Triton (18 page)

Printed on the metal, now scraped and peeling, was the stamp of NASA. And below that, in proud red white and blue, the insignia of the Triton Project.

Naomi disconnected the crane and stepped to the side, where Jake and Brynn stood with grim expressions.

“Do you recognize this?” said Jake.

“That’s Triton One,” said Cedar, his voice flat. “The first one they sent up.”

“I didn’t know they were scheduled to recover it.”

“They weren’t,” said Cedar. “It got fried in the interference zone and vanished into deep space.”

“Dump it,” Jake
said, once the others had left. “Dump it over the side.”

“I might be able to recover some of the data,” said Naomi. “It’s worth a shot, at least.”

“Don’t waste your time. Everything’s fried on this piece of junk.” He kicked the probe, and more brown seawater poured out. “Dump it.”

“If you say so.” Naomi reattached the winch and, operating the crane’s levers, slowly steered the Triton I out over the water. She released it, and it splashed into the ocean.

From the bay door, Jake watched the capsule drift past the ship and vanish from sight off the stern, and only then felt himself relax.

Good riddance.

What he hadn’t said to Naomi was he didn’t like the very idea of the Triton I capsule being onboard their cruise ship.

The spacecraft had been inside the interference zone; who knew what it had brought back with it.

The Thing in Room 834

Back up on
the bridge, Naomi steered the
Cypress
back on course, her thoughts unfocused. The NASA capsule had filled her with a deep sense of unease.

Restored as her navigator, Sky brooded in a similar fashion next to her. The sun sank toward the horizon, slashing the bridge with reddish-orange rays.

NASA had lost contact with Triton I over a year ago. By now it was supposed to be halfway to Mars, lost forever . . .
gone
. Not floating in the Atlantic two hundred miles east of Bermuda.

Up until the launch three nights ago, the Triton Project had all but been a disaster; they’d lost all three unmanned spacecraft in the interference zone. Like clockwork, the exact same area of space seventy-three thousand miles above the equator had swallowed each and every one of them.

The coincidence nagged her. Three days ago, they had sent up astronauts. Two days ago, every living thing had vanished. Today, NASA’s first capsule reappeared out of nowhere.

And this morning.

This morning, something very big had fallen from outer space and crashed into the Atlantic.

Brynn stood behind
Jake on the elevator, her eyes on his broad, muscular shoulders. Next to her, Cedar fidgeted, picking at the skin around his fingernails.

The elevator dinged, and the doors slid back to reveal the lobby on deck ten—and the lingering smell of burnt rubber.

“It’s there,” said Cedar, pointing to the floor.

Jake stepped off the elevator and his eyes narrowed on the carpet, which was crossed with giant black burn marks. He blew out a sigh of air and dragged his hand through his curly hair. “I see.”

Brynn studied the pattern on the floor, her heart picking up speed. It was some kind of writing, and . . .

And it looked familiar.

“Could have been made before,” said Cedar.

“That’s what I’m thinking too,” said Jake. “No one’s been in this lobby since it happened, right?” He glanced between her and Cedar.

“Unless Naomi has,” said Cedar.

Jake shook his head. “She would have told us.” He dropped his gaze back to the markings. “Any clue what it is?”

“It’s a prank,” said Cedar.

“How’d they make it so precise?” Brynn tilted her head to get another angle. The design . . . it was right on the tip of her tongue.

Jake knelt and touched the edge of the closest burn mark, rubbing the singed fibers between his fingers. “They painted the carpet with a flammable chemical, then lit it. I’ve seen it done before.”

“When did you see that?” said Cedar.

“It’s a trick.” Jake stood and brushed the soot off his fingers. “I knew a magician who did it to make fire burn in patterns.”

Cedar raised his eyebrows. “A magician?”

“In case there is someone still on board, we should search the ship again.” Jake peered around the deserted lobby. “Although it’s pretty obvious we’re here; I imagine they would have come forward by now.”

“Unless they’re hiding from us,” said Cedar.

Jake shrugged and returned his attention to the design on the floor. “It’s a kooky design. Looks like an alien language. Or Arabic or something.”

Realization flashed through Brynn’s mind.
Arabic
 . . .

