Exodus Code (15 page)

‘Something wrong?’ asked Rhys. ‘I need to get home to Anwen so Mary can come see Gwen. I can’t be taking care of you too, mate.’

‘Go,’ said Jack, his knees aching terribly. ‘I’l sit with Gwen until Mary gets here.’

‘Sure?’

‘More than.’

When Rhys had gone, Jack tapped a number into his mobile. The guard banged on his window.

‘Is this line secure?’ asked Jack. ‘Good. I need you to do something for me.’

Jack laughed at something the cal er said after Jack explained his request.

‘Of course, you should do it Torchwood style.’

The Ice Maiden

IN THE COMMUNICATIONS room opposite the newly refurbished mess, the
Ice
Maiden
’s two analysts sat in front of a bank of computers. Like Sam and Hol is, they were also ignoring the increasingly violent rise and fal of the ship as she sailed into the storm. Vlad Lidenbrok had his feet up on the desk, reading a Steampunk novel balanced on his lap while his computer was plotting a geologic map, its waves of reds, blues and yel ows washing across his screen.

Eva Giles was perched on the edge of her chair, leaning over what looked like an old-fashioned printer. It was, in fact, a sophisticated piece of sonar-recording equipment, its shuttle flying across the scrol ing paper, while also sending its results to Vlad’s hard drive.

‘How many is that we’ve discovered now?’ asked Vlad, shouting to be heard over the thunderous waves battering the side of the ship.

‘Counting this one forming off the coast of Wales?’ asked Eva. She wore over-sized black-framed glasses and kept her long brown hair pul ed off her face. Eva was the crew’s science officer who Cash had recruited, at Dana’s request, from the doctoral program in Earth Sciences at the University of Vancouver. As the crew’s youngest and newest recruit, she desperately wanted to be taken seriously.

‘Four significant disturbances,’ she final y replied. ‘That’s a lot in such a short time. Should we be worried?’

‘You’re not?’ replied Vlad, pul ing up two other sonar maps to his screen.

One was from a hundred miles off the coast of Vietnam, the other from the ocean south of New Zealand. Vlad quickly scrol ed through a series of windows until he settled on an oceanic map of the world. Tapping the screen on the key places where they’d recorded the other deep-water disturbances, he then dragged the key bits of data and embedded them in each flagged point.

Grabbing the arm of her chair before it rol ed against the door, Eva watched Vlad work, knowing some morsel of data, a detail of code, had snagged his mind as he’d been scrol ing and he was puzzling over what he was seeing. She watched quietly as he began rubbing his fingers across his short beard, his green eyes narrowed as he stared intently at the screen. Every few seconds, he scribbled a note on a sheet of paper, adding to the scraps and piles that already carpeted his desk. Then he’d twirl his pencil, once, twice, come to a conclusion and then, using the eraser, double-tap each flag on the screen. In one swift gesture across his screen, he made the images and the data fly to a massive electronic map that covered the room’s only open wal , each spot on the map pinging bright within seconds of Vlad’s touch on his screen.

‘Eva,’ said Vlad, nudging her. ‘Did you hear anything I just said?’

‘No, sorry. What?’ Eva could feel herself blush. She’d been thinking about Vlad’s touch. She couldn’t help it. He had the most beautiful hands she’d ever seen in a man. His fingers were long, his nails short, the skin not soft but not rough either.

‘Eva!’ Vlad shook his head, using two fingers to wipe data over to the wal map.

‘It’s the storm,’ she said, quickly. ‘I’m a bit… nervous. I’ve never been in a bad one before.’

Vlad softened his tone. ‘Wel , don’t be. It’s not going to be that bad. Cash has a tendency towards the drama of a storm, usual y so he can comfort whatever grad students we have on board.’ Vlad smiled, squeezing Eva’s shoulder. Heat shot up from her toes to her tummy. Vlad leaned back on his chair, rubbing his fingers over his lips, concentrating on the data streaming across his screen.

