by Ben Farthing
Bobby hadn’t seen the shadows pushing the steel pile of chemical burns waiting to happen.
“Look out!” Riley yelled, but Bobby was too focused on the three in his sights.
Riley grabbed his elbow to yank him out of the way as metal crashed down, the sound muted after the rifle shots. The floor shook with the impact.
Bobby looked at what she’d just saved him from. “Thanks,” he mouthed.
Five figures still approached. Orange dust-coated cracked skin.
“They keep trying to shove us into the junk around here,” Bobby said.
Riley barely made out his voice through her muffled hearing.
“That’s how I got separated. They wrapped Carlos in a rug. He screamed.”
One of them stepped in front of the others. Dark hair was now dusty dreadlocks. It took three tattered shirts, a pair of jeans, and a skirt to keep her body covered.
“How long have you been here?” Riley wondered aloud.
The lead woman opened her mouth to speak, but only a raspy whimper came out. She shook her head. She pointed at Riley and Bobby, then pointed back to the exit.
“You’re harboring terrorists,” Bobby said. “We’re not leaving.”
“They don’t know anything about the cult,” Riley said.
The woman shushed Riley, her eyes wide with fear. She checked their surroundings, then made a shoo-ing motion with her hands and again put her finger over her lips. Get out. Be quiet.
“I’ve already run into the little monster crabs,” Riley said.
The woman shook her head. She pointed all around, waved her finger, and pointed upwards.
The threat wasn’t here yet. It was still outside the boat.
It had to be the building project that Chris was talking about. The threat she’d sensed when she’d seen the other side. He said it was built by slaves and also was now building itself.
If enough space had already been terraformed for it to cross over, then all of this was pointless. She had to hope there was still time.
Riley checked over her shoulder. Bumps and creaks all around them. She thought she saw movement in the dark space above stacked rows of dressers.
“I can’t go until I find my friend,” Riley told the woman.
She bared her teeth in anger. They weren’t warning them out of compassion. The lead woman motioned to the two men to take the child away. They didn’t want Riley and Bobby to draw the attention of the threat and bring it to their… home? Hideout?
As the two men led away the child, the second woman stepped up next to the one in charge.
Riley dug in her heels. “I’ll leave as soon as I find my friend.”
The two women picked up short steel studs to brandish them like clubs.
Bobby fired the rifle. The impact struck the women, but made no visible damage to their bodies.
The lead woman’s companion lowered her makeshift club. She tilted her head back to look upwards. She spoke frantically, but Riley was deafened by Bobby’s gun.
Riley felt the air pressure rise, like when an AC unit kicked on without an open door or window.
Bobby continued firing.
The two women shifted back to blurs and crept away.
Following their lead, Riley put distance between herself and Bobby, who fired until his magazine went dry.
Pain blossomed in Riley’s ears, whether from the rifle or the increasing air pressure, she couldn’t say.
Bobby looked around. He asked Riley a question she couldn’t hear. He looked up into the darkness.
A twisted red rope shot across the room. It appeared out of the shadows behind the stack of dressers. It stretched taut four feet above the floor to strike against the plastic hull of a yellow lifeboat. Blood splattered against the yellow plastic.
Riley fell backwards, landing on her rear. Orange fog covered her up to her ears.
Bobby aimed the empty rifle at the lifeboat, where the red cord now stuck firm. It was a crimson tightrope, as thick around as Riley’s thumb, made of smaller threads twisted around each other.
The threads were translucent. Blood pumped within, carrying along dark specs.
Riley crab-walked backwards away from Bobby.
A strand of blood vessels shot out from the hull of the lifeboat, from the exact spot where the first strand had struck. It stretched across the room, latching itself to the stack of dressers. The drawer face it stuck to should have been too weak to hold the artery so tautly. The drawer should have slid out and let it droop. But this wasn’t following the laws of physics that Riley learned in high school.
The two artery strands now roped off Bobby, leaving him a narrow corridor.
Riley yelled, “Get away!” She still sounded muffled.
Bobby ducked to go under.
A third strand burst out of the dresser drawer face. It pierced through Bobby’s forehead and attached itself back to the lifeboat.
Riley’s impulse was to scream, but she choked on saliva on the inhale.
Bobby dangled from the bloody, twisted cord. His forehead and the back of his head remained intact. No blood dripped down. The back of his skull hadn’t blown out.
His eyes opened wide. He gasped. He grabbed at the cord in front of him. His hands stuck to it.
He cried for help, but Riley froze. He looked for her out of the corner of his eye, unable to turn his head.
The cry for help devolved into a scream of agony.
His whole body lurched two feet down the cord. Again, three feet this time. Then it dragged him thirty feet all at once. He smashed into the dresser drawer hard enough to daze him.
The next strand dragged him now, quickly toward the lifeboat, tracing its path in reverse.
Riley realized her ears were recovering because she heard bones snap when Bobby smashed into the plastic hull.
As the first cord of blood vessels dragged Bobby away into the shadows from where it had first emerged, Riley thought she saw his body shrinking as it was pulled within the twisted arteries.
Riley sat frozen, praying that the mist hid her from the invading cords.
