Once I stepped up on the boat, I turned to face him, my legs trembling. “What did you do to Justin?”
“If he’d stayed in the cabin and minded his own business, it never would have happened.” Raoul sneered when he spoke, revealing an ugly row of uneven teeth.
“What never would have happened?” I thrust my hands on my hips, wanting more than anything to punch him relentlessly and break every bone in his face. I would have too, had he said the words that I didn’t want to hear. That he’d killed Justin. That I’d never see him again.
“If your nosey boyfriend hadn’t followed us, I wouldn’t have had to hurt him.”
“Followed you? But he was in the room with me.” I asked the question I could bear to hear answered instead of the one I feared asking the most.
“You must have been asleep when he stepped out. He overheard us talking in the hall, saw me holding your notebook and tried to grab it from me. That’s when I shot him.”
That was definitely the wrong answer. Murderous out-of-control anger boiled over. “Shot him!” My eyes burned with tears and I pummeled his chest with my fists.
“Take your hands off me, you stupid bitch.” Raoul shoved me roughly across the deck and I tripped and fell back on my bottom.
I jumped to my feet, dashing toward him again with my head aimed at his stomach.
“Maybe I’ll have to shoot you, too.” He grabbed me by the head half way through my rush. “Although it would be a shame. I’d think you would want to find out what all this research you’ve been doing is all about.”
I shook my head free from his grasp and glared at him. My voice shook and tears welled from my eyes as I yelled, “My research means nothing to me compared to Justin. Did you kill him?” Oh, please just say no.
“I tried to, but my bullet barely grazed the sucker. Hit him in the lower leg. I never saw him again after that.”
My relieved exhale felt like it infiltrated every fiber in my body. Maybe he’s still alive. No more rash moves. Plot out every step from now on with a cool head. All at once, a plan hatched in my mind. “You didn’t kill him,” I gushed. I allowed happy tears to flow like a waterfall from my eyes. “He could still be alive, oh, he could still be alive, I’m so happy.” I jumped up and down and sobbed even louder.
Raoul’s eyes widened in surprise and he stepped back. Overwhelmed by my emotional spectacle, he never expected my well-aimed roundhouse kick, which launched the weapon from his hand. He grabbed his hand for long enough for me to snap out another kick in a more fortuitous place. This kick had him moaning and twitching on the ground clutching his groin. I guess I’ve still got a little bit of conditioning left in me after all. Matt quickly rushed to my side. He held the Glock to Raoul’s head while I rummaged through the storage lockers to find some rope.
“Let’s go find the others,” I said to Matt once we’d tied up Raoul.
“Are you sure you’re up to this?”
I was about to ask you the same thing. “Do you know how to shoot that thing?” The Glock nearly slipped from his hands.
Matt shook his head.
What do executives know how to do? That’s what I’m wondering. “I’ve had some training.” I held out my palm and Matt dropped the gun into my hand. “We should grab a knife or two in case they’ve been tied up.” We rummaged through the storage lockers and pulled out two knives. I clutched the gun in one hand and a knife in the other as we sprinted into the forest.
I heard a distant echo of voices. Once we reached the margin of the forest, I spotted the group. My eyes struggled to adjust to the brilliant light as we emerged from the obscurity of the jungle. Their hands tied behind their backs, each person was attached by carabineer to a circle of rope that rounded the base of a bird-watching tower. “We have to find a way to distract him,” I whispered.
“How do you plan to do that?” Matt asked.
I wasn’t sure how to respond until one of my fellow scientists, Thomas, made a toilet request. That could work. Manuel unhooked him and prodded him toward the edge of the forest with the butt of his gun. He never expected my sudden attack from behind a cluster of palms.
I burst from the bushes, slicing his weapon-holding arm with the butt of my gun. Upon impact, the gun flew from his hand and Matt managed to catch it. Talk about a miracle. “Don’t move or I’ll shoot.” I grimaced and flexed every muscle in my arm to show I was serious. And I was. My patience had run out. I wanted to get on the boat and get to Justin the millisecond the rocks transformed again.