Then he turned, gripped the arms of Eva’s chair and dragged her to face him. Leaning into her, Vlad kissed her, his lips soft on her mouth, his tongue parting them gently. She returned the kiss, her own mouth hungry for his. She tilted her head back, exposing the pale skin of her neck, letting Vlad’s mouth trace a line of soft kisses from her lips to her neck, his warm lips, his long fingers, moving across her bare shoulders, under her sweater to her hardening nipples. Without shifting him, Eva reached up and loosened her hair, then grabbing a handful of his, she guided him to her lap.

‘Jesus, look out!’ said Vlad, lunging over Eva to catch a heavy nautical compass tipping from the shelf before the storm crashed it on top of her.

‘Are you OK?’ he asked, stil leaning over her.

Eva was most definitely not OK. Vlad’s scent was intoxicating. ‘I’m fine.

Real y.’

She wanted to grab his shoulders and jump his bones, no, not jump him, nail him, screw him, fuck him right here on the cold, hard floor. Eva squeezed her nails into her palms, shocked at her thoughts. She shoved Vlad out of her way and stood up. Forgetting to brace herself against the ship’s angry rol s, her chair slammed against the back of her legs and she toppled into Vlad’s arms.

‘Do you need me to strap you down?’ he laughed.

Oh, God, yes, she thought.

‘I’m sorry. Sorry,’ she said, stepping out of his way. ‘Stil developing my sea legs.’

‘Wel , make it fast,’ he said, sliding her chair back to her desk and setting the compass inside one of the metal storage lockers in the room. ‘Because I need you—’

A soft moan burst from Eva’s lips. Vlad looked at her, quizzical y. ‘Are you sure you’re OK? You look flushed.’

‘I do feel hot,’ she said, then quickly added, ‘I mean warm… warm.’

‘OK,’ said Vlad, thinking that this was why he preferred working alone. Vlad had raised a force field around his heart years ago. He was personable, polite and participated in the crew’s card games and movie watching, but he perceived his fel ow shipmates as nothing more than sophisticated computers, hard-wired to behave in certain ways. They were necessary to the job at hand but immaterial to his personal development.

Vlad had accepted the position as analyst on the
Ice Maiden
after much of the funding for his research on deep-water morphic fields had dried up when his mentor at the University of Prague had disappeared with most of the funding. Vlad’s passion for the oceans and his insane knowledge of computers were currently running in second and third place to the growing resentment towards the man who’d stripped him of his future.

‘If you think you can stay focused long enough,’ said Vlad, standing in front of the wal map and reading some of the information he’d just posted, ‘can you run a cross-check of the data from the Paracel Islands with this recent deep-water event off the coast of Wales?’

‘Why?’ said Eva, trying not to stare at his ass or at the way his faded jeans sat on the muscular curve of his hips, a thin scar set in the hol ow above his pelvic bone. Or how his hair curled over the frayed top of his Ziggy Stardust T-shirt.

‘Have you got something?’ she asked. Oh, you do, she thought, you real y do and I want it. Good grief, what was happening to her? Horny didn’t begin to describe these feelings.

She turned back to her computer, the pulsing plot points on the map mimicking her racing heartbeat. Eva knew when she had signed up for this job that spending months at sea would mean giving up certain things she enjoyed – a lot. Shopping for cheap couture, eating fresh fruit, running outside on solid ground with unsalted air in her hair, and regular pleasurable sex with one or two of her on-again off-again boyfriends. But until this moment in the middle of the coldest waters she’d travel ed, she’d never felt such desire, such intense sexual hunger coursing through her veins, racing to every organ at warp speed.

‘Eva, real y,’ interrupted Vlad, his patience wearing thin. ‘Focus. I think we have a serious problem.’

‘What?’ said Eva, using al her wil power to not look at Vlad below the neck.

‘How quickly is the disturbance in Wales growing?’ Vlad asked, standing over her to get a closer look at the echogram.

Vlad smel ed of Ivory soap and the scent set off a peculiar but not unpleasant ringing in her ears. When he reached across to highlight a point on the graph, her body tingled al over, every muscle vibrating like a mil ion hands on her at once. She crossed her legs and leaned forward, her pulse quickening again, the ringing clanging in her head. Suddenly she could taste a burst of peppermint on her tongue.

