Slater and Aston spun around, saw a crowd of mantics standing behind Jen and Syed where they trembled on the shore. The creatures swayed gently, otherwise immobile, watching them, but blocking their retreat.
Slater startled at the sight of them, Aston raised his dagger.
“Could he be telling the truth?” Slater asked.
“Maybe. I don’t know. There’s a fungus that turns ants into zombie drones. It’s essentially a natural form of mind control. Fungal cells inside the ant's head release chemicals that essentially take command of the insect's central nervous system.”
“All right. I don’t need a lecture right now. All I wanted to know was is it possible?”
Aston shook his head. “It shouldn’t be. This is a far cry from zombie ants. But he does seem to have control of the mantics.”
“Don’t worry,” O’Donnell said. “They won’t harm us here, not now. Through him, through my connection, they do my bidding. I am with them. I am them.”
“If that’s the case,” Aston said, “you can have them show us the way out. Let’s all get out of here!”
O’Donnell laughed again. “There’s no need! Soon we will all be one with him!”
“Digby, it’s not a god!” Aston yelled at the man. “I don’t know what it is, but what you believe is a fiction. That thing, that monster out there, is some mutant, yes, but it’s no god. Some kind of cephalopod, a giant octopus, some presumed extinct mega-fauna, that’s all. But whatever it is, it doesn’t have some greater plan. It’s just another predator and it wants to eat us!”
“Yes!” O’Donnell agreed. “Eat us! But it is a god, Sam. Oh, in fact, it’s more than a god. And it will make us all one with its glory.”
Slater felt faint. “Sam,” she said. “You were right. Let’s just go!”
“But how will we find our way?” Jen Galicia said.
Aston shook his head, squared his shoulders. “If Dig here is telling the truth about seeing through their eyes, I can only think of one way.”
Slater looked over at him, read his expression and intent. “Sam, no!”
42
Aston swallowed hard, a little appalled at the course of action he was considering. But he could think of nothing else. They would almost certainly die down here, one way or another. Lost and starving, or killed by mantics. Or even killed by the Annaki. He wasn’t sure if the Annaki had led them here to show them a possible answer to questions or to sacrifice them to this creature, but either way, he had lost all trust for the strange, pale race. He couldn’t help feeling a little like a cow led to slaughter. But if they were going to survive, they needed to be proactive. Running blindly along the dark passages wasn’t the kind of proactive they needed. They could go in circles for days, and then starve. Assuming they avoided all the other kind of deaths in the meantime. The chance of finding another way out was surely lowest on the list of possibilities. After all, how far had they come? How deep had they gone?
He looked back over his shoulder, thinking of all they had been through to get here. They could retrace their steps, possibly. But that would mean returning through the Annaki city. It would mean risking tunnels they knew were swarming with mantics. And even then, he would have to remember every twist and turn, every choice of route they had made, and he would need to remember it all in reverse. He didn’t think he could do that.
So it left only one option. There had to be some kind of hive mentality happening with these creatures. Some chemical connection that was triggered by the consumption of whatever the glowing green substance was that affected them all, some by-product of the vines or the greenium. Or both. Either way, if O’Donnell was telling the truth, it would allow Aston to see a way out. And if Digby was lying or simply delusional, well, they were as good as dead already anyway. And if the green stuff poisoned him, the same conclusion applied. He had to take a chance. It was the only chance he could think of.
Refusing to consider it any more deeply, he waded out next to O’Donnell and looked down into the water.
“Sam, no,” Slater said again, but he ignored her.
Aquatic life gathered around O’Donnell, some gently milling and floating as if in a trance, others feeding off the scraps that fell from Digby’s mouth. Every creature seemed to face the man, like they were somehow in obeisance to him. Or perhaps the man was irrelevant and they faced the burning idol. Fish, crustaceans, jellyfish, even a massive, albino tortoise with glowing green eyes, its shell as long as Aston was tall. They all watched O’Donnell like a dog watches its master.
Aston took a deep breath and ducked a hand into the water. He scooped up a fish about the size of his middle finger. Slater’s voice was panicked, screaming at him, trying to stop him, telling him he had no idea what he was doing, or what it would do to him. Syed joined in, and Jen Galicia too, all begging him not to do it.
“Let’s just go!” Slater yelled.
“We have to know where to go!” Aston said, and shoved the wriggling fish into his mouth. He bit down, chewed hard and fast. The flesh was ice cold and bitter. He felt the thing burst, tasted salt with the bitterness, and swallowed it all down as quickly as he could, suppressing the urge to gag. The others around him fell silent. He realized he heard no more gunfire either, and hadn’t been for a while. No shouting, no scrabbling of mantics. Were Larsen and his friends dead? All he heard was the lap of the shining sea, the bubbling further out.
He felt nothing else.
Digby O’Donnell stared up at him and Aston met the man’s eyes, saw madness there. What have I done? he wondered. Perhaps he hadn’t done anything at all. Would he simply go crazy like Dig?
Heat began to swell inside his gut. A strange dizziness swept over him, making him stagger, and for a moment he leaned forward, convinced he was going to vomit the half-chewed fish back into the ocean. He gasped a breath.
“Sam? Are you okay?” Slater’s hand on his arm was heavy, her grip trembling.
“I’m okay,” he managed, but he wasn’t certain.
He straightened, heard a soft chuckling laugh. Dig had his head tipped to one side and Aston looked into the man’s eyes again, saw the green brightness in them, the glowing idol held almost as if forgotten in Digby’s ruined hand. A slow smile spread across Dig’s face and Aston saw a frown overlaid on it. As if Digby were grinning and concerned at the same time. Then, with a shudder, Aston’s perception caught up with the simple view and he realized he was seeing two things at once. Both his view of Digby O’Donnell and Dig’s view of him, blurred together in his mind.
“The edibles are kicking in?” Slater forced a faint smile.
Aston couldn’t answer. He staggered, cried out in disorientation, as visions flooded through him. He saw the ocean from a dozen different viewpoints, he saw dark tunnels and glittering caverns, he saw the Annaki city and the lift to the surface. He even saw glimpses of the base, too bright to really determine clearly and he cried out. He didn’t want to be blinded like that. The images snapped away. He thought of his friends, and saw them from numerous points of view, through the eyes of the mantics nearby, and through Digby’s eyes. He saw them shimmering through a greenish haze and realized it was the view of every creature that drifted at his knees.