Exodus 2022 (38 page)

Beck studied Joe some more, and felt nauseated by the man’s appearance: the greasy, matted beard. The scalped, bandaged area on his head. His pallid, emaciated frame. Beck thought he looked like a mental patient. A dangerous schizophrenic fresh from lobotomy surgery.

He felt no sympathy for the priest. He had no interest in easing his suffering or keeping him alive long term—only in his immediate utility.

So he watched him breathing now with cold, appraising eyes. He knew that Joe and Mia were linked, telepathically. Ring had told him that the reinstalled thought-capture hardware would allow them to track Mia’s movements throughout the Exodus.

But as Beck observed Joe now, he wondered if the young man would even survive the next few minutes. He appeared to be at death’s door.

Joe turned his head slightly, and his swollen lips moved again, like he wanted to speak.

“Get him some water,” Beck told his infirmary team. “And wake him the hell up.”

Beck’s gaze flicked back to the ROV pictures.

The robot was hovering again. Holding steady in the water column roughly 150 meters from the chamber mouth. The pilot had positioned the craft to one side of the rush of creatures.

The remote’s cameras revealed a densely packed ribbon of organisms. A long, unbroken trail of life-forms flowing from the darkness of the sea toward the phosphorescent portal.

Beck turned to the screens, marveling at the surreal, impossible nature of the feed: predators and prey swimming side by side, submarine-sized whales flanked by seals flanked by sharks, surrounded by salmon and snapper, lamprey and herring, sculpin, wolf eels, greenlings, sole, tubefish, and ray. Orcas and otters and sea lions.

All seemed to be flying headlong toward the horn-of-plenty–shaped chamber, as if it were a colossal vacuum sucking in every last bit of life from a hundred miles around.

An elephant seal shot fluidly past the 12x lens, rolling and twisting and mugging for the camera. The beast’s obsidian-black eyes shone with fierce intelligence. With excitement. It lingered a moment, then spun, merged into the parade of animals, and vanished.

The screens flashed to a wider view.

From this perspective, the fish and mammals crossing the phosphorescent bell resembled bits of interstellar detritus transiting a black hole’s event horizon. Passing a threshold to another universe, never to return.

The flow of animals started to diminish and the War Room staff stared, mute and motionless, like witnesses to a catastrophic disaster.

Joe stirred on his bed and sat up straighter.

A new shape passed beneath the ROV then—through the glow of the ROV’s halogens: Beck’s submarine.
Velocity
.

Dark and sleek and nimble it looked. A worthy high-tech offspring of
Marauder
.

Beck glanced at Ring, sitting at his control panel, flitting from keyboard to keyboard.

“Your plan gonna work, Ring?”

“It should.”

Beck nodded. Looked at Joe. The priest was awake now, soaking in the scene, gawking at news feeds. The White House press secretary was talking to reporters on one monitor, and a caption across the bottom of the screen read “Breaking News. Crisis in the Sea.”

Beck said to Ring. “Send
Velocity
through. Let’s do this.”

Beck stepped to Joe’s gurney as an attendant helped the priest sip water from a plastic cup.

Joe’s eyes—tired but clear—widened slightly when they found Beck’s face.

“Where’s Ella?” he asked, voice thick and raspy.

“Here. On the ship. Safe and sound. For now, at least.”

“What do you want?” Joe asked. The anesthesia was wearing off.

Beck leaned closer. “I’m Sheldon Beck,” he said.

“I know who you are,” Joe whispered. “You’re a criminal. A murderer.”

Beck laughed. “Bold words, Father. But you need to set your anger aside for the time being. We need each other, you and I.”

Joe took another sip of water. Said nothing.

“You need your girl back. In one piece. I need your…insight, navigating in an unfamiliar environment.”

Beck tapped a monitor on the nearest wall. “You see this? This is our Stanton feed. It’s all you, my friend.”

Joe looked from the screen to Beck and back. A group of adult orca whales were patrolling near the surface, along the edge of the flood of life. The Exodus tunnel was visible, but small and remote and far below, on the seafloor.

