The Tide (Tide Series Book 1) (15 page)

An underlying current of anticipation buzzed through the small crowd as murmuring voices filled the mess hall.

“Captain, permission to speak freely,” a voice called from back. It belonged to Mark O’Malley, one of the ship’s stewards whose usual duties entailed meal preparation and general maintenance of the ship.

“Granted,” Dom said.

“You never include
us
”—he gestured to the small group of support staff—“in the intel briefings. Why now?”

“A valid concern.” Dom folded his arms across his chest. “I need your help—and your forgiveness.”

Voices rose, and the crew shared confused looks. Dom held up a hand to signal for silence. “Right now, we don’t know what turned the people on the IBSL platform, human beings we figured were at one time normal and healthy, into the creatures we call Skulls.” He paused, waiting for the murmurs to cease again, and steeled himself for what he had to say next to his crew. “We don’t know if we’re susceptible to whatever agent or disease turned those people into Skulls.”

Mark O’Malley stood. “We could become one of those monsters you showed us?”

“We honestly don’t know,” Dom said. “I assure you, Lauren and her team are hard at work examining the samples we recovered aboard the rig.”

“You mean that shit’s on board?” Mark cried out again, ignoring formal rank-order respect. Others clamored around him, their faces turning red with anger. Their words began to drown out Dom’s thoughts.

“Quiet!” he yelled. “Quiet! I’m being open with you because you all deserve that much. We’re in unknown territory, but each of you accepted that risk the day you boarded the
Huntress.
” He stretched his arms to encompass every crewman and crewwoman. “You all serve a vital role in protecting our friends and families, along with our nation, from biological and chemical weapons. And our most recent mission is a testament both to our dedication and to the frightening enemy we face each and every day. Our enemy isn’t defined by a single nation or terrorist organization; we’re fighting against the unethical, corrupt use of weapons and technologies perverted to harm those we hold dear at home and across the globe. If you would like to renege on your commitment to this ship and the rest of the crew, feel free to do so. I’ll be happy to sign your relinquishment papers after we’re done here. But
not
until we’re sure we aren’t carrying any biological agents.”

The crew sat in stunned silence.

Renee stood at attention. “I’m behind you, Captain.”

“Same here,” Glenn said, joining her.

The rest of the crew followed suit, their voices raised in support. Eventually Mark O’Malley did too.

Again, Dom held up his hand and drew in a breath. “Remember, the world may not know about your service, but I hope you all know that your work here could save it.” He took a second to scan individual faces and then said, “Dismissed.”

The crew filtered out of the mess hall and into the ship’s corridors. Thomas stayed behind and waited for the last crew member to leave. He approached Dom and placed a hand against the bulkhead. “You forgot to mention when we’ll be holding Brett’s burial at sea. Bad luck to delay a sailor’s funeral.”

“I didn’t forget. We haven’t scheduled services.”

Thomas raised a skeptical eyebrow. “And if I’m reading between the lines correctly, you aren’t going to.”

“Not any time soon.”

“The man’s gone,” Thomas said. “What are we waiting for?”

“I’m afraid Lauren’s going to need to observe him for a while.”

“Observe him?” Thomas’s voice rose. “KIA or not, he’s a human being, not a science experiment.”

Dom straightened, but he kept his voice calm. “I’m well aware. But we need to keep his remains quarantined. Lauren needs to determine whether or not he was exposed to the agent responsible for the Skulls.”

“You’ve got your damn samples. Isn’t that good enough?” Thomas’s brow creased. He pulled a cigar from his front pants pocket and rolled it back and forth between his fingers. “Let the poor man rest his soul.”

“He came in direct contact with the creatures,” Dom said, his voice sharp. “I get where you’re coming from, but we’re dealing with unusual circumstances.” He took a step forward and narrowed his eyes. “I don’t want to have to deal with more funerals at sea because Lauren’s team missed out on a vital piece of data.”

Thomas clenched his jaw, muscle tightening under his five o’clock shadow.

“I know it doesn’t feel right,” Dom said when Thomas didn’t respond. “But if Brett was infected with something, we’ve got to understand what it does to the human body and how we might stop it.”

