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# Bering Songs and Silence

#### _One of the UNSETIC Files_

by

Erin M. Klitzke

Smashwords Edition

Taliesin Ambrose Books

Copyright 2013 Erin M. Klitzke 
This is a work of fiction, one that deals with themes of religion and the paranormal.  All resemblance to actual individuals, living or dead, is coincidental.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.  This ebook may not be re-sold or distributed to other people without providing compensation to the author.  If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with.  If you're reading this book and didn't purchase it, or did not purchase it for your own personal use, please consider heading to your favorite ebook retailer and picking up your own copy.  Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.

E-Book version 1.0 ~ if you notice any errors in the text or formatting, please e-mail the author at doc@embklitzke.com with the version number and what the error was so it can be corrected in later editions.

Table of Contents

Cover

Bering Songs and Silence

Dedication

The Oath

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Epilogue

About the Author

Other works by Erin M. Klitzke

# Dedication

To the ISRP crowd...thank you. 

# Oath of the United Nations Supernatural and Extraterrestrial Investigative Corps

I solemnly declare and promise to exercise all loyalty, discretion and conscience while carrying out the functions entrusted to me as an international agent of the United Nations Supernatural and Extraterrestrial Investigative Corps, to discharge my duties and regulate my conduct with the interest of the United Nations and my planet only in my view.  I understand that at times, I will be called upon to defend myself with force but forswear the overuse of deadly force, to be used only when necessary to defend the lives and persons of innocents and my comrades at arms.

I do so swear to defend my world against all threats foreign and domestic as directed by my superiors within the Corps and the United Nations.  I understand where this oath conflicts with any oath of service to military, security, or other organization that my loyalty to my conscience and my comrades should come first.

I will protect those who cannot protect themselves from threats seen and unseen to my dying breath.  This is my solemn oath and vow. 

##

## Bering Songs and Silence

#### Brigid O'Connell and Timothy McConaway

# One

I can remember thinking that they probably should have hung a sign on the door that read X-Files in here. As it was, the office behind the steel door at the bottom of the stairs was small, windowless, and spartanly decorated though that didn't necessarily make it uncomfortable.

What made it uncomfortable was knowing that I'd volunteered for this—whatever this turned out to be.

Of course, I hadn't had many alternatives.

I sat in the hard wooden chair in front of the desk, staring at the fifty-something man behind it, his hands folded in front of him. He didn't smile as he stared right back at me.

"We're waiting on another."

"Oh." I folded my hands, staring at them. What am I doing here? What am I getting myself into? I must be insane.

The door behind me opened. I looked over my shoulder. The man that walked in was slightly older than I was, eyes haunted, face gaunt, a healing cut on his lip and fading bruises on his jaw and neck. I knew him.

He was supposed to be dead.

He was in the Gulf with us. One of the ones we looked for. Merlin.

The Gulf had been two years ago this past summer.

I'd known one of the two pilots who'd gone down, Mat O'Brien. He'd been my friend. The man next to me, Merlin, had been his. Mat had introduced us at a party back while we were at the Academy. I'd all but forgotten his friend until one hot summer day near the Bosporus. The day two planes from two duty stations went down over the Iraqi desert.

We'd searched for the two downed planes for six weeks, found the wreckage of one. That had been Matthias O'Brien's plane. Not Merlin's. We never found any sign of Merlin's.

And now here he is, big as life and definitely still breathing. How is that possible?

The pilot I barely remembered moved stiffly, sat down slowly in the chair next to me. He didn't look at me, just stared straight ahead as if I didn't exist. Stared at the man who was our new boss.

Why did I volunteer for this?

It was simple, though. I was a part of this because I'd seen someone turn a mortal wound into a minor wound and gone looking for answers. It was all downhill from there.

Doubt must have been written all over my face, though, because the man behind the desk pinned me to my chair with his gaze.

"You've been working for us for the past three years, Lieutenant O'Connell," Paul Ballard said quietly. "You just didn't know it." He looked toward the man next to me. "Are you sure you're up to this, Lieutenant McConaway?"

He's out of uniform. Part of me was surprised that he was still with the service. He's been missing for thirty months. Where has he been? How did he survive? How did he disappear? Where did he hide?

I got no answers to any of those questions as the man next to me nodded slightly. "Yes, sir." His voice was quiet. "I'd assumed I'd be assigned someone from the Air Force to work with, though."

Ballard inclined his head. "That was the intention, but Lieutenant O'Connell's potential partner tried to get himself blown up and yours is dead. The assignment can't wait for us to find a new partner for either one of you, so you're stuck with each other."

Blown up? I hope it was doing whatever he did before he got recruited into this spook-factory. I took a deep, silent breath, knowing that neither man would notice it unless they were watching too closely—and neither was. "What's the assignment, sir?" I asked quietly.

"You haven't reconsidered volunteering, then, Lieutenant?"

I glanced toward Timothy McConaway, studied him for a long moment. There were rumors about what had happened to him in the Gulf, but I'd never believed any of them. From the look of him now, whatever had happened back then hadn't left him whole.

But he's still in the service, apparently. Maybe. I nodded, almost to myself. Inches and miles. I'm not sure I've got any choices here. Not if I want answers to the questions I've still got about what happened on the Daedalus, or answers to the questions I've got about what happened that day in the Gulf. "Yes, sir. I'm in."

"Very good." Ballard stood from the desk and took out a pair of files from the cabinet in the corner. "There's an installation in the Arctic that we need you to take a look at."

"...that's all?"

He skewered McConaway with a long, hard look. "You sound surprised, Lieutenant."

McConaway frowned. "Sir, what is it, exactly, that we're supposed to 'take a look at' out there? I was led to believe that what I was going to do for this agency was going to make a difference." He didn't flinch under Ballard's stare, but added, somewhat belatedly, "Sir."

"Don't make the mistake of assuming that you won't be, Lieutenant." Ballard slid the files across the desk. I leaned forward and took one.

We're going to freeze our tails. Does that equate to making a difference? My brow furrowed briefly as McConaway's words echoed through my brain. All I'd been promised was eventual answers—answers all in due time. No difference-making promises here. Just facts.

Just answers to the questions I'd started asking on the flight deck of the Daedalus far too late.

The world's gone crazy and I'm hanging on for the ride.

