The Demon Crown

by James Rollins

  Valya studied each of them before coming to a conclusion. “I actually believe you.” She lowered her palm without pressing it. “But it’s not good enough.”

  She waved to the armed men, stepping away from the glass.

  “We’re finished here. Take them to the plane.”

  Inside the room, three men thrashed in their chains, like slabs of meat on hooks. Agonized screams followed Gray and the others as they were forced at gunpoint away from the window.

  He stumbled as he turned, numb with the knowledge there was nothing he could do for the men inside, but a new purpose focused him.

  He stared at Valya’s back, making a silent promise.

  I will make you scream even louder when I kill you.

  3:55 A.M.

  It’s taken us too long to get here. . . .

  Seichan questioned her course of action as she released ballast and floated her stolen submersible toward the station’s pressurized docking chamber. The steel-floored glass dome abridged the lowest level of the complex, a glowing barnacle on the underside of the research station.

  On her approach, she had noted another two matching domes, along with a larger one. The conning tower of a midget submarine poked up into the bigger dock. Its bulk looked like a giant lamprey latched on to the facility. Past its length, her sub’s cone of light revealed the black eye of a tunnel, which likely led out to the open ocean.

  Seichan craned her neck as her tinier craft rose toward the circular pool at the center of the docking chamber. The pressurized air inside the dome must hold back the lake from flooding into the rest of the station.

  When the sub breached, she ducked her head low over the controls.

  Palu crouched behind her on the open deck in back.

  As the craft surfaced into open air, salt water drained from his body and off the glass hood over the pilot seat. As it cleared, she spotted the watery image of a dockworker coming toward them.

  She scowled at his presence. She had hoped to find the place empty.

  No such luck.

  The worker waved an arm impatiently. “Hayakusiro!” he demanded, urging them to hurry, believing they were the returning crew.

  She and Palu had disguised themselves in the dead men’s face masks, so it was an easy enough mistake to make.

  The worker pointed to his radio headpiece and spoke rapidly in Japanese. “The evacuation order was just transmitted. We have fifteen minutes to clear the station.”

  Palu hopped off the back of the sub, but he immediately stopped at the pool’s edge and turned his back on the dockworker. He pretended to be waiting to help Seichan.

  The worker grabbed Palu’s arm and tried to steer him toward the exit. “Get to the airlock.”

  Unfortunately, Palu didn’t speak any Japanese.

  Seichan rolled out of the pilot’s seat and over to the back deck. As she stood up, she tossed off her scuba gear.

  Upon seeing her, the worker’s pinched expression changed to open-eyed shock.

  She expected this reaction. Her lithe form was impossible to hide in a snug wetsuit. Before the man could take a step, she leaped at him, a dagger already in hand.

  Palu stumbled out of her way.

  She knocked the worker flat onto his back. Her blade sliced his throat, cutting above the larynx so he could not shout into his radio. She covered his death gurgle with her free hand. She watched blood run in a crimson trail across the steel floor and spill into the docking pool.

  Palu quickly shed his own gear and moved to the airlock. He kept to one side, away from the door’s porthole-like window. A green light shone above the frame, likely indicating the airlock had already been pressurized to match the docking dome.

  She rose from the dead man. Before she could take a step, fresh pain burst through her body. She hunched against it, her legs suddenly weak. She breathed heavily through the flare, willing it to subside back to its steady smolder.

  Palu hurried to her side. “C’mon.”

  He hooked an arm around her and helped her to the airlock. Each step was like walking through fire. He got the door open, pushed her into the cramped space, and followed her inside, slamming the door behind him.

  An illuminated timer above the exit door began counting down from three minutes as the airlock depressurized to match the main station. She cursed the delay but recognized the slow process was to help acclimate divers as they transitioned from the docks, lessening the risk of the bends from nitrogen bubbles forming in the blood.

  Impatient, she moved to the tiny porthole in the outer door. She inspected the glass tunnel that extended from the dock. It was thankfully empty.

