by Joshua Grant
“But you kept your calm and did what you had to do to survive,” Carver pressed. “And survive you did. But not just you, no. You saved seventeen members of your team.” Carver let his words sink in.
“And that’s why I called you here tonight Dr. Pittinger. I need you to join my team.”
Aubrey frowned. “I don’t understand.”
Carver plucked thoughtfully at his graying mustache. “The news has covered the vanishing of my ship, the Emerald Rose, quite extensively. But what they won’t show is that another of my ships, an exploration vessel called the La Magia, vanished in the same area just days prior. It had been tracking a strange signal, a signal from the bottom of the ocean.”
Aubrey blinked, staring at him for a long moment. Forget Bond. This just went sci fi convention. “A signal ate your ships? Carver, I hope you didn’t call me up here to give you a psych evaluation ‘cause I’m not that kind of doctor.” God, someone had to be playing a prank on her. She just hoped this was one of those hidden camera gameshows and the host was about to pop out of Carver’s desk and give her two thousand dollars.
Her humor slowly drained when his stony expression didn’t slip, not even a little. “No, Dr. Pittinger, I’m being quite serious. Two ships, one area, and no forewarning. Well, almost none.”
Aubrey raised her eyebrows, inviting the inevitable hokey explanation.
“Just before she went dark, the Emerald Rose sent a transmission, a transmission known of by only a select few people in my corporation. It contained only a single word: Pandora.”
“Pandora?” Despite still thinking he was nuts, Aubrey had to admit her curiosity was piqued. “That’s it?”
“That’s it. I imagine someone of your educational background knows the myth of Pandora?”
He was testing her. He had been this whole time. She couldn’t decide whether she wanted to pass or fail. “Pandora was a Greek creation myth. She was the world’s first woman. Zeus sent her as a ‘gift’ to his enemies, the Titans. But in truth she was a weapon. He sent her with a vase, aka Pandora’s Box, and told her to never open it. Naturally, curiosity got the better of her. She opened the vase and released the spirit of evil on the world.”
Carver nodded approvingly.
“And you think, what, that your research ship or the cruise liner found Pandora’s Box, the Pandora’s Box?”
“I don’t know,” Carver stated simply. “That’s what I’m sending a team out there to figure out. And I want you to go with them.”
Aubrey shook her head in disbelief. He was screwing with her. Maybe that’s how it was when you were that rich, playing with the lives of the little people for a moment’s entertainment. It was sick. All those people lost and he was joking, actually joking about it! And Aubrey sure as hell didn’t like being messed with, not when she had bigger things on her plate, real world problems.
“Carver, you’re a piece of work. If you said you were sending a team to salvage the ship, I would have believed you. Or to rescue whoever still may be stranded onboard, I would have believed you. But this? This is crazy. You’re crazy Mr. Carver. What other explanation could there be for sending someone like me on something like this, huh?”
Carver smiled as if that was exactly what he wanted her to ask, as if this entire conversation had already been planned out and they were just going through the motions. “Why indeed? Aside from the fact that you can keep a cool head in a tough situation, that you’re a doctor, and a capable researcher?” Carver’s pause swelled along with his point.
He took a deep breath. “I’m going to level with you Dr. Pittinger, because I trust you. I don’t know why but I do. I believe someone in my company has been trying to sabotage this particular endeavor from the start. The loss of both ships in such a short time only confirms that. Frankly, I can’t trust anyone in my employ. You’re an outsider. When something is sick within, it’s important to seek outside help, especially from a doctor.”
Aubrey stared at him dubiously. God, is anyone really this paranoid? And he was continuing with this screwed up charade. Why? Frankly, she really couldn’t give a shit. She looked him square in the eye. “Give me one reason why I shouldn’t walk out that door right now. Make it a good one.”