I thumbed through the folder, eyes skipping over pages. There wasn't much inside the folders, just a set of documents about the research post, some technical specifications, references to the type of research being done, and three thin dossiers of the researchers manning the outpost. Nothing about cover identities in my folder, though there were signed and dated orders for departure as well as a plane ticket in my real name to Anchorage. "As ourselves, sir?"

"You are, Lieutenant." Ballard said to me, then eyed McConaway. "He is not, but I think that's par for the course, isn't it, Mr. McConaway?"

"Yes, sir." McConaway's gaze never wavered. He'd taken the folder almost mechanically and had stayed quiet, staring at a spot on the wall somewhere just above Ballard's shoulder.

"You'll get full briefing on the way out. Everything we've got," Ballard said, mostly to me. It was almost as if McConaway wasn't there or simply didn't matter. My stomach twisted slightly.

Does that mean he's expendable? If he's expendable, what does that make me? I barely suppressed my frown as Ballard kept talking.

"You leave in thirty-six hours. You're dismissed, Lieutenant."

I stood up, saluted him, and slipped out of that office at the bottom of the stairs. I considered lingering for a moment outside the door so I could maybe catch McConaway on his way out, to talk to him, but something made me think better of it. I left that basement and headed home.

Sometimes, looking back now, I think I should have stayed.

• • •

It was raining in Alexandria, an ice-cold winter rain that turned the world dreary and gray outside the window. Back home, it'd have been snow this time of year. That was still taking some getting used to, but after the years I'd spent in Maryland and then the years I'd spent at duty posts elsewhere, rain was better than a lack thereof.

The Internet hadn't been very informative about the project that we'd be showing up to somehow disrupt. All three were geologists. Takeo Yoshuda, the youngest of the three researchers, had a secondary specialty in biology. He'd co-authored a few papers on the ecosystems that arose around deep-sea geothermal vents. I didn't understand half of what was in those articles, but the little I'd been able to decipher was vaguely interesting. He'd been working with a Russian expiate, Yuri Tursenko, for the past eighteen months on a joint research project—something to do with the ecology of the sea floor in the northern Pacific Ring of Fire. The last scientist on the rig, Mira Thomlinson, had turned down a promising teaching job at Brown in favor of heading north. I hadn't been able to make heads or tails of her actual specialty, though.

What little I'd learned about the scholars we'd be interrupting seemed like a mountain of information compared to what I'd been able to find on my new partner's recent life. Timothy McConaway, apparently, was some kind of ghost.

Even I had a Facebook account, for pity's sake, even if I never used it. He didn't even have that. No social media. Not even an e-mail address I could find. No mention of him in the past three years.

He'd stopped existing the day his plane went down over Iraq.

I found plenty information about his life before that day, though.

Graduate of the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. Grew up northwest of Chicago, in a comfortable suburb. His mother had been an assistant district attorney for Cook County. His dad had been a cop—a detective. Past tense, both of them. They'd been murdered in the city when he and his sister—and Mat O'Brien, our mutual friend—were teenagers. It made all the society pages in the Chicago area, apparently, since the McConaway family owned a major stake in some pharmaceutical firm and the CEO, their uncle, had taken them in. He must have joined the Air Force out of high school, like Mat had with the Navy, like I did with the Navy.

After joining the Air Force, other than a blurb in a suburban paper about him being officially listed as missing in action, there was nothing.

I stared at my computer screen, frowning. How can there be nothing? No trace of a man? Just...gone?

Someone buzzed my door and I jumped about three feet in the air.

Christ, O'Connell, I chided myself. Get a grip. I peered out the windows of my second floor apartment, down toward the street. There was a silver Ford Taurus parked behind my Jeep that hadn't been there ten minutes ago. My nose wrinkled.

Who the hell is that?

I punched a few buttons on the panel near my front door to get a look at the feed from the security camera downstairs. I frowned at the figure in a windbreaker and baseball cap that stood on the porch. Then he tilted his face up toward the camera and stared right into it. Bruised face, a few cuts, eyes the color of the Wisconsin lake where we vacationed while I was growing up.

McConaway. What's he doing here? I frowned and buzzed him in.

How does he know where I live?

He knocked on the door and I let him inside. He brought the smell of Chinese food with him, holding a paper bag almost like a shield.

"Peace offering?" he murmured, lifting his chin just enough for me to see his eyes beneath the shadow of his cap's brim and holding the bag out to me. "Sesame and General Tso's chicken. Figured you wouldn't punch me or something if I came bearing food."

I stared at him as he stood there, dripping on my doormat. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"Trying to make nice, I guess," he said, still holding out the bag to me. He tugged off his baseball cap and raked a hand through his short hair. A few droplets of water sprayed from his hand and spattered against my pale blue walls. "Going to be stuck working together for a little while, at least. Seemed like a good idea at the time."

I took the bag, brows knitting as I watched him shrug out of his windbreaker, hanging it on a peg next to my Navy-issue wool coat. He hadn't changed his clothes since leaving the briefing. That was roughly six hours ago. He must have had somewhere to go after he left, though—didn't he?

He glanced at me and smiled a bare trace of a smile. "Do you have plates?"

"Of course I've got plates." I spun mechanically on my heel and headed for the kitchen. He followed me, his booted feet whispering on the hardwood. "Thank you."

All I got in response was a shrug as we crowded into my kitchen. He unpacked the food while I got down the plates. My mouth felt desert-dry as I kept stealing glances at him. Curiosity, eventually, was going to get the better of me—it was gaining a lot of ground already. I wanted to know where he'd been for thirty months, where the bruises on his face had come from.

Why he looks so damn haunted. Why he seems like he left part of himself somewhere and is walking around half a man.

I managed to keep my mouth shut until the bowls were full of rice and chicken. As I turned to snag two bottles of Guinness out of the fridge, I said, "I was part of the team that tried to track you down in Iraq."

A fork clattered and he muttered a curse under his breath.

When I turned with the two bottles in my hand, he'd retrieved the fork and was staring at nothing, off into space.

"How long did you search for us?"

Us. Someone told him about Mat, then. "Six weeks. We found the other plane."

Pain flickered through his gaze and he winced, unable to conceal the expression fast enough. "Mat's plane."

I nodded, reaching into a drawer for the bottle opener. "No sign of yours. They called us off after that." I cracked one of the bottles and handed it to him. "Am I allowed to ask what happened to you?"

"You're allowed to ask," he said, his expression melting into the emotionless mask again. "But I'm not allowed to tell you."