“It’s not a language,” said Cedar. “It’s just a prank.”

Brynn’s her eyes widened. “I know what language this is,” she said. “It’s not Arabic. God, I’m so stupid.”

Their heads swung her direction.

She felt like kicking herself for not seeing it before. And after a whole semester, too. The angle of the floor must have distorted it. She looked up, beaming. “It’s Hebrew.”

The five of
them convened in the elevator lobby on deck ten, while Brynn worked her way across the room and copied the message onto a piece of paper. It was too hard to read all stretched out like that, especially for an amateur.

“You know, I’m not that good at Hebrew,” she said.

“Just do your best,” said Jake.

Once she finished transcribing the message, she stared at what she had written, and a chill fluttered up her spine.

Two words.

“I think it’s a warning,” she said. “This first word—you read from right to left, not left to right like in English—this first word means
warning
. Or
beware
.”

The others exchanged worried glances. Brynn sat cross-legged against the lobby walls to work out the second word.

“What’s the rest say?” said Jake.

“I’m not sure. This second word . . . it’s . . .”

“Any guesses?”

“I took one semester, I didn’t translate the freaking Torah,” she said. “And I got a B.”

“Just do your best.” Jake checked his phone. “But if we’re going to search the ship tonight, we should start now. The sun’s going to set soon.”

Brynn ignored him and channeled her focus into the messy Hebrew script. She’d seen a similar word on the midterm . . . not that she remembered
that
word either.

She closed her eyes. Focus, Brynn, focus . . . nothing came to her. With a sigh, she opened her eyes and let the paper flutter to the carpet, defeated.

Jake nodded. “Don’t beat yourself up, Brynn.” He addressed the rest of them. “Okay, here’s the plan: we’re going to split up to cover more ground. Searching the ship as a group took way too long.”

Groups
. Brynn’s eyes widened. The class learned words in similarly themed groups; the unit had been religion and mythology. She remembered now.

“Naomi, you take the lower decks; you know them best,” said Jake. “Brynn, take three to five. You’re pretty familiar with the boardwalk area.”

Brynn snatched the paper off the floor and scrutinized the second word, paying him no attention.

“Sky, you take six to eight,” Jake continued. “Cedar, nine to eleven. I’ll take twelve to fourteen. We’ve already checked fifteen and up.”

“Oh, I suppose you get one deck less than the rest of us because you’re special?” said Cedar.

“What are you talking about?”

“There’s no deck thirteen, moron. Twelve to fourteen is just two decks.”

“Fine. I’ll take eleven,” said Jake. “
You
take two decks.”

“I have four decks,” said Naomi.

“Great. Everyone shift down by one, okay?” said Jake. “Ready, guys?”

“Wait—” said Brynn, “I remember now. This second word . . . I think it means giants.”

“Giants?” Jake repeated flatly.

“Or fallen, I think.”

“Beware
fallen
,” he said. “What the hell does that mean?”

“No, it’s like English, it can mean
beware of
.” Her eyes darted across the page, adding up the different possible meanings. Only one clicked, and its meaning sent prickles leaping across her skin.

Brynn glanced up, and through a swallow, announced the final translation. “It means
beware of the giants
.”

Since Cedar’s search
parameters included deck ten, he stayed in the lobby while the three girls boarded an elevator down. Jake took another elevator up, leaving him in silence with the creepy Aramaic script burned into the floor.

Clearly, wonderboy Jake was too pussy to search deck ten himself. Probably afraid of the giants.

As Cedar stood there, the burnt smell sank into his skin. Though a warm humidity hung in the air, he shivered.

A creak sounded behind him, the swish of a weight dragging across carpet. He spun, but the lobby loomed around him, deserted. The emptiness made his skin crawl. Just the ship creaking.

Suddenly, the bulbs dimmed, humming like buzzing insects, and the lobby sank into semidarkness. The ship groaned again, and the room flickered back to life.

Just the ship creaking, Cedar. There was nothing else alive on this ship. Now prove it and be done with it.

He marched toward the first cabin, interior stateroom 446, his breathing hiked only a little. At the door, his radio burst into static, and Jake’s tinny voice echoed down the silent halls.

