It seemed only a moment had passed, but the next sensation Giona had was of being free from the crushing grasp. She’d passed out again. Upon waking, she sat on the floor, shivering not with cold, for the innards of the monster were quite warm, but with absolute dread. She’d unwittingly entered an alien world where logic and human senses became useless.
Exhaustion took over Giona’s cross-legged form, and her rocking slowed. She slipped back and leaned against the soft chamber wall. The flesh that met her body gave some and gathered around her back like a cushioned chaise. She closed her eyes-they were no good to her anyway-and tried to think about something happy.
But she became distracted by a sensation on the back of her head. The cushion of flesh behind her head pulsed up and down. The movement wasn’t violent, merely a repeated rising and falling. With each pulse, she felt more energized.
As though waking from a dream, Giona found her thoughts coming more easily. She realized that the palpitating behind her head came from a massive artery, pulsing blood from the creature’s heart to some other organ. Giona’s mind fought to gain some understanding of her new environment. Her fear ebbed slightly as reason began to take over. She’d been smart-scratch that-brilliant, before being consumed by this beast, but had since been reduced to a mindless prey animal. She longed for a return of her old self.
As Giona’s curiosity climbed to the surface of her consciousness, she turned and placed a hand on the artery. It was ten inches from top to bottom and, she imagined, stretched the length of her prison. She pondered the meaning of her mental revival and remembered that some blood vessels, the arteries, weren’t merely the mass transit system for white and red blood cells, they also transported oxygen. She leaned in close to the throbbing vessel, which she could feel pulse with every thud of the beast’s heart, and took a deep breath. The air smelled and tasted of coppery fish, but the surge of energy she received confirmed that oxygen was entering into the chamber by osmosis through the giant artery. Her life-support system. Without it, she would have died long ago.
But how long could she survive? She had no water, no food, and her body suffered for that absence already. Between the constant hammering pain in her skull and the agonizing knot in her gut, death couldn’t be far off. All the oxygen in the world couldn’t keep her from starving.
An odd thought struck Giona. What if the creature wanted her to live? It certainly seemed that way. That the chamber existed at all was strange in the extreme, but she’d also been physically protected during the attack. It might have been uncomfortable to the point of her losing consciousness, but Giona knew that without the firm grip of those walls, she would have been beaten to a pulp. And now she’d discovered an oxygen supply.
Giona lit her watch, feeling emboldened, and found her way to the oversized sphincter. Her nose crinkled with disgust at what she was about to do. She extinguished the watch light and pounded on the coiled muscle. “Let me out!”
Emotions Giona thought she’d buried beyond reach resurfaced. She pounded with both fists, screaming. “Let me out! Let me out!”
Tears broke free.
“Please, God, let me out!”
Giona sobbed and unclenched her fists to cover her face with her palms. When her sobs died to a whimper, she sighed. “At least give me something to eat.”
A subtle change in direction caused Giona to slip back away from the fleshy spiral of muscle. The beast was rising. She could also tell by the rapidity of the chamber’s undulation that it was speeding up.
Before Giona could wonder what would happen next, the sphincter burst open. A blast of cool, salty sweet air burst into the chamber, knocking Giona farther back. When she regained her balance, she realized she could see. A cool white glow lit the chamber from above. She looked past the opening, past the silhouettes of dagger teeth, and saw something she believed her eyes would never gaze upon again-the moon.
An instant later, the moon and its light were gone. A roar like thunder filled the void and rushed toward her. A torrent of water surged into the chamber and slammed her against the doughy back wall. As the space filled with water, covering her head, Giona found herself thinking about the cool air and glowing moon. If they were the last things she experienced before drowning, at least the creature had given her that final joy.
Water suddenly cleared from her face. She took a gulp of air. In moments her whole head emerged from the water, then her torso, thighs, and knees. As the water continued to course out through some unseen drain, Giona lit her watch. The water-covered floor shivered, alive with movement. She could feel tiny bodies flicking against her feet. Thrashing water echoed through the small chamber, filling Giona’s ears with an unceasing static hiss. Needing to know whether or not she should be petrified, Giona aimed her camera down, closed her eyes, and snapped a picture. Even with her eyes clenched shut; she saw the bright flash through her eyelids as a pink glow. She blinked her eyes open and looked at the camera’s viewscreen. Then gasped. The reflection was brilliant, but the image revealed a mass of silver-bodied herring.
Fish!
Food! Giona’s mind shouted.
Giona dropped the camera and fell to her knees. She completely forgot that she didn’t like sushi and began grasping the small fish in her hands. With a savagery long tamed by civilization but unleashed through starvation, Giona ripped into the fish, swallowing chunks of flesh, not knowing or caring whether the juices running down her chin were blood or bile. She ate for minutes, until sated, then slumped against the oxygen-supplying artery.
She was breathing.
She was sustained.
She was alive.
“Thank you,” she muttered, but to whom she was talking, she had no idea.
44
The Titan
Atticus slapped Andrea gently on the cheek. She roused from unconsciousness with a grunt and blinked at the brightness assaulting her unadjusted eyes. She immediately recognized where they were. “Not again.”
“Welcome back sleepyhead,” Atticus forced a smile, knowing it would do little to keep Andrea from quickly realizing their predicament. Atticus had been awake for an hour. He’d tried to rouse Andrea three times, but the drugs she’d been given had had a stronger effect on her smaller body.
As he’d sat in the room, guarding Andrea’s inanimate form, he’d tried to distract himself with thoughts of his family: Mom, Dad and, Conner. Was Dad still in the hospital? Was Conner still waiting for him at home? But the thoughts came and went in a haze. He struggled to come up with some kind of escape plan, but his mind had been unable to concentrate.
With Andrea awake, he felt a part of his mind refocus, but he was no closer to coming up with a useful strategy. He stood on wobbly legs and sat next to her on the wooden bench. His body sagged. “Hell of a first date.”
“Second date,” Andrea said. “Our first included you jumping from a hospital window and scaling down the side of the building like Spider-Man.”
A slight smile crept onto Atticus’s face. He couldn’t imagine ever having the energy to pull off a stunt like that. “I’m far from a superhero.”
Andrea rested her head on his shoulder while rubbing one of her temples with her fingers, fighting off the same blazing headache still hammering Atticus. “Well, you’re my hero.”
“You won’t think so when that door opens and the only thing I can do to defend you is shout obscenities.”
She slid an arm up around his back and patted gently. “They’ve got bigger fish to fry…much bigger fish. I’m sure they’ve forgotten about us for now.”
A resounding clunk signified that the brig door was being unlocked.