  Small bit of luck there.

  Her relief was short-lived.

  A Klaxon suddenly sounded. It was ear-shatteringly loud in the small space. She hunched from the noise, trying to judge its significance.

  Was it an evacuation siren? Or had they been spotted?

  Palu answered it by pointing back into the docking dome, toward its roof.

  A mounted camera swiveled there.

  Distracted by the worker, addled by pain, she had failed to spot its presence.

  She turned back to the other door. Through the porthole, she watched three men in helmets and body armor appear at the far end of the glass tunnel. They rushed toward the airlock, the butts of their rifles fixed to their shoulders.

  She checked the timer.

  Another two minutes to go.

  They were now trapped in a cell of their own making.

  She shared a glance with Palu, silently asking him.

  Are you ready?

  He shrugged, knowing they had no other option.

  4:04 A.M.

  As the siren continued to blare, Ken stood with his back to the tunnel wall. The others flanked him to either side. Rifles remained fixed on the group, while the chaos was sorted out.

  Ken stared back down the tunnel toward the blood-spattered window five yards away. The group had been forced to stop in the tunnel when the Klaxon sounded. Even above the alarm bells, the men’s screams could be heard. By now, harvesters coated their arms and legs and lower abdomen. Their bodies appeared to be struggling less as the paralytic agent in the wasp’s bites began to take effect.

  Gray stared back there, too, his face dark with rage.

  Aiko simply studied her bare toes.

  A few steps away, Valya and Masahiro huddled over radios. He could not make out what they were saying due to the noise. But the pale woman turned her icy stare onto Gray. Her lips thinned, one edge curling up with what could only be satisfaction.

  Gray noted her attention.

  The siren suddenly cut off, leaving Ken’s ears still ringing.

  Valya returned to them. “It seems all our questioning has proven to be moot.”

  “Seichan’s here,” Gray said.

  “And we have her all boxed up and ready to be delivered to Masahiro’s grandfather.”

  Gray showed no distress at this news. Instead, he stood straighter and narrowed his gaze on Valya. “I wouldn’t be so sure of that.”

  4:07 A.M.

  Through the airlock window, Seichan stared at the trio of armed men as they guarded the tunnel. Above her head, the timer ticked down the final seconds of depressurization, marking when the safety lock on the door leading into the station would be released.

  Palu leaned against the wall, accepting the inevitable.

  Finally, the timer read 0:00 and its red glow switched to green.

  Time’s up.

  The three men outside had taken up position. Two of them hung a few yards down the tunnel with rifles leveled at the door. The third shouted through the window.

  “Hands on your head! Where I can see them!”

  Seichan obeyed, as did Palu.

  “When I open the door, you wait. You only step through when I tell you. Do you understand?”

  Seichan nodded for them both.

  Agony racked the muscles of her legs and arms, making it hard
to hold this position. She pictured the tiny larvae carving paths through her flesh, leaving fire in their wake.

  Get on with it already.

  The guard glared at the trapped pair, then shifted to the side, pulling the door open. He used its steel bulk to shield himself in case they tried anything. His two partners leaned their cheeks to their rifles’ stocks, aiming into the airlock.

  Satisfied, the guard at the door yelled, “Exit slowly. Your hands move from your head, you die.”

  Seichan led the way, stepping out first. The air inside the station was cooler. She could also feel the difference in pressure. Even this small movement apparently aggravated the larvae. Fresh pain shot down her legs.

  Still, she kept her pace slow and steady, her fingers entwined atop her head.

  Palu followed, matching her pace and posture.

  The guard shifted from the door to cover them from behind with his weapon. “Keep going,” he ordered. “Slowly.”

  With no other choice, Seichan allowed the men to herd them down the tunnel toward the main bulk of the station. In her head, another timer was running. Her training with the Guild had taught her this discipline, of compartmentalizing her thought processes.

  It was more challenging due to the pain etching every muscle fiber.