One of those. I wonder how much time he spent...wherever he was—and why he's here now. "Am I allowed to ask where you got the bruises?"

He smiled humorlessly. "Fisticuffs with a Cossack."

I deadpanned at him. He stared back at me and shrugged.

"I didn't say that you'd believe me if I told you." He leaned against the countertop, poking rice and chicken with his fork. "I woke up three weeks ago on the floor of a bathroom of some dive in St. Petersburg. Stumbled into the street, made the guy spill his borsch or something all over his parka and he tried his best to kick the crap out of me. I think I broke his arm before the police broke it up."

Who the hell is this guy? My brows knit and I stared at him. "What were you doing before that?"

"Before I woke up?" He shrugged. "Most of it I can't remember. The parts that I can are what I'm ordered not to talk about." He finally met my eyes and when he looked, I felt like he was looking straight into my soul. It was an unsettling feeling. "Besides," he said quietly. "You wouldn't believe me anyway."

I just stared at him before I found my voice again. "This is a wonderful way to start out a partnership."

"You think I don't want to tell someone and have them believe me?" The flesh around his eyes tightened. A muscle in his jaw twitched as he clenched his teeth. "You think joining this organization is some kind of choice?"

That rocked me back against my heels. "You didn't volunteer?"

"They only think I'm crazy," McConaway said, staring into his bowl. "I'm not actually nuts."

"I volunteered."

He stared at me. "You don't look crazy, Lieutenant."

"I want answers. They promised I'd get them." I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. "I saw something I wasn't supposed to see. It was either this or be told to forget about it. I watched a friend of mine save someone's life and then cover it up. I don't have any explanation for how she did either. I want to find out why—and how many more people are out there that can do what she did."

He kept on staring for another moment, then looked into his bowl again. "I suppose that's as good a reason as any. I hope you get your answers."

So do I. I watched him for a moment, the stiffness of his movements, how he held himself. Guarded, withdrawn. A prisoner's stance at war with a soldier's carriage.

What the hell happened to him?

By the time this mission was over, I was bound and determined to find out.

# Two

I tried very hard not to feel like I was hanging on for dear life as the cold, thin air shook the helicopter. Tim McConaway's hands were steady on the controls.

How the hell can he be so damned calm? We were shaking and rattling as the 'chopper hovered maybe two thousand feet above the ice pack.

Who thought it was a good idea to come here in January? At least it was a clear day, no storms, not too much wind. We weren't that far from land, were we?

I closed my eyes, knuckles white beneath my heavy gloves. Just hang on, O'Connell. Just hang the fuck on and hope he doesn't get you two killed. No reason to turn into a basket case. He's a pilot. He knows what he's doing.

Flying a helicopter that could have its hydraulics freeze at any second while you're miles away from land flying over ice. If we crash, we're probably screwed—either we'll go right through the ice or we'll be stuck on the ice and no one will ever find us because who the hell goes flying out over the ice pack this time of year? No one, that's who. No one sane.

How the hell is he so calm?

"Do you see it?" McConaway asked suddenly.

My eyes snapped open again. I peered out the windshield. "Where?"

He pointed. I followed the angles, gaze skipping across the ice pack to where it ended raggedly in bright blue ocean. Our destination was a bit beyond the ice pack, out in the open water.

The old platform was gunmetal gray with fading red and white paint, perched amidst a span of blue dotted with floating chunks of ice. "That's the rig?"

"Coordinates look right. That should be it." We dipped a little, then leveled off again. I held my breath.

Fingers spasming around the oh-shit bars, I glanced over at him. "Are you sure you know what you're doing?"

His expression was totally blank, his hands steady on the controls. "Of course I'm sure. You act like I've never done this before."

I was almost afraid to ask. I did anyway. "Have you?"

He didn't say anything, just aimed us toward the scientific installation housed on an old, modified oil rig that had been abandoned some six years ago. Scientists from a joint project had taken over back then—geologists, something about looking for core samples from deep in the sea floor. What they'd want with something like that, I had no idea. The files had said something about geothermal vents that I hadn't quite understood. Maybe something to do with the volcano on the uninhabited island ten miles from the rig. I couldn't be sure.

Though if the ocean floor around the rig was warmer than the rest of the water, it would certainly explain why there was a span of open water here while everything else was choked with ice.

What am I doing? I glanced toward McConaway. His expression was still blank, and effortlessly so. It had to be a mask. No one was that emotionless. But what lurked behind that carefully cultivated mask? I wasn't sure I wanted to know. Rumors about what had happened to him in the Gulf made me certain of that.

Our chopper settled onto the rig's landing pad a few moments later. McConaway killed the engine and leaned back in his seat, blue-green eyes scanning the rig's metal and concrete decks.

"No welcoming party," he observed.

"Not yet." I started unstrapping myself. My right hand was stiff, cramped from hanging on too tightly. Wind rattled the windows. "Don't think I blame them, either."

He grunted. "Bad sheering. Not looking forward to lifting off again." He tilted his head to the side for a moment, as if listening to something. "You hear that?"

"What?" I couldn't hear anything but the wind.

"Thought I heard some kind of music. Like flutes or strings or something." McConaway shook his head. "Imagining things. Let's go."

Phantom sounds, or just some rampant paranoia rearing its fair head? I shrugged, peering out the windows again as I reached back to grab my pack. Three figures appeared from inside the main compartments of the rig—two men and a woman. "There's our welcoming party."

He grunted again. "I'll get the gear. You can go make nice."

I gave him a look and then shrugged, straightening in my seat. If he wanted to handle the bags, fine. I wasn't going to stop him.

I popped the door and climbed out, trying not to breathe too deeply as the shockingly cold air hit me. My eyes started to water immediately and I yanked up the hood on my parka. Bloody hell.

Hearing their footsteps over the sound of the wind, I pivoted smoothly toward our welcoming party, not quite as bundled against the weather as I was—but then, having been here for the past three years, I presumed that they were simply used to the chill. A woman with dusky blonde hair tumbling over the top edge of a woolen headband was in the lead.

"Lieutenant! I'm sorry you had to come all this way just to check up on us. It really wasn't necessary." Her smile was forced as she extended her hand to me. I took it and suppressed the urge to crush her hand in mine even as she made a valiant attempt to smash my knuckles. "Mira Thomlinson."

A smile, though forced, came easily. "We're just here following orders, Doctor. We're making the rounds to all of the installations up here, doing a check on the ice levels and some other things. Coast Guard has its hands full with other issues." It was a flat-out lie, but she didn't know that, judging from the annoyed look she gave me.

