The Aeschylus

1

Kate was so stunned that at first, she didn't make a sound. Then the pain hit her, and she shrieked. Mason was dragging her like a sack of grain, pulling her by the hair.

“Let me go!”

He punched her then, a quick, hard shot to the chin. Her head reeled. When she opened her eyes, another building loomed in front of her. She tried to remember something from her youth, a self defense throw, kick, something. But it was happening too fast. He was too goddamned big.

Mason pulled her in front of him. “Vy, get the door, would you?”

There was the sound of metal creaking — a giant hinge on a giant door. Or maybe not so giant, just sinister, just final.

She kicked out hard, slamming her foot into his shin. When it hit, she pulled her hand out of her pocket, her key chain gripped tightly between her fingers. A single key stuck out between her knuckles, and on instinct, she stabbed him with it. She felt the key sink into his arm, hard metal into soft meat. Mason barely grunted. He slammed her into the wall, and she dropped it, her last, pitiful weapon.

“No!” she screamed. “No!”

Mason threw her through the open doorway, her body twisting as it collapsed onto the concrete. She scrambled to her feet, reaching the door just as it slammed in her face. The sound of a lock clicked into place.

“You bastard! Why are you doing this?” It sounded foolish, but to her surprise, she got an answer.

“Because if they found the vice president's daughter full of bullet holes, it would be a hell of a thing to explain, that's why. The odds of anyone finding you are next to nothing, but it's not a chance I'm willing to take. Better you die of natural causes, princess. I thought we might have to drop you off the side of The Aeschylus with an anchor tied to your feet, but this is easier.”

“What are you talking about?” she cried.

“It's much easier to deal with two targets at once than three. And if it wasn't for your stupid indiscretion, we'd only have one. But I guess you passed that sentence this morning, didn't you?”

“What do you mean?” she yelled. “What do you mean?” But that question didn't need answering, because she knew what he meant just fine.

She was a target. They were all targets.

She didn't know how or why, but someone at Valley Oil had had ordered them dead. They were cleaning house upstairs, and that meant cleaning the dirty laundry. AJ knew about the security violations; Kate had insider information from old Stan McCreedy's envelope. Not they needed an extra reason to get rid of her. Nearly four hundred thousand shares of a company that could be running the American oil industry in twenty years? They could have never done it inside the states, not with her political ties, and not with The Service watching. But out here was the law of the jungle, and out here, no one would save her.

“I'm sorry about this Kate, I really am,” Mason said through the door. “I did respect your father, even if I didn't like him. This is just business, if you'll excuse the old expression. If it makes you feel better, you can blame the old man.”

“You leave my father out of this!”

“You'll be dead of dehydration in three or four days. Try to sleep it off, if you can.”

She wanted to scream at him, to tell him that she would find a way out, but she couldn't. In that moment, there was only despair. “You don't have to do this,” she groaned. “Please…”

There was no answer, and as the seconds ticked by, her solitude became a stifling certainty. They were leaving her. They were really leaving.

She crumpled to the floor, her head in hands. Then she wiped her face, wondering how many seconds of life each tear would cost. Without food or water, the clock was ticking.

When she lifted her head, she noticed there was almost no light. There were no windows that she could see, no vents or portholes or fenestrae anywhere around her. Then, she remembered her cell phone. She took it from her pocket, praying she had remembered to charge the battery enough to last the day. When she flicked the button, it came to life, and she saw the readout. “No signal. Of course not,” she said. The phone did emit light, however, and that was something. She held it in front of her like a flashlight. All the wits of a CIA operative, she thought again, and she laughed a little. Maybe she could keep those wits about her.

Maybe.

The light on the phone suddenly cut off, and she cried out, nearly dropping it to the floor. The light came back when she slapped it, though. Just the automatic power saver. She exhaled, remembering she'd have to flick a button every few seconds to keep the light active. The battery showed the phone had close to a full charge, but she knew from experience that it wouldn't last forever.

