crushed. Codman the zoologist was still crawling away.

And then the roof came down. It pressed on her knees, heavy but not unbearable, not yet. It was enveloping her, and then it was pushing down on her mask, pushing it against her head, pushing on the plastic, and the light on her helmet was smothered, and she heard the first, unmistakable
crack
of her mask, and she screamed.

*

Light!

It blossomed into Odette’s eyes, which she hadn’t even realized were still open. Through the spiderwebbed cracks of her mask, everything around her seemed to be glowing with a soft white light that lifted itself up and away, the pressure coming off her legs and body and face.

For one terrifying, beautiful moment, Odette thought she had died and left behind all the problems she had in the world. But she wasn’t dead.

Instead, she found herself in a brand-new, totally incomprehensible situation with some brand-new, totally incomprehensible problems.

The plastic of her mask was riddled with cracks, and there was a little hole. The air that came in was all right, although it did smell like the inside of a fish shop.
It’s probably an extremely bad idea to take off the mask,
she mused.
But I can’t see anything, and if I’m not poisoned by now, I’m not going to be.
So she peeled off the mask to see what was what. She took in her surroundings, sniffed cautiously, and then shrugged.
Well, okay.

The blowhole — that claustrophobic slimy tube in a dead animal — had changed. She got to her knees and looked around incredulously. The walls of skin and muscle had stretched around them so that the whole space was now twice as big. Not big enough to stand up or even crouch in, but it was far less cramped, and patches of soft white light were coming out of the walls. The tunnel was still sealed just behind her, and it appeared to have sealed up ahead of them, beyond Wharton, but a hole had opened up in the floor between her and Codman. It angled down and curved away to who knew where. The slime that had been oozing out of the walls was getting sucked back in, so Odette and the two Checquy operatives lying on the floor were now the dirtiest things in a leathery beige pod.

The two Checquy operatives in question were sitting up, looking as bewildered as she felt. Hesitantly, they pulled off their masks, the light from their helmets no longer necessary in the glowing space. She scooched over to them, carefully avoiding the hole. The three of them established that all of them were all right, if somewhat puzzled to still be alive, and then, to the surprise of everyone, they had a brief, rather trembly group hug.

“Thoughts?” asked Codman once they’d broken the hug and the men were pretending it had never happened.

“I certainly didn’t see this coming,” said the marine biologist. “What’s with the lights?”

“Some creatures
do
exhibit bioluminescent qualities,” said Codman. He poked at an illuminated patch with interest, but the light seemed to be shining through the flesh from a distance.

“And why has it suddenly gotten so comfortable in here?” asked the marine biologist. No one had an answer. Of course,
comfortable
was a relative term. “Well, we can either stay here, or go down the hole.” The pod rocked violently, and they all put their hands against the walls to steady themselves. It was clear that, even if the situation in their particular corner of the monster had undergone a sudden radical change for the better, the overall situation had not.

“I vote for going down the hole,” said Odette.

“Any particular reason?” asked Codman.

“Can we assume the Checquy is going to kill this creature?” she asked.

“Yes,” said the two men simultaneously.

“Messily?”

“Yes,” said the two men simultaneously.

“Then I think it would be better to be closer to the middle,” said Odette. “Put as much buffer as possible between us and the conflict.” The Checquy operatives exchanged glances and then, as another shudder shuddered through, came to a decision.

“Let’s go,” said the two men simultaneously. They looked at each other warily. Odette could see the agreement pass between them to stop saying things simultaneously if they could at all help it. She led the way this time, slithering with relative ease down the hole. As they all wriggled along, they felt vibrations through the floor.

“I rather wish I knew what was happening outside,” said Wharton as they descended. “If the creature makes a successful break for it and gets to the ocean...” They all paused — it was not a welcome thought.

“Our people will bend heaven and earth to keep it inside the hangar,” said Codman decisively. “And there’s certainly no way it could escape to the open sea. If worse came to worst, there’s an entire military base that could be mobilized to prevent its escape.”

“So, theoretically, if it got into the water, they would blast holes in it, and the ocean would come flooding in here?” asked Odette.

“Theoretically,” said Codman. The three of them checked their oxygen tanks against the possibility that things might take a sudden turn for the wetter.

The tunnel wound down, coiling tightly. The patches of light were fairly regularly spaced, and, much to Odette’s relief, the air remained relatively fresh, though still smelling exactly as if they were inside a giant sea monster. There was also another scent, much weaker, that she couldn’t quite identify but that left her feeling uneasy.