"Well, I suppose as long as you don't interfere with our research, there shouldn't be any problems. We're at some really fascinating places with it all, though I'm not sure you'd appreciate it."

"You might be surprised," I said cheerfully, then looked beyond her to the two men in her shadow. "Are these your colleagues? Dr. Yoshuda and Dr. Tursenko, correct?"

"Call me Yuri, please." Yuri Tursenko had a firm grip and a ready smile, his face having all the angular, chiseled lines of a young Putin. His pale brown hair practically floated away from his head in the wind.

I smiled back. "It wouldn't be proper, Doctor, but thank you all the same."

Dr. Takemitsu Yoshuda was more reserved, but I found his grip as firm as his colleagues'. His dark eyes met mine for a brief moment, then he murmured a few words so soft that I barely heard him.

"Thank you for coming," he said, then stepped back.

McConaway appeared at my shoulder and handed me my bag. I nodded to him, then glanced back at the science team. "This is Specialist McCray. He'll be helping me check the structural integrity of the rig and make sure your emergency systems and the like are up to code."

"Well," Thomlinson said, eying the both of us, "let's get on with the grand tour, then. I'll show you to your cabin first. You don't mind sharing, right? Of course not. You're used to that kind of thing."

I gestured for her to lead on. The wind was brutal. McConaway's face was already starting to get as red as my hair, and though his jaw was set, I could tell that his teeth were trying to chatter right out of his skull.

Thomlinson nodded, then looked at Yuri. "Head for the galley and put some coffee on. We'll be right behind you."

Yuri nodded to her, inclined his head to both of us, then headed back inside. Yoshuda followed him like a small, silent shadow.

Strange, that, I thought, watching their backs. Thomlinson forced a smile.

"Well, let's get going. Follow me." She turned and headed for a hatch. McConaway and I followed.

Thirty-five meters later, we were out of the wind and inside the relative warmth of the rig's interior. Relative because it wasn't that much warmer just beyond the hatch than it was outside, but at least we were out of the elements. The corridors were about the same width as the ones on the Daedalus had been, maybe a touch narrower. I could hear the hum of the florescent lights above us, the occasional sputter or buzz as one tried to short out and then righted itself again. The lap of the water against the rig's support pilings was a distant sound that echoed up through the metal, strangely comforting.

At least it reminds me of being on a ship. I glanced at McConaway and noted with a brief flash of triumph that he didn't seem all that soothed.

Thomlinson led us up a gangway and down a corridor, eventually shouldering open a hatch. The room beyond was small—ten feet by ten feet—with two pairs of bunks set flush into the walls and lockers at either end of the bunks. The rear wall was dull gunmetal gray with two built-in desks, metal chairs tucked neatly beneath them. The cabin probably hadn't been used in years, but it was clean and didn't smell like it'd been closed up for all of that time.

I tossed my duffle onto one of the bunks. "This'll do fine," I told Thomlinson. "What's next?"

"I'll show you the mess. Yuri should have that coffee ready by now, and maybe some sweets if we're lucky."

The galley she brought us to was more mess hall than kitchen, larger than any other room I'd seen thus far on the rig. McConaway seemed content to keep lurking in my shadow, silent, though I knew he was quietly absorbing and cataloging everything for later analysis. Yuri stood at the range, lifting a steaming kettle clear of the burners. Yoshuda was nowhere in sight.

"I'm afraid that I've got to get back to some work," Thomlinson said as she ushered us into the mess. "But I'm going to leave you in Yuri's capable hands. He'll show you around anywhere else on the rig you might want to see." The smile she gave us was so false it made my skin prickle in warning.

Settle down, O'Connell. No reason to jump to unnecessary conclusions. Not yet, anyway.

The false smile remained in place as she watched us seat ourselves at one of the long tables. "If you'll excuse me?"

"Of course," I said. "We're not here to keep you from your research."

Something dangerous flickered through her eyes. "Of course not."

She spun on her heel and marched out.

I saw Yuri shiver out of the corner of my eye as he brought two mugs of something steaming over to McConaway and I.

"Tread lightly, Lieutenant," he said softly. "She doesn't like you and she doesn't trust you. This place is her castle and she thinks you're here to upset her fiefdom." One corner of his mouth twitched into a smile. "And there is not much we serfs can do to help you without the lady of the manor coming down on our heads."

"The feeling is mutual," McConaway said quietly, his eyes glittering dangerously as he glanced sidelong toward the door. "I don't trust her, Lieutenant."

I waved for him to be quiet, cursing inwardly. Now I'm the only one here that's neutral and that's already going to be a struggle. "What exactly is she researching that's so time-critical?" I asked. There must be a logical explanation.

"I think it was a check-in with a corporate research division, actually," Yuri said as he turned away. He cracked open an oven and checked its contents before straightening and turning back to us. "Mira has been in touch with representatives of Dantel Coporation and Bachmann-Koch for some time. They're quite interested in the apparent 'possibilities' opened up by her research."

"Possibilities," I echoed. "What exactly is she researching?"

Yuri brightened at the question and began to rattle off academic speak at a rapid-fire pace, too quick for me to quite keep up with. I stared blankly as he threw out terms like stratigraphy and lithosphere. Next to me, McConaway's expression was impassive, but his eyes sparkled with amusement. After several minutes of highly technical explanation from Yuri, McConaway cleared his throat.

"In layman's terms, Dr. Tursenko?"

The scientist stared at us for a moment, then let out a self-conscious laugh. "I'm sorry. She's investigating the makeup of the bedrock in this portion of the ocean. The corps think it might have some resource acquisition benefits. Less invasive test drilling and similar applications or some rot like that." His lips thinned. "Mira is brilliant, but I don't understand her sudden things like that. She used to be completely about the science. She's changed."

Good to know, but probably doesn't have anything to do with why we're here. "I see," I said, letting the mug of tea between my hands warm my chilled flesh. "Well, that's good to know, at least. Have her corporate entanglements had any impact on the functionality or safety of the rig?"

"Functionality, maybe," Yuri said. "The safety, I don't think so. Either way, isn't that what you're here to look into? Not just the levels of pack ice in the area, I'd imagine. They wouldn't send a pair out for that, especially not from the Navy. Merchant Marines or the Coast Guard, perhaps, but not the United States Navy."

Sharp. I smiled wryly. "It is indeed. Asking questions is just part of the drill."