Cautiously, she began walking the hall, sticking her head into each room along the path. The first two rooms held metal bed frames and a couple of shelves. The third contained a hole with an ancient, fetid smell. The room at the end of the hall was the largest, and it looked the most lived-in. She saw beds and shelves, old blankets, toiletries scattered on the floor. A stuffed bear sat on one of the cots, staring at her with ancient, button eyes. It held the faded, worn look of a child's love, and it looked sad somehow. I'm lonely, its eyes seemed to say. Pick me up and hold me. It's been so long since I've had company. So long.

Kate sat on the cot and squeezed the bear to her chest, its stuffing as soft as old jelly. It was comforting, that bear. It didn't matter that it had been almost thirty years since she'd last had one of her own. When at last she set him down, she saw a glint of something strange on one of the shelves. It looked terribly out of place, and at first, she thought the light was playing tricks on her. When she grabbed it, she couldn't believe it was real.

It was a screwdriver.

2

“Dutch?” AJ called. “Dutch, are you there?”

The room lay still. Outside, the platform groaned as it swayed subtly in the wind.

AJ dropped the file he was holding and pulled the M1911 from his belt. He counted his respiration: one breath, two… and then heard the click of footsteps. Dutch appeared in the doorway ahead of him, but he wasn't alone.

“I'd put that down if I were you, smart boy.”

The man behind his friend was smiling. AJ noted distractedly that he had a huge jaw — worthy of acromegaly, really — and it made him look oddly simian.

Dutch cast his eyes downwards. “I'm sorry, buddy.”

“Guess this one's not as slow as the old guy this morning,” AJ said conversationally.

“I guess not.”

St. Croix had eyes for only AJ. “I told you to put it down.”

“Fuck you, you put it down.”

“You don't put it down, I'll shoot him.”

“You shoot him, I shoot you. And you have a big head for a target.”

“Now, now, here. Why don't everybody just calm down?” Just when AJ didn't think things could get any worse, Melvin appeared. He was pushing Doctor Grey in front of him, one hand on the man's shoulder and one wrapped around the trigger of his shotgun. He shoved the doctor into the room, and Grey tumbled to the floor. He looked only half lucid.

A long kitchen counter separated the standoff, and after Grey was down, Melvin began circling around it. AJ saw him flanking, and without opening fire, he couldn't do a thing to stop it. The odds were dropping fast, and his finger twitched, a hair's breadth from thunder.

Melvin leveled the shotgun. “You want to get messy? You look like you thinkin' 'bout it.”

If this were a movie, AJ could hit St. Croix in the head and drop Melvin before either of them could blink. But this wasn't a movie, and Dutch was the marksman, not him.

He lowered his gun. “Shit.”

“On the floor. Kick it over to me.”

The gun skittered across the tile. “What's your boss going to think when he sees what you kids have been up to?”

“I don't know if you heard the boat, buddy-boy, but he's down below. Guess you ain't as sharp as you used to be, huh?”

“Oh yeah, I would have heard it,” St. Croix said.

Dutch spun before the man's mouth was closed, whipping his arm around to strike, but the ape was too fast. St. Croix smacked his attacker in the head. Dutch stumbled, then Melvin booted him in the ass and knocked him over to his friend. AJ grabbed him and hauled him to his feet.

It took a moment for Melvin's words to sink in, but when they did, he felt his face flush. “If Bruhbaker is below, what about the girl? What's she gonna say about all this?”

At that exact moment, Mason appeared in the doorway, his face grim. “She won't be saying a damned thing.”

“What does that mean?” AJ knew Mason could be cold-blooded, but if something had happened to Kate, it would be a new low, even for him. He told himself Mason couldn't be that brazen. Not an official mission for Black Shadow, not with the girl being who she was.

“I didn't shoot her, but your girlfriend won't be coming back from the island to send any postcards. You can bet on that.”

AJ was about to fire back at him, some pithy comeback that would put the sonofabitch in his place, but when he opened his mouth, nothing came out. The girl? All of them? This had been one hell of a day, but he had never doubted for a second he would see the end of it. He had never doubted that no matter how bad things got, there could be a way out.

“We go back a long time, Mason,” he said quietly.

“That we do.”

“And I guess you're not going to tell us why you're doing this?”

“You've seen what's going on out there. This thing, whatever it is, it's bigger than you and me. It's bigger than all of us. Somebody at the top wants to make sure they have plausible deniability, and I suppose that means getting rid of the people who knew better.”