Carver smoothed a hand over his polished, larger than life desk reading the script that wasn’t there. Finally he spoke. “You were forgetting the last part of the Pandora myth, Dr. Pittinger. All the contents of the vase poured out leaving only one thing remaining inside: hope. And that’s what you’ve been looking for these past few years, isn’t it? Hope. Ever since Jennifer—“
“Don’t say her name!” Aubrey snapped suddenly, uncontrollably.
Carver persisted, unfazed by the reaction. “Ever since you watched helplessly as your little girl wasted away to some stupid disease--was eventually claimed by that disease--you’ve been searching for a cure in the hope that no mother would ever have to go through what you went through. But research is costly and like your daughter your hope and your funding have slowly disintegrated.”
Hot tears burst onto Aubrey’s cheeks, forced up by the burning anger in her chest. She turned away, refusing to let him have the satisfaction of knowing he got her where it hurts. She suppressed the sob that was growing in her throat, that had been growing there ever since the loss of her brave little girl.
Carver continued, more gently this time. “Go with my team Aubrey. Please. Even if you find nothing spectacular, which I don’t think will be the case, I’ll commit to fully funding your research indefinitely.”
Aubrey blinked away the tears, turning to face him. Was he serious!? Ghost stories and quests and now grand promises? Some absurd part of her badly wanted to tell him to screw off and then storm out. Every part of her wanted to lock herself in a room and scream into a pillow. But some small part of her wanted desperately to believe him. He was dead on the money. She was beginning to give up any hope of finding a cure with the resources she had to work with. And she had to find a cure. It was that or—
“I’ll do it,” she said a little more hoarsely than she would have liked, the declaration surprising her more than anything. A minute ago she was ready to turn and walk out, and then likely write Carver a hateful editorial in some tabloid newspaper, but one mention of Jenny—
Just do it. Go on Carver’s wacked out paid vacation. Get the money, get revenge on the fucking disease.
She swallowed hard. “I’ll do it,” she said again, this time more adamantly. “What the hell, I’ve always wanted to go on a cruise.”
Carver smiled wider than ever and Aubrey hoped she hadn’t just sold her soul to him. “Good. That’s very good. I assure you, Dr. Pittinger, the shows on this one will be unlike any other.”
Chapter 2
Men’s Locker Room
Julian toweled the excess moisture from his body and discarded the finely woven cloth to the dark recess of his all too barren locker. He didn’t bother to hang it up. The expensive fabric, something that probably cost an arm and a leg only to be used to dry an arm and a leg, was just another reminder that he was here, worlds away from the slums his brother was forced to endure day after day.
Not after today, he reminded himself.
Julian hated fighting. He hated killing even more but he’d continue to do both if it meant giving his brother a chance at having a good life, a life he never had. Julian grew up in the slums of El Salvador where drug use and murder were everyday occurrences. He joined a drug lord’s security cadre when he was only fifteen. Long story short, he had seen more scrapes than he was due.
But in all the fights he’d been in, he never killed anyone that didn’t deserve it. Before she died, his mother told him that survival in and of itself was empty. Your life had to mean something. There had to be an ideal to strive for. There had to be God.
He blew her off at the time, but her words made a nice mantra to repeat when the dying screams of the men he killed would return to him in the night. He never truly understood them until
she died, killed by AIDS like so many others in his town. She hid it well.
Suddenly Julian had something to live for, someone. At the time little Ricardo was too young to understand the terrible things Julian was forced to do. The kid was getting older though and Julian would be damned if he was going to let his little brother follow in his blood soaked footsteps. The kid was too innocent, too loving to be touched by that kind of sin.
So he left the service of his employer. Not an easy thing to do in that business. One didn’t just say, “Hey big drug lord, I’m putting in my two weeks, just FYI.” But a few cold corpses later Julian found that his former boss was more agreeable.
It wasn’t long before Carver’s people picked him up for his “unique talents.” Julian may still have been a killer, but with Carver it was honest work, and more importantly, it paid well. He ran security for shipments mostly. Boring stuff. But boring meant that Ricardo would never have to get a piece of the action and that was enough to placate Julian.
