Page 108 of Tides of Fire
As they did, all of them withdrew at the smell that wafted up. It reeked of salt and rot and alcohol, a cocktail no one would order. They waited for the worst of the smell to dissipate before leaning in closer.
The source of the odor was easy to spot. A glass-lidded tank rested at the bottom of the safe. It still held liquid, though its seal must haveweakened enough for some of the fluid to evaporate and condensate inside the airtight safe.
Seichan covered her mouth at the smell—and the sight.
Something dark lay curled inside the tank.
“What is it?” she asked.
For the moment, Gray ignored the tank and reached to an iron shelf next to it. He slid out an oilskin-wrapped pouch. The package was sealed in wax and stamped with an insignia of the British crown.
“This must be Stamford’s missing pages,” Gray said.
Xue remained fixated on the preserved specimen. “But what did he hide with it?”
Gray used the cuff of his jacket to wipe the condensation from the glass lid. The contents were still hard to make out. It appeared to be a coiled black mass, splotched with gray, all nestled upon itself.
“It looks like a snake,” Seichan said. “Maybe the Rainbow Serpent.”
Gray tilted his head one way, then the other. “It’s not a snake.”
He pulled out a penlight and shone it through the yellowed glass to better illuminate the contents. What looked like a single fat coil was actually made up of several tentacle-like strands twined together.
But that was not the true horror.
Gray shifted his light to reveal a mass half buried beneath those tentacles. Its gyrations and folds were unmistakable, but from its surfaces, hundreds of tendrils hung in the fluid.
“Is that a brain?” Seichan gasped out.
“Maybe at one time.” Gray turned to Xue and Heng. “This looks like what I saw on your video. From the morgue in Cambodia. Emerging from a corpse’s skull.”
Heng confirmed with a nod.
Gray reached down and wiped his thumb across a steel tag affixed to the glass lid. It was deeply inscribed. But what was written there was no scientific classification of the specimen—only a grave marker. It was etched with a single name to encompass a life cut short.
Matthew
29
January 24, 9:28A.M.NCT
Three hundred miles off Norfolk Island (Australia)
Ninety minutes after setting foot on the ruins ofTitan Station Up, Kowalski was ready to leave.
He stood atop the rig’s mid-deck and stared across the seas. To keep his perch on the tilted floor, he braced a hand against a strut. With his other, he balanced a PF-89 anti-tank rocket launcher on his shoulder. He had confiscated it from one of the Chinese prisoners.
He smoked a cigar and stared down at the fiery wreckage of a Z-8 helicopter. It floated in the ash-choked sea. The bird had been an easy target. Pinned down by the low clouds of ash, it had nowhere to hide during its approach. Kowalski suspected it had returned to the station not to attack it, but to seek a safe harbor. By the time it got here, its engine—clogged by ash—struggled to hold the aircraft aloft. It coughed and stuttered the last of the distance.
Still, Kowalski had noted the helicopter’s air-to-surface missiles and gunpods. In an abundance of caution and even more fury, he had shot it down before it could do any harm. It was an easy decision. After he and Jarrah had hunted down the last of the Chinese stragglers, they discovered a couple dozen researchers and support staff locked in the mid-deck crew quarters. The survivors were only a fraction of those who had been aboard the two stations—UpandDown.
So, Kowalski had not been feeling especially merciful. Still, he hadspared the lives of the handful of commandos who had surrendered or who were too injured to be a threat. They were bound and locked up. Jarrah had gathered discarded weapons and armed the remaining survivors.
While he did that, Kowalski had swum out to the seaplane. It was the Twin Otter that he and Monk had flown aboard to reach the station. It had been set adrift in the debris field, but it was still intact. Once he recovered it, he used the plane to retrieve Haru, Byrd, and Jazz from the foundering Tethys Tier. Gliding over the waves, with no cavitation of props in the water to trigger a UUV, he was able to safely ferry them back to the station.
The Otter now rocked below, moored to the lower level. It still had another trip to make. Kowalski squinted to the east, toward where the Chinese helicopter had been headed. He had learned from the survivors that a large military ship had steamed off in the same direction.
Kowalski knew what lay out there.