“Check in everyone. How we doing?”

A hiss, and then Naomi’s voice “. . . real creepy down here.”

“You should see the empty shops,” said Brynn. “Like an apocalypse movie set.”

“Cedar?” said Jake.

“I’m here,” he said, and then added, “Sky?”

No answer. Cedar’s heart gave a jolt, and he squeezed the talk button again. “Sky?”

“Here,” she said finally, her voice devoid of emotion.

Cedar reclipped his own radio, satisfied she was safe . . . but stewing in agony over how he’d treated her earlier, how he’d freaked out and lashed out at her, all because of that crap car crash eight years ago.

Because he’d yanked that steering wheel with every ounce of his nine-year-old strength . . .
why?
He had no idea why; the concussion had wiped his memory clean. All he remembered was waking up upside down, his mom’s unbelted corpse bleeding out in the driver’s seat, brain leaking out a dent in her skull the size of a steering wheel—and wailing in the backseat, blonde hair stained with blood . . . his baby sister.

Someone once told him if he hadn’t grabbed the steering wheel, the eighteen-wheeler would have killed all three of them.

A complete lie. A fabrication, invented by his therapist to ease his conscience; he was a murderer.

In the deck
three kitchen serving the Opus Dining Room, a large steel refrigerator door hung ajar. In a flash, Brynn forgot all about the eerie warning she had just decoded. Why did
her
decks have to be the creepiest?

A damp, electric energy prickled through the kitchen air. She could feel the creaking hulk of the ship around her, swallowing her.

No, the chefs must have vanished in the middle of digging through the fridge. Indeed, broken dishes littered the floor, confirming her theory. Satisfied, she continued through the gleaming stainless steel aisles. No, wait—

Her eyes jerked back to the door, and uneasiness seeped into her lungs. At midnight, two nights ago, this kitchen would have been closed.

Duh, Brynn. The meteor. The tsunami nearly capsized the ship, of course the impact would have knocked open the door.

Besides, checking was easy. She headed back to the refrigerator. In the five hours since the tsunami, the inside of the refrigerator would have warmed to the temperature of the kitchen. A muggy eighty degrees, she guessed.

That would prove it had been open for a while—she passed through a cool patch of air, and goose bumps raised along her forearms.

A vapory cold leaked from the refrigerator. She stepped right up to the doorway. The air bit into her skin, nearly freezing. Inside, jugs of milk secreted icy mist. Cartons of broken eggs dripped slime through the racks, and where the yolks made yellow pools, a fuzzy layer of frost grew like mold.

The warmth drained from her skin. The refrigerator had been opened minutes ago—and ransacked.

All at once, the kitchen’s metallic clicking and creaking took on a hostile tone. She swiveled around, scanned the rows of hanging carving knives, gently swinging, her heart drumming.

Her eyes were drawn to the far wall, to a gap behind a steel hood, and she stared in horror as a shadow materialized into focus—stretched, but humanoid in shape. Her heart jolted. She blinked, and it was gone.

Fear crawled under her skin.

Sky. Sky was the closest; she had the top level of the Opus Dining Room, maybe she’d wandered down.

“Sky?” she managed to stutter out. “Is that you?”

No answer.

Naomi let herself
into the crew purser’s cabin, which had only a smidgeon more floor space than her mom’s. In other words, enough space for a dwarf to do a pushup.

Brynn’s translation popped into her head.
Beware of the giants.
Not in the crew cabins below the waterline, at least.

The purser had left the TV on. The screen now displayed a haze of static. Feeling OCD, she clicked it off.

On the floor rested two loafers, which he must have taken off before collapsing into bed to watch TV—before popping out of existence.

Something small and black jutted out from under the bed. She leaned over and slid it out.

A Bible.

She lay it faceup below the pillow, where the purser’s heart would rest if he were sleeping.

Her radio crackled.

“Sky, are you in the kitchen on deck four?” hissed Brynn’s frantic voice.

The double doors
out of the kitchen swung open automatically, and Brynn peeked her head around the corner. Compared to the stabbing glint of fluorescent lights off polished steel in the kitchen—the warm, velvety hues of the Opus Dining Room soothed her eyes.