  By the time they reached where the tunnel turned into the main station, her brow was pebbled with sweat. Her breathing had become gasps. She stopped at the turn, panting, half-hunched. Though her arms now trembled, she kept her hands atop her head.

  “Keep going!” the man in back shouted.

  Palu twisted and growled back. “She’s sick, brah. And pregnant. Let her catch her breath.”

  The guard scowled back, studying her trembling breaths. “Ten seconds.”

  Only need another two.

  As the timer ran out in her head, she leaped headlong toward the side tunnel, pulling a blade from a wrist sheath.

  Palu followed her through the air.

  Before the guards could react, an explosion rocked the entire station. Her ears popped from the pressure. She landed atop the nearest guard, who had been knocked off his feet by the blast. She jabbed her knife under his chin until she hit bone, then wrested his rifle away. Still on the floor, she fired at the man who had been behind them, catching him in the throat.

  Palu had barreled into the third guard and punched his meaty fist three times into the man’s nose. His body went slack.

  Seichan snagged the snub-nosed assault rifle and pointed toward the bulk of the station. “Go, go, go.”

  She had studied the rough layout of the station during her approach to the docking berth and fixed it in her head, where it turned like a 3-D model. But it hadn’t been her only precaution before arriving here. In addition, she had readied a stratagem not taught to her by the Guild, but by Gray.

  To improvise on the fly—to utilize old resources in new and unexpected ways.

  What Seichan had chosen to utilize had certainly been old—going all the way back to World War II. Earlier, before leaving the graveyard of Japanese bombers, she had sought out and found an intact torpedo in the sand. She and Palu had carefully strapped and hidden its length on the underside of their stolen submersible and affixed a demolition timer packed with a small C4 charge to its nose.

  At the time, she hadn’t known if the ordnance preserved in these hypersaline waters was still intact.

  She certainly had her answer now.

  Behind her, as she sprinted with Palu, a massive throaty gurgle grew louder, chasing them. She recognized and expected this threat. She pictured the airlock doors blown off—if not the entire dock. No longer held back by the pressurized dome, the lake was flooding into the station.

  She risked a glance over her shoulder. Past Palu’s bulk, water blasted into view at the turn. It struck the corner with enough force to rattle the tunnel. The churning jet swirled around the turn and roiled toward them, pushing a tangle of bodies before it.

  “Seichan!” Palu yelled at her, his eyes huge, his voice full of panicked warning.

  She turned her attention back around. Ten yards ahead, a steel iris was pinching closed across the tunnel. The explosive decompression must have triggered the automatic closure of emergency hatches, designed to seal off flooded sections of the station.

  She dug her toes into the perforated steel floor and sprinted with all her breath, using the fiery pain in her leg and belly muscles to fuel her.

  She reached the iris before it closed and dove headfirst through it. She rolled off a shoulder and back to her feet.

  Palu . . .

  The large Hawaiian had been unable to match her speed. Water frothed and growled behind him, tearing up sections of steel flooring. The ballistic polymer glass splintered around him. The iris closed tighter and tighter.

  Seichan recognized the truth.

  Palu did, too—the terror of that certainty shining in his eyes.

  He’s not going to make it.

  26

  May 8, 4:18 A.M. SST

  Ikikauō Atoll

  Chaos was opportunity.

  Gray reacted with an instinct drilled into him by the Army Rangers and honed from his years in the field for Sigma. As the explosion shook the station, knocking everyone helter-skelter, Gray lunged to the nearest guard and grabbed the barrel of his rifle. He yanked the weapon, then punched the steel stock hard into the man’s nose.

  As bone crunched, the rifle fell loose. Gray spun it around, dropped to a knee, and shot another guard in the head. To the side, Aiko moved as swiftly, dropping another gunman with a snapped side kick into his jaw. She rolled over his body, coming up with a rifle, and shot the last armed guard.

  The action had taken four long seconds—and unfortunately, he wasn’t the only one taking advantage of the moment.

