“I think it’s the communications tether,” Hunley said, her voice shaking. “Is she getting up?”
“Slowly, but yes.” He moved the beam of light to catch Charlotte’s movements. The squid was frozen underneath the curtain of ice threads, and Ashton breathed in a sigh of relief.
“She isn’t turning back, is she? She needs to get to the vessel.” Hunley pulled a manual from the shelf. “I think I can talk her through restarting and docking.”
“Charlotte is fine, Pru, thanks for your concern,” Ashton snapped, glaring at Hunley, who turned beet red.
“Now see here, Wells,” Hunley started, rubbing her eye beneath her glasses. “I only meant—”
“I know what you meant. You think of her as nothing more than a monster to do your bidding, but you can, at the very least, pretend to value her life.”
Gazing back out the porthole, Ashton whispered a prayer, his throat tight. Charlotte jerked on her feet, her hands going to her helmet, and then she lunged for the vessel. Something was wrong, Ashton thought, and his mind went to all of the terrible possibilities. Torn suit, leaking hose, anything and everything could go awry out there and usually did.
“Why should I?” Hunley asked evenly.
He turned, staring at her. “What?”
“She is a monster, Ashton. You did not see her on the Decatur.” Hunley shook as she spoke. “If she dies, then at least we tried. But I will sleep soundly should we lose your precious Charlotte tonight. In fact, given the fact she now knows about this facility and what we are trying to do here to combat the Trembling Sickness…”
“What are you saying?” He stared at her, incredulous.
Hunley tilted her head, eyes wandering his face. “You didn’t know.”
“Know what?” Ashton’s gaze rested on Charlotte as she fought to make her way to the vessel.
“The Peaceful Union scientists had made headway on the sickness. There were even rumors of a suppressant; something to stop or reverse the affliction. That is until your sweetheart and her knights burned the place to the ground and took the information. I heard she even threw the head doctor off the roof to get the research.”
“Why would The Order do that? Curing the sickness benefits them, and their investment in North America.”
“Not The Order,” Hunley said. “Arecibo. He’s up to something and it involves her.”
“Enough!” Ashton’s balled his fists against the porthole glass. Head down, eyes clenched, he fought to subdue the rising tide of anger roiling in his chest. The truth was, he had no idea what Charlotte had done for Arecibo in his absence. But her dream from the Stygian seemed real to her. She’d told him about it, sure it was memory. Ashton knew her rage. Knew it was possible she had done something terrible for Arecibo. He shook his head vigorously, clearing the thought from his mind. “We do not know anything at the moment. I refuse to jump to conclusions based on rumors. She is a victim of Arecibo too.”
“You should have killed her like you promised,” Hunley spat, advancing across the room. “Arecibo took the best part of her. The girl you thought you loved. What is left is dangerous and unpredictable at best. A potent weapon in his hands at the worst.”
“I said, enough,” Ashton growled. She took a step back beneath his glare. His focus on what might be wrong with Charlotte’s suit, he had no time to argue with Hunley right now.
“If Arecibo gets his claws into her again,” Hunley continued, her voice soft, measured. “If he regains control…”
“He will not.” Ashton shook his head. “I’ll see to it.”
“But if he does,” Hunley said. “She must die this time. For all of our sakes. Hers included. He broke her mind, Wells.”
Ashton did not answer, instead turning to peer out into the black of the ocean, his jaw grinding as Charlotte disappeared into the vessel. He scanned the length of the Chasm Walker for signs of life or light within. Was she all right? Had her suit leaked? Was she injured?
“We need to devise a way to communicate with her,” Ashton said, turning and eying the bank of controls next to Hunley. “Are we connected to the Chasm Walker in any way? Do we receive a communication from them? How does it usually work?”
“Aethergraph, but…” Hunley shrugged. “The submersible needs to surface to send or receive anything.”
Ashton wiped his face with both hands, his mind spinning as he considered and then discarded plan after plan.
“What is that?” Hunley pointed out of the porthole.