Yuri smiled back, a little tentatively, but genuinely before he spun back toward the oven. He busied himself with yanking out a loaf of something that smelled like cinnamon bread as I watched.

McConaway nudged me and leaned into my ear. "There's more going on here than they're going to tell us," he murmured.

I nodded slightly.

Tell me something I don't know, Merlin. Tell me something I don't know.

# Three

"I wonder what made corporate sponsorship suddenly so attractive to Mira Thomlinson," I said, pacing the length of our tiny cabin later that evening. Outside, a winter storm howled across the water and battered the rig, occasionally making the lights flicker.

McConaway perched on his bunk and watched me pace, a blanket wrapped firmly around his shoulders. "Ambition. Greed. Blackmail. Could be all of the above." He hunched a little in the blankets as the wind gusted outside, rattling our world. "Bloody hell. Is it going to be like this the whole time?"

"Hopefully not. We still have to make it look like we're checking the structural stability around here while we're trying to get to the bottom of whatever drew Ballard's attention."

"One of them asked us to come here," he said. "Once we figure out which one it was, that should make things easier, right?"

"Hope so," I said. "Briefing docs didn't give us much to go on, did they?"

He grunted. "Disturbances and mysterious equipment breakdowns. Ghosts in the water. Either they're going batshit up here or something's actually going on. Equal odds on both."

"You really think there's something in the water up here and nothing's actually going on?"

"You do," he pointed out, then stretched and lay back against his pillow. "And you're the one in charge." After smothering a yawn, he continued. "In the morning, I'll try to corner Yoshuda and Yuri if you want to tackle Thomlinson and her corporate entanglements."

I smothered my own yawn. "Yeah, that sounds like a plan." I'm not keen on talking to her, but at least I know I'll only bait her far enough to learn what I want to know. Merlin might get himself thrown off the rig and into the drink.

"Good night, Lieutenant."

"G'night, Merlin," I said absently. I turned off the overhead light and sank down onto the edge of my bed in the darkness.

What the hell are we doing here? What the hell's going on here that prompted us to be sent? Someone had to have reported something, but who?

And what?

For a moment, sitting there in the dark, I wondered if we were going to be walking into every mission blind as bats.

Ballard can't possibly think that he'll be able to treat us like this forever, can he? We should have pressed for answers. The briefing was crap and the docs were shit on top of it.

But we're here now. There's a job to do, and we have to do it, even if we don't' have any help.

I worked off my boots and slumped into bed. The long day and the stress were catching up, slowly but surely.

A good night's sleep should help. We'll figure out something.

Interviews. That'll get us to the bottom of this. They always do.

Always.

I drifted off, the storm still echoing in my ears.

• • •

The rig creaked and moaned with the storm as I woke the next morning. It was still dark in the cabin, but McConaway was stirring.

No. Not stirring. He's having nightmares.

He was mumbling, almost sobbing in his sleep, twisted in his blankets. I felt a stab of sympathy for him.

Is that what every night is like?

I heaved myself out of my bunk and padded across the room to him, uncertain whether I was going to wake him, soothe him, or both.

As it was, I touched his arm and he jerked awake, his hands clawing at my throat. I swore and punched him.

He fell back, blinking and startled, blue eyes wide in the darkness.

"Lieutenant?" he asked after a moment.

"Christ, Merlin," I said, probing a spot on my neck where his nail had caught me. "What the hell was that about?"

"Sorry. Nightmares." He rolled over, his back to me, apparently no worse for having been punched. "What time is it?"

"Three or four," I said. "Nightmares about what?"

"The shit they won't let me talk about," he mumbled, burying his face in his pillow. "Sounds like it's still storming," he said, his voice muffled.

"Probably is," I said, listening to the creaking and pounding. "It does that out here this time of year. I was reading up—surprised this section of water's not covered in pack ice, but I guess it's the cluster of vents that's keeping it clear." And if it's not, I've got no idea what it could be.

McConaway sat up slowly, movements stiff, as if he was beaten black and blue beneath his clothing. "Why the hell did it have to be the middle of winter?" he asked, then sighed. "Might as well turn the lights now and get to work, right?"

"I doubt anyone else is going to be awake this early," I said as I snapped on the lights.

A faint whine began to reverberate through the rig, the sound of machinery instead of the storm. McConaway cocked his head to one side.

"You were saying?"

"Fuck you, Merlin," I growled, then turned around to dig clean clothes out of my bag. His bunk creaked a moment later and I heard him start working on the same. I kept my back to him, not too shy to strip to my skivvies and yank on clean clothes. Serving on the Daedalus had broken me of any residual embarrassment fairly quickly. "All that tells us is they either get to work ridiculously early or someone else couldn't sleep and decided to be productive."

"Or that something's malfunctioning. Could be that, too."

Could be, but I doubt it. I bit back another curse and just shook my head, quickly taming my hair with fingers and a comb. "Maybe, but that doesn't strike me as likely." I almost wished it did. "Most rigs like this need manual intervention to work, in my experience. Gears and switches and shit."

He grunted. "I'll take your word for it." His bunk creaked again. He'd sat down to put on his boots. "Same plan that we discussed last night?"

I nodded, turning back toward him. "I think so. I'm not that keen on talking to Thomlinson, but better me than you."

He actually smiled. "Afraid of what I'd say?"

"Shouldn't I be?"

"Oh," he said with a shrug, "probably."

Good to know I'm still a fairly accurate judge of character. I shook my head. "If I didn't know better, I'd say you were proud of that."

"I am. She's a bitch and she's up to something rotten. I can smell it all the way down here." He finished lacing his boots and stood up. "Breakfast first?"

"Coffee at least," I said, scrubbing a hand over my face. "I'm not sure what in the way they'll have of breakfast at this hour."

He shrugged and grabbed his coat. "You were surprised that they were drilling this early in the morning. We might be surprised by what's available for breakfast, too."

It was as if a switch had been flipped. One second he was a haunted shell, the next he was a cocky bastard. I barely suppressed the urge to shake my head, uncertain whether I liked his mutability or not.

He'd make a bloody wonderful spy, though.

Then again, that's almost what we are.

I frowned a tiny frown, snagged my parka, and followed him out the door.

• • •

We found a bleary-eyed Yuri in the mess, working on a vat of coffee as we arrived. He took one look at us and cursed under his breath in Russian.