  Gray swung his weapon toward the greatest threat, but Valya had Ken hugged to her chest, an arm pinned around the man’s neck. Her other arm pressed a pistol against his temple. Using the man as a human shield, she dragged him to a side tunnel. She herded Masahiro behind her.

  They vanished around the corner.

  Gray glared after them. “Hold here,” he ordered Aiko. “Cover my back.”

  “Hai.” Aiko took a firm stance, her stolen rifle at her shoulder, aiming toward that corner in case reinforcements were sent.

  Gray turned the other way and ran down the tunnel toward the three trapped men.

  Their screaming had ominously stopped.

  His heart pounded. He feared he was already too late.

  When he reached the window, he saw their bodies hanging slack in their shackles. He swung his arm wide and slapped his palm against the green emergency button. An alarm sounded and thick streams of highly pressurized white foam sprayed from hundreds of jets in the ceiling. The men’s bodies were immediately coated. From the force of the spray and whatever insecticide was in the foam, black bodies shed from their arms, legs, and bellies. As the mass was washed off, the draining white foam turned bright crimson with the men’s blood.

  The three continued to slump in their chains, their limbs limp and lifeless.

  The foaming ended with a final sputtering, and the alarm went off.

  Responding to this signal, Gray rushed to the door. He spun the locking wheel open. His breath heaved from the effort and the terror.

  Am I too late?

  4:22 A.M.

  “Move it!” Seichan hollered.

  She crouched to the side of the closing iris. A tempest of water and torn steel churned violently toward Palu as he crossed the last of the distance to the emergency hatch. As it tried to close, gears ground against the stolen assault rifle she had wedged lengthwise into the center of the iris a second ago, holding the way open for Palu. The force of the hatch’s motor vibrated the weapon, struggling to pop it free.

  The barrel began to bend.

  C’mon.

  Palu reached the hatch and dove headlong through it. His hip caught against the obstruction of the rifle, r
equiring him to twist and claw himself free. He finally rolled into the tunnel behind her.

  Seichan yanked on the assault rifle, trying to free it, but the iris had closed tightly against it. If the hatch remained open, they would never escape the water’s rage.

  Palu came to her aid, clearly recognizing her struggle and the danger.

  Together, they tried to rip the rifle out.

  It refused to budge—then it was too late.

  The wall of water hit the hatch, shooting like a fire hose through the pinched opening. Seichan tried to maintain her grip on the weapon, but she was washed down the tunnel. She caught glimpses of Palu. The Hawaiian still clung to his post, his legs braced against the hatch, impossibly withstanding the water’s force.

  Then a loud clang rang out, and Palu came rolling toward her.

  Seichan sputtered for air, trying to break her tumble.

  Then, after several harrowing, breathless seconds, the force of the riptide faded around her. She sloshed a few more feet and came to a stop. Water continued to spill forward, but with little power.

  She turned to find a waterlogged Palu crawling toward her. He clutched the rifle in one hand.

  “How . . . how did you . . . ?” It hurt too much to speak, so she nodded to the gun.

  He looked down at its bent barrel and tossed the useless weapon aside. “Not me, kaikaina.” He glanced back to the sealed hatch. “Big piece of the steel floor smacked into it on the other side. Popped it right out.”

  She nodded, relieved but still concerned.

  And for good reason.

  The station groaned under the weight of the flooded section. Around the edges of the sealed iris, the ballistic glass began to splinter.

  It’s not going to hold.

  Confirming this risk, she watched the docking dome break away and slowly fall toward the lakebed.

  Time to get out of here.

  She hauled to her feet, while Palu did the same with a loud groan.

  “Where to?” he asked.

  She simply headed away, avoiding the question as much as the truth.

  I have no idea.

  4:33 A.M.

  Gray wheeled the door’s locking mechanism until it released. He took a deep breath, then pulled the steel hatch open. Residual foam spattered into the hallway, bringing with it a stench that immediately churned his stomach. It was a cloying sweetness mixed with rotted meat.