by E. J. Foster
24
Jules had followed the blue wire which led us here, to this locked room. She got down on one knee and began digging through her pack.
“What else do you have in that bag?” I asked.
“Everything I need for any kind of pen test. Including devices to test physical access security for vulnerabilities.”
Jules pulled out a ring of keys and jingled them at me.
“Bump keys,” she said proudly.
Jules examined the keyway on the doorknob and held each key up to the keyhole one by one, comparing the shapes.
“Kwikset KW1,” she declared, and then inserted a key. She tapped the back of the key with a screwdriver handle in three quick successive raps, and the keyway turned. The door was open.
“I should have asked, what don’t you have in that bag?” I inquired, raising my eyebrows. She never stopped surprising me.
Jules threw the keyring and screwdriver back in her pack and pushed the door open to a small room. It was filled with a mass of cables, hundreds bundled as thick as a tree trunk in awesome places. Electronic lights flashed and twinkled like a thousand tiny stars. There were racks of networking equipment filling the small room and heating it to an uncomfortable temperature.
Within a few minutes, I felt the sweat begin to glisten on my forehead.
“Jules, talk to me,” I said. “What’s the plan?”
“Cameras. They’re all over this boat.”
“Ship,” I corrected.
“Ship. They’re all over this ship. And I can tap into all of them from this room. We can find the brats in a jiffy and then bail.”
Jules swung her backpack off, unzipping it. She dug into it and pulled out some electronic gadgets.
She deployed three small antennas on a small device the size of a deck of cards, rotating them upward. She scanned one of the blinking boxes in the room. It had fifty or more blue wires plugged into it, all in a row. Network cables. Jules found an empty jack and then plugged a red wire into it connecting her small handheld device.
“There,” she said. “Now we’re connected to the cameras”
“What cameras? How do we see them?” I was confused.
“All the cameras are wired, which is actually pretty good for security, but bad for us. This pineapple,” she pointed to the small device with three antennas, “will send the stream over Wi-Fi. I can grab it with my android, which acts as the ad hoc C2 server proxy. Then, we can enable any stream with a simple command.”
She must’ve registered the confusion on my face because she tried again, much simpler this time.
“We can watch all the videos on my phone.”
I raised my eyebrows and nodded. Jules had always impressed me with her talent, and this was no exception. When it came to tech, this girl was brilliant.
Jules stabbed at her phone screen, punching buttons and typing commands faster than I could keep up with. I knew better to interrupt her when she was in the zone.
“Done,” she said, finally.
A grayscale image appeared on her phone screen, and she turned the phone sideways to orient the video in landscape. It was unremarkable. A view of an empty hallway that extended into darkness, with corrugated steel containers on one side and a flat wall on the other.
White text overlayed the video image: H1.
“How do we find the kids?” I asked.
She touched the screen and another view appeared, also grayscale with nothing of interest, but in a different long darkened hallway. The white text on the screen read: H2.
She touched again. This time the image was in color, and I recognized the setting. A crewmember stood in the wheelhouse. The text overlay read: WH.
The helm of these great ships was usually referred to as the wheelhouse. The term referred to the small, enclosed part of the bridge which usually held the ship's steering wheel and had been used since the days of pirate ships.
There were no longer literal wheels, but the word had stuck, and I liked it.
“The wheelhouse,” I said. “Why is the image in color? The others weren’t.”
“They’re all in color. You just can’t see the color in the night vision cams, since they’re illuminated by IR.”
“Infrared. Ah.” It made sense. Infrared light fell outside the rainbow spectrum of visible colors.
“How many cameras are there?” I asked.
“Hundreds.”
“This could take a while. We better keep moving,” I said.
Jules donned her backpack, and we both froze.
Footsteps were heavy on the grated walkway outside the room––and getting louder.
25
Finn walked along an endless hallway, banging on the steel containers to his right as he went, creating a rhythmic beat that sounded like cannon fire from a distant pirate ship.
Jessa followed behind him, thinking out loud.
“They kept saying... lore.” Jessa was having a conversation with herself, trying to understand some of the French words she had heard.
Finn was oblivious, walking and banging with every other step. The war drum was hypnotic.
When they reached the end of the long hallway, there was just a hatch door with a sign above it that read: Hold #2.
Just like the last door, it had no doorknob. Only a lever.
Finn stood at the door, examining it up and down. He shrugged and rotated the lever, and the door unsealed with a hiss.
Jessa stepped through the door absently. Finn followed her through it and closed the door behind her. Jessa’s mind was elsewhere.
“But that’s an English word.” Jessa was speaking both halves of the conversation. “Is lore a French word?”
“Doesn’t lore mean, like, legend, or something?” Finn asked. Jessa hadn’t realized he was listening, and finally lifted her head to address him directly.
“In English, the definition of lore is an ancient teaching, or tradition; knowledge that is passed down. But that’s in English. Those men were speaking French. I’m certain.” Jessa was back to thinking out loud.
