A slender hand patted Moni on the arm. Mariella slipped around her and hoisted up Darren. The girl was barely as wide as one of his thighs, but she dragged him across the pavement effortlessly. Moni hurried over and scooped up his feet-not because Mariella needed help-but because she wanted to pay a part in this closure.
They stopped at the edge of what had been a pier at the burned out Melbourne Harbor Marina. Only a few charred wooden pillars protruded from the choppy water. With nearly all of the light poles destroyed, she could barely see. That gave her little comfort. Nearly a week ago, these waters had claimed the lives of three teenagers and a firefighter. Moni hadn’t feared water before, but since she rescued Mariella, her worst dreams had her running in the streets from freakish creatures only to find herself trapped against the even more terrifying murky waters of the lagoon. She had imagined that the source of all darkness lurked within it. It snatched body parts and corrupted the innocent. Now, her little girl called it home.
Moni approached the lagoon with her ex lover’s body as an offering. She couldn’t call it Darren’s resting place, for she knew that his remains wouldn’t be at rest in their hands.
Darren had betrayed her trust and caused her nothing but grief. He would have shot her on two occasions if Mariella hadn’t been there. Both times, the girl had implanted thoughts in his head that discouraged him, Moni realized. That last time, ever her most forceful orders inside his head couldn’t derail him from his bent on murder.
Moni gazed into the lifeless slits of Darren’s eyes as they dangled his corpse on the side of the cracked seawall. “Darren, you aren’t the man I fell in love with. I won’t stand for your abuse. I deserve better than you. Everybody who hurt me is gonna pay. And this time, you will help me, for real.”
Moni and Mariella released him in perfect synchronization. She listened for a huge splash when Darren’s body hit the water. She didn’t get the satisfaction of hearing it. Instead, it made a thud like a giant softball lobbed into a catcher’s mitt. A second later, she heard bubbling and then something sloshing through the water. It left nothing behind besides a noxious stench.
Mariella’s people have him now, Moni thought. They’re taking him where they took the others.
Moni’s legs trembled as she stood on the seawall that served as the ledge between humanity and an emerging alien world. One land had bruised, and battered her so much while the other held unfathomable opportunities and irreversible metamorphosis. She didn’t know which world she dreaded more.
“Those are your people out there,” Moni said as she clasped Mariella’s petite hand. “Let me speak with them.”
Gazing into her eyes, the little one sized her up. Mariella’s eyes flashed purple. Moni’s body vanished from existence. Her mind floated without a sense of touch or sight. She couldn’t feel the cool breeze on her face or smell the rotten lagoon any longer. But Moni felt. She felt like a single cog on an expansive electrical grid interconnecting thousands of minds. Moni could make out the location of the lagoon in the same way a passenger on an overnight flight can spot land by the lights from the houses below. She recognized Mariella’s signature close by her. Many signals were small and simple-tiny creatures. Others were more complex but not on the level of conveying emotions. They were compulsive beings. The directions from their ambassadors became their new instincts. Many scoured for fuel and iron. Some were busy assembling things that they didn’t understand. Yet, the brain power of the hosts limited their ambassadors’ capabilities and control. The visitors hungered for mentally stronger creatures.
Moni detected a massive source along the center of the lagoon as if it were a freight train sitting in the street. She couldn’t access it like she could with the others. It contained something more powerful than the basic human mind.
She suddenly snapped awake. When her senses returned, the first thing Moni realized was that Mariella had let go of her hand.
“What gives?” Moni stepped back from Mariella, who responded with a shrug. “Don’t get me wrong. That blew my mind, but why’d you stop?”
Moni understood that she hadn’t been prepared for some things. If she had gotten drawn too deeply into their world, it could make her ordinary sensations feel dull by comparison.
“I am prepared,” Moni said. “I don’t wanna feel more pain or hear more intolerance. All my life, people have hated on me. Take me out of this. Please let me be with you.”
She took both of the girl’s hands in hers. This time, she didn’t pull away.
Chapter 39
Aaron never showed up early for school if he could help it. But this was more than a run-of-the-mill class, or even a mission.
Leaning against his car next to the dangling side view mirror that Moni’s psychotic ex had smashed, he watched the red hue of the sun climbing over the horizon to signal the start of morning. The crimson light scattered across the healthy waters of the Indian River Lagoon along the Atlantic Marine Research Institute’s headquarters in Fort Pierce. Aaron wondered what awaited him underneath the waters further north.
The answer made the bacteria that he had dreaded earlier seem like bath oil by comparison. After a late night of research, he and Professor Swartzman had confirmed the presence of nano-cyborgs in an infected rat-just like the Lagoon Watcher had described. They were herding the bacteria and calling the shots in the animal’s brain. They must have ordered the rat to stop breathing, because it suffocated to death once they started messing with its tiny masters. About a minute after the host died, they disappeared.
Following that, Swartzman doused the whole lab with sterilizer and made everyone shower off.
The close encounter thrilled the scientists, but it didn’t sway Sneed or Brigadier General Colon. They didn’t believe something so small could mastermind the wave of attacks. So Aaron and his professor set out to prove the second part of the Lagoon Watcher’s story-the “colony” in the deepest part of the lagoon. If they put photos in their hands, they couldn’t deny that the source of the problem lies below the water, rather than above it.
It bummed out Aaron that he hadn’t told Moni a word of this. He figured that she needed some time with Mariella after rescuing her. That served as a convenient excuse. How could he tell Moni that the girl she loved probably had microscopic cyborgs inside her? She cared about the girl so much, that she would never forgive him if he broke the news that severed their bond, he thought. What’s the urgency? It’s not like Mariella has endangered anybody.
After making sure that Swartzman hadn’t arrived yet, Aaron took out his cell phone and dialed her up. He couldn’t tell her everything, but she still needed his support after nearly losing Mariella for the second time in two days.
“Hello.” Moni answered the phone as if she didn’t recognize his number.
“Hey there. Sorry to wake you.” Aaron stopped himself. He heard a humming engine on the other line. “Okay, scratch that. Sorry to disturb your absurdly early morning drive. What has you hopping to it at the crack of dawn?”
He waited for her to take an easy shot at him by asking why he was up before noon. “There’s somewhere I need to go,” said Moni, who must have left her wit at home.
“Yeah, that’s usually why people drive,” he replied. “So how is Mariella?”
“Uh, Mariella.” She stumbled over her words as if she were coming out of a trance. “She’s right here. Don’t worry about her. I’ll make sure she’s safe.”
That didn’t exactly answer his question. If she didn’t feel like telling him, then he better not freak her out by pressing her. What set off even more of his alarm buzzers was that she didn’t have any questions for him, such as: “Have you found Mrs. Mint in the forest?” or “How’d your interrogation of the Lagoon Watcher go?”