by Starla Night
They ascended and then stopped, hovering at a specific mark on the cable to reduce the pressurization effects. Mermen did not get the bends, but apparently, other effects were reduced by pausing instead of rocketing for the surface.
Balim curled over and shuddered.
The general watched him with a dead gaze.
“Why are you doing this?” Bella demanded, furious. “The Sons of Hercules are your greatest enemy. You should hate each other.”
“The enemy of my enemy is an untapped ally.”
“Their goal is to kill you.”
“They cannot poison the faithful,” he scoffed. “Only rebels who deserve to die.”
Balim clenched over his injury. “Does the All-Council know you made this treaty? That you have unleashed an ancient disease?”
“No one will question my results. When all mainland warriors are dead and Atlantis is a cursed boneyard, we will silence the rebel voices. Dragao Azul and Aiycaya will return to the All-Council. The mer will descend and revert to the natural order.”
“Aiycaya?” Balim screwed open an eye. “Aiycaya has rebelled?”
“You would not have heard, would you? You were exiled before the news.”
“What news?”
“Perhaps I will not tell you.” His cold smile widened. “Comfort yourself by knowing Atlantis is emptied of its army, and it is too easy for my warriors to stow explosive vials in the remaining castles.” He gazed at his cursed treasure. “Or worse.”
The threat stabbed into Balim. He hunched over and moaned.
She hugged Balim, as powerless now as she had been to soothe Jonah during his chemo when he’d cried because the insides of his bones ached.
Where were her queen powers?
“It’ll be okay.” She tried to channel something, anything, other than his pain-filled decline. “I’m here. This pain will pass. It sucks, but it will pass, and you’ll be stronger because you endured it.”
“He will grow weaker.” The general smirked. “He will wither and die like all warriors who turn their backs on the ancient covenant.”
This big, ugly bully poked at her furious heart.
Bella fired back at him. “No, he won’t. I will heal him with my love. It’s my queen power. I just have to develop it. You’ll see.”
“This human ‘love’ is a lie. Only resonance in the soul is truth.”
“And we’re soul mates.”
“More lies.”
“I transformed because of our resonance. Look at my fins.”
“Any female destined to mate a warrior can transform. But modern females cannot speak true vows. Their minds are distracted, and their words are weak.”
Balim’s eyes cracked open, and his gaze fixed on her. The distinctive red of his tattoos and the matching threads in his irises darkened. He heard the general’s words and believed them.
“No,” she insisted to Balim. “I haven’t loved anyone like I love you. It’s not just words. Believe me.”
But did he? His eyes closed again, and he slipped into unconsciousness.
Distant notes of discord filtered past their argument.
Her hope rose.
Octopus Kong? Nora?
The general tilted his head, rotating his chest in a circle to pinpoint the direction, and then frowned. “Spread out.”
His elite warriors obeyed.
The noise faded.
The general’s sharp gaze faded into the same lazy fog that had taken over his expression after drinking the medicine. He ordered his warriors to rise once more.
“You vow to love each other forever,” the general taunted her. “But you are a modern human who will change her mind as soon as you meet another warrior more to your taste.”
She hugged her unconscious warrior. “That will never happen.”
“You think you are wise.”
“Obviously you’ve never found your soul mate.”
“Now you are the foolish one. I could not hold this position unless I fathered a young fry.”
But doubt flashed in his eyes, and he turned away.
They approached the surface. The cable they’d been using ended at a floating buoy, and the warriors unclipped everyone, leaving Balim for Bella to handle. Close by, a long boat floated in the middle of nowhere. It pulled on its anchor chain, drifting on the current. She had never seen such massive metal. Each chain link was the size of her own body.
Satisfied that they were alone, the general broke through the water barrier and shifted to air-breathing. He looked even paler but less translucent. And the sunlight revealed marks of an old fight bruising his skin.
Bella knew nothing of boats but what she’d seen on TV, which wasn’t much. The boat was painted a military greenish-gray and the massive deck was stocked with cranes, submersibles, and bristling with antennas and satellite dishes. It looked like a cross between a polar icebreaker and a scientific vessel, stable enough to cross the roughest, stormiest Atlantic swells in the middle of winter. How many people lived there? A hundred?
The general led them to the back end of the boat, ordered his warriors to hide beneath the waves, and yanked a long rope to signal his arrival.
A bell pealed.
They bobbed in the large waves.
The general frowned and pulled the greenish, algae-slicked rope again.
No one answered his summons.
He swam to a plunging ladder, clambered to the deck, and disappeared.
A platform descended to sea level. His elite warriors dragged Bella and Balim onto the crashing metal and then slipped beneath the waves.
The platform rose.
On the deck, the general stood with his trident out. He was nude aside from the weapons and armor, and his flaccid cock dangled between his legs. “Get off.”
She obeyed, pulling Balim with her. They were both nude too. She never noticed that in the water but the instant she was on land, she shrank into a form small, vulnerable, and afraid.
