As the Worm Turns

by Matthew Quinn Martin

  The rotors began to gather speed as they climbed in. As Thorne shut them inside she said, “Good work, Becker.”

  “Don’t mention it . . . ever.” Beth crossed her arms. “One question, though.”

  Thorne shrugged as she tucked away her tablet and leaned back against the bench, mission accomplished.

  “Those checks you gave Conrad?” she asked. “They going to clear?”

  Thorne smirked. “What do you think?”

  Forty

  NEW HARBOR, CONNECTICUT

  Dr. Kander was alone in his lab. But that was nothing new. He was almost always alone, eschewing even the company of assistants. He found their presence an impediment that outweighed any benefit. Isolation was in his nature. But it had its drawbacks, the incident in Camden a prime example.

  He slammed the heel of his fist against his thigh. It was a small act, a petty one, and perhaps a waste of energy. But it felt good. Kander very rarely allowed himself such displays, and when he did, they were almost always in private. He prided himself on control. The last time he’d let his emotions get the best of him, he’d almost found himself sealed inside a burning building by the lunatic who called the shots out here. And for what? For speaking the truth?

  Kander tried to stuff the squirming memory back into its hole. The doctor loved his work, but he hated his job. He loathed the Division and its cloak-and-dagger bosh with every molecule in his body. But where else could he go? Fresh out of graduate school, there’d been plenty of options. Weyland-Yutani, Yoyodyne, North Central Positronics, Destcorp, they’d all vied for the opportunity to snap up the young and morally flexible polymath. But that man was years gone, the promise gone with him.

  Even if he did try to leave the Division now—even if such a thing were possible—those same corporations would see him as damaged goods, thanks to his employers.

  He only had himself to blame, and he knew it. The Division had offered him access to work he couldn’t have imagined before. But they’d done so on their own terms. He was theirs now. One only had to look at how they’d treated Jackson to know how inconceivable it would be to walk away. Kander shook his head. He’d placed his bet, rolled his dice, and now had to sit hunched at the table with the rest of the chumps until his chips were counted.

  At least the work offered some solace. The work kept him sane. And the creatures . . . they had proved far more fascinating than even the legends they’d spawned, the mechanism vastly more intriguing than magic. Even as a child, Kander could think of no more mundane an explanation for the unknown than magic. Magic was the refuge of small minds, the apron front that juvenile intellects scampered behind when comfortable realities got challenged.

  The chance to unlock those creatures’ mysteries, to decode what exactly they were, to discover their origins, was a once-in-a-hundred-lifetimes opportunity. And it was Kander’s. And now, with the Asbury Park anomaly in the picture, it looked as if lightning had struck twice. Which was a more common occurrence than one would assume, Kander thought. Provided you kept both hands tight on the lightning rod.

  He went to the lab’s refrigeration unit. He keyed in the combination, and it unlocked with a trailing hiss. White fog tumbled from the open door as he reached for the single sealed cylinder inside.

  Kander held it up for inspection. The severed pseudopod they’d taken from the Asbury Park anomaly hung dormant in the suspension fluid like a length of pickled snake. Its delicate skin was crisscrossed with a diamond webbing of very fine threads just below the epidermal layer.

  The point where the tentacle had been severed—just a ragged stump when they first brought it to him—had grown something akin to a root system, a tangle of filaments that dangled downward like a thatch of Spanish moss. Both phenomena were unlike anything Kander had ever seen. And according to his research, unlike anything anyone had ever recorded.

  The cold seemed to keep the specimen in stasis, but when the temperature was raised to anything above arctic, the tentacle would move. Usually just a twitch of the main shaft or a few of the trailing ganglia crawling along the cylinder walls—probing, testing. Other times, though, it was full-on writhing spasms. At first, Kander thought the specimen might be reacting to outside stimuli, that a human presence might be the catalyst. Now he wasn’t so sure.

  All attempts at a biopsy had resulted in utter failure. The instant the specimen detected a threat, it would form an impenetrable shell, which it would later shed. Analysis showed that the shells were identical to the chitin-like scales from the anomaly that Jackson had provided them with.