"How is it that you military types are so able to look bright-eyed and fresh at the most ungodly hours of morning?"

I didn't think that we looked bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, but I also hadn't looked in the mirror this morning. McConaway didn't look that great, but he looked better than Yuri. I shrugged and started to rummage around for coffee mugs.

"Training, I guess," I said.

Yuri grunted. "Next cabinet, if you're looking for cups. If it's the sugar, it's on the other side over here."

"No, mugs." I followed his direction and brought out three mugs, glancing at McConaway.

"Black is fine," he said as he settled into a chair and stretched. "Who's drilling?"

"Mira, I'd guess." Yuri didn't turn away from the counters, apparently starting work on a hot breakfast. "She's worried. You two being here's got her on edge."

That doesn't bode well for the conversation that I need to have with her.

"Really," McConaway drawled. "Why would she be that concerned? Not like we came to shut the place down." His gaze slid to me. "Right, Lieutenant?"

"Not unless we've got a reason to," I said, setting the empty mugs on the counter near the old-style, industrial-sized percolator. "I haven't seen a reason to yet. Are you saying there might be one?"

Yuri shook his head slowly. "I couldn't tell you, Lieutenant. She doesn't talk about her work anymore, not to us. She's been having me adjust the drill, though, to keep going deeper." He exhaled a quiet breath and shook his head again. "She won't say why. Must be some sort of corporate non-disclosure fignya."

Bullshit indeed. I poured the coffee. "You're probably right, but she'll have to disclose it to us. Part of our mandate here." She's not going to like it and I'm probably going to have trouble getting it out of her.

"Good luck," Yuri said.

"Thanks," I said, leaving one of the cups for him and taking the other two over to where McConaway sat. "Does she have some kind of beef with the military?"

Yuri shrugged slightly. "No more than any scientist who is interested in their work moving forward. Why do you ask?"

"She seemed a little short with us when we arrived, that's all." I tapped a fingertip against the side of my coffee mug, frowning slightly. I wonder what she's got to hide. Usually there's something to hide.

Yuri shrugged again, then shook his head. "I do not know what to tell you, Lieutenant. I wish that I did. She has been very close-mouthed about her work lately. That's not like her."

I nodded again, took a deep swallow from my cup of coffee, then stood from the table. "Well, I guess there's no time like the present. Better to get the interview over with and then she can go ahead and get back to work."

A ghost of a smile crossed Yuri's lips. "She may agree and she may not, Lieutenant. Do not take it personally."

"I'll try not to." My gaze slid toward McConaway. "Stay out of trouble."

"Yes, ma'am," he said and actually managed to sound like he meant it. I was marginally impressed.

Then I turned and walked out of the galley, my cup of coffee still clutched securely in my hand. Odds were pretty good it would either be cold or gone by the time I reached the control center, but either way I would be at least marginally fortified for what I suspected would be a long, painful interview.

The wind outside rattled the walls and nearly tore the door from my grasp as I exited the interior of the rig and headed out onto the platform, heading for the narrow metal stairway that led up to the control center. A twelve-by-twelve metal room studded with reinforced windows and a lot of control equipment, it perched about ten feet higher than the rest of the rig, settled flush against the top end of the housing for the drill shaft. Outside in the darkness and the howling wind, I could still hear the sound of the drill's deep, heavy engines, feel the vibrations that were unique to its operation rather than the wind trying to rip the staircase from its moorings.

Thomlinson's head snapped up as I ducked into the control center, a baleful look in her eyes as I shut the door firmly behind me. She was dressed in heavy cargo pants and a sweater, her parka tossed carelessly over a nearby chair. It was warmer inside the space than I suspected it would be.

"What the hell are you doing up here? It's not even five in the morning."

"My body thinks it's about ten," I retorted. "And with the storm going on out there, I was finding it a little hard to sleep. Since you're up, maybe we can get our little chat about your work here out of the way. The sooner that's taken care of, the sooner McCray and I can handle our inspections after the weather breaks and get the hell out of your hair." I forced a smile. "I'm sure that's exactly what would be preferable to everyone involved."

Thomlinson grunted and turned back to the controls. "You'll have to pardon my distraction, then," she said, her voice as tart as a fresh-picked lemon. "I've got a lot of work to do and not nearly enough time to get it accomplished."

"Of course," I said as I set my empty cup down on one of the inactive consoles. "So long as you answer my questions to the best of your ability for the purposes of my report, I don't think there will be any problems."

"And if I can't answer your questions?"

"Well," I said carefully, my voice taking on the weight of mingled threat and command, "then I suppose we may have some problems and my stay here will be extended. Possibly indefinitely."

The look she gave me could have peeled the paint off the flight deck of the Daedalus. All I did was give her a frosty smile.

"None of us want it to come to that, Dr. Thomlinson. Cooperation is a much better option than stonewalling me, don't you think?"

"Maybe it is," she said slowly, still eying me with a dangerous look in her eye. "But I'm bound by confidentiality agreements. There is information that I cannot furnish without a court order."

Is that the kind of game we're going to play? So be it. I canted my head to one side, lips puckering slightly. "Then I suppose I'll be observing a great of your work while I'm here, just to make sure that your research doesn't pose a threat to the health and safety of your fellow researchers or to the security of the United States." I smiled slightly, one corner of my mouth twitching into a smirk. "After all, you're dangerously close to international waters. We have to be certain that this installation doesn't pose some kind of threat—since we're conveniently here."

She tried to stare me down, her jaw set so tightly I thought she was going to crack a few molars. I just looked back at her, expression as cold as the wind and ice lashing the windows and walls.

"Your move, Dr. Thomlinson," I said softly.

"Just stay out of my way while I answer your questions," she spat. All pretense of welcome or accommodation were gone.

This was the real Mira Thomlinson that I was seeing for the first time, and I pitied her colleagues here on the rig.

Yuri did say that she wasn't always like this, but people don't change that much that quickly. This was always there, somewhere beneath the surface. Maybe she just lost patience with everything and let the real her loose for the first time.

Maybe.

"I think I can accommodate that request," I said as I seated myself in one of several chairs in the control center. I crossed one leg over the other and leaned back, taking a voice recorder out of my pocket. For a second, I hoped the sound of the storm wouldn't drown out whatever ending up being said, but decided it wouldn't matter one way or the other if it did.

Odds were pretty good that Thomlinson wasn't going to be entirely truthful with me anyway.

Here's to hoping Dr. Tursenko and Dr. Yoshuda are more helpful.