Manuel scowled, but raised his hands in the air. Matt and I freed my co-worker Andy and then used his rope to tie Manuel to a tree. Then we walked around and freed everyone else. “Are you just going to leave me here?” Manuel asked.
“I’m sure the tourists will eventually find you. You’re lucky I don’t cut you with this knife and throw you out in that water for fish bait.” I raised the knife menacingly in his direction.
“You wouldn’t?”
Don’t kid yourself, slime ball. “Why shouldn’t I?” I walked toward him clenching my teeth, pointing the unguarded knife toward his throat. “Your partner tried to murder my lover. And I’ve been a raging lunatic ever since. Just about anything could send me over the edge right now.”
I lowered the knife and prodded his upper arm with its tip until a small thread of blood appeared. “Now do you promise to leave us alone?”
Wide-eyed Manual nodded furiously. Sweat beaded and then dripped down his deeply bronzed forehead.
“Say it,” I ordered, pushing the knife a little deeper into his flesh. “Because I swear to God if I see either of you again while we’re here, I’ll slice you to ribbons.”
“I promise not to bother you again.”
“Very well.” I pulled back the knife and sheathed it.
When we got back to the boat, Raoul was nowhere to be seen. Damn. We all knew how to navigate a boat, so it wasn’t difficult to get underway. I asked one of the police officers to help me re-enter our destination coordinates and then the stronger men pushed the boat back into the water.
The crash site was only ten minutes offshore. I tried to use my radar instruments to access depth profiles, but saw only the local topography, uninterrupted by any NRG sites. I’d have to wait until the minerals reconfigured to locate them. “I’m going to go down and take a look,” I said. “I want to see if there are any fragments of the crash lying around.”
“I’ll go with you,” said Matt.
I slid on a wetsuit and then swung the rest of my scuba gear onto my back. Matt and I checked each other’s gear before we rolled off of the boat into the water.
“Watch out for anything suspicious,” I said. “Raoul is probably lurking around here somewhere.”
Matt and I descended to the bottom of a shallow incline at about one hundred eighty feet. At that depth, our light-drained surroundings appeared a shadowy, deep blue hue. Flipping on my large light and shining it across the sand, I noticed some of it looked slick and smooth, like my glassy rock sample. We’d planned to swim around the perimeter in opposite directions to cover the area quicker. Using my light to illuminate my swimming path, I searched for shards of evidence. The glassy margins of the NRG site appeared to be free from debris. I could see Matt circling around toward me. Once we met, we decided to pan the entire area of the crater. Swimming up and back became tedious. The middle section of the crater was probably two hundred feet in diameter. After we’d covered more than half of it, I began to lose hope. All I need is just one small tidbit to show that he was here. Just one. Please let me know you’re alive, Justin, my mind pleaded. And then my lamp illuminated a silver earring, the single strand of chain he always wore in his left ear. I shrieked, forcing a burst of bubbles out of the sides of my mouthpiece. Oh Justin, I knew you had to still be alive. And all at once the ocean I’d loved all my life felt magical to me again—it washed around me like a familiar, soothing womb. It’s going to be all right, it seemed to say. And a warm calm settled in
my belly. I picked up the earring and pressed it to my lips. I love you.
I gave Matt the thumbs up sign and we ascended for the surface. Once we surfaced, I was so excited, I burst out talking, forgetting I still had the regulator in my mouth. Hearing the tubal echo, I pulled it out and spoke. “It’s Justin’s favorite earring. I know he was here. He must have travelled through the tunnel that night the boat crashed. Now if the rocks would just change, we could travel through and find him.”
As we kicked on our backs to the ladder on the side of the boat, Matt cast me a doubtful look. “It looks like some kind of death trap to me. I don’t think I want you going down there again.”
Hanging on the ladder, I yanked off my fins one by one and tossed them up on the boat. “It’s not a death trap—you have to trust me.”
“I wish you would let one of our other guys go down first.”
I climbed up the ladder, looking back at him. “I have to know what happened to Justin.”