Another cord burst out from the lifeboat’s hull, from the spot where it had last touched. It shot deeper into Deck One. Riley suspected that if her hearing had fully recovered, she would have heard shouts or gunshots from that direction to draw its attention.
She felt like a coward for not leaping up to help Bobby. But she was alive. And what could she have done? No way she could have yanked him away from it. One of those steel studs might have enough force to break the cords, but it would have burned through her fingers before she could swing it.
Still, if she survived this, she knew she’d never get that view out of her head, of Bobby’s limp corpse getting dragged out of sight while it was pulled into the artery.
As her hearing more fully returned, a rapid-fire clicking sound reached her ears. She held still and looked around, trying to pinpoint its locations. It was quieter than the fiddler crab or starfish. More like a watch.
She checked Dad’s watch, but she hadn’t accidentally wound it.
Finally, she realized where it was coming from: the taut blood vessels that still hung between debris. They were organic in every way that Riley could see, but from inside, they whirred and clicked as if driven by clockwork.
They were the edges of the self-building creation that Chris warned about. Riley felt confident in that. She hoped they were just the edges, and this small part crossing over into terraformed space would still die like the fiddler crab if it went too far.
Riley swallowed a giggle. It was absurd. Riley thought of fleeing but quickly discarded the idea.
This couldn’t be happening, and she desperately had to stop it from happening.
As quietly as she could, she followed the blood vessels deeper into Deck One.
41
As Riley’s hearing returned, she heard shouting and gunshots.
The sparse junkyard of Deck One—with its orange fog and scattered
holes in the floor—now felt like a bloody spiderweb.
The strand of twisted blood vessels shot from surface to surface, deeper toward the commotion.
Riley followed, trying to be quiet enough not to be noticed but fast enough to find Chris before it was too late.
The journey felt far too long. If her sense of direction held, she was walking left-to-right across the ship. It shouldn’t be this wide. But when she looked down into one of the holes in the floor, she saw the same normal subbasement that had killed the fiddler crab.
A nearby gunshot startled her. Someone was running up ahead—the old man with the 3d-printed gun. He saw Riley but paid her no attention. He limped badly, his old bones not used to this level of effort.
Two uniformed crew members came into view, chasing the old man. They carried semiautomatic rifles like Bobby had.
Riley ducked into the fog. The crew would see her as another terrorist.
The old man ducked under a taut strand of blood vessels. Riley didn’t know how far the front end of the thing had gone. She didn’t know if the whole strand was dangerous or just the furthermost front tip.
The crew apparently hadn’t seen the damage it could do yet. One wasn’t careful enough ducking underneath. The blood vessel snagged his shoulder. His feet jerked forward, and he bounced on the line.
Riley lowered her eyes and plugged her ears. She couldn’t help, and she didn’t want to watch that again.
She counted to thirty and then looked up. Only the orange fog, the scattered junk, and the maze of twisted arteries.
The second crew security must have tried to help and been taken, too.
Riley checked over her shoulder for the old man cult member, then continued in the direction they’d all three come from.
A flailing body came sliding along the bloody cord. It was dusty and scarred already—one of the shadowy people. It bellowed in anger as it flew past Riley.
Their invasion had drawn attention to the shadowy people’s hideout. Riley tried to think of a way she could have stopped this, but she was a latecomer. She wasn’t the one who’d led everybody down here.
She walked around another lifeboat on its side and then navigated an open area spotted with holes. Ahead, she heard shouting, close enough to nearly be intelligible.
A gun battle came into view.
Three security crew had fanned out around an upside-down prefabricated swimming pool. They each aimed their rifles at it. One shouted for someone to show themselves, but if they’d been firing, Riley didn’t imagine anyone could hear each other.
Riley couldn’t see who was underneath the pool shell. It had to be Nathaniel. He was the only one left.
She had to know if Chris was with him. She slowly circled wide around the crew.
The blood vessels hadn’t reached this far yet, probably distracted by hunting the shadowy people. A single strand stretched behind the crew, but Riley couldn’t see where it came from or headed.
Gunshots from under the pool shell. The crew returned fire. Riley used the distraction to dash for cover behind a truck-sized pile of cafeteria trays.
She peeked around. From this angle, she could see underneath the crooked prefabricated pool.
Her uncle sat with his back against the fiberglass pool wall. He held one pistol trained on Chris, who lay on his stomach. The other he held ready to fire again at the crew.
Riley needed a plan. Some way to get Chris to stay down and Nathaniel to expose himself.
The solution was suddenly obvious.
She cupped her hands around her mouth to shout, “The Deviser’s arriving!”
Chris’s head popped up. He spotted Riley. She motioned for him to stay down.
At the same time, Nathaniel looked around eagerly. Then he saw who had shouted. Riley had convinced Wendy but never got the chance to convince her uncle she was on their side. He didn’t trust her.
He stayed behind his cover.
A half-success.
Something zipped through Riley’s wall of cafeteria trays. Plastic shattered.
Her shouting had drawn the attention of the crew. They thought she was a terrorist.
Riley followed Chris’s lead to drop to her stomach and bury her face in the floor. Cold metal cooled her cheek.