Flashing from within the submersible shot out of the dark windows like tracer fire. Ashton’s chest tightened. Something was making her mechanica engage. She only did that under duress, in fear, or in battle. “There’s something wrong.” He turned to Hunley, but her gaze slid from his. “What did you do?”
“I–I thought…they should be dead by now.” She fumbled with the manual. He strode to her, knocking the book from her hands, backing her up against the control panel. “Wells, I promise, I thought there was enough time lapse.”
“How long has that vessel really been out there?” He leaned over her, using his size to intimidate. “What happened to the crew?”
“I don’t know,” she said, her face a mask of fear. “The dive room truly was sealed since before we arrived. That part is true. We have never been inside, but—”
“What part did you lie about, then?” Ashton’s gaze shot out to the vessel. It had turned eerily quiet and his gut knotted. He took Hunley’s chin in his hand, made her look him in the eye. “Tell me everything, now!”
“That ship, The Chasm Walker, it crashed there two weeks ago. W-we didn’t know where it came from, but it was seen by myself and Kirkland from our dirigible. Coming back from a supply run, we saw this…craft move along the surface of the water, sink, then come back up.” Hunley gulped, shaking in front of him. “Erratic behavior, something seemed to be happening aboard, and then it disappeared below the surface.”
“And you know nothing else?” Ashton pushed. “Tell me!”
“We thought, given the strange messages about sickness, that, you know…” Hunley took in a deep breath. “There might be Tremblers aboard.”
“Had she known, we could have armed her. Prepared her. Instead, you sent her into an enclosed space, defenseless!”
“She’s one of them,” Hunley shot back. “She leads them in battle.”
“No,” Ashton shook his head, his hand going to Charlotte’s baton in his coat. “Not all of them. Only the ones…the knights are different. The sickness is slowed.”
“But she has been in their midst and they do not react to her like they do to us,” Hunley shot back.
“It is worse,” Ashton shouted. “They overwhelm her. She hears them. They are drawn to her. What do you think will happen in there with nowhere to run?”
“I was willing to risk it,” Hunley said, swallowing hard and staring up at him defiantly. “Tell me you would have let her go if you knew.”
“No, I wouldn’t have.”
“And how would you have stopped her?” Hunley asked. “Something tells me she doesn’t like to be told what to do, not even by you.”
“You don’t know anything about us,” Ashton growled. He grabbed the schematic from the counter and shook it in her face, anger flaring his pulse in his ears. “What is this, then? How do you have it?”
“Gustav went out on the floes with a spyglass. He sketched it because he was curious. That’s how we know its name. It’s on the hull like a boat.” Hunley tried to slide away, but Ashton caged her with his arm against the counter.
“You tricked her. Both of us.”
“I needed to.” Hunley laughed nervously. “If I told you there might be Tremblers aboard, you might never have tried.”
“She deserved to know.”
“Look at it.” Hunley swung her arm toward the door. “It was worth the lie. I’ve never seen anything of the sort. The ability to tread these waters undetected? Do you know what we can do with that abilit
y? We can go anywhere, Wells. Advance my research by an order of magnitude due to the fact that we can get to and get away with the equipment and supplies we’ve been literally dying for out here!”
“Who does it belong to, then?” Ashton looked around the room. “This diving room is set up to operate a submersible.”
Hunley shifted on her bad leg, fiddling with the cane handle.
“Yes, but the two-man models used to facilitate diving bells,” Hunley said. “That is what I found in the maintenance logs. The teams went out for mining runs, but that’s all. There was never any submersible here.”
Ashton shook his head, sick to his stomach that he had trusted Hunley so readily.
“You had no intention of letting us leave with that vessel, did you? You simply saw an opportunity to have Charlotte get it for you and took it.”
“We need it, Wells,” Hunley whispered. “The sickness is worse, somehow. They turn faster. Are more violent. There is some sort of group behavior emerging…”
“That is Arecibo,” Ashton said, stepping back and giving her room. “He manipulated the affliction for his own ends and somehow made it worse. Stopping him is stopping the sickness, Hunley. They are one and the same.” Ashton raked his fingers through his hair, pacing. “Why can’t you understand that?”
