Black liquid filled her lungs. She fought to the surface, choking. Again and again, she battled against the superior force of rushing waters while the ship revolved around her. Bodies floated past; some prone in the water, others struggling as she was. She finally managed to wrap her arms around a section of piping and held on as murky waters flooded past. The sounds of rending metal and shrieking winds was all there was in the world, an onslaught of noise and violent tremors that threatened to entirely overwhelm her senses. Elena squeezed her eyes shut and held on for dear life.
This has to be the end. It has to be.
Her feet dangled, suspended over empty air. When she opened her eyes and stared downward, she gazed through a gargantuan cavity, outlined by shredded metal and sparking wires. The waters streamed past, out into the storm outside. Her mouth dropped open at the sight.
The ship had been torn in half.
The bottom section was slowly pulled into the depths of the black sea waters, still encompassed by writhing tentacles. The segment she was in appeared to be suspended in midair, though Elena couldn’t comprehend what held it upward. She blinked water from her lashes, sure she was hallucinating.
Lightning flashed, sizzling across the waters. For an instant she thought she saw a man out in the storm, levitating in the midst of towering waves. The waters receded as something dark and terrible breached from the depths as if to confront him.
Darkness obscured her view as the ship lurched again. An unsummoned memory surfaced, a time when she was a child, screaming because the merry-go-round wouldn’t stop. She was there again, clutching a metallic rail with all her strength while the world span round about, blurs of indecipherable movement and shapes. Her stomach roiled, her consciousness teetered on the edge of blacking out.
A sudden impact jolted her entire body. She had just enough time to register that the ship must have struck something solid before the resulting collision ripped her from her perch and sent her flying through empty space. She glimpsed flickers of grainy light and flashes of green before she struck something metallic and the lights went out.
Chapter 12: Fregoli Delusion
Michael hovered over the raging sea while monstrous tentacles pulled half of the ship to a watery grave. Angry black waves dashed against one another in liquescent warfare, lightning forked nearly nonstop, illuminating the perfect storm in dazzling flashes.
Michael was not alarmed. He was the sea. He was the storm.
The remains of the ship hung in the air above his head. He was the ship. He held it aloft easily, some bond connected he to it and it to him. He did not question the impossibility. Answers did not matter there, in the heart of the tempest.
Abomination.
The voice was thunder. It was the sound of the fathomless deep, booming in Michael’s head.
The waters cowered back as a terrible visage surfaced from their depths. A head the size of a small island breached the surface, dark and primeval. The thick tentacles that had destroyed the ship hung from its face like a living beard. The rest of it was bulbous and scaled, with fiery eyes affixed above the wriggling appendages. Its gaze locked on Michael, filled with ancient intelligence and dark majesty.
Abomination. You should not exist.
Michael shook his head. Not real. He forced himself to take a closer look at the massive monstrosity. It seemed impossible that such a being could exist. Judging by the head alone, Michael guessed the thing would tower over skyscrapers if it emerged onto dry land. He answered in the same manner the monster spoke — within his mind.
What are you?
I am what remains. I am the worm that eats the core of your world.
No. You are not real. You are just another manifestation of my madness.
Madness is a label attached to what you do not understand. You are an abomination. Your metamorphosis was not anticipated. Now we comprehend a great many things.
I don’t know what you’re talking about.
You are no longer one of them. Nor are you one of us. You are an anomaly. You are the Herald.
Of what?
Of your world’s destruction.
Michael trembled. For an instant everything teetered on the edge of collapse. The world spun around him before he centered himself. He was the sea. He was the storm.
What do you want?
The Cataclysm must not be reset.
I don’t know what that means.
The Cataclysm has already consumed your world. You simply have not witnessed it yet. It does not matter. Humanity is a withered corpse, rank and overrun by maggots. It is only a matter of time before you pass beyond the point of no return.
The sea frothed as the monster slowly submerged. Its tentacles whipped around Michael, thrashing like trees in a tsunami. As the massive head sank into the roiling depths, the rumbling voice uttered its final words.
You will kill them all.
Michael blinked open his eyes.
Invasive light flooded, causing him to wince and squeeze them shut again. He wondered if everything he’d experienced was some vivid dream, and he was back in the sterile isolation of his padded prison.
The sound of water became gradually audible. It was soothing, gentle. Much like the beach in Miami when he had proposed to Cynthia. He turned in that direction and reopened his eyes. The shore was only yards away, the sunlight glinting off of glassy blue waters. The wind was light and the air salty.
He sat up and examined himself. His clothes were half-dry and torn in several places. Blood was spattered across the collar of his shirt. He squeezed the bridge of his nose and snorted, not surprised to find it partially clogged. If all he had to worry about was a bloody nose, he had come out of the ordeal very fortunate.
“Michael!”
He turned around. Nathan strode toward him, followed by Elena. Both of them looked worse than Michael did, covered in cuts and bruises. The ruined wreckage of the ship was farther back, like some toy that had been torn apart and discarded. Massive pieces of debris littered the shoreline. Looking at it, Michael was surprised any of them had survived.
Relief flashed across Nathan’s face. He looked as if to embrace Michael, but stopped short. “You’re… alive. I can’t believe it. I thought for sure you had—”
You will kill them all.
Michael winced and shook his head. “Not yet.” He nodded toward the ship. A few other people wandered around the wreckage, picking through the remains. “How many survived?”
Nathan’s face turned grim. “Not enough.”
Elena glanced up at the sky. “At least the storm has broken. Is that the end, then? Is the Aberration over?”
Michael looked past the damaged ship, which had collapsed against the jutted roots of a tangled forest. It looked like some primordial jungle, some lost section of the world never discovered by man. Shadows and mist danced to dark music just beyond the range of hearing. Thousands of glimmering eyes gazed from the darkness, every one of them staring directly at him.
Ravens.
“No. We were just at the outskirts earlier. It will only get worse from here.”
Elena cursed softly before taking a deep breath. “Well, we’d better join up with the others. We’ll see what our options are.”
Alexander Blackwell laughed. “Options? Our options haven’t changed just because we had a little mishap. Our objectives remain the same: locate the laboratory and hopefully Dr. Stein himself, then find a way to get out of here.”