by Ben Farthing
This time, nobody survived to start replicating the gift.
But Chris had been watching for another attempt. He’d planned to knock down the next building immediately when it happened again.
Instead, he got a series of text messages, presumably from the same guy who’d just sent him this note.
He said that Micah had led a whole group of believers. These believers still thought the Deviser was benevolent. Most of the cult—that’s what they were, Chris figured—blamed Chris for Micah’s death and the skyscraper not being put to good use. But his secret friend thought Chris also worshipped the Deviser and still deserved to get close to the Deviser again, so they informed Chris about the mysterious nature of this new cruise ship.
The Aria of the Seas had appeared overnight.
Not the original. That was scheduled for retirement, but the cruise line found this one floating in the Pacific, claimed it, swapped it out, and kept their cruises going.
Chris’s mysterious friend had told him about the cult’s intention to be on the new Aria’s maiden voyage. He invited Chris to join.
Chris stood up from his lounge chair. His seagull friend flapped away. He leaned on the railing.
He couldn’t let the Deviser snatch away any more people. He still had nightmares of the screams and pleading from the men it had already taken. He’d seen a glimpse of its world and sensed the foreign emotion behind its intentions. He didn’t know what the Deviser was or exactly what it wanted. Only that it had spent millennia prepping mankind to be harvested, and now it was ready to take and use them.
He didn’t know what this ship was, but if it came from the Deviser, it couldn’t be good. Maybe it would disappear on its own in a few weeks. But it would have a purpose before then. Probably taking more people. Likely something worse.
Whatever its purpose, Chris figured it would be more difficult to accomplish if the ship were at the bottom of the ocean.
He checked his watch. His bags should be in his cabin.
He kept his head lowered to avoid Micah’s cult spotting him and headed for his cabin to make plans.
7
Riley found Krystal in the Cloud Club, which turned out to be on Deck Eleven.
Her heart still pounded from running up five flights of stairs—which was as far as she got before her body demanded the elevator—and from the banging and threats in a foreign language she’d heard through the Deck Two door. Not to mention the goopy dripping glass in Deck One.
She paused at the entrance to the club, catching her breath.
The Cloud Club was a cocktail bar with leather wingback chairs and glossy wooden tables. Laid-back electronic music played. Globe lights hung from the ceiling over each table and over the bar. The far wall was all glass, looking out over the harbor. Sometime during Riley’s excursion downstairs, the Aria had disembarked. Strange that she hadn’t heard any foghorns or celebrating.
The club was half-full of old folks who were dressed for a Caribbean cruise—not a cocktail hour.
Krystal was whispering with Marjorie over bright orange drinks. With the old lady’s pink hair and Hawaiian shirt, Riley had an impression of Krystal chatting with her own future self.
Riley joined them. “Krystal, I need to talk to you.” She didn’t want to confess what she’d seen in front of Marjorie. She didn’t need rumors going around about the crazy twenty-somethings on the cruise. Any attention she drew to herself could make Nathaniel notice her.
Krystal waved to the bartender with her orange slushy drink. “One of these for my friend.”
“I don’t want to get drunk yet.”
“We do,” complained Marjorie, “but no alcohol until after the evacuation drill. These are virgin.”
“Too bad it’s not a singles’ cruise!” Krystal and Marjorie fell into a fit of laughter.
Riley bit her tongue instead of asking Krystal to explain whether it was the hypothetical virgin who’d want to be on a single’s cruise or whether all the other guests would want a virgin to be there.
Either way, Krystal was going to find an excuse to squeal and laugh. She was perfectly happy to gloss over the details of how she got there.
“I can leave you two to gossip on your own,” Marjorie offered.
“Don’t you dare,” Krystal said. “Riley’s got problems on her mind, but we have six weeks to think about those. Let’s have fun right now.”
Six weeks on this ship with whatever was on Deck Two. It made Riley’s gut do somersaults.
The bartender sent over her drink. She sipped on it. Without any tequila, it was an orange Slurpee. Riley loved Slurpees.
Deck Two was probably nothing.
Well, nothing as scary as it first seemed.
Nathaniel’s destroy-the-earth corporation probably had something prepping down there. And someone had yelled at her in Farsi or Romanian or Tagalog or some other language she hadn’t heard before. It had sounded far more foreign than that, but until Riley could talk through the experience with Krystal, that’s what she could tell herself.
“Yoo-hoo,” Krystal wiggled her fingers in front of Riley’s face. “You’ve got your head in the clouds.”
Marjorie laughed again, wrinkled cheeks bouncing. “In the Cloud Club!”
A harsh tone interrupted the house music.
The passengers all jumped.
The tone was followed by a recorded announcement. “This is a drill. All passengers to lifeboat evacuation stations.”
The recording warped at the end, transforming into a high-pitched screech before cutting out. The tone sounded once more, painfully loud.
The bartender raised both hands. He spoke with an eastern European accent. “Our apologies for the speaker malfunction. We’ll get that looked at. But everyone, please head to deck three or four. Check your room keycard to see where your assigned evacuation station is.”
Marjorie booed.
