He wasn’t the only candidate left. There were others. But Seever was undeniably yielding the best outcome so far. His body’s molecular biology had responded to the DNA changes better than any of the others. Instead of tolerating only a few edits before problems arose, Seever absorbed several successfully with no notable symptoms at all.
In fact, even after eight complete, body-wide edits to date, his system had shown that not only were all eight present in his new DNA, but a full six of them were active! It was astonishing.
Astonishing and puzzling. Because neither Talbot nor anyone else on the team under General Bullman had an explanation. No one could come up with a viable theory why Seever’s body was able to do what many others could not.
Making Seever their prototype. At least for the time being, until they could figure it out. The situation left most of Bullman’s team more than a little concerned, including Talbot. But General Bullman did not share their unease. Nor was he the slightest bit bothered by Seever’s brutish antics. Before or after the tests. What he needed was a success––a soldier he could showcase to the CIA and others as an example of what was now possible. And how the United States was on the brink of changing clandestine operations and warfare forever.
From the bed, Seever continued staring at her. “I hear our prize is on its way.”
Talbot’s eyes returned to his. He was talking about the Chinese girl. “Where did you hear that?”
“Everyone knows.”
Talbot merely shook her head.
“How long will it take?”
“How long will what take?”
“To isolate the bacterium.”
“We don’t know yet,” she answered. “There’s still a lot we need to figure out.”
Seever flexed his arm and stood up from the bed with a sarcastic reply. “Then I guess it’s a good thing they have the other woman too.” He walked to the door, glancing back over his shoulder just before rounding the corner. “Better hope they still need you.”
***
Seever didn’t care at all for Talbot. The woman was uncomfortably odd. And that was putting it mildly, it didn’t matter how smart she was.
He opened the door and stepped over the threshold into a longer hallway, which turned right and proceeded back toward the testing bay. While he walked, Seever glanced down at his bandaged arm, the blood more visible now. But contained.
As he moved, he could feel the innate strength within his muscles evolving. Ever so slowly…it was amazing. The sensation definitely pulsed through his arms and legs, even traveling down to his hands and fingers too. It was a feeling as if his entire body was surging with testosterone. Chronic aches he’d had in his knees from an old accident, he could no longer feel, and everything seemed to move smoother. Easier. His muscles felt more fluid and increasingly more powerful by the day. Even better than when he was in his prime.
Of course, as expected, the editing brought a few side effects, but they were subtle. Minor enough that no one had noticed yet except him. And certainly nothing he was about to reveal, especially to that kook Talbot.
For now, he had more testing to do. Or more accurately, given his revised orders, Seever planned to continue honing and pushing the limits of each one of the skills being made possible by his new genetics.
Because what he knew, yet Talbot did not, was that he wasn’t going to be there much longer. She had no idea that he was now in direct communication with Bullman himself. And the general had plans for his new prototype.
90
The Pathfinder’s sickbay, a 15x25 foot room on the ship’s mid-deck, lay forward of both the galley and the research lab. Packed full with two chest-high filing cabinets, examination lights, and two in-use, wall-mounted folding operating tables, there was barely enough room for the four people being treated. Let alone the ship’s nurse.
Chief Engineer Ackerman lay on one of the beds with his left arm tightly wrapped from shoulder to wrist. Alison rested on the second bed with her eyes closed and left ear bandaged.
Sitting on two appropriated plastic chairs were Smitty and Beene, the first donning a metal splint for his wrist and middle two fingers. The SEAL next to him showed no visible signs of injury and was growling at the nurse, trying to convince her that he was fine.
The entire room turned to the door as Captain Emerson stepped in and shook the heavy raindrops from his short gray hair.
“Anything?”
Ackerman shook his head and glanced at the handheld radio perched next to him on a small shelf. “No, sir.”
The captain checked his watch. It had been a half hour. He placed his hands on his hips, thinking. “You’re sure you had Tay on the line?”
Ackerman nodded and glanced at Smitty, who did the same. “Pretty sure. Unless he attached something else for us to pull up. But the signal was clear.”
“Any idea how far up you had him?”
“Not sure. I’d say forty, maybe fifty feet.”
Emerson frowned. Forty or fifty feet didn’t sound like much, but it was high enough to be fatal. Even in water if someone hit the surface wrong. But what he was more concerned with was the possibility of added injury. Tay had already made the fall once and sustained what he thought might be a fractured leg. Now he was weaker, making him prone to more serious injuries. Injuries that could be far worse.
“But you got the package through.”
“Yes, sir. That we’re sure of.”
“Good. So scenarios one and two are either that Tay did not survive the fall. Or he did and succumbed to injuries.”
Alison grimaced at the thought and watched Ackerman nod. “Yes, sir.”
Emerson exhaled. “Well, there’s not a hell of a lot we can do about one and two. So, let’s move on to three.”
Beene spoke up from his chair. “He’s alive but unconscious.”
