The woman shook her head. 'Just you, Megan. Only you this time. Very few survive, but they all teach us something. No one is wasted.’
‘It’s not just me,’ yelled Megan defiantly. ‘Alex is still alive. He survived your trap.’
The woman shook her head. ‘He failed when he triggered that trap, Megan. We have no use for him. He’ll be gassed humanely. Just climb down away from the hatch.’
Megan’s arms were shaking from holding the ladder so long.
The woman signaled two men. 'Quickly, she needs the platform.'
'Wait,' called Megan, slapping her pocket with one hand. 'I need something.'
Megan climbed up again.
'No!' yelled the woman. 'Don’t go back in there! It's dangerous!'
Megan was already hauling herself through the hatch. She yelled back, 'The others left messages. I need them.'
Alex grabbed her arm to help her through.
Cold air was blowing down from the ceiling now, rapidly cooling the chamber. Alex was standing up. He looked unsteady, but he was up. Megan could see his mind racing.
‘How long do we have?’ he asked.
‘Long enough,’ said Megan. ‘Move back from the hatch. Stand behind it where they can’t see you.’
Megan scanned the chamber.
Where’s my bag? There it is.
From her bag she took her plastic sandwich container.
'Come out of there!' the woman demanded.
Megan activated her phone. She hadn't come back to get the messages. She'd come back to make one.
She lifted the phone to her lips and started recording.
'It's me, Dad. I'm still alive. I really miss you. I know you’ve been trying to find me, but you don’t have to worry anymore because I’m coming home now. I just have one thing left to do. I'll see you when I get there. I love you, Dad.’
Megan saved the file.
She put her phone in her plastic sandwich box, sealed it tight and then wedged it down the back of her shorts.
Without wasting a second, she sat on the floor and braced the shackle between her shoes.
She took three quick breaths. It was going to hurt, but she knew pain. This chamber had nearly frozen her to death. It had burnt her with acid. It had sliced chunks of her flesh and cartilage away. It had nearly cooked her alive. This chamber had taught Megan a lot about pain.
This shackle is coming off.
Right now.
Megan thrust at the restraint with her shoes.
The heavy iron compressed her hand.
Her wrist clicked.
Her knuckles crowded together, but couldn’t fit through the shackle.
Not without a bloody sacrifice.
The skin began tearing from her knuckles.
Megan pushed on through the pain, feeling the iron peel away her skin.
Her hand inched through the shackle by degrees until...
...clatter.
The shackle shot off. It flew through the hatchway and dragged the chain after it, clattering loudly against the ladder on its way down.
Megan didn’t even stop to check her injured hand. She was free from the chain and her hand still worked. That was essential for her plan.
The yelling from below sounded hostile now.
I don't have long.
But it wouldn’t take her long.
She’d made a promise to herself when Glen died. She intended to keep it.
She slid the artifact toward the hatchway, balancing it over the edge.
The woman squinted up at the hatchway. 'Don't make us sedate you, Megan.'
Megan called back, 'The others left you a message. I'm sending it down.'
She took a firm grip and then heaved up the tailfins.
The bomb slid through the hatchway like a torpedo leaving a submarine.
Alex slammed the hatch shut behind it.
Megan curled into a ball and covered her ears.
Her plan was simple.
Whatever sick minds designed these chambers had made them strong enough to confine the damage from an exploding bomb. Hopefully that same design offered protection from an explosion outside the chamber.
With the hatch shut, Megan didn't hear when her tormenters started screaming.
She did, however, hear when they stopped.
Or rather, she felt it.
The explosion hit the chamber so hard that everything became airborne.
Five human corpses and the artifacts from every period of human history flew into the air as though gravity didn’t exist.
Megan felt herself heaved into the air with everything else.
Then she was falling.
She seemed to fall too far. She was sliding.
The tower is falling!
When she hit the floor, it was no longer level. Everything in the chamber began sliding down a thirty degree slope that was now the floor. She couldn’t see Alex. The wooden chest from the Titanic toppled end-over-end. The stone calendar slid like a giant hockey puck. The dozens of other artifacts all bounced and slid and tumbled together as though attracted by a giant magnet.
Victoria’s body slammed into Megan and sent them both careening with all the artifacts toward the bottom of the chamber.
Crash!
Megan’s back hit something soft.
It was Chrissie. She was pinned between Chrissie and Victoria. She felt objects thumping into Victoria’s body, burying her deeper and deeper.
God, I‘m buried. How much is on top of me?
Megan struggled to breathe under the weight.
‘Alex!’
‘Hold on — I’m coming! Where are you?’
‘Under Victoria!’
Megan heard Alex throwing artifacts and then finally felt Victoria’s weight shifting.
It wasn’t enough.
‘I can’t move!’