The bartender lifted a bottle of tequila. “Then everybody come right back here, and let’s give those drinks some life!”
Krystal and Marjorie cheered. The rest of the old folks in the Cloud Club clapped mildly.
“Looks like we’re on different decks.” Marjorie looked at Krystal’s keycard. “I’ll see you ladies back here after we learn how to not go down with the ship.”
The old lady leaned on her candy-cane walking-stick and hurried off.
Krystal chugged her Slurpee, grabbed her forehead until the brain freeze passed, and then picked up her purse. “I’m ready.”
They navigated their way to the elevator, then to Deck Four.
Riley couldn’t talk to Krystal about what she’d seen. The cruise was hardly packed, but with everybody going to the same place at once, it was a shuffle through a geriatric crowd.
The creeping flow of the crowd took them outside.
Salty, warm air greeted them, along with the swush of the ocean water against the hull.
Crew members in neon yellow life vests held up cardboard signs with numbers on them to indicate the different drill stations. The signs looked like they were drawn in permanent marker.
“If your keycard says group number fourteen,” a crew member yelled, holding up a crudely-drawn number fourteen, “then you are assigned to lifeboat fourteen, and you stand in this line.”
Guests were shuffling about in front of him. Not exactly a line.
“This is a mess,” Krystal laughed. “I hope we don’t sink.”
Riley found their group number on her keycard. Twenty-one.
They pushed through five herds of old folks.
The crew member holding their sign was a stocky woman in her 40s with jet black hair pulled into a tight pony tail. She looked to be from Southeast Asia somewhere, and her accented English confirmed it. “Group twenty-one, here is your line.”
Riley and Krystal stood at the front of a loose bunch of guests. All gray-haired. Several with frowns that said standing this long was painful. Riley couldn’t imagine them rushing for the lifeboat in an emerg
ency.
Finally, the flow of guests thinned until everyone was in their groups.
Their crew leader raised her voice. “Everybody, eyes on me.”
Krystal elbowed Riley and pointed up.
The lifeboats were hanging above them. Riley had been too lost in thought to notice.
“Look at that one,” Krystal whispered.
Two groups over, a lifeboat hung crooked. It lurched to one side like a shrugging teenager.
“That can’t be good,” Riley said.
The crew leader repeated herself. “Eyes on me. Even you two youngsters.”
Riley felt her cheeks turn warm and red. Her fellow guests chuckled.
Spurred on by the laughs, the crew leader said, “Kids today think nothing bad can happen. And they’re probably right. But just in case, we need to be prepared. My name is Annie. If there’s ever an emergency, you’ll grab a life vest under the bed in your cabin and come to this spot.”
Riley stopped listening.
Standing ramrod straight, not twenty feet away, was her Uncle Nathaniel.
Riley had only met him a few times since when she was a toddler. Then he and Dad had a falling out, and she didn’t see him until the funeral. But she recognized him, even with his back turned.
He used his posture to announce to the world that he was nauseatingly proper. He watched his group’s crew leader without moving. Nathaniel was tall and wide. Long silver hair was slicked back down to his shoulders. He was ten years older than Dad. He had to be over seventy now. But he carried himself comfortably and relaxed.
Riley willed him to keep his head forward. If he so much as glanced back to his right, he’d spot her.
What if he already had? When Annie had called out Riley and Krystal, had he turned to see?
No, he’d still be staring at her if he had. The man ran a multimillion-dollar mining company. He didn’t believe in being subtle.
Humid wind blew along the ship, whipping Krystal’s hair into Riley’s face.
The lifeboat creaked overhead. Something slipped. The boat dropped two feet.
Krystal gasped.
Riley’s heart leaped into her throat.
The old folks slowly looked upward at the yellow fiberglass hull that had almost crushed them.
If there were a disaster, between the janky procedures, crappy equipment, and the guests’ molasses-slow reaction time, it’d be a mass casualty event.
Annie had left her jaw hanging mid-sentence. She watched the boat, hands out as if she’d leap forward to catch it. “Maybe everyone step to the side.”
There were murmurs of disapproval from the group as they split in half to push into the neighboring groups.
Krystal started toward Nathaniel’s group, but Riley grabbed her elbow and forced her the opposite way. “My uncle’s over there,” she whispered.
“Which one is he?” Krystal asked. “The guy next to the lady with the dangly earrings? He kinda looks like you.”
Riley had her dad’s high cheekbones and nose. She supposed Nathaniel did, too.
“Is that your aunt?”
Riley had been so afraid of being spotted by the boogeyman Nathaniel had become that she didn’t notice Aunt Wendy at Nathaniel’s side.
She was nearly as tall as Nathaniel. Auburn hair was done up. Glittery earrings danced in the wind. Her round face gave a kinder impression than her husband’s. Riley hadn’t spent any more time with Wendy than with Nathaniel. But when Riley had broken in, trying to steal the watch, Wendy had only shooed Riley out. She could have called the cops. So there was that.
If Wendy spotted Riley, it’d be as bad as Nathaniel. She’d tell him. He’d realize why Riley was there. The watch would go into the vault, which would make it next to impossible to steal. Riley had backup plans for that, but she wasn’t confident in any of them.