Until this one.
Boring could hardly describe their current task. When was the last time pirates had hijacked a cruise ship? Had there ever been one? Pirates. That was the official story. Julian’s opinion: the whole thing stank worse than the corpses he’d been forced to dispose of over the long years.
And you’ll never figure out why if you stand around in your birthday suit all day.
He pulled on his black jumpsuit. Clothes, always a good first step in the search for truth.
Tick.
Julian whirled at the soft sound.
The hell!?
He stood agape at the finely suited man who leaned heavily on a cane at the end of the row of lockers. There had been no one in the cement bunker of a room when Julian had come in and there was only one entrance. How did someone sneak up on him, especially a cripple?
He quickly glanced around to make sure no one else had crept in, like a couple of ex WWE wrestlers with AK-47s, but it appeared to be just the two of them, a dripping shower faucet in the back, and some rusty lockers left in varying states of disarray. Still, one couldn’t be too careful. In Julian’s line of work, he had made more than a few enemies. He slid his foot back as a brace in case he had to defend himself.
“Can I help you?” His voice lightly echoed in the hollow chamber.
A thin smile painted itself across the visitor’s face. “I’m not the one who needs help.”
Julian braced himself for the inevitable attack that usually followed a statement of that kind. “Look pal—“
The man silenced him with a wave of the hand. “I’m not here to harm you. In fact, I’m your greatest ally. Not everything is as it appears to be. You must trust no one Mr. Eduardo.”
The way the man smiled like he knew some great secret that the rest of the world wasn’t privy to made Julian’s skin crawl. His piercing stare only added to the conclusion that this guy shouldn’t be messed with. And yet, something seemed very familiar about him. Familiar usually wasn’t a good thing when Julian was concerned.
“Who the hell are you and what do you want?”
The man nodded, as if that was exactly the question he wanted Julian to ask. “I’m here to help you with your little problem. There is no knowledge that is not power and right now, Mr. Eduardo, you are completely powerless. That’s the way Mr. Carver wants you, in the dark. And believe me, when you board that ship you’ll be in the presence of darkness.”
How can he possibly know—
The man’s identity finally clicked. When he first joined the company, Julian had to take a course on the corporation’s history. A lot of good that did. Part of that course was learning who the top execs were, probably so that if they were kidnapped he could recognize them and not shoot them in the rescue. This was Marcus, a member of the board. Everything about the guy screamed nuts but something in his voice made Julian believe him whether he wanted to or not.
“And why would Carver deceive his own rescue party?” Julian asked, only minor amounts of skepticism leaking into the question.
“Why indeed?” Marcus countered. “I don’t know his motivations yet but I do know he is misleading you. First, he told you that the Emerald Rose has been taken by pirates but that doesn’t explain why a ship of that size has been off radar screens for a week. And then there’s this.”
Julian tensed when he slipped a gloved hand into his suit jacket. He exhaled a moment later as it reemerged producing a thin tablet computer. “Carver would have you believe that the Emerald Rose was the only ship to come under duress in the past week. In reality, there were two. The wreckage of a research vessel called the La Magia was recovered by the crew of the Emerald Rose just before her disappearance. A very strange coincidence, yes? What they found, Mr. Eduardo, was one survivor and one black box.”
“So the pirates destroyed a research vessel and used the wreckage to lure the Emerald Rose,” Julian proposed.
Marcus’ cold eyes twinkled with amusement. “Possibly, but what the black box recorded leads me to believe otherwise. Just before going dark, the Emerald Rose sent a data stream containing a string of words and this recording from the La Magia’s black box.”
Marcus held up the computer and clicked the triangular play button in the center of the small screen. The blackness was immediately replaced with the chaotic shaking of a handheld camera. The man on the other side of the glass lens was the La Magia’s first officer based on what was left of his torn shoulder lapel. Julian hoped he was a better seaman than cameraman as the image jumped from the man’s soiled face to the left and right of the dark engine room. Cinematography was obviously the last thing on his mind. He clearly had a rough night. His once white uniform was all but in tatters, the remaining shreds of it smeared with grime and the unmistakable crimson of blood.