“Well, give Jessa a gold star,” Finn spoke under his breath. Jessa stopped in her tracks.
“What did you say?” There was an edge in her voice.
The war drums stopped beating.
Finn turned back to Jessa, knowing he had stepped in it. Sometimes she was just a know-it-all, and he felt like a know-nothing.
“I’m sorry.” Finn’s head was down, eyes on her shoes.
“Gold star?” she asked.
“I didn’t mean anything by—”
“That’s it!” Jessa had more energy now. “Gold.”
Finn kept his mouth shut. Whatever he got himself into, he seemed to get out of it.
“They weren’t saying lore.” Jessa was gaining confidence now. “They were saying le... ore... The gold. L’or.”
“Gold?” Finned wanted confirmation. “Like, treasure?”
Jessa wasn’t sure but her eyes were wide with hope. She wanted to believe.
They had just begun walking again when they heard noise from up ahead.
Finn grabbed Jessa by the arm, stopping her forward motion, one finger pressed against his lips. They both listened in the booming silence.
He could feel her skin under his grip, warm and soft, and he wondered if this was the first time he had touched her. Finn decided he liked the sensation and didn’t want to let go.
The noise was back. The scraping and scratching noises sounded like someone was sliding a cardboard box, broken by the whistles of squeaky wheels rolling in the dark.
It was close; maybe two or three alcoves ahead.
Finn started moving again, not letting her go. Jessa moved with him, content to give her arm over to him.
When they arrived at the next hallway on the right, they stopped to listen closer.
This was definitely the one. The hallway from which the sound was coming.
Finn’s head peeked around the corner. And then Jessa’s head s
lid around the corner below Finn’s, both of them locked on the view.
The twin.
One of the two men that had chased them was standing in front of an open container. The door swung wide open.
The man stood sentinel as if he were guarding the Queen of England. There was something about this container that seemed more important than all the others on this massive ship.
Whatever it was, the twin was going to protect it. That was obvious.
Finn turned to tell Jessa what he had seen, not realizing she had been under him, watching the whole time.
Finn fell over her with a loud crash.
26
Jules and I were still frozen, feet welded to the floor long after the passing footsteps diminished back to silence.
The only sound left was the electronic hum of the room.
A bead of sweat rolled down my forehead, pausing at my brow for a moment before falling to the floor, turning the metal darker in the spot where it landed.
“We’d better stay put. We can check the cams from here,” I said.
Jules and I crowded around the small screen, flipping through cam after cam.
“Stop,” I said. “Go back one.”
Jules hit the back arrow, cycling us to the previous camera feed.
The text overlay read H2 in white letters over the grayscale video. There was pixelated motion in the dim light. It was a man. We both studied the image.
“Is that a guard?” Jules asked. “He looks like he’s guarding something.”
“I can’t think of another reason why he would just be standing there, in a dark hallway, in the bowels of the ship. No. It doesn’t make sense.” I shook my head. “These sailors are just supposed to transport these containers. They're not even supposed to know what’s inside them, much less guard them.”
“There!” Jules said, excitement in her voice. “Another one.”
Another man came into view, pushing a heavy-duty flatbed rolling cart. Is that the same guy?
“Wait,” Jules said, squinting her eyes. “Or is it?”
“I was thinking the same thing. Are there two of them? Twins?” I asked.
Jules and I watched in silence as the guard opened the door for the other.
They both disappeared inside the container, stepping over a familiar-looking object on the floor. A meteorite.
“Jesus. How many of those things fell out of the sky?” I asked.
“Hundreds. Maybe thousands,” Jules said. “Look at the floor, along the corner, all the way down the hall.
She was right. There were hundreds of small meteorites scattered all along the floor, in just this hallway alone.
“And that big one.” Jules pointed to the center of the screen at the larger meteorite just inside the container. The one I had already noticed. It was the size of a wooden chest.
The men emerged from the container, hefting something in their hands.
“What’s that?” Jules asked. “A thermos?”
“Not sure,” I responded, squinting my eyes. “It looks flat on top. Not rounded.”
The items appeared heavy from the way the men used both hands to carry. They both set the heavy things onto the flatbed dolly. A glimmer of light flashed at the camera.
“They look metallic,” Jules said.
“And heavy,” I added.
The twins spent the next few minutes moving in and out of the container, loading the heavy items onto the cart until the flatbed was covered in a single layer of them.
One twin began pulling the cart. He heaved to get it started, and it finally broke inertia and began to roll slowly into the darkness and out of frame.
“Did those look like gold bars to you?” Jules was incredulous.
“Ingots, yeah. That’s what it looked like to me,” I said.
“What the actual fu—” Jules started, but I cut her off.
“I don’t know. But something doesn’t seem right.”
“Ya think!” Jules was always sarcastic when she got nervous.
Motion on the screen ended our discussion. The other twin emerged from the container, walking backward.