Alex tossed aside a helmet and a broken sundial before shifting Victoria again. ‘Give me your hand.’
With help, Megan squirmed out from under Victoria. She clambered up and out of the pile.
After a moment to catch her breath, she crawled up the floor, away from the tangle of bodies and artifacts that had been their entire life for the past week. Alex tucked something under his arm and followed.
The explosion had blasted open the hatch.
Megan grabbed the edge of the hatchway and peered through.
The deck was devastated and already flooding with seawater.
Not a single person was left standing.
The psychotic cleaner had been closest to the bomb. The woman must have practically disintegrated.
The ladder still reached down to the deck, but that piece of deck had been torn away and now dangled just meters above the water.
The entire tower had been blown sideways. It hung over the side of the badly listing ship.
‘I’ll go first.’
Megan turned and carefully climbed down the twisted ladder. The metal still felt hot from the explosion.
Alex checked she’d reached the bottom before starting down. The ladder creaked and twisted even more under his weight.
Megan moved over. The dangling piece of deck was barely large enough for them to stand side by side, gripping the ladder.
Hooking one elbow through the ladder, Alex showed Megan what he carried.
It was the seventh bottle.
My bottle. My secret.
‘I found this when you passed out.’
Megan glared at the bottle.
She didn’t want anything more to do with these sadistic animals and their demented mind games. She’d escaped. She didn’t have to follow their rules anymore. That meant the information in that bottle could stay what it was supposed to be all along.
A secret.
‘I don’t want it. I don’t even care what it says. I know who I am.’
Alex nodded, pleased with her answer.
He pulled the cork with his teeth and then hurled the bottle into the ocean.
M
egan watched it bob for a moment and then sink away.
Good riddance.
‘Now we know their big secret,’ said Alex, waving at the ship. ‘It’s all recorded on your phone. It won’t be a secret for long.’
Megan nodded and looked up again at the ship.
These people didn’t want anyone repeating the mistakes of the past, but they were repeating the biggest mistake of all.
They were underestimating humanity’s ability to solve its own problems.
Just like they underestimated me.
Megan pushed the plastic container with her iPhone securely down the back of her shorts.
‘Can you swim with that hand, Alex?’
‘Just watch me.’
Megan dove into the water and struck out for land.
Two weeks later
Alison walked through Elizabeth's empty house.
No matter how much wood she fed the fireplace, she still felt cold.
The house felt smaller than she remembered.
She stared from the hallway into her bedroom. A shiver of revulsion ran up her spine. Her bedroom shared a common wall with the main bedroom.
One thin wall had separated Alison from Elizabeth.
She must have heard what he was doing to me. She must have heard me crying.
Alison had never wanted to see this place again. The entire house and Elizabeth's precious garden could burn to the ground for all she cared.
But that wouldn't change anything.
'Closure,' her therapist had recommended. 'Nothing there can hurt you now. You need to see that.'
So Alison had come.
Reluctantly.
It felt more like re-visiting an old nightmare than achieving anything approaching 'closure'.
For three days she'd kept herself busy, donating all Elizabeth's belongings to charity, throwing out the worthless junk and then listing the house for sale.
Everything was done now.
She need never return.
The entire house was empty.
Empty except for two old shoeboxes on the kitchen counter.
Alison had discovered them hidden under blankets in the hallway closet.
One shoebox contained photos.
Family photos that Elizabeth had selectively stripped from her photo albums. The common theme was Alison. Any photo containing Alison had been quarantined from the family albums and hidden away.
It's like she pretended I never existed.
Alison was never the subject of any of the photos. Not even a baby photo. In every image she looked like a stage prop hustled into the picture as an afterthought.
An accessory.
That's what I was to her. An accessory to be used. Used and discarded.
The other shoebox contained letters.
Alison recognized her own handwriting. These were her efforts over the years to contact Elizabeth. To gain some kind of recognition for what she'd been through. To understand why Elizabeth allowed it to happen.
Well, Alison had her answer now.
I wasn't a real person to her. I wasn't true family. I was just an accessory to be used for photographs and cruelty. A problem that was easier to hide in a shoebox and forget about.
The police hadn't told Alison much. What they did give her was a flash drive. Apparently it contained a recorded message from Victoria.
Alison couldn't bring herself to play the message, and now she knew why.
She ignored me for all these years. She pretended I didn't exist. And now I don't care. I don't care what she has to say.
The fireplace was burning low again, but Alison didn't fetch more firewood.
Instead, she knelt and began feeding in the photos and letters.
The photos curled like dried leaves.
The letters resisted, but the flames were ruthless.
Even the shoeboxes went in.
'Hey,' Alison's husband called from the front door. 'The girls are buckled up and ready to go. What are you burning?'
Alison tossed the flash drive into the quickly dwindling flames.