Joe realized Beck was telling the truth. The images
were
coming from him—from inside his own head—courtesy of Mia.

He lay still as the connection reengaged in his conscious mind. It was like tuning into a lost signal on the radio and finding it bright and clear and powerful.

Mia was communicating with him. Allowing him to see what she was seeing, real time.

They’re shepherds
, he thought as he watched the orcas patrolling the edge of the Exodus.

Yes. Shepherds.

The whales, members of Mia’s pod, all of them, were shepherding the flood of life. Channeling the animals within it, spurring them on and guiding them to the tunnel.

Joe lay quiet. Thinking. Comprehending.

Mia and her family will wait until everyone else is through.

They’ll do a sweep, check to see that everyone that could leave did leave. Then they’ll depart. After all the others have crossed, they’ll go. And then—

Joe felt Mia reaching out to him, finding him in the darkness and touching him with her mind.

He forgot about Beck and the War Room and closed his eyes. Let the connection build. He felt the warmth of Mia’s spirit and suddenly saw her for what she was: a blend of bright-eyed child and sage old soul.

Inquisitive, playful, and wise beyond reckoning, Mia was in touch with secrets powerful and profound.

My friend
, she seemed to be saying.
My friend.

Joe felt Mia’s message in his bones.

I am leaving.

I am sorry.

You are my friend.

I love you.

Stan-ton. I—

Joe cried out in pain as the communication broke. He opened his eyes to find Beck grinning at him, slapping his face.

“We’re sending the submarine through, Father. To the other side. I need you to stay awake. Show us where the queen bee is. What she’s doing.”

Joe’s head was pounding, his ears ringing from the abrupt separation, wishing he had the strength to throw a punch. He said flatly, “She’s leaving, Beck. They’re
all
leaving. She’s sure as hell not going to hold the door for you.”

Beck kept grinning. “We think she will. Meantime, I want to know what she’s up to.” He punched Joe on the shoulder. “So keep those pictures coming. For your girl’s sake.”

Joe said nothing, just lay there, trying to restart the conversation with Mia.

No luck. She was still sending him pictures via his subconscious—he could see them on the monitors all around—but the two-way communication was through, at least for the moment.

He took a breath and tried to find Ella with his mind, suddenly desperate to feel her presence. Hear her voice.

Ella?

Ella. It’s me. Are you there?

No reply.

Beck’s done something with her
, he thought, and his heart skipped a beat.

Beck’s done some—

He spotted Ella’s image on a small black-and-white monitor near the bottom of one video wall. She was sitting on a chair in the middle of a drab-looking room. There was no one else around. She looked okay.

Joe breathed, and his heart slowed once more. He tried again to reach her.

Ella?

Ella. It’s me.

Nothing.

He lay back, frustrated.

It’s the situation
, he thought.
Stress blocking my thoughts. Or hers.

He focused again on the activity around him.

Beck and Ring were conferring with staff, talking low and urgently as screens blinked and techs busied themselves at a dozen nearby consoles.

The submarine, Joe saw with surprise, was already well inside the tunnel, traveling amid the swarm of fish and mammals as if it belonged there.

Mia and the other shepherds were aware of the submarine. Joe was positive of that. But they appeared utterly unperturbed by the craft’s presence and trajectory. He could see the whales—on a different set of screens—patrolling near the surface, as before. Guiding the ever-dwindling tide of organisms.

Joe heard bursts of radio chatter—quick, excited exchanges between Ring and Beck and the submarine crew, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying.

The sub moved deeper into the cavernous chamber, so deep that it was lost now to the ROV’s cameras.

Cameras mounted on the sub itself revealed narrowing, light-filled walls and the now-familiar latticework of shimmering, glowing lines.

Fish and mammals clogged the gently spiraling passageway in front of the sub, and vanished around a graceful bend that seemed not far ahead.

The sub moved steadily on, and the radio chatter intensified. Ahead, a barrier. A shimmering, pearlescent wall.

He gasped as the creatures approaching the wall burst into flame—or appeared to—and vanished.