But what struck Julian the most though was the man’s eyes. Tired and dark…and crazed. He had seen that fear-driven desperation in the eyes of the men he’d cornered and killed, but never as intense as this. The first officer was afraid, truly afraid beyond anything Julian had ever encountered, and that honestly scared him a little, Marcus’ parlor tricks or no.
What the hell?
Julian squinted, willing his eyes to see more. Finally, the gritty camera stilled, focusing solely on the man. He had apparently finished whatever task he had set himself to doing. He stood there breathing in short, quiet gasps, strangely calm and still after the frenzy of motion.
“I didn’t want it to come to this,” he said in a choked whisper. Julian could hear the strain in his voice. He scanned the edges of the camera, willing it to pan around the room and give him a better picture of the situation, but it remained fixed on the desperate man’s haunting face.
“I’m all that’s left now. And they don’t just kill you. No, no, no. There’s things.”
He tapered off. His frightened eyes darted around the darkened room searching for the threats veiled in shadows. Finally, they fell to the emergency flare clutched in his free hand. He popped the plastic cap off and focused back on the screen. “Please, please help me.”
Something off screen let out a shrill, inhuman, lusting cry making Julian jump. Hopefully Marcus didn’t see. The man’s attention snapped up, the fear in his eyes palpable. He wasted no time in igniting the torch and hurling it to the ground.
Oh shit!
In the split second that followed, the flare’s red glow revealed a floor drenched in crude oil. The man had been busy puncturing the ship’s fuel tanks with an ax still lodged in the tank wall behind him. The fireball that followed instantly engulfed the image of the man in a hellish light. The video froze there.
The locker room was again silent, save for the occasional drip from the shower. Julian stared at the still screen, not really sure what to think. What the hell could scare a man so badly as to blow up his own ship? He thought the man crazy at first but then there was that noise, so feral and inhuman. And why would Carver keep this from him and the rest of the team?
Becau
se it’s batshit crazy, that’s why.
It occurred to Julian that Marcus might have staged the whole thing. He certainly had the money to make a Hollywood level film. But to what end? If he was trying to sow the seeds of doubt about Carver’s leadership within the company, why do it in such an outrageous way?
“It certainly creates a lot more questions than it answers, doesn’t it?” Marcus intruded.
Julian looked him over. “So I ask you once again, why are you showing me this?”
Marcus tucked the computer back in his vest. “We’re playing a dangerous game, Mr. Eduardo, and in every game the players need power. I give that to you in the form of knowledge, knowledge of what you’re up against. I believe that the Emerald Rose picked up something more than a survivor, something evil and intent on less than the good will of men. I also believe in hedging my bets. Something tells me that before this night is over, more than just the fate of one ship will rest on your shoulders. I’m sure you’ll do whatever is necessary.”
Marcus didn’t wait for a response. He tipped his head respectfully as if he was out for a leisurely stroll and disappeared around the edge of the lockers as quickly as he came. The sound of the room’s only door opening and closing announced his exit.
Julian stood agape. What—what the hell just happened?
He half thought about rushing out and beating some more answers out of the man. But aside from the fact that assaulting a board member was moderately illegal, Julian was monumentally late for the mission briefing. He was so transfixed by the bizarre encounter that he lost track of time. He needed to finish getting dressed and rush upstairs and—
--and then what? Julian stopped with one boot half on to contemplate the question. He had always been sure of what he was doing—work hard, make some money, help Ricardo—until now. He suddenly felt poised upon a precipice, a light breeze away from teetering into total oblivion. And oblivion in this case seemed sure as hell not where he wanted to be. He leaned a hand on his locker, his finger lightly touching something. Paper. A picture, the last one he and Ricardo took with their mother before she passed.