He climbed up behind me and stood beside me on the deck. “Yes, I suppose you do.”
We had nothing to do now but wait for the rocks to change. I maneuvered the boat into shallower water to anchor for the night. We spent the evening feasting on freshly caught snapper. The sun transformed to a brilliant orange and stretched out on the horizon in a bed of clouds before disappearing below the watery horizon. I hoped this would be the last time I’d ever watch a sunset alone. I’d seen too many of them in Justin’s absence. I tossed and turned as I lay on one of the scanty bunks, fearing I’d fall asleep the instant the rocks transformed. I clutched the rock in my hand, hoping I wouldn’t miss the instant that it gripped my fingers. The boat rose and fell over the gentle waves. It was like a gentle lullaby urging me to sleep. Stay awake, I told myself. Stay awake.
My eyelids drooped and dark shapes moved in front of my eyes, like patterns on fabric. And then I thought about a something, but couldn’t recall what it was a moment later. Justin’s face floated in front of my eyes and then I saw a swirling floral pattern before I drifted off to sleep.
A bright light awoke me. At first I thought it was the digital numbers on the clock radio until I noticed the light came from underneath the covers. It’s the stone.
I leaped from bed, and ran out into the hall shouting. “It’s t—.”
“Shut up and come with me or I’ll kill you.”
“Very funny,” I said, laughing. Matt clapped his hand over my mouth. Then I knew something was terribly wrong. I turned and tried to read his expression, but his face was shadowed.
He dragged me toward the front of the boat and stuffed a gag into my mouth, tying it so tightly around the back of my head, it felt like it tore the corners of my lips. The water was illuminated only by faint moonlight, dimmed by passing clouds. Another boat had been tied to ours. A few men sat waiting. “Grab all your gear and follow me onto the boat,” he ordered.
I gathered my scuba gear and my instruments and followed him onto the boat. Raoul, Michael and Manuel were amongst the group. He pulled the gag off my mouth. I licked blood from the corners of my mouth. “How could you do this?”
“Just like everyone else, I’m after a moment of fame,” Matt said.
“Are you crazy? Your lust for fame is absurd at a time like this.” I clenched my fists, wanting to punch him.
“Could you restrain her, Raoul?”
He grabbed my arms and yanked them around my back. I grimaced as a stab of pain shot through the front of my shoulders.
“When you first brought up this subject of comets obliterating the earth, it sounded so completely absurd, I almost recommended your termination. But something stopped me. I told my superiors that you seemed somewhat unbalanced, but that I would see to it that you focused on serious research. But now that it seems that you’re right—”
“So, you want to take credit for all my hard work.” The strained tendons in my shoulder screamed louder as I squirmed to break free.
“Soon everyone will believe I’m the one who saved the Earth. Your job will be to explain my version of everything that’s happening on a live broadcast. Then I’ll see that you don’t get hurt. Otherwise a rather unfortunate accident might happen. Or when we find Justin, he might come to a terrible end.”
“How could you do this?” I thrashed and jerked to free myself from Raoul’s grasp. Just the mention of hurting Justin enraged me. The director I’d worked for all these years had betrayed me, had betrayed the integrity of our entire project.
“I’ll be the one asking the questions if you want to live,” said Matt. When he held the Glock against my temple, I had little alternative than to answer his questions when he pointed to different pages in my journal and asked me to illuminate. “I want you to take me through the crater now,” he ordered.
We descended in our diving gear in the darkness. The haunting darkness was illuminated by our lamps and the eerie green glow, which brightened as we approached the sandy bottom. Three dolphins swirled around us as we touched down. For some reason, their presence comforted me. I can survive this, I told myself.
Matt pointed toward the crater’s rim. I pumped some air in my BCD and swam toward it, hovering over the eerie green crater that looked like glowing glass. The dolphins frolicked around me and one of them plunged nose first into the green crater and disappeared. Its two companions followed and were quickly swallowed by the green glowing mass. I said a silent prayer as we descended down the last few feet between our world and the one I was about to enter.