I switched on the recorder and set it down on the console, looking at her. She glared at me one more time and then turned her back, her body language rigid and angry.

"I'm just a researcher, Lieutenant," she snapped somewhat abruptly as she flicked a few controls, adjusted a few dials. "At the end of the day, science is all that matters to me. Solving the mysteries of this planet—that's what's important to someone like me. I want to know."

"Know what?" I asked, brow arching slightly.

She looked at me, her gaze flinty, her voice velvet over stone. "Everything."

# Four

"So what did you find out from her?" McConaway asked me as he met me in the silent mess hours later. The drill was quieter now; Tursenko and Yoshuda had control of it for the moment, taking shallower samples than what Thomlinson was pulling. The bitch was down in the lab now, examining the samples she'd pulled up that morning as I grilled her. The interview hadn't gone well—but that was about what I expected.

I glanced up from the notes I was jotting down, tugging one earbud from my ear. "I learned more from what she didn't say than what she did," I told him, yanking the headphone jack out of the voice recorder. "You want to hear some of this playback?"

"Maybe in a few minutes," he said as he dropped into the chair adjacent to mine. He leaned closer to me. "Tursenko is the sanest one on this rig, present company excluded. He's stable and he watches and listens. After you left I got him to open up a little bit more about what Thomlinson's been doing. Apparently, he and Dr. Yoshuda only stayed because they were concerned about what she might end up doing if they left."

"Are you saying they're some kind of break on her ambitions?"

"I'm saying that they both think if they leave, she'll move a team of scientific guns for hire in to work on some kind secret pet project that she's been pursuing since she made all those corporate contacts." McConaway chewed the inside of his cheek for a moment—the first time I'd seen him display any sort of nerves since he showed up at the door of my apartment back in Virginia. "They stay because they're a brake on her ambitions."

I shook my head slowly. "Which might be more dangerous than we know except I can't get a read on exactly how they could be dangerous." I slumped in my chair and shook my head. "She tried to stonewall me at first. After that, I'm not sure how truthful she really was with me, but I'll be honest and say I couldn't find a way to call her on the bullshit I suspected she was dishing without ending up in some kind of position of weakness." Knuckling my eyes, I shook my head slowly. "She's hiding something and I can't put a finger on it."

"And you can't figure out why her drilling might be dangerous, either," McConaway guessed, his voice quiet.

"No," I said. "No, I can't, I just suspect that there's something fishy going on. It's my gut, Merlin."

He winced at the name but shook his head slightly. "I don't think you're wrong, Lieutenant, but how do we figure it out? Hack a corporate database?"

"Are you saying you can do that?"

He snorted. "In a word, no. But I can try to break into her cabin if you can keep her distracted for a while."

"How about I break into her cabin and you keep her distracted?" I pinched the bridge of my nose, exhaling slowly. "The woman already doesn't like me. I doubt she'll sit still for me again."

"Then I guess we're at an impasse, because I doubt she'll sit still for me, either." McConaway reached for the voice recorder. "Did you get her to slip on anything?"

"She's definitely working for Bachmann-Koch," I said. "Not Dantel like we thought she might be. Something about their deep water research division and alternative energies. That said, given what little I understand about geothermals and all the other bullshit scientific terminology that's being thrown around up here, I cannot think of any possible way that they'd be able to turn a profit on anything she found here. I don't think it's energy she's concerned with up here. Not with those core samples she keeps pulling and then spiriting away somewhere. No. It's something else."

"Like what?" he asked, toying with the recorder, flipping it around in his fingers and frowning. There was a strange gleam in his eye as he watched me wrestle with the mental puzzle I was trying to piece together.

"I don't know," I said. "But the look in your eye tells me that you've got an idea."

"It's not so much me as it is Dr. Yoshuda," McConaway said slowly. "He has suspicions about what she's doing. He said something about biofuels being the tamest thing that Thomlinson could be looking into up here."

I came fully upright in my chair, peering at him. His expression was deadpan as he stared back at me.

"Are you saying what I think you're saying?" I asked quietly.

"Depends on what you think I'm saying, Lieutenant."

"You're saying that she could be drilling these samples in the hopes of coming up with some kind of biomass or microbe that could have...applications...that would be a threat to national security."

He smiled humorlessly. "Damn national security, I'm worried about some kind of worldwide pandemic."

I swallowed bile and looked away. Not good. "We've got to figure out what she's doing."

"And we're back to that dilemma," he said, his eyes drifting partially closed. "Look, I can try to get into her room even without you distracting her, but I'm going to need you to keep watch and give me a heads-up if she heads in my direction."

"I'm not sure that's a good idea." I'm not sure it's worth the risk. But how else are we going to learn something?

Christ, I thought that this assignment was going to have more to do with weirdness than this. Maybe I should be grateful that all we're possibly uncovering is a corporate plot to exploit untapped resources for the military-industrial complex...

He stood up, setting down the recorder. "Then come up with a better one. Right now, I'm not sure I see any other options, do you?"

"No," I growled. "You're right. It's probably the only way."

"Short of hacking her research files? Yeah. You don't happen to have any skills in that direction, do you?"

"Would I have asked you if I did?"

"Point taken." McConaway shoved his hands into his pockets and regarded me with serious, shadowed eyes. "Whatever it takes, Lieutenant. This may not be the supernatural creepy-crawlies or extraterrestrial bump-in-the-nights we thought we might be dealing with, but it's definitely a threat to the world and its people."

His words shot shivers down my spine. All I could do was nod. "You're right. It could be a threat and those threats are something we're out here to handle, aren't they?"

"Us and every other agent ever recruited," he muttered, then took a deep breath. He squared his shoulders. "Do you know where she is right now?"

"Down in one of the labs," I said. "Probably will be for another few hours, I'd guess. She made a big deal about having too much work to do and not enough time to do it."

He nodded and helped me gather up my notes. "That squares with what Tursenko and Yoshuda said. She doesn't sleep much and socializes less. I'll probably have an hour or two to snoop before she sets foot outside of that laboratory."

"Probably?"

McConaway gave me a devil-may-care grin and shrugged. "That's why you'll be keeping an eye on that door for me. Make sure I've got time to get out of she decides to call it an afternoon."

I cursed under my breath as we walked out of the mess together with him in the lead. "This is a terrible idea," I said.

"But we don't have any better ones, so it's the idea we're going to go with."