She sighed. Christ, she felt real y good.

‘That was weird,’ said Eva, grinning up at Vlad. ‘I mean it’s weird… the events… they’re weird…’ His eyes narrowed. She charged on. ‘I mean they both displayed signs of a tremor, but neither area is close to any traditional plate boundaries or fault lines. And now there’s a deep water geyser forming in each site.’

She pushed away from the desk and Vlad, stepping over to the world map secured on the wal . She needed to see the entire scope of their travels plotted on the map, and she was also afraid of what might happen again if she didn’t get some distance between her body and Vlad’s.

The peppermint lingered on her lips, tasting pretty sweet.

‘OK,’ she said, gathering some professional composure, but keeping her back to Vlad to be safe. ‘Let’s look at what we have. Al the waters we’ve trawled have experienced some kind of seismic disturbance since Tuesday, none of them are on traditional fault lines, and so far, thankful y, none of them have created any major tsunamis or any obvious disturbances on land for that matter. Yet. But who knows what can happen if they continue to strengthen.’

She took off her glasses, and squinted at the map. ‘Did you see that?’

‘See what?’ said Vlad, his eyes stil on his computer screen where he’d cal ed up an imaging model of the Norwegian waters they’d just finished trawling. Pushing his hair from his eyes, he watched his projection image rotate on the screen, the same points of Eva’s map highlighted on his. He froze the map, and final y turned to Eva. ‘Sorry. Say again.’

Eva rubbed her eyes and put her glasses back on. ‘It’s nothing,’ she said, ‘I thought I saw the lights on the map flash in an odd way.’

‘I think you may need some rest,’ said Vlad. ‘We’ve al been working odd hours recently. I can cover if you want to go and lie down.’

And then it happened again.

In her peripheral vision, she could see the lights on the southern hemisphere of the map burst into light at the same time, flashing a regular rhythm, which was odd because each light was recording a different deep sea disturbance.

There was no possible geological way that each one of those events, thousands of miles apart, were syncing with each other.

It must be a glitch in their deep-water recorder. Had to be.

THE STORM WAS sending the ship into barrel rol s, and Cash had hit the lockdown alert for the second time. If that happened a third time, they’d have to strap on their lifejackets, gather the flares and prepare for the worst.

This time walking skilful y against the ship’s barrel motion, Eva unlocked a ceiling-high storage locker, took out a camera and a tripod and set them up facing the wal map.

‘What’s going on?’ Vlad asked, watching Eva keying in a series of commands into her iPad to control the camera’s time-release.

‘Not sure, yet,’ she replied, staring again at the pulsing lights on the maps where they’d recorded recent seismic disturbances. ‘Going with a hunch.

Trying some low-tech recording.’

‘OK…’ said Vlad, curious about Eva’s hunches, but not interested enough to push for an explanation. Instead, he returned to his own screen. ‘Not one of these deep-water crevices has ever recorded eruptions of this magnitude before with the exception of this last one we recorded this morning,’ he said, zooming in on the ocean off the southern coast of Peru.

Eva was stil staring at her wal map, which had red lights flashing in the same places as Vlad was marking on his computer image: one, their most recent, off the coast of South Wales, one close to the southern tip of New Zealand, one north of Scotland and not far from their current position, and now the latest light off the southern coast of Peru.

‘The southern coast of Peru,’ added Vlad, ‘has had significant destructive quakes and volcanic eruptions that have been getting worse for decades, especial y since the 1920s and 1930s.’

Eva stared at Peru on the wal map, twisting her hair in concentration while she spoke. ‘I remember when the one in 2007 happened, but the worst quake that area ever had was in 1930.’

While Vlad was listening to Eva, he initiated a statistical program he’d written. When it was loaded, he dumped their data into it.

‘I did one of my first field studies on a high archaeological dig in the Peruvian Andes,’ continued Eva, glad to have the memories take her mind off Vlad. ‘The elders in the local vil ages stil talk about the 1930 eruption.

According to their stories, the tremors and eruptions were so powerful that an entire mountain top dropped into the ocean. I can’t remember the name, but—’