She tried to think of a way to warn the crew about their guns attracting the blood vessel. There was nothing she could do.
A few moments later, one of them screamed. She couldn’t see them, but she could see Nathaniel watching them.
His bushy gray brow furled in confusion. He shook his head.
Riley saw Chris speak, but whatever he said, Nathaniel just shook his head more vigorously.
Right now, he was probably searching for justification for why the Deviser’s realm would be so dangerous if the Deviser was the benevolent deity he believed.
Gunfire as the crew defended themselves. It was too late.
Riley saw horror on Nathaniel’s face. He ducked back under the pool.
Riley waited for the blood vessels to find Nathaniel. A minute passed. Five.
She looked behind her. The twisted artery had taken off in another direction.
Nathaniel must have realized the same thing. He spoke loud enough for Riley to hear. “The Deviser protected us. It knows I’m on its side.”
“It doesn’t know you exist,” Chris said.
“I don’t pretend to know its purposes, but I can interpret its actions. It’s protected us.”
“Then why did you hide?” Riley yelled.
Nathaniel stood up. “You two come with me. We’re going back up to Deck Two to make sure the naive crewmen haven’t interfered with the Deviser’s machinery.”
So he did know about the pile of dough. That had to mean he knew about the bodies. Chris had no chance of convincing Nathaniel that the Deviser was evil. Her uncle had already accepted that committing evil was okay. Whether he thought the ends were justified didn’t change the fact that he was dangerous.
“Get up, both of you!” Nathaniel aimed his pistols at them both.
No way he’d be able to hit her with that plastic gun from forty-feet away while also distracted by Chris. But if Riley ran, Nathaniel might take it out on Chris. She walked to them.
“If you’re going to kill us,” Chris said, “kill us.” He crawled to his feet.
Nathaniel pointed his other pistol inches from Chris’s nose. “I still want your account of the Richmond building.”
“And me?” Riley asked.
Nathaniel opened his mouth in a stunned expression that looked like Dad. “You’re my niece. Wendy wanted you to be here. I expect you’ll need significant convincing to serve the Deviser, but I can be very persuasive with family.”
“Then why couldn’t you get the pocket watch from my dad?” Riley couldn’t help but prod him.
Nathaniel’s lips tightened into a fine line that disappeared into the many lines on his aging skin. He stuck Chris with the butt of one of the pistols.
Chris grunted and rubbed his jaw.
The light plastic pistol didn’t have the effect Nathaniel was apparently hoping for.
Before Riley could stop him, Chris jumped on the opportunity. He grabbed Nathaniel’s wrist and punched him in the gut.
Nathaniel whimpered in pain, the blow striking hard without any youthful fat to dampen it. But he was still determined and furious. He swung the other pistol around toward Chris.
Riley saw it in slow motion, her uncle’s lanky arm swinging toward her friend. She tackled him.
Her shoulder connected with the back of his ribcage. Something cracked inside.
Nathaniel screamed.
Riley felt sick to her stomach. She’d never had a broken bone and had certainly never felt someone else’s bones break under her.
Chris collected both pistols.
Nathaniel rolled over to look up at them, but the determination on his face had been replaced with agony.
Broken ribs hurt. And the depression just below his sho
ulder said that his collarbone had snapped, too.
Chris handed Riley a pistol. “Are you okay leaving him here? We can’t let that machine upstairs run any longer.”
“We shouldn’t leave him.” The pistol felt awkward in her hand. Lighter than she’d imagined a gun would be, but still as deadly.
“I’m not carrying him back through here,” Chris said. “I won’t risk my own life for his. Not when that machine upstairs is still pumping, and we’re the only ones who know it needs to be stopped.”
Riley realized he was right. Her own guilt about leaving Nathaniel to die was less important than stopping more of the Aria from becoming like Deck One. Or more of the world. There was no reason to assume it would stop with the ship. “We’ll come back for him afterward.”
Nathaniel started to protest, but the pain made him wail even louder.
Riley scanned their surroundings.
Where before there had been one strand of twisted arteries, now there were two crisscrossing each other.
It was searching for them.
“The door’s that way.” Chris pointed out through the chest-high blood webbing. “I don’t know what that rope is. Is that what killed the crew? That’s what you were warning about?”
Riley nodded. “Let’s not try to go back through there.” She led the way to an open spot in the orange mist, ignoring Nathaniel’s whimpers. Peering down into the hole, she could see a normal hallway with copper pipes and ductwork along one wall. “We go down, find a stairwell, and head back up.”
Chris got on his hands and knees to stick his head down through the hole. “It’s some kind of maintenance deck.”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
“It doesn’t look like the Deviser’s dimension.”
Riley swallowed her annoyance. “Exactly.”
“That doesn’t mean it’s ours, though.”
Riley wasn’t about to let her fear wander down that rabbit hole, and she sure as hell wasn’t sneaking past that bloody clothesline of death. “I’ll risk it.”
Making sure her finger was off the pistol trigger, Riley stepped out over the hole and dropped down.
42
In the maintenance deck hallway, the heat and humidity weighed down on Riley. Her clothes were quickly drenched in sweat, and she saw the same happen to Chris.