The red drained from Thomas’s face, and he nodded reluctantly.

“If we can study this contagion, we might be able to ensure the rest of the crew doesn’t suffer. Hell, maybe even the rest of the world.”

“I know you’re right. I know what you’re doing is logical. But it doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t feel okay.”

Dom waited for him to continue.

“I just wanted to let you know I don’t like it.”

Dom nodded. “I understand. That’s why I keep you around. To question me, to make me think about my actions. This time, I know what we’re doing is necessary.”

“As long as you note my objection,” Thomas said.

“Objection noted. Anything else before I head to medical bay? I want to see if the man Renee’s team recovered has anything to say.”

“Nothing currently.” Thomas tilted his head to the side, gesturing toward the mess hall exit. He stuck his unlit cigar into the corner of his mouth. “Mind if I join you for that chat?”

“Be my guest,” Dom said. They walked, side by side, into the corridor.

“Dom! Urgent call!” Chao waved, his head poking out of the electronics workshop. “Meredith’s on the line!”

***

L
auren Winters examined the round plastic dishes holding the samples of yellow tissue she’d isolated from Scott Ashworth’s wounds. In each dish, pink liquid—cell media—nourished the cells in the samples. She placed a dish under an inverted microscope and pressed her biohazard suit’s visor against the eyepiece. The tiny chunks of supposed scar tissue seemed to have grown.

“This is odd. Take a look.”

Peter took his turn on the microscope. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say this looks like calcified tissue indicative of—”

“Bone growth,” Lauren finished for him. “But the strange thing is, I don’t see any osteoblasts.”

Peter pressed his visor against the scope’s eyepiece again. “You’re right. Those cells would be visible at this magnification. They’d be easy to identify. For that matter, I don’t see any cells at all.”

“So I’m not going crazy?”

“I want to say no, but maybe we both are.”

“For their sake, I want to hold onto my sanity a bit longer.” Lauren glanced through the window separating the patient quarantine chamber from the laboratory, where Miguel stood talking to Scott behind the glass.

“Jesus, I can’t believe both of their suits were compromised.” Peter shook his head. “You think they caught whatever it is?”

“I hope not, but if they did, we still have no idea what the symptoms would look like—or when they’d hit.”

“At least Miguel still looks healthy,” Peter said.

Lauren agreed; Miguel certainly appeared ruddy and animated. “But Scott’s still lethargic, and he’s complaining of joint pain along with a killer headache.”

“Yeah, I wish I knew how to explain all those symptoms.”

“Right? I didn’t find any evidence of cranial contusions or trauma. And in spite of everything he says is bothering him, he hasn’t said a word about the wounds in his abdomen we stitched up.”

Peter’s mouth dropped into a frown behind his visor. “His condition makes our work all the more important.” He pulled up the results of their virus and bacteria screening assays. “Most of the microfluidic experiments and sequencing experiments are still running. We’ve still got a slog of tests to identify what might be in the samples from the IBSL.”

Lauren glanced over Peter’s shoulder at the scrolling lists of ongoing and upcoming experiments. “It’ll take the better part of this day and the next before half the initial tests are completed.” In the cramped laboratory setup aboard the
Huntress
, space was at a premium, and Lauren didn’t have access to the sheer inventory of equipment like at her old job in the CDC. “And we don’t have any positive IDs yet?”

“Nope. Whatever might be in those samples doesn’t match any known bacteria or virus so far.”

“You’ve checked it against botulism, rabies, anthrax, Ebola, neurotropic drugs, everything?”

Peter shook his head again, jostling his suit. They’d already tested for a variety of contagions they hypothesized
might
be part of the agents from the rig. Any substances that could be used in a biological weapon or to turn people into killing machines were potential candidates.

“It’s all too strange.” Lauren looked into the scope again. The granular tissue filled her view. “This calcification isn’t just happening spontaneously.
Something
must be causing this growth.”

“Whatever it is, we need to identify it soon.” Peter nodded toward Scott. “Because I don’t like the way Scott’s wounds are shaping up.”