“Right. But for how long?”
The nurse standing next to Beene answered the captain. “A hit that is hard enough could keep him out for several minutes. There’s also a relatively common phenomenon where a person who has been knocked unconscious passes into a form of ordinary sleep. But if there was a traumatic head injury…”
“Then we’re back to scenario two.”
“Probably.”
Alison looked at the captain worriedly. “But if he’s unconscious for that long, he could drown.”
“Very possibly,” Ackerman nodded. “Although the harness should keep him afloat.”
“Assuming he landed face up,” Beene said.
“Right.”
“Okay,” Emerson said. “Scenario three is that he’s alive, but unable to reach the package.”
“Or can’t find it.”
“The light should activate as soon as it touches water.”
“Unless it’s for another reason.”
Emerson sighed. “Then we have at least four possibilities. The first two are not good. The third isn’t much better. And the fourth is that he’s alive, on his back, and just hasn’t woken up yet. Or hasn’t reached the package yet.” He looked around the room, but no one spoke. “Time to be optimistic.”
The captain looked back to the nurse. “If he did get knocked out and slipped into this sleep state, how long could he stay in it?”
“Under normal circumstances, not more than a couple hours.”
“Okay, not too much longer then,” Emerson calculated. He inhaled and folded his arms. “It may be Hail Mary time. For anyone who is a person of faith, now would be a great time for prayer. In fact, even if you’re not, it’d still be a damn good idea.”
91
Over a hundred feet below Captain Emerson and his crew, the turbulent blue waters of the Caribbean had finally begun to settle. Both beneath the ship and along the long gray alien wall.
Waves of brilliantly colored fish moved rhythmically through the still-surging current. Sometimes by the hundreds, they appeared unfazed and blissfully unaware of any recent commotion. The only remnants from a rescue attempt g
one bad were tiny specks of organic matter churned up and swirling through the water. The various schools picked carefully at the microscopic bits of nourishment shaken free from the dense, endless fields of underwater plant life.
Dozens of dolphins returned as well, gliding by and studying the strange surface, unblemished and just as silent as it had been before.
One of the dolphins, shorter and stubbier, stood out from the rest. With darker skin and a much larger melon, it moved quietly along, carefully examining the alien craft.
The savant dolphin dove deeper yet remained close to the wall, eventually easing up and coasting to a halt.
It paid little attention to the others swimming and circling past him. Instead, the smaller mammal began sweeping its oversized head back and forth very gently.
***
Several minutes later, aboard the Pathfinder in the tiny and empty communications room, Chris’s monitor registered a translation from IMIS. Brief, four words displayed themselves across the top of the screen. Where they remained unread.
Alison. You friend live.
92
Elgin Tay’s eyelids fluttered briefly. Rather than open, they continued struggling as his brain gradually began to clear. When his eyes did finally show themselves, it was under the canopy of an eerie yet familiar blackness.
He felt something lining his face and shoulders, traveling down around his legs, which took several seconds to recognize as water. His muscles jerked awake, and he instinctively reached into liquid nothingness below him.
In a brief panic, he righted himself in the water, splashing loudly in the echoing darkness. He felt something around his chest and probed with his fingers. When he found the thin cable, everything came back to him. He was still wearing the harness…still attached to the cable that had suddenly given way. But it was the thick Neoprene fabric that had kept him afloat while he lay unconscious. Thank God he’d been on his back.
He kicked his legs and almost shrieked. His right leg was dangling further down in the water than his left, and it felt unresponsive. Not only out of position but now, without a doubt, broken.
He leaned his head back in the water and inhaled deeply, desperate for the pain to subside. He blinked and looked up. Like before, everything above him was dark. And silent. The bright light from the wall was gone. No drill, no–
Then something flashed.
It was a brief, weak light and it gave a faint glow to the wall in front of him only momentarily. He waited, breathless, until it happened again. Tay twisted around through a wave of pain, looking for the cause, and found it a few hundred feet behind him, floating in the water.
It was a small beacon––a light, bobbing in the water next to a larger elongated object. They had dropped him an emergency rescue kit.
Tay swam toward it with his arms, cringing and trying desperately not to use the lower half of his body. He clawed his way forward, closing the distance until he reached the kit.
It was larger than he had thought at first glance and wrapped tightly in clear plastic. Strapped across its long shape, causing the package to roll over onto its side, was the flashing light. Having been activated by the water, it alternated between bright flashes of white and red.
“Thank God!” Tay flipped the package over, looking for a crease in the thick plastic. When he found it, he pulled as hard as he could, ripping a strip of clear tape away. He pulled the flap open, searching for more creases and ripping them free just as quickly.
When Tay finally managed to pull the contents out, he laughed in delirious relief. A small, orange life raft materialized, wrapped around another smaller package in its center.