As the three moved along, the movement of the creature periodically flung them against the walls or sent them skidding down the tunnel. It did not appear that things were calming down.

“I have good news and bad news,” said Odette suddenly. “And I’m not letting you choose which you hear first.” The two Checquy agents said nothing. “The good news is that we’ve come to the end of the tunnel.”

“And?” said the zoologist. “Is the bad news that it’s sealed?”

“Not... exactly,” said Odette. She lay down on her stomach so that they could see past her. The hole had terminated in a large puckered ring of muscle that was clenched closed. There was a horrified silence. “It’s an anus,” said Odette flatly.

“Well, it’s certainly a sphincter,” said Codman after a moment.

“Do we try and force our way through?” asked the marine biologist, and the other two winced. “Don’t look at me like that. You don’t need to read anything into my saying that.”

There is no way this conversation is not going to get horrible,
thought Odette.
No situation is improved by the presence of a gigantic anus.

At that moment, the gigantic anus in question trembled and, before anyone could react, unclenched. Everyone was braced for unspeakable developments, but the only thing that poured through was a roar of sound and light. They shrank back. It was horribly disorienting after the close dimness of the tunnel, as if someone had opened a portal to a football game or a rock concert. Odette squinted. There appeared to be a much larger space beyond — one that you could stand up in. On instinct, without opening the subject for debate, she scuttled through and into the larger space.

It wasn’t nearly as bad as she’d thought it would be. Her eyes adjusted to the light. The noise was actually music, orchestral music that seemed to be coming out of the walls themselves. It was the sudden strong scent, however, that cut Odette’s legs out from under her.

Oranges.

Oh God, how could this be?

She was on her knees, trembling, even as the other two came into the room and stood up. They looked at her oddly and then took in where they were. It was, very definitely, a room. This was not a space in a monster that just happened to be large enough to stand up in. The music and the warm glow put paid to that idea. The walls curved round, but the floor was flat. There were broad ledges and pedestals wide enough to sit or lie upon. One feature in particular drew their eyes.

On the other side of the room, facing the curving wall, was a chair. It appeared to have grown out of the floor and was the most unsettling piece of furniture ever seen. It was wide and high and made up of struts and ridges that were unmistakably bones, covered with padding that looked like muscle and skin. From the roof dangled a mass of tendrils, some fleshy and others glistening like plastic tubes. Their ends vanished behind the chair back.

On one side of the chair, a pale white hand hung down as if it had slipped from an armrest.

As they all took in the presence of that hand, Odette heard two sharp intakes of breath, one on either side of her, and the two Checquy men moved into fighting stances. She heard the snaps of their wrist knives springing out, and Codman held up his coring tool, its little blades spinning. The air around Pawn Wharton suddenly grew hot and dry.

“You needn’t bother,” Odette said dully. “’S already dead.” Underlying the smell of oranges and salt water was the unmistakable smell of rot. She got to her feet and led them around the chair. She knew what she would see. She’d seen it before.

It was a naked body, slumped and white. White nodules covered its bald head, and the tendrils from the ceiling seemed to have grown into the nodules as well as into points along its arms and spine. It didn’t appear to have a gender. Odette peeled off a glove and reached out to the body’s neck.

“Don’t!” gasped Codman.

“It’s fine,” she said. The skin was cold, icy cold. She felt for a pulse, found none, and then lifted up the head. Memories flooded back, punching her in the heart: the last time she’d been with her friends, when they were torn out of her life. She snatched her hand away.

*

Felicity was not happy.

After a while, she’d calmed down. At first, she held out some hope that she would be freed, but after reaching four hundred thirty hippopotamuses, she’d given up counting. Then she’d thought things through and concluded that the creature had come back to life, and that was why she could no longer move. She hung there and brooded.

She had no doubt that the Checquy would kill it eventually, but the potential for disaster was still huge. There was no telling the kind of damage a creature that size could do. Scores of Checquy personnel were in the hangar — the casualties could be horrendous. Leliefeld, with her amazing ability to get into trouble, might get injured or killed.

And there was the stomach-turning knowledge that Felicity had left her own body right next to the creature. Of all the locations that lent themselves to getting one’s catatonic body smeared into paste, right below a gigantic monster’s chin seemed the riskiest.

I was so close!
Felicity fretted.
I bet I’m not ten meters from my body,
if it’s still there and hasn’t been crushed
. All she could do was resolve that once the opportunity arose, she would be ready to escape.

And then the sound came. Though she normally could not register sound with her powers, the vibrations hummed right through her, and she felt a sudden horror. She had heard that tune before.