“Blackburn must have had chances to turn on him,” Hunley said, catching Ashton’s gaze. “He abducted her, experimented on her, tortured her, and she never once tried to exact revenge?”
“She couldn’t,” Ashton said, turning back toward the porthole. “She was under his control with the shock treatments.”
“So what is different?” Hunley asked, folding her arms. “Aside from proximity to him, what has really changed? Have you thought about that, Wells?”
Lights, faint and flickering, came on in the vessel across the way and Ashton hurried back to the porthole. “She’s all right,” he said, relief swelling in his chest. His gaze went to the flood lights. “Help me. I think I can get a message to her.”
Hunley hesitated, her eyes snapping to the porthole.
Ashton sighed. “Do you want that ship or not?”
Reluctantly, Hunley nodded. “What is she saying?”
Ashton squinted out the porthole, deciphering the on and off dimming of the vessel’s outside lights. The floor seemed to tilt beneath him at her message. “She’s running out of air.”
Hunley bent and scooped the manual off the floor. “Then we must act fast. I sent out queries into the aether, asking for any information anyone might have on this mystery ship.”
Ashton’s head snapped to her. “You announced you saw it?”
“No, I said I heard about a sighting, and I made the query anonymously from an aethergraph machine inside the Maine city-state dome. It cannot be traced.”
Ashton nodded, barely convinced.
Hunley continued. “According to previous attempts at a submersible, the controls resemble that of a frigate. She should be able to pilot it to the water-lock if it is still operational. Which I believe it is because…”
“Because it likely crashed due to crew infections, not mechanical failure,” Ashton finished for her. “You knew all along what happened, didn’t you?”
She nodded.
Ashton signaled Charlotte via the floodlights, sending her directions for manning the controls as fast as he could, hoping the Morse code her father taught her was not rusty.
She signaled back. Short, two-word answers and questions.
“In your queries, was the water-lock of a standard type?” Ashton asked, eyeing the side of the vessel.
“I have no idea.” Hunley put her hand to the porthole window, shielding her eyes from the facility light to better see out into the sea. “The information I received seemed mostly supposition and guesses. But there have been submersibles attempted before, and they always used the dive room dimensions adopted by mining companies from before the quakes. Let’s hope whoever designed this had the same idea.”
The vessel moved, stirring the silt as it rose, yawing to the right as it hovered unevenly above the sea floor. Appendages grasping at the rocks and large lava crevices below it, the Chasm Walker clawed its way toward the facility.
Ashton fought the fear throbbing in his head as the craft veered sharply toward the building. “She’s coming,” Ashton said, turning to Hunley. “Man the water-lock.”
Hunley rushed over and pumped air into the chamber, readying it for the vessel to dock.
“You can do this, Charlie,” he whispered. “Steady…”
“Something is off,” Hunley remarked, walking over to the porthole. “The pitch of the vessel is all wrong.”
Ashton stepped away from the floodlights and moved toward the doors while Hunley remained distracted.
And then, the Chasm Walker rose, nose pointing upward, it ascended in a flurry of bubbles and water wash. He depressed the switch on his arm guard, releasing the sections of the shield, wincing at the sound of metal clanging together as it connected to a solid barrier.
“What is she doing?” Hunley screamed as she turned to Ashton, her face a mask of fury. “You warned her. You signaled her to do this!”
“Change of plans, Pru,” Ashton shouted as he ran for the door of the chamber, pulling Charlotte’s baton as he went. He ratcheted it out a moment before Gustav and Kirkland rounded the corner. “Back up gentlemen, unless you’d like another set of bruises to match this morning’s.”
Gustav hesitated, but Kirkland, surprisingly, charged.
Ashton sliced with the baton, forcing them backward as he advanced with the shield. He pivoted them until he slid past, toward the front of the facility. Over Gustav’s shoulder, Ashton spied Hunley hobbling out of the diving room.
“Stop him!” She yelled, waving her cane.