Joe’s eyes danced from monitor to monitor. He could see that things were winding down. Coming to a close.

The torrent of life had diminished to a trickle.

Joe realized that in another minute or two Mia and her family would gulp their last lungful of Earthly air, dive six hundred feet, and enter the tunnel. A minute after that, they would swim into the barrier, or portal, or whatever it was, and vanish from the world.

Joe’s attention flicked to Ring, who had risen from his command station and was standing now at the Palantir, talking urgently with a cluster of techs.

Their eyes met, and Joe panicked. Ring’s eyes gave it all away.

It’s happening
, Joe thought.
Just like Dieturlund feared. They’re going to try something.

He had to warn Mia. Had to reestablish the connection.

He closed his eyes and, miraculously, found her. Touched her with his mind.

Mia.

Mia. Listen to me—

The same love and compassion he’d experienced earlier rolled toward him once more.

Stan-ton.

My friend.

We are leaving.

I am sorry.

Joe tried screaming at her with his thoughts.

Mia! Watch out! They’re up to something!

No use.

The communication was muddled. Mia could feel his terror but didn’t perceive it as a warning.

Mia, you have to—

Joe’s eyes flew open and he cried out in pain as the connection shattered, the link with Mia severing instantly, brutally, as she exploded with rage.

Molten hot fury was the last emotion Joe felt. And she was gone.

“Beck!” Joe screamed. “You bastard! What are you doing to them?”

And then he saw. On the monitors it all came clear.

Beck’s men were firing something off the weather deck. Firing into the water with what looked like a grenade launcher.

“Flash-bang,” he heard someone say.

THE LASER-GUIDED PROJECTILE
landed a few yards from one of the last remaining orca pods—a group of Mia’s cousins that included a two-week old calf known to researchers as T-13C or, more affectionately, Ninitat.

The projectile, a twenty-one-ounce tactical flash-bang grenade, detonated as it hit the water, blinding and disorienting the whales and temporarily incapacitating the eight-foot long, five-hundred-pound baby—which was exactly what Ring had intended.

Beck’s crew in the Zodiac was on top of the listless calf ten seconds after detonation, looping canvas straps around the baby’s sleek body, preparing to haul it aboard.

A Boston Whaler was on the scene moments later—more men to help hustle the calf into the sling and onto the inflatable. Ring had admonished the crew to work fast. To drag the baby aboard and jet back to
Marauder
with all speed.

Once at
Marauder
, Ring had explained, more crew would hoist the baby into a saltwater pool on the well deck. And there the calf would remain, a hostage, as Beck’s sub transited the undersea portal at will.

Beck’s men worked fast, but Mia and the other shepherds were faster.

The listless baby was in the canvas sling between the Zodiac and the Whaler when the first orca—a thirty-foot-long, ten-ton male—exploded from the fast-moving tidal churn behind the inflatable. He leapt completely over the craft, smashing the crew into the sea as he flew.

Orca after orca drove into the boats from below, flipping the Whaler as if it were a toy and upending the Zodiac.

One of the crew on the inflatable fired his sidearm into the attacking beasts as he fell, and red splattered against the orcas’ white underbellies.

Then it was a frenzy.

Like goldfish in a piranha tank, the men in the water were ripped to pieces by jaws packed with three-inch-long conical teeth—jaws accustomed to crushing seals and sea lions and lesser whales.

The boats and equipment lolled broken and sinking in the chop.

An instant later, the whales were gone. Diving in unison. Diving fast. Guarding the baby, who had begun to come around.

For the tunnel they swam, with all speed.

IN THE WAR ROOM,
Beck was screaming at everyone and no one.

“What the hell was that? What the fuck just happened? Goddamnit! Goddamnit!”

Joe watched in silence as the ROV’s cameras tracked Mia and the other shepherds.

Steadily, unhurriedly, they descended toward the tunnel—like spaceships approaching the entrance to an alien city. Gently, the tunnel swayed with the current.

So vast was the structure’s phosphorescent bell that Mia and her family looked like minnows passing over it.