It felt like a rocket launched me—I travelled so fast through a tunnel of bright glowing colors. My skin and hair pulled back from my face. My regulator pulled loose from my mouth and I thrashed around trying to grasp and replace it until I realized I could breathe without the tube. Pink, green, and blue lights flashed as I soared through space. The seemingly endless roller coaster ride terrified and thrilled me at the same time. All of sudden I dropped out of the tunnel and bounced across a pad of green gel. I glanced around and saw two huge orbs of rotating light. Motors whirred and the ground under me rumbled. They had to be some kind of spaceships. I looked around to see if anyone was around. Matt had disappeared, but I sensed a presence. A familiar, comforting presence. A line of excited goose pimples rose on my arms and then a force stronger than gravity turned my head. My eyes flooded with tears as the magnanimity of the moment overtook me. Through a lens of tears, I saw my beloved Justin in the flesh—every perfectly sculpted contour of him.
Chapter Twenty One
He stood on pad of gel a distance away, his naked chest glistening under the eerie green light. “They said you would come,” he said. His voice reverberated in the cavernous chamber that surrounded us. “But I wasn’t sure how much longer I could wait.”
We ran toward each other and clung to each other in a crushing embrace. I melted in the warmth of his arms, relished hearing his elevated heartbeat against my head. “Oh, Justin, it’s really you.”
“Oh, Marissa.” His green eyes looked just like I remembered them, passionate and flecked with various shades of yellow and brown. I kissed his hair, his forehead, both of his ears, and cheeks, running my hands over the muscular contours of his shoulders and chest to make sure I wasn’t dreaming, that he was really there. He skimmed his hands over my arms and collarbone, before placing them on either side of my cheeks so he could turn my lips toward his. He kissed me at first gently and then more urgently, licking over my lips and then parting them with his tongue, making love to my mouth. “I missed you so much.”
Tears ran like rivers down my cheeks. My voice trembled. “I missed you, too. Every single hour of every day. I couldn’t believe you were lying dead on the bottom of the ocean. People told me to let you go, but I just couldn’t. I love you too much.”
He crushed me in closer to his chest, so that I felt the press of his body’s familiar sinewy hills and valleys against my chest, my abdomen, my thighs. “Oh, Marissa. I’m so sorry you suffered so much. That night of the boat accid
ent when you held my hand, a heavy object fell on top of me and pulled me down. Before I had a chance to get out from underneath it, I blacked out. By the time I regained consciousness, I was lying down here. Every day without you felt like forever—and it was awful waking up every morning to an empty bed. I kept hoping you’d understand the message I left. When did you finally know?”
“When I saw the news report about the five people disappearing in La Jolla,” I said.
“But how did you know you could travel through the craters?”
“I’ve been carrying this NRG rock sample in my pocket for quite awhile. It transformed once in class, but I didn’t understand the full significance of it until much later.” I pulled the rock from my pocket along with the earring I’d found and held it up. “Look what I found today when I was diving.” I slipped the dangly silver earring back into his ear. I kissed him on a smooth, recently shaved cheek. His scent smelled different than I remembered, like a mingling of his normal masculine aroma with seawater and soap. He must be housed somewhere where he slept, bathed, and groomed. “Have you met the beings who created these tunnels?”
“Yes, I’ve met many of them. They first appeared looking like upright-walking sea turtles, but I’ve seen them transform into a variety of shapes. They are very soft-spoken, gentle beings—they’ve sheltered and fed me since I arrived. They say you’re the messenger they chose to save people and other benevolent beings who live on Earth.”
“How were you able to communicate with them?” I leaned in closer until my forehead touched his lips. It still felt like an amazing dream standing face-to-face with the man I loved.
He massaged my neck with his thumbs. “They said they’ve studied our methods of communication for decades. They speak many of our languages.”
“What about the boy? Is he here?”
“He’s being safely housed at a different landing site—one deep below La Jolla Shores. But there are several more humans here, divers mostly, who somehow passed through the craters when they transformed. Oh, look, Blanuga and some of the others have come to welcome you.”
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