  Only during his first attempt at harvesting a tissue sample did Kander manage to collect even a trace amount of organic matter. And that amounted to little more than a few cells stubbornly clinging to the business end of his biopsy needle.

  At least, he assumed they were cells. And they may have looked like cells—at least enough to fool just about any observer, even a PhD biologist. But they didn’t act like cells. At least, not any that he’d ever seen. What they acted like were viruses.

  Kander had been keeping a mental tally of what they knew about the Asbury Park anomaly. He ran through the facts once more. The anomaly had demonstrated the ability to morph parts of its anatomy into simple shapes as needed. The arms became tentacles, and, according to Jackson, the legs had merged into an elongated tail.

  The anomaly could—at will and on instinct—generate a protective sheath that appeared indestructible, withstanding fire, bullets, and blunt force. But Jackson had reported that its naked skin had reacted to salt in the same manner the creatures themselves did. Kander wondered about both of those abilities, what their limits might be, and how they might be connected to the creatures.

  He peered more intently at the now-dormant specimen. It told him nothing. He locked it away again, trying to ignore the nagging curiosity that would no doubt gnaw at him long past lights out.

  Jackson was due back soon. He’d already finished one batch of snap-vial gas and was gearing up to donate enough blood for a second. Kander thought about what Ross had said back in Camden, that they’d catch Jackson at all costs, that he was priority one. And now that the lunatic’s decade-long crusade had run its course, Kander wondered if Ross really tallied the check. They had Jackson. They now had a functioning supply of the illusion-blocking gas the Division so coveted. What came next? Did Ross even have an answer to that?

  Soon Kander would be able to synthesize the compound in Jackson’s blood himself. And it would only be a matter of time before he cracked the formula. Then Jackson and his annoying sidekick could be safely liquidated. Or the girl would be, anyway. Jackson’s ticket was all but punched.

  As much for his own amusement as anything, Kander had run full scans on Jackson, and sure enough, the man’s body was riddled with tumors. No longer confined to his lungs, either, they’d metastasized and set up shop along his entire lymphatic system. They were in his glands, his major organs, even his brain. It was a wonder Jackson was conscious, let alone ambulatory and in such apparently robust health. If anything, he seemed stronger than when he’d first arrived at the compound.

  It couldn’t last, that was for certain. Kander was no oncologist, but this cancer seemed so aggressive he couldn’t understand how it hadn’t killed Jackson already. He’d ordered biopsies of the tumors, too. The results had come back, but he hadn’t gotten a chance to look at them yet. He had time to kill now, though. Might as well get that out of the way so he could at least have the pleasure of delivering the bad news to Jackson personally.

  He clicked on the file. And what he saw kept his eyes stapled to the screen. At the macro level, the tumors looked like typical malignant growths, but at the micro level, they looked like something else entirely. In fact, what they looked like were—

  Kander heard the sound of the door opening. He whipped around to spot Jackson entering the lab. He quickly blanked his screen. He’d have to wait to get back to what he’d seen. He only prayed he’d have the patience.

>   Forty-One

  I don’t get it,” Beth said. “If Conrad convinced himself that his mermaid was just a hoax, why didn’t he wonder why someone would go to all that trouble to keep it frozen? Why they kept it hidden?”

  “Maybe he did,” Thorne answered. “The human mind has a way of making an end run around truths it has a hard time with.”

  Beth nodded. She remembered Jack saying something similar to her once, back when she’d first learned about the creatures.

  They sat in Thorne’s quarters, staring at Thorne’s computer screen. The suite was almost identical to hers and Jack’s, except there was no dog curled up on the floor for company. Beth didn’t peg Thorne for a dog person anyway. In truth, she had a hard time picturing the agent owning any pet other than some exotic fish covered with poison spines.