The general sliced through her bonds with the deadly, sharp middle spine of his trident. He freed Balim, rotated the weapon, and nudged him with the rounded base.
Balim groaned.
The general grimaced. “Wake your so-called soul mate.”
“He’s sick,” Bella protested.
“Wake him or I will.”
She caressed Balim’s pale, scraped cheek, murmuring her wish. It worked. His lashes fluttered, he blinked, and then rolled over and ejected the water. Gasping on his forearms and knees, he gathered strength.
His cut looked horrible. Purplish-green, festering, and bruised. A direct injury with a diseased dagger was much more virulent than whatever had infected Pelan. The ghostly blue rings hidden beneath his tattoos spread out across his body from the cut.
“Get him up. Walk with me.”
“He’s sick,” Bella repeated, snappish.
The general’s dead expression showed how he did not care.
Fine. Well, not fine, but Bella would try. She swung Balim’s biceps around her small shoulders, hardening herself against his pained grunt and wince so she could be the caregiver he needed. “I’ve got you. You’re with me. Everything’s going to be okay.”
Balim forced one half-human foot after another, stumbling and dragging himself on her command.
They staggered after the general.
Bella was not a natural caregiver. She was too selfish. But for Balim, like for Jonah, she cared in sickness or health. And the way her spirit was firing for revenge, she’d be there fighting for vengeance long after they were parted by death.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Bella helped her soul mate stagger after the general.
The boat, which could hold hundreds of people, was empty. And that flummoxed the general. He wandered through passageways with no idea what to do.
“Hercules?” His gravelly call echoed down the hall. “Humans? I have your dagger and your test subject.”
“Where is everybody?” Bella asked, looking up from
focusing on her footing with Balim.
He raised his voice. “Where are you?”
No one answered.
The boat creaked. Distant waves splashed. It was strange and creepy.
They entered a room full of scientific equipment. The chairs were pushed back and the coffee was overturned, still a wet brown stain on the floor, as if everyone had abandoned the ship in a hurry.
“Something bad happened here,” she warned him. “This is where they studied the dagger? We should go. Now.”
He grunted. “The small boats are no longer attached.”
“The lifeboats?”
A tank of blue water rested on a table. Inside rested a crusty dagger just like the one he had removed from the field and used to stab Balim. The general set his wooden box with the new dagger in it next to the tank, on top of a stack of papers, soaking everything and making the ink run.
“Make your people answer.”
“How do I do that?” she asked.
He gestured at a flickering monitor. “Hercules conveys orders through this device.”
She eased Balim into a chair, stretched, and then examined the computer station. A locked screensaver told her the company owner. NGMT Enterprises. The letterhead on the wet stack of papers spelled it out. Next Gen Mil Tech Enterprises. It was stamped with a government seal.
Next Generation Military Technology.
A government contractor? They had badly underestimated the Sons of Hercules’ importance, influence, and reach. They were not “mere” college students, even though the active shootings and bombings had been performed by disgruntled college-aged men. They must be the expendable grunts. The true organization was obviously much, much larger.
She tapped the keyboard. It popped up a password field. She walked around the other computers. “They’re locked.”
He unsheathed the normal, non-diseased dagger strapped to his bicep. “Do not defy me. I will carve my dissatisfaction into your exile.”
“I’m not defying you. Look.” She wiggled the mouse and revealed identical password screens. “Do you know the password?”
“Pass…word?”
“The word to unlock them.”
He considered. “Hercules.”
She typed it. “No.”
“Rebel.”
“No.”
“Anathema bride.”
“Really?”
“The Sons of Hercules do not tolerate them,” he replied, but of course it didn’t work either, and the third attempt locked her out with a warning that the station had to be unlocked by the system administrator.
She needed Starr.
“We need to find an unlocked computer,” she said.
The general made her shoulder Balim once more and follow him around the boat to the bridge.
It too was empty and filled with buttons, dials, switches, and gages. What did any of them do? Even the maps were strange looking, but a satellite image showed their position: the middle of the Indian Ocean.
And the date said several months had passed since she’d descended to Atlantis, putting home in midwinter.
Time dilation, Balim had called it.
Had Starr made much progress? She hoped everyone was okay. The journey through the undersea world had taken longer than she’d realized.
“Operate the satellite internet,” the general ordered.
She eased Balim into one of the cushy seats and perused the mysterious instrument panels. “Which one controls that?”
“You are the human.”
“I can read. But I can’t understand most of these labels. I’ve never sailed on a boat.”
“Do not defy me!” He lifted his trident to Balim’s throat.
Balim closed his eyes and stiffened.
Bella felt so helpless. Balim was sick. She was imprisoned aboard an abandoned boat and held hostage by an unpredictable, violent, drugged general who didn’t seem entirely sane. He was, hands down, the worst client she’d ever worked for.
Although he had yet to kidnap her child. So he was only second-worst.
What was wrong with her? Why was she able to cut off her emotions and have these ironic thoughts when Balim’s life was on the line?
Her chest blazed. Because that was her strength. She could focus even when her loved ones were in a life-and-death fight. She could feel happiness and sadness and myriad other emotions. I’m okay.