“I always was a problem.”

The look Mason gave him was almost compassionate. Almost. “You still are.”

“Why don't you just shoot us?” Dutch yelled.

“Not today.”

Mason motioned to the door. On his way out, Melvin made a little point-and-shoot motion at them with his thumb and forefinger. It made AJ want to rip his hand off and feed it to him.

“Close it,” Mason said.

Seconds later, the door closed, and a welding torch began to seal them in.

3

They stared at each other awkwardly. “I guess we're in this together now, whether we like it or not,” AJ said.

Gideon picked himself up and straightened. He was looking better now, the effects of Melvin's little concoction wearing off. At his full height, he was taller than both of his companions. “Who are you people? And what the hell am I doing here? You know that asshole out there hit me? He actually hit me!” he said, looking around like he expected to find a lawyer hiding behind a cabinet.

“We didn't get a chance to meet yet, Doc. I'm AJ Trenton. This here is my friend, Henry Jones. There was another person with us before, a girl. We were brought here to… well, to consult, you might say.”

“Pleased to meet you, I guess.”

“How are you feeling?”

The man shrugged, his orange coat too big on his shoulders. “Aside from being back in here? How the hell are we going to get out?”

AJ looked at the doctor and then over to his friend. If Dutch was freaked out, he was hiding it well. The situation didn't seem real yet, maybe because it all happened so fast. “Well, this place worked once. I guess they figured it would hold people again. How did you survive, anyway?”

The man giggled. It was a strange sound coming from an adult male. “There's plenty to drink, if that's what you're wondering!”

“Not any more,” Dutch said. He was looking through the refrigerator and through the cabinets. “No more bottles.”

Gideon looked over his shoulder, and his face went ashen. AJ wasn't sure he liked that look any better than hysteria.

“They must have moved everything out. I don't think our imprisonment here is a spur-of-the-moment kind of thing. They must have been waiting for an opportunity to get us separated.”

“You think it's true, what they said about Kate?” Dutch asked.

“I don't know. I didn't hear any shots, did you?”

“You didn't even hear the boat.”

“But you must have.”

Dutch settled his butt against the counter. “Yeah I did, and I didn't hear any shots.”

“They must have left her there.”

“Or drowned her. They'd have a hell of a time getting you and me underwater, but her?”

Gideon began to pace back and forth, his hands threatening to rip out chunks of his own hair. “Okay, okay, great! So no shots. No shots! But we're trapped in here. Right back to square one, you might say. Not just a chair this time. Can you build a welder? If not, then we'll be eating each others' corpses within the week.”

AJ actually laughed. The guy was nuts but not humorless. “Can you make a welder?”

“Me? Hell no. I'm just a biologist, for Christ's sake.”

“I'm sure Bruhbaker was counting on that.”

“Bruhbaker?”

“He's the asshole,” Dutch said, “the one who hit you.”

“Oh.”

AJ started around the room. He was scanning his memory, going over every detail he could remember. He wasn't on the engineering team, but he was well-familiar with the blueprints. It had been part of his job to know the place inside and out. The kitchen, of all places. It hadn't exactly been high on the list of security risks.

“Hey Doc,” Dutch said. “Maybe you want to calm down and tell us more about what we're facing?”

“What do you mean?”

“I don't know if you noticed, but it's a freakin' jungle outside. Those Carrion things are everywhere now.”

“They grow fast, don't they?”

“We noticed,” AJ said. He was over in the corner now, looking at one of the big, industrial stoves. Heat was always a concern, so the primary ventilation system ran…

“There are more of them than when I was outside last,” Gideon said. “When I heard the gunfire I expected… I don't know what I expected. I guess I expected hazmat teams and a government quarantine. I should have known VO would be trying to clean up its own mess.”

“With extreme prejudice,” AJ said. He had begun yanking the stove away from the wall. It was heavy, but it had wheels. “Dutch, you got a penny?”

His buddy tossed him a ten-centavos Chilean coin and went back to examining the door. It didn't look like he was having any luck.

“What I don't get is why they didn't shoot us. If they're trying to kill us, I mean,” Gideon said.