“What’s he doing?” Jules asked.
He seemed to be dragging something really heavy. He struggled to navigate over the large meteorite as he pulled.
Once both feet were outside of the container, it became obvious what he was dragging. Randall.
“Ho-ly shit,” Jules said, and her mouth fell agape. “Is that what I think it is?”
Jules started pacing the room, shaking her hands as if they were wet and she was trying to dry them. She circled back to the video again but couldn’t watch and returned to pacing.
“Jules,” I said, trying to calm her, while also trying to calm myself. What in the hell was this?
Jules peered over at the phone; she wanted to look but didn’t want to get close to the small screen, as if it was poisonous.
I continued watching the feed, until the body had been dragged completely out of the container and lay lifeless on the ground in the hallway.
The twin stood over the body as if deciding what to do with it. From behind him, a few pixels flicked with motion, near the dark end of the hallway. I focused my vision on it, trying to make something out of the dim pixels. When the image finally snapped into focus, there were two more figures moving in the hallway. I knew instantly who they were, and that’s when I was certain we were in trouble.
Finn and Jessa.
27
Finn laid there motionless, his legs up on top of Jessa, paralyzed with fear. Jessa knelt immobile, her arms trembling with the effort of holding her up, waiting for Finn to react. The weight of his legs pressed down on her back, intensifying their closeness.
Finn closed his eyes and waited for death to come. The impending doom was louder than thunder against the silence. He had lived a good life, he thought, and even got to see middle school before he died.
His eyes squinched tight, waiting for heavy footsteps to come, but they never did.
Jessa was a statue, doing her part.
After a dozen heartbeats, the pounding in his chest began to subside. His eyes opened slowly, expecting to see the evil twin towering over him, ready to smash his face in. But all he saw was the dim ceiling above him.
He wasn’t dead. There was no evil twin. His face wasn’t smashed in. The twin didn’t hear. Finn tried to stay alert, not letting the thought comfort him, but still, he felt sweet relief. He wouldn’t die today.
Renewed with life, Finn rolled off Jessa and silently got back to his feet. Jessa stood, brushing herself off.
In a flash, both their heads peered around the corner to resume their investigation.
“What is it? That big thing in the doorway?” Finn whispered.
Jessa pushed her glasses back up to the bridge of her nose and narrowed her eyes.
“Give me your phone,” she said.
Finn reached into his pocket, and his head sunk when he remembered.
“I don’t have it,” he said sheepishly. “I dropped it in the water.”
Jessa thought for a moment, letting uncertainty color her face.
She peeled off her backpack and dug through it, pulling out her own phone. She held down the power button, and after a moment the screen came on, illuminating her face.
“What are you doing?” Finn asked.
“I am gathering documentation,” she whispered.
Jessa trained the camera phone on the large black boulder that sat in the door of the damaged container. With her fingers, she pinched and pulled on the surface of the touchscreen, zooming in and out as the rock got bigger and then smaller again.
“What for?” Finn hissed.
Jessa pressed the button, and the entire hall was daylight in a flash. The electronic sound of a camera shutter boomed out of her phone speaker before the hall fell dark again.
“Qui es-tu?” a man’s voice shouted in angry French. The hall was pitch black in the moments after the flash, and th
eir eyes were still adjusting.
A hiss came next, like the sound of air leaking from a tire. When Finn’s eyes adjusted, the black rock had cracked open, and the fissures glowed neon from within, jetting out a green smoke which filled the area surrounding the Frenchman.
The man choked and coughed, sucking in the green gas as he did.
Finn watched as the man began to spasm and cry out. His moans slowly transformed into screams of pain, as if he was being torn apart.
A cracking sound came next, like fiber was stretching beyond its capability. Torturous screams filled the void.
Jessa put her hands over her ears but was hypnotized by the sight.
The man’s face turned inside out, as his skin evolved from flesh tone to pure black. His body began to grow, tearing itself out of the jumpsuit, as the material fell, tattered on the floor.
All parts of the man were jet black; thick black hairs began to emerge from his skin, sparse and few. Each hair was as thick as Finn’s thumb.
New black legs tore out of the man’s abdomen, freeing themselves from inside him, lengthening, shooting straight up and then back down again from a knee joint. Eight black spider legs stood eight feet tall, surrounding a smaller, bulbous body that was also black, with a white lightning stripe running through it.
The twin had transformed into a giant, eight-legged thing; black and hairy, like a tarantula.
Jessa and Finn stood stunned, mouths like tunnels.
A crash came from directly beneath them.
Finn looked down to see Jessa’s phone screen cracked on the ground. He looked up again to find that he had the full attention of the eight-legged monster.
28
The phone was trembling in Jules’ hand as we watched Finn and Jessa run out of frames.
“Run!” I shouted at the phone reflexively.
I had just watched a man transform before my very eyes. The giant black spider-like creature stood tall. A memory flashed back in my mind from earlier today. Katie’s lab.