  “Here’s the sketch of the refrigeration unit,” Thorne said, clicking her mouse. Up popped a charcoal rendition of a refrigerated sarcophagus straight out of a steampunk nightmare. It was enormous, fronted in glass, and festooned with louvered fins that might have been exhaust vents. Conrad hadn’t been kidding with the Cronenberg crack. Beth thought it would have looked perfect as the centerpiece in a gritty reboot of The Fly.

  Thorne clicked again. “And this is how Conrad described what was frozen inside.” The image that stared back at Beth was identical to what they’d witnessed at Castle Amusements. It sent a shiver running through her that she could not quell. It was all there, the same face, the same body, and the same eyes.

  “And then there’s this,” Thorne added, bringing up an archived article from the Asbury Park Press circa 1974. It was little more than a lifestyle sidebar, but it mentioned a popular attraction that had cropped up on the nearby Ocean City boardwalk.

  There wasn’t much to it besides a blurry newsprint photo of a block of ice with what appeared to be the body of a young woman inside—a young woman from the waist up anyway; below that was a tail. The image was maddeningly out of focus, and a flash off the ice had rendered nearly half of it so overexposed it was little more than muddy gray pulp paper.

  Beth read the headline out loud. “ ‘Ocean City Smitten with Minnesota Mermaid.’ ” It sounded like a joke, even to her own jaded ears. “You really think that’s a mermaid?”

  Thorne took a breath, considering before she spoke. “Of sorts.”

  Beth shook her head. Déjà vu all over again . . . again. First it was vampires of sorts. Now mermaids of sorts?

  “Why are you showing me all of this?” she asked, leaning back in her swivel chair, arms crossed.

  “I told you. Agent Ross thinks your input will prove helpful. And you proved him right once already in Ocean City. He sees in you an inborn curiosity that cannot be assuaged, even by allegiances. His words.”

  “Tell him where he can shove those words,” Beth grumbled. She’d begun to suspect that Ross was using her as a conduit to Jack, that he was trying to funnel cherry-picked information to him. To what end, Beth had no idea. But she circumvented the entire scheme by telling Jack nothing yet about what Thorne had shared with her. The only time they even saw each other was at night. And that was in the bugged suite where even whispers weren’t safe.

  There were aspects of all of this that she knew she needed to tell him, but she had to find a way to do it on the QT. That way, Ross would be unaware of the depth of Jack’s knowledge about this anomaly. It had been his idea as much as hers.

  “How come no one remembers this?” Beth asked, changing the subject. She’d seen more than her share of weird artifacts held up as if they were the Ark of the Covenant on countless History’s Mysteries episodes. This thing would have fit the bill perfectly for any number of those types of shows.

  “A few conspiracy buffs still do, but not many,” Thorne answered. “According to what we could gather, the Minnesota Mermaid was only on display for about a month and only in a few coastal cities. Even the name appears to have been chosen to piggyback on another oddity, the Minnesota Iceman, an alleged missing link also frozen in ice. And keep in mind, there was no Internet back in the seventies. Memories are fickle, and this was small potatoes compared with more well-known hoaxes.”

  “Except this one isn’t a hoax.”

  Again, Thorne nodded. “Two days after that newspaper article ran, the artifact disappeared quickly and quietly. No one seems to know who owned it or who was exhibiting it.”

  “Someone wanted it hidden. That’s how it ended up in that storage locker.”

  “Exactly. Now we just have to figure out what it is—and what it wants.”

  Thorne’s phone buzzed on her desk. She picked it up and pressed it to her ear. The conversation was short, and she ended it with “We’ll be right over.” She turned to Beth, already reaching for her suit jacket. “Come on.”

  “Come on where?”

  “I’ll tell you on the way over.”

  • • •

  They stepped out into the sun-drenched compound. The August heat was crushing, especially after they’d spent so much time in the air-conditioned suite.

  Beth still wasn’t thrilled with finding herself dragged into the Division’s machinations, but they were calling the shots. As long as those shots weren’t fired at her or Jack, then she’d have to count herself lucky—for now.