Ashton ground his jaw. She’d almost gotten him with the dagger handle earlier. Ashton spun away from them, feeling the stitches in his leg pull as he went. He trudged through the knee-deep flooding, ready for anyone else who might pop out of the shadows. Splashing behind him spurred him to push faster.
“You are not taking that ship,” Hunley yelled. “Do you hear me, Wells?”
He had no source of light and the pathways intersected, throwing him off. Running down one corridor, he passed a bowed-out door he was sure he had never seen, and doubled back. Hunley’s voice echoed, distorted by distance, or was it because he had turned a corner? Another hallway seemed to take him in a circle, ending back where he was. Ashton stopped, leaned against the wall, panting as he fought to breathe in the dank and stagnant air. He was lost.
What path had they taken to get deeper into the bowels? The morgue should be around here somewhere. Voices bounced off the dark walls just beyond, and Ashton eased back onto his injured leg. He had to move. Slower now, he moved with deliberation as he felt his way along the inky hallway. The water at his feet was lower, the walk harder as it inclined. He was heading in the right direction. Light from further down the way started as a pinprick and grew. He was almost there. That was the laboratory. He recognized the sound of Hunley’s machinery within. It was one of the only places other than the diving room with power. It had to be her lab. And if he was there, he could find the cave entrance and get out.
Ashton paused, listening for the sound of the other crewmembers of the facility. Hearing nothing, he straightened his vest with a tug, collapsed the baton with his thumb, and entered the laboratory. A group of people turned when he walked in, all of them pale and startled.
“I will not hurt anyone,” Ashton said, his hand ratcheting out the baton. “I only want—”
The first bullet from the rifle ricocheted off the shield on his arm and pierced the glass wall containing one of the Trembler Knights. The second pinged off of the examination table. A woman wearing the whites of the kitchen staff held the weapon in her shaking hands, a determined look on her face. Arms going up in surrender, his gaze narrowed as he recognized her as one of the two people who had tri
ed to come in during their melee with Charlotte earlier. Apparently, she had traded her knife for a rifle.
“You stay put,” she snarled, stepping forward.
Hunley ran in, limping, hair in a tangle, Kirkland and Gustav right behind her.
“Good job, Gretta,” she said and eased around Ashton to stand next to the armed cook. “We have him now.”
Ashton shrugged his shoulders. “And what do you plan on doing, Pru?”
“I plan on bargaining,” Hunley remarked, signaling Gustav and Kirkland to grab him. They pounced on either arm, holding Ashton fast. “Your life for the Chasm Walker.”
His face fell, and he shook his head. “Ah, Pru. Why are you doing this?”
“I let you two leave with that, and I may never get a chance to have it back. We can use it for good. To keep the people here safe and advance my research.” Hunley frowned. “Knowing you, that vessel is likely to be destroyed in some ill-advised heroics.”
“You are making a mistake,” Ashton said through gritted teeth.
“What’s the matter, Wells?” Hunley asked. “Afraid she won’t choose you?”
29
The controls vibrated beneath my palms, the Chasm Walker straining to surface through the ice floes floating atop the sea. My hands shook as Ashton’s warning still flared in my head.
Rise. Rise. Rise.
Something had gone wrong with Hunley. I did not know what, but I trusted Ashton’s warning.
The topmost windows of the vessel showed black sky, and I stopped my ascent. Just below the ice, I flooded the outside with as many lights as I could flick on. The small windows provided a view along the surface. There, walking in the beams provided by the Chasm Walker, four people trudged across the snow piled on the floes.
Ashton, flanked by Gustav and Kirkland, trailed an irate looking Hunley across the blocks of ice floating atop the sea. He was limping, and a sliver of worry pierced my gut. How could I get him away from them? Hunley and the others stopped short, waiting it seemed. Gaze snapping to the ladder chute at the far end of the helm, I took a breath and climbed it. Twisting the wheel in the hatch’s center until it clicked, the seal gave with a crackling sound. I pushed up the hatch and popped my head out of the top of the submersible.
Chasm Walkers Page 24