***
Despite the throbbing pain in his leg, Tay flung himself into the raft, exhausted but triumphant. He managed to prop his head up onto the edge of the raft as if it were a hard, inflated pillow. With his chest heaving and the pain of climbing in now behind him, Tay lay motionless, sprawled happily from side to side. The emergency light continued flashing from its new spot next to him inside the raft.
After several long minutes, Tay raised up the waterproof bag and studied it, deciphering the clasp without difficulty and dumping the contents out. The first item he recognized was the headlamp. After turning it on, he sorted through the remaining items. Several plastic bottles, a first-aid kit, a small, hand-operated desalination pump, some thin rope, a digital camera, and dozens of energy bars.
But nothing made him happier than the sight of the hand-held radio.
93
Everyone in the Pathfinder’s sickbay jumped when they heard Tay’s voice crackle over the radio. Ackerman leaped from his seat, barely catching the radio before nearly knocking it onto the floor.
“Tay! Tay! We hear you! Can you hear us?!”
Below, in the darkness, Tay grinned from under the bright glow of the headlamp strapped to his head. Thank God! He had been afraid the signal wouldn’t make it through the walls.
“I can. Who is this?”
“Elgin, it’s Ron Ackerman!”
Ackerman? Tay blinked and furrowed his brow. He knew the name well. “Are you…on the Pathfinder?”
“Yes. I am.”
“What the hell are you doing on the Pathfinder?”
The large engineer smiled and laughed. “I was reassigned. To come help save your sorry ass.”
Tay stared up into the shadows above and laughed himself. “Well, what are you guys waiting for?”
94
In the sickbay, Ackerman looked around the room as everyone cheered and raised their arms in victory. Beene jumped from his chair and clapped Smitty firmly on the back, leaving a fleeting grimace on the smaller man’s face.
The room was jubilant as Ackerman pressed the button and spoke again.
“We’ve been trying to contact you.”
“Sorry about that,” Tay replied. “I think I was out for a while.”
“You okay down there?”
“More or less.” Tay looked around at the dim surroundings. His headlamp was just bright enough to make out the strange shelves covering the inside of the wall. And to illuminate several feet below into the water. “I’m a little banged up, and my right leg may be fractured. But I’m alive, and I can’t tell you how good it is to hear you guys!”
“Good. Because we were beginning to think we accidentally killed you.”
“Lucky me. And by the way, thanks for the supplies. I think the painkillers are already starting to kick in.”
Ackerman winked at Smitty. “It was the least we could do.”
“So, what happened with the drill?”
“It’s a long story,” Ackerman replied. “Let’s just say our timing wasn’t the best we’ve ever had. Mother Nature sure as hell wasn’t making things easy for us.”
“You got a storm or something?”
“Yes. Hurricane levels but it should be past us soon.” Ackerman released the button and looked at the others. “So, tell us what you’re seeing down there?”
95
Even light pressure on his leg was torturous, but the further he moved the more Tay convinced himself that the Norco was doing the heavy lifting. Which meant his injury was likely worse than he thought. An unfortunate fact which he tried to put out of his head while he shuffled forward, deeper into the belly of the ship. The small radio dangling from his neck, had been turned off in an attempt to preserve battery.
What he discovered first, was how much smaller his surroundings appeared in the light. It probably shouldn’t have surprised him, given how dark his first venture had been. Not being able to see had a way of making things feel much farther away.
Now with the reality of narrower walkways and walls awash in a light dull gray, his first clear look inside was strangely…disappointing.
Until he reached the first room. What felt empty before, it turned out, wasn’t. Instead, the room was open and lined on the opposite side with several odd-looking objects, rising from the floor and almost egg-shaped. Although not quit
e. Together they ran the length of the two different walls—four along one, and three along the other—walls that connected to each other at perhaps a forty or fifty-degree angle. But what enraptured Tay almost immediately were the markings.
Not markings per se as much as diagrams. Etchings in the walls, covering them almost from floor to ceiling.
He shuffled closer and studied the indentations. They were arranged very concisely, some appearing to repeat multiple times.
Tay remained motionless, tracing the etchings from section to section. Most were lines, squares, and circles, with smaller areas resembling what might be some form of writing. Yet the longer he inspected them, the more he thought they looked like something he’d seen before.
It wasn’t until he followed several patterns down to eye level that he reached out and gingerly felt the surface. Tay suddenly jumped back when the small circle he touched lit up and promptly faded.
Glancing around nervously, Tay waited, but nothing happened. He touched it again, watching the light appear and then fade a second time. Still nothing.
He then tried another circle. And found the same thing. Then another and another before finally touching a square just above them. All gave the same muted reaction.
Tay took a clumsy step backward and studied both walls, continuing to trace the symbols. What Tay was looking at reminded him an awful lot of a computer control panel.
Etchings near some of the circles and squares clearly resembled some kind of word or label. They were similar to how humans marked their own ships, regardless of country or language.
Mosaic (Breakthrough Book 5) Page 27