  She followed Thorne past a pair of agents in suits so identical it made them look like matched chessmen. And she realized that, with her wearing Thorne’s outfit, they must have looked that way, too. “What’s with the suits anyway?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Why the suits? You guys get a bulk discount at Anderson-Little or something?”

  “Something like that.”

  “And why do you call yourselves agents? You don’t work for the government. That’s what Jack said.”

  “Do real estate agents work for the government?” Thorne asked, not turning to face Beth as they walked down the compound’s center thoroughfare. “Do literary agents work for the government?”

  “Not exactly the same thing.”

  “No.” Thorne followed her gaze to the men she’d spotted. “The suits are a kind of uniform. For a lot of Division recruits, it’s a comfort. Most low-level agents are culled from the military. After they’re discharged, they find the civilian world treats them as little more than discarded toys. They go from coordinating attack squads and handling multi-million-dollar hardware to having a hard time convincing people they’re qualified to operate a cappuccino machine for seven-fifty an hour. The Division gives them a home. The suits give them a sense of belonging.”

  Beth remembered that when she’d first met Jack, all he would wear was a uniform of some sort. She wondered now if this was a habit he’d acquired in Division custody. “And is that all?”

  “No. The suits project an aura of authority and professionalism. As you’ve no doubt noticed. You might want to get one of your own,” Thorne added with a glance at Beth’s loaner threads.

  “Sure,” Beth said. “You and I’ll go shopping once we’ve got this whole situation sorted out. And then we can both get mani-pedis and maybe cosmos after. I mean, I’m going to want to look my very best for when your goons dump my body in some unmarked grave, right?”

  Thorne quickened her pace. “I hope your snarking gives you a sense of satisfaction.”

  Beth hurried to catch up. “They aren’t exactly inconspicuous, though, are they? The suits. I mean, for a shadowy organization and all.”

  Thorne reached one of the Division’s identical Lincolns. “Trust me,” she said, throwing open the driver’s door. “The Division can be inconspicuous when it wants to be. We know when to hide in the shadows and when to cast them. We do both, and we do it when it suits us.” Thorne looked over, a small smirk gracing one corner of her mouth. “Pun intended.”

  Beth looked at Thorne, and she tried her best to look past the automaton she’d pegged the woman to be. “So where are we going?” she asked, sliding into her passenger seat.

  “The t
ranslucent face plate you and Jackson discovered—before we gave it to Kander for analysis, I had it scanned. We’ve been running it through facial-recognition software, through every database imaginable. We just coupled the search with the sketch Conrad provided. Taken together, they generated a ping.”

  “A ping?”

  Thorne twisted the ignition. The engine fired up. “Meaning the techs think they have a match. They think they know who it is.”

  “Who who is?”

  “That’s what we’re about to find out,” she answered, and put the car in gear.

  Forty-Two

  Venerable Bede College was written above the entrance to the college in flaking wrought-iron scrollwork. Beth thought it a surprisingly modest entrance. Many of the gilded-age mansions they’d cruised past on the way here had gates that were far more impressive.

  Once inside, they drove past a few ramshackle buildings that had been constructed in a diminutive beaux-arts style, along with some midcentury cinder-block relics that wouldn’t have looked out of place in Stalinist Russia, and a few fresh additions faced with plate glass and polished granite. All of them were hideous in their own fashion.

  The college stood at the top of Grey Hill. Founded in the early twentieth century by a group of Catholic sisters of the Benedictine Order, Venerable Bede had been an all-women’s college until the mid-’80s. Now it was a small coeducational liberal-arts institution, dwarfed by the gargantuan University just a few miles away and all but invisible except to the students who attended it.

  The campus’s front entrance abutted a posh neighborhood where well-heeled New Harbor denizens occupied the refurbished estates of prominent nineteenth-century robber barons. The college’s lower border was protected by a towering wall of cyclone fence, beyond which stood the remnants of shotgun shacks that had once housed the labor pool for those same robber barons’ long-shuttered textile mills and gun factories. Thanks to white flight and decades of economic decline, Grey Hill had turned into crack central. It was a slum so decrepit it made the Docklands look bucolic by comparison.