She stood and smiled at the man she loved. 'Nothing that matters anymore. Let's get those girls home.'
#
Maddie had fallen asleep with her head on Michael’s shoulder again.
Michael carefully slid free, set aside her bedtime story and covered her with the blankets.
She was adapting well to their new routine. This was a small house compared to where they’d lived with Chrissie, but Maddie didn’t seem to mind.
Michael just wanted Maddie safe.
When Chrissie took Maddie away, it was the lowest point of his life.
He was terrified.
He realized marrying Chrissie was the stupidest mistake he’d ever made.
He knew she was possessive. She read his emails and text messages. She isolated him from his family. She even tracked him with her smart phone.
He put up with it all, believing that once Chrissie had a baby, once they were a true family unit, she would change.
She would have someone to love, other than Michael.
Something to be good at, other than work.
A baby would change everything.
He was wrong.
Chrissie didn’t have a maternal bone in her body.
If anything, having a child made her more possessive and controlling than ever. She treated Maddie as either competition for Michael’s attention or as a tool to manipulate him.
When he’d finally had enough, when he left her, it was Maddie who paid the price.
Michael couldn’t comprehend a mother harming her own child.
Chrissie almost killed Maddie, just to teach him a lesson.
Just to punish him for daring to leave her.
Removing Maddie from harm’s way became Michael’s only goal, so it wasn’t surprising when the police suspected him of Chrissie’s disappearance. Michael had been with his lawyer that morning. Camera footage proved it. His alibi was watertight.
At first Chrissie’s absence seemed a blessing. Michael fantasized that she’d met another man and simply abandoned Maddie at daycare.
When she failed to appear in court to contest his custodial appeal, it seemed all his prayers were answered.
Then the federal police visited.
They explained where Chrissie had been, or at least what they knew.
Eight people were abducted. Two had escaped. Six had died.
Chrissie was one of the six dead.
The police gave him a recording on a flash drive. He listened to it over and over, trying to make out Chrissie’s desperate words. She was crying and talking about being cooked alive. She said they were being punished. She babbled about ice and artifacts and traps. It sounded like she was in hell. Her mind didn’t seem her own.
He would never have wished this on her, but he still felt guilty.
Guilty of how he’d felt after learning she wasn’t coming back.
Guilty because he felt relieved.
#
Michelle stared at Glen’s headstone.
Her brother wasn't buried here.
This was their family's plot, where he would have been buried had he lived out his natural life.
For a while Michelle held out hope that he’d somehow escaped. After all, if the others escaped, then why not Glen?
He was stronger than he looked. Determined. It was easy to underestimate him. If anyone could have escaped, Glen should have.
A folded envelope in her pocket proved otherwise. It meant that her final words to him were permanent.
I hate you! I never want to see you again!
She remembered yelling that at him. She remembered slapping him. At their father's funeral, she hadn't even looked at him.
She truly thought she hated him until she realized she could never see him again.
She had been crying when her boyfriend handed her the letter. Now she carried it everywhere.
It was from Megan Summerset, one of the survivors.
She described how Glen had saved her life twice. How he'd done incredible things. She described Glen as strong and caring and selfless.
She said Glen was her hero, and Michelle would have been proud of him.
Shortly after the letter, the police gave her a recorded message.
It was from Glen.
Michelle felt sick when she heard her brother’s voice. He spoke quickly, as though he had only minutes to talk. Michelle had expected a goodbye message, but what she heard was the voice of a person who expected to live. Not only live, but earn her forgiveness a hundred times over. He said that she was his motivation for staying alive and that she meant everything to him. Finally he'd told her how proud he was of her and how much he loved her.
'I love you too, Glen.'
She bent and kissed the smooth marble headstone.
‘And I forgive you.’
#
Joshua waited until his entire family left the house.
It would take his wife about an hour to get all the groceries.
With four kids aged from five to thirteen years old, private time was a rare commodity.
But he'd found some now.
He had something important to do.
He drew the flash drive from his pocket and stared at it thoughtfully. He hadn't heard from his brother in seven years. Not since their parent's funeral. Not even on birthdays or Christmas.
Josh had promised their parents to keep visiting Carl while he was in jail, but after that their lives had simply taken different paths. The few exchanges they had were awkward and short. The rift hadn't been intentional. Months without calling had simply turned into years, and then eventually so long that making contact seemed awkward, and perhaps unwelcome.
He had no idea what kind of message his brother had left.
He rubbed the flash drive with his thumb.
Only one way to find out.
Plugging in the drive, he noticed his hands were shaking.
Why am I so nervous?
He didn't know.
The folder automatically opened on his computer screen. It contained just one small audio file, labeled 'CARL'.
With his headphones on, he double-clicked the file and closed his eyes.
Carl's voice instantly filled his head.
MELT: A Psychological Thriller Page 30