Lauren nodded. They’d found more of that granular yellow tissue in the stitched-up lacerations. She feared it might be one of the symptoms of the Skull infection. Yet the regrowth of tissue hadn’t reached nearly the extent it had when they first brought him into surgery. An idea struck her.

“When Scott first came in here, this calcified tissue had essentially healed his wounds, right?”

“I can see those wheels turning. What’s on your mind?”

“The time between Scott’s injury and the time he came into the OR was no more than an hour.”

Peter’s eyes widened.

“And it’s been several hours since we operated on him,” she continued. “Yet the tissue has only grown back to what I’d estimate as a quarter or so of what it was before.”

Peter picked up her train of thought. “So maybe, just maybe, something we’re doing, something we gave him is slowing the growth of this mystery calcification.”

“I think so,” Lauren said. A victorious grin spread across her face. If something they’d done was slowing the progress of this calcified substance, it meant they might be slowing whatever
caused
the abnormal bone growth. Slowing its progression meant maybe they could stop it. If Scott and Miguel were indeed infected, her team might at least be a step closer toward a cure. She glanced into the microscope again.

“Even if we
did
slow its progress, we still need to get to the root cause of these spontaneous formations,” she said as she twisted a knob on the side of the scope. Another lens clicked into place and increased the magnification. With another flick of a button, the image on the scope shone on a computer monitor. Across the display, branching nodules grew out of the yellow tissue-like formations. Tiny pores dotted their surface. “There’s something we’re missing.”

Peter squinted at the screen. “Up close, this looks familiar. Almost like coral.”

Lauren was ready to dismiss his statement as nothing more than a casual observation until she considered it more seriously. The vast array of colorful and intricate hard coral formations that made up reefs were not just pretty rocks. Rather, the bulk structure of coral was constructed by a colony of tiny polyps. These polyps created their own exoskeleton by secreting calcium carbonate.

“Interesting idea,” she said.

“What?” Peter asked. “You think this is some kind of mutant coral?”

“No, of course not. But maybe something living, even if we can’t find it,
is
responsible for what’s going on here.” She magnified the image as best as she could, but like before, she found no cells, much less polyps in the pores of the calcified granule samples.

“Nothing,” Peter said. “At least, nothing we can see
yet.
”

“What I would give to have an SEM for this shit.” A scanning electron microscope, or SEM, would enable her to reach a magnification of almost 250 times greater than the meager light microscope they used now.

Peter laughed. “Good luck using that at sea.”

“No kidding,” Lauren said. The bulky, sensitive hardware required for an SEM wouldn’t survive the harsh environment of an ocean-going lab. Still, the idea that something invisible to their microscope was responsible for the calcification they saw in the culture dish didn’t seem entirely unreasonable. That gave her another idea. “There are plenty of bacteria too small to see on our scope, right?”

“Yes, but we’re already running microfluidic assays to detect them.”

Lauren nodded. “Right, but we’re looking for bacteria that have previously been studied. Bacteria that scientists have documented in the lab. What if this is something different?”

Peter’s suit rustled as he walked over to the clear partition separating the lab from the isolation ward. He pressed a hand against it and stared at Miguel and Scott. “If we’re dealing with an unknown bacteria, something that creates those calcified formations, and something potentially responsible for turning people into those Skulls...” He stopped and turned around. “If that was what those people on the IBSL were developing, I hope to God it went down with the rest of that platform.”

––––––––

D
om leaned forward and strained to hear Meredith’s voice amid the static. “Meredith, this is Dom. You have a SITREP for me?”

“That’s right,” Meredith replied. She summarized the past couple days she’d spent on the run from the agency. In turn, Dom told her what they’d discovered since recovering the mangled data and biological samples from the rig.

“What did you say this project was called?” Meredith asked.

“Amanojaku,” Chao Li said.

“What exactly is a—what did you call it?”

Chao looked up for permission. Dom gestured for him to answer her.

“An amanojaku is a demon-like creature from Japanese folklore, a small
oni
, or spirit, that causes people to act on dark, evil desires. From what my team’s gathered, the biological agent under development at the rig is supposed to do just that.”