“Operate it,” the general ordered through clenched teeth.
“I told you, I can’t.” She lifted her chin. “You drove in a car. Did you learn how to drive?”
“The metal car drove itself.”
“So, no. Don’t be unreasonable. Sailing a giant metal boat isn’t an intuitive life skill. I don’t even know which button to push to turn it on.”
The general lowered his trident. “How do I communicate I have upheld my vow?”
“Let me see…” She finished inspecting the deck and rummaged around in the pockets of the jackets the crew had left hanging over chairs next to opened cans of soda and half-eaten sandwiches. A square metal cell phone was her reward. She pulled it out. “Hold your breath.”
General Giru eyed her suspiciously. “Why? Is it poisoned?”
“If I can guess the password, we can call anyone.”
“How does holding breath assist with your guess?”
“It’s just a figure of speech.” She pressed the power button to wake it. “Here we…”
The phone showed a music player screen with the message, Trusted device nearby. Safety lock disabled.
Huh. Secret government contractors who’d set their phones to stay unlocked when trusted devices were nearby? Starr would love that.
She closed the music player and dialed, waited for it to connect, and prayed.
“I can release my air?” General Giru asked faintly, still trying to hold his breath and talk.
“Yes. Sorry. It’s fine.”
He breathed out.
How trusting.
The dial tone stopped.
Shoot.
“MerMatch,” a clear female voice said confidently over the bridge loudspeaker, making them jump. “Hazel speaking.”
“Hazel, it’s Bella.” Her heart thumped hard.
“Bella! Oh my god, I was just leaving the office, I almost didn’t pick up the phone! Where are you?”
“A ship in the Indian Ocean,” Bella said. “And right now, I’m afraid it’s a plague ship.”
“Stop this conversation.” General Giru lifted his trident once more to threaten a half-conscious Balim. “Contact Hercules.”
“Who’s that?”
Bella looked at the general.
He straightened his spine. His pupils had returned to normal size, and he was showing the strain of whatever injury had caused him to demand medicine from Great Healer Dalus.
“I am General Giru, Second General of the All-Council armies. You will obey my orders, or I will eviscerate your friends, starting with the false healer Balim.”
“E-eviscerate?” Hazel’s tone edged into panic. “What? Bella? Are you okay?”
“For the moment.” She kept a smooth, soothing lilt in her voice. “We just need to contact the Sons of Hercules.”
“But how? We don’t know—”
“I’m sure we do know.” Bella smiled tightly at the general and then gazed at the intercom as she held the phone to her ear. “We didn’t know how to call off this boat and now I’m talking to you, so it’s a similar manner of working through the problem. Contact our contacts.”
“Oh. Um. Oh. God. Okay. Here’s, uh, here’s Dannika.”
The phone clattered, making them jump again, and Dannika’s concerned voice took over the line.
“Bella, we’re so glad to hear from you. You’ll be pleased to know that Faier was found unharmed. He’s even found his own bride. She’s a—”
“Don’t tell me too much. We’re on a party line.”
“Yes, of course. I’m making conversation while Hazel cont
acts someone who can help with your problem. General Giru, you said? I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure.”
The chiseled general did not answer. Dark shadows around his eyes and hollow cheeks sickened his expression. He straightened by sheer force and looked as though he preferred to hunch over as Balim did.
“You do know him a little,” Bella said, also trying to keep the conversation easy. “He’s the one who entered the mer hospital and infected everyone.”
“How very brave,” Dannika murmured. “He didn’t worry about infecting himself?”
Oh.
Ohhhh.
“I think he did infect himself,” Bella murmured.
He fixed on Bella for a long, hard moment. “I am a general of the All-Council. I do not collapse from weakness. The warriors of Oannes Field fought to death during their sickness. I will do no less.”
“Bella, Hazel has almost connected you to your Starr,” Dannika said, accidentally revealing her half sister’s name. “Just hold on one—”
Clink.
Another voice intercepted the call and boomed through the loudspeaker. Not quite male, not quite female, and masked with computer distortion.
“What idiot forgot to abandon ship? Report to the bridge to be mocked by your superior.”
General Giru straightened. “Hercules.”
“Yes? Who’s forgetting passwords and locking themselves out of their workstations instead of jumping overboard and paddling away like a little pup?”
“And what do we need to flee, Herc?”
A surprised pause ensued, and then strange admiration. “Why, Bella Taylor. Imagine you showing up on my condemned secret lab ship. You are more resourceful than I gave you credit for.”
Her stomach soured, and fury filled her. “So are you. I assume this is the government lab you used to study the Life Tree blossom.”
General Giru frowned. “Life Tree blossom?”
“Government?” He guffawed. “Private sector! The government pays so much more for the same biological weapon if it’s developed by a company with black folders to contain its communiques.”
“Packaging is everything,” she agreed.
“Of course you understand. It really has been wonderful working with you, Bella Taylor. If only you had been more competent at your assigned task.”