AJ knelt down and examined the space behind the stove. He found the screws he was looking for and starting twisting one of them with the coin. “They can't. Sooner or later, there will be hazmat teams and a government investigation. If our bodies are riddled with bullets, there will be too many questions. Mason was right about that. It might be the easy thing, but he cares too much about Black Shadow's reputation to risk it. Ever since Baghdad, the private sector has been very cautious when it comes to bodies. You got to imagine that goes double for the vice president's daughter.”

“What? Who?” Gideon asked.

“The girl,” Dutch said.

“They can deny we were ever a part of the investigation to begin with. They can claim we ended up here of our own accord.”

“That doesn't make any sense,” Gideon said.

Dutch shook his head. “My buddy's right. Without hard evidence, who's going to prove otherwise? They could make our contract disappear on a whim.”

AJ picked the heavy metal frame off of the wall and tossed it to the floor. It clanged against the counter, snapping everyone's attention back to him. He looked at them. “There's bad news and worse news.”

“Let's hear it.”

“I found the main ventilation system. It goes out the wall here and through the floor,” he said, pointing. “That's actually good news because it goes out of the building. The bad news is that it'll be a tight fit, if we can squeeze through at all.”

“And the worse news?”

“It's a fifty foot drop to the water. I don't see any rope, do you?”

“What about the windows? Have we tried those yet?”

AJ shook his head. “They're shatterproof. You couldn't break one of those with a sledgehammer.”

“I know, I tried,” Gideon said. “I mean, not that I had a real hammer or anything.”

Dutch let out a breath. “Well, there's no waiting it out, I guess.”

AJ looked at him. “I don't know about you, but I'm not counting on the government moving in for another two or three days. If the Shadow team manages to hold off the authorities, we'll be just as dead. In fact, I think that's their plan. Besides, you heard what Doctor Grey here said about how fast that stuff is growing. I'm not sure I want to wait until it drags the whole damned place down with it.”

“You don't think…” Dutch began.

“I don't think it can move, but it could grow heavy enough to topple the platform. This place may look solid, but you got to remember that it entered the water horizontally and was tipped ninety degrees into place. It could tip back if the supports break.”

They were quiet. Every groan of wind became an unbearable din. They could feel the strain of the place all around them, their prison getting smaller by the moment. No one mentioned the cut on Doctor Grey's head. No one mentioned the fact that — if they stayed — he might be as prone to The Carrion spores as the original crew, and it probably wouldn't take a full three days before something happened.

Dutch bent down and examined the hole in the wall. He threw his jacket down and started taking off his shirt. “Well, now or never.”

“Not yet,” AJ said. He knew what came next, and it wasn't pleasant.

“What are you do—”

AJ grabbed Gideon by the scruff of the neck, bending him backwards over the counter.

Gideon flailed. “What the—”

“If we're going out there, I want you tell me one more thing, Doc. It's something you neglected to mention in your little speech to Bruhbaker and company.”

“What… what's that?”

“I want to know what happened to the crew. You see, I know where they were. They hunted down your friends and kept you inside this room. That's what you said, right? But what I want to know is where they are. Because as you've noticed, it's been awfully quiet, and I have a feeling we're not really alone, are we Doctor?” AJ saw the man's face change, and he suddenly felt a ghost step over his grave. How had Mason not thought to ask him? He had smashed the doc before he had a chance to spill it.

Gideon squirmed.

“You can start talking, or we can toss you down that goddamned vent shaft and let you drown in the water below. What do you say?” AJ released him, and the doctor bounced back to his full height.

“Oh,” the man said, rubbing his throat. “That won't be necessary. Certainly not.”

So, he told them.

4

The gunk oozing from the arm-sized tentacle stank unlike anything Jin had smelled in his life. The closest approximation was Mama's Canh Chua. Jin's best friend in middle school had been this Vietnamese kid named John Choy. He used to invite him over to his house, but on Sundays, his mom made this stew with fish parts and oils that smelled like rotting pussy. John said it was called Canh Chua, but why he insisted on putting Mama's before it, Jin never knew. He did know he never had the stomach to try it, and on some level, it was responsible for why he detested most Vietnamese people on sight now. They were just so goddamned dirty, maybe because they could eat shit like that without flinching. Old Johnny used to just love his Mama's Canh Chua.