Riley turned her back to her aunt and uncle. She removed a bobby pin to let her hair fall over her cheek. The wind made that pointless. “We need to get out of here.”
“They won’t let us yet,” Krystal said.
Annie was already ushering everybody back together, off to the side of the dangling lifeboat.
Riley suddenly thought of a better plan. “When this is over, I’ll meet you back at the Cloud Club.”
“Where are you going first?”
“Hey, youngsters!” Annie waved with her fingers. “Let’s pay attention.”
“So sorry!” Krystal sang.
Annie finished her spiel, but the other groups were still going, so they had to stand and wait.
“You’re going to follow your uncle, aren’t you?” Krystal whispered.
“I gotta see what cabin he’s in. And there won’t be another chance with such a big crowd.”
“Do you need me to cause a distraction?”
“What? No.”
“Well, at least take my hat. Your dark hair will stand out. It’s like a hair salon in a nursing home around here. Everyone’s gray.”
Riley put on Krystal’s red sunhat. Despite its garishness, Krystal was right about it standing out less.
The other crew leaders finished their speeches, and then that same tone sounded over the speakers. It was too quiet out here. Barely noticeable.
The crowd started shuffling back for the doors.
“Wish me luck,” Riley whispered.
“Don’t get arrested. You don’t get to call your lawyer if you’re arrested at sea.”
“Thanks for that.” Riley locked her gaze onto Nathaniel’s slicked-back silver hair and started following.
8
Back in his cabin, Chris slammed the door behind him and raced to his suitcases.
The disaster drill had been a clusterfuck.
Before he could get to his cabin to check on his bags, the drill had been announced. Chris had never been on a cruise—he didn’t know to expect that.
He did know, after seeing the shitty drill, that in a real disaster, most of these geriatric guests would die.
Sinking the ship had become a bit of a moral conundrum.
The cruise line’s evacuation procedures didn’t deserve the faith he’d put in them. No way these old folks could get to their lifeboats in a timely manner.
No way all the lifeboats would be watertight. Hell, he’d seen two of them break loose just in the twenty minutes they’d stood for the drill. And he’d heard other guests talking about more of them doing the same in other places on the ship.
The cruise line must have swapped out the Aria without much notice. He wondered what else about it wasn’t up to snuff.
If he went with his original plan to sink the ship and cross his fingers that everyone got off alive, who could say what other problems with the ship would reveal themselves?
Chris didn’t want to murder a thousand guests and twice as many crew and staff.
He made sure the door to his cabin was locked, jammed a chair under the doorknob, and then opened his suitcases.
He unpacked his clothes and toiletries. He set his Kindle, satellite phone, and chargers on the nightstand.
And then he lifted out the suitcase’s lining to reveal the metal frame.
Square aluminum tubing supported the canvas sides. Chris had lined it with lead. He unhooked three latches, and the whole length of the center tube opened on a hinge.
He removed four different plastic baggies of powders and pellets. He’d purchased them from various medical and farm supply outlets.
By themselves, they were harmless, or even helpful, if you had thyroid problems or a wheat beetle infestation.
But when combined together, and then with the contents of the toothpaste tube in his shaving kit… boom.
A very controlled boom. One that could be directed to a small area.
When Chris had practiced in an abandoned warehouse in the middle of nowhere, Virginia, it had blown a twenty-foot hole in a reinforced concrete wall.
He wasn’t positive how that would translate to the hull of a cruise ship, but he ex
pected a hole maybe half that size.
Three of those charges placed along the hull, and the ship should be guaranteed to sink, but not so fast that it stopped people from escaping to the lifeboats.
At least, that had been the plan before the emergency drill.
Now Chris realized the Aria would need a week’s notice to evacuate everybody. And even still, the lifeboats themselves might not launch or might break apart upon hitting the water. Or might just fall and crush the evacuees.
But he couldn’t call the whole thing off, either.
This ship came from the same place as the skyscraper he’d escaped last year. Whatever its exact purpose, Chris suspected it would end with the people aboard yanked to an overlapping dimension where they begged for death.
Was drowning in the middle of the Pacific better than suffering in a dimension ruled by an incomprehensible entity?
Chris didn’t know.
There had to be a better option.
He needed a way to get everyone off the ship before he sank it.
But the Aria’s schedule had only one stop to refuel in its entire journey across the pacific. And the guests weren’t even allowed off.
There weren’t port-of-calls at touristy destinations.
Chris replaced his bomb-making material in the hidden compartment in his suitcase’s frame. The wheels in his head kept turning.
He needed a minor disaster.
Something that would get everyone off the ship, at least temporarily.
He looked at the narrow door to the narrower bathroom.
Backed-up plumbing might do it.
If no one could flush a toilet, they’d have to get the guests off the ship.
The cruise line might even send another ship to transfer passengers over.
Chris turned on his satellite phone. No signal down here on Deck Six. He would have liked a cabin with a balcony outside, but he’d barely scrounged together the money for a ticket in the first place.
He stuck the phone in his pocket and went upstairs to make a call. He didn’t know enough about cruise ship plumbing. But he could call his son and get him to look it up.