“You having fun down there?”

Bending over the railing, Jin looked up and saw Peter gazing down from the level above. Christian stood next to him, and the two of them looked unbearably pleased about something.

Jin held up a plastic bag filled with the fungus. It was a viscous black color, full of chunks where he'd chopped at the thing. It looked like he'd been prospecting for hobo shit. “You want to help?”

By way of reply, Peter scrunched his cheeks and let a gob of spit fall down towards him. It was thick with tobacco juice. Jin dodged, pulling his head in and nearly smashing it on a steel pulley. “Now that's disgusting.” He heard laughter above, stuck his head back out, and shot the pair of them the bird. Then he turned back to his gear, making a mental note to add Italians to his list of inferior dirt eaters. “You're a fucking animal, St. Croix,” he yelled. They absolutely howled.

How they could be laughing, he didn't know. They were in the middle of some weird shit, and they were a long way from out of the woods. He supposed they were gloating now that the security specialist was out of the way. What happened to doing a good day's work and going the fuck home? Jesus, you didn't have to gloat, especially when a man's life was at stake. But whatever. One day, he'd be free of these psychos and be able to open his own consulting firm. This bloody field work had to go.

He threw his baggie to the ground and picked up his tool kit. Good, he thought. Back to my real job. It's not like they couldn't pay some other dipshit to collect the samples they wanted. But of course, it's Jin for the grunt work… again! Always the goddamned Asian guy.

Not that he was complaining. He'd rather spend two hours down here than five minutes with those monkeys up top. As far as repairs went though, things weren't as bad as he had thought. With a little elbow grease, he thought he could repair the antenna and restore the short range radio. Mason said there was some kind of interference going on, but he was on his own for that one. Jin had had just about enough of figuring out other people's problems. At least if he got the radio running, Bruhbaker would be happy. “Well, probably not,” he said to himself. “Jin, fix the derrick while you're it. You got time, right? Oh, and find out what's going on with the cell phones. Just out of curiosity, where are those sub-sea repeaters? Do you think you could get to those? Jesus, you're the smart one. College boy. Hurry it up!” But…

Whatever.

“You need some help down there?”

Jin poked his head back over the rails to see that Peter and Christian had calmed down.

“Seriously,” Peter said. “The place is secure. You don't want to be taking any chances with the ropes.”

“Thanks, but I don't think so.”

“Suit yourself, China-man.”

Jin hated being called China-man, especially since he wasn't Chinese. Not to mention the term was downright racist, and that's not shit you were supposed to say out loud in a professional environment.

“I think I'll be just fine without you two idiots.”

Christian hocked a spit down at him then, the loogie passing considerably closer than Peter's had.

“Piss off!”

The pair of them cackled like old crones and disappeared. He could hear them talking above, but he was too tired to give a shit. “I hope you rot.”

Jin found his backpack and brought out his harness. He would have to do a little rope work to get to the antenna cables, but that was fine. He was a professional goddammit, even if he was surrounded by morons. Peter had saved his bacon earlier, and Jin didn't forget that. As talented as the man was though, he just wasn't firing on all cylinders.

There were already support systems in place for a rope access technician, so Jin had no problems strapping in. He made sure the rope was well-secured, then stepped over the rails and perched his feet on the ledge. One of the huge, black tendrils lay just in front of him, the water fifty feet below. He made sure he had his equipment — tool kit, gloves, wiring — then floated out over empty space. The ropes held fast, but he discovered the cable he wanted was just out of reach; the tentacle was in the way.

It was massive. Jin guessed it could be eight feet wide, and the smell was unbelievable. Mama's fish stew, he thought, reaching into his shirt and pulling up a painter's mask. Oh Johnny, you fucking dirt eater. If this didn't deserve extra hazard pay, he didn't know what did.

The thing in front of him wasn't opaque like the smaller tentacles he'd cut. This one was different, and it looked translucent when he got close. There was a fluid moving inside of it, giving the thing an awful, undulating appearance. There was something else too, some… shape.

He pulled himself closer still, bringing a gloved hand up as if to touch it. There really was something inside, and it was moving. He inched his face closer, wanting to see just what the hell it was.

That's when the thing inside opened its eyes and looked back.