Briefly, I wondered if everyone found him infuriating, or if it was just me. "You're going to get us thrown off this rig," I muttered.

"Not us, just you. Make sure she doesn't see you and if she somehow gets past you and discovers me poking around in her room, I'll just lie." A shadow crossed over his expression. "I'm good at it," he said quietly. "Trust me."

"I do," I said. "I just don't like the idea of hanging you out to dry if it goes sideways."

"Then we'd better hope it doesn't." He exhaled slowly and shook his head. When we reached our shared cabin, he opened the door for me. "We'll need the radios."

"Come in here while I get them," I said, dumping my research onto the narrow desk at the far end of the room and then turning to rummage around in my bag for the pair of small, wireless radios that I'd stuffed into one of the duffle's myriad pockets. The door clicked shut behind him and I glanced over my shoulder in his direction.

"Is there a particular reason you're so willing to do some breaking and entering that I should know about?"

He paused for a moment, then shook his head. "No. I'm just doing what it's going to take to get the job done, Brigid. That's all."

I frowned for a second, then shook my head. "I wish I could think of another way."

"Well, belaboring the fact that we can't isn't going to get us anywhere, now is it?"

"No." I extended one of the radios to him. "You're right. It's the only way."

He nodded grimly as he stuffed the radio into his back pocket and started to feed the earpiece up through his shirt to his ear. "There's a green case in my bag," he said. "Looks like a little toolbox. I need it for this."

"Please don't tell me you carry lockpicks," I said as I headed for his bag and started to dig around between sweats and unmarked jumpsuits for the box he'd described.

"I don't carry lockpicks," he said, his voice flat and mechanical. I swore under my breath.

What kind of man was he?

Still, when I found the box, I handed it to him. He shoved it into another pocket and finished getting the earpiece of his radio into place as I straightened up.

"Just warn me if she's coming in my direction," he said quietly. "Otherwise, just pretend I'm taking a walk or something. Don't think about what I'm doing if it makes you uncomfortable."

"It doesn't," I said, though I think he knew I was lying. Breaking into Thomlinson's room did bother me, but not as much as I was making it seem. It was a matter of uncovering a possible threat to national—global—security and safety. That had to trump morality every time.

One corner of his mouth twitched upward. "If it makes you feel any better, I have a feeling I'm going to be saying Hail Marys for the next two years over this one."

"Two years? For doing what you're about to do?"

He hitched a shoulder in a shrug as he tugged on his parka and headed out into the hall. I stuffed my own radio into my pocket and hurried to follow him.

"I think you're being a little hard on yourself," I said.

"No," he said simply. "Just hard enough." McConaway took a deep breath and then exhaled it slowly. "Wish me luck."

"Luck," I said, then squeezed his arm. "Give me a few minutes to get into position before you start breaking into anything."

He nodded in agreement and we parted company. I fit the radio's earpiece into my ear and headed down a flight of stairs toward the laboratories as he headed up a different flight of stairs to the next level. Thomlinson kept her rooms on the highest level of the rig possible, near an overlook and an open-air gangway above the drill pit.

I'll never understand people who enjoy being close to places where they could fall into very deep water and drown—and I'm in the freaking United States Navy.

Mercifully, I was going to be safe and sound in the bowels of the rig.

Damnation, Merlin, be careful.

The radio crackled softly in my ear as I approached the laboratory. "I'm in position," McConaway's voice breathed in my ear. "I'm going to get started. Give me a heads-up if she's heading my way."

"Roger that," I murmured. The door to the laboratory was slightly ajar. I could hear Thomlinson inside, muttering to herself. I exhaled a quiet breath and moved past the door as quickly and quietly as I could, taking up position in a niche a few yards down the hall. I leaned back against a heating pipe and exhaled another breath I hadn't realized I was holding. "She's still in the lab," I murmured into the radio's voice pickup. "But it sounds like she's getting frustrated. Not sure how much time you're going to have, Merlin."

"Almost got the lock," he murmured back. "Just warn me if she's coming."

I swallowed hard and went quiet, straining to hear sounds of movement in the lab over the deep, throbbing thrum of the drill. I needed to give him the maximum amount of time I could if Thomlinson started heading in his direction—mostly so he'd have a chance to get clear before she saw him.

There's a wrinkle.

Settle down. Pay attention.

I heard Thomlinson swear quietly in the lab. My heart began to beat just a little faster. Something banged into the wall down there, but she didn't come storming out like I expected. She swore again, but she didn't emerge.

"I hope you're in," I muttered into the radio. "Work fast."

"Working as fast as I can," he hissed back. "This place looks like a bomb went off."

At least she won't notice if something's out of place. "Roger that," I said quietly, then shut up and let him work, my fingers crossed that he found something useful during this insane gamble.

A moment later, the laboratory door banged open without any warning and Mira Thomlinson stormed out, glowering at nothing.

Dammit. "She's on the move," I muttered into the radio and praying she didn't hear or see me as I watched her storm down the hall.

I didn't get an answer as Thomlinson turned the corner and headed for the stairway. I ducked out of my hiding spot and jogged silently down the corridor after her. "Merlin? Did you hear me?"

"Give me a minute," he said.

"You don't have one," I said. "She's on the move and heading your way."

I heard him growl over the radio. A dozen curses ran through my head as I crept around the corner to see Thomlinson storming up the stairs. He doesn't have time to be screwing around.

"Merlin," I whispered urgently. "Get the hell out of there. She's headed for the second set of stairs."

He didn't answer. All I could do was pray. As Thomlinson disappeared from my vision again, I headed up the stairs to the next level up.

All sounds of the drill died a few seconds later. Yoshuda and Tursenko were finished and I could no longer count on the hum of the drill to cover the sound of my approach.

When it rains, it pours.

Thomlinson was nearly at the top of the next set of stairs and heading for her quarters when she noticed me as I mounted the stairs below her, clearly on my way up toward her level. Her eyes turned chill as she spotted me, colder than the ice floes to the north and west of us.

"I thought we were finished talking," she said, her tone frosty. "This morning you said we were done unless you came up with more inane questions to ask. Did you?"

"Not at the moment, no," I said. "I was just wondering if you'd be joining everyone in the mess for dinner, though."

"No," Thomlinson said firmly, then turned away from me. She marched directly toward her quarters.

"Shit," McConaway's voice whispered in my ear as Thomlinson cleared the top of the stairs.

Halfway up the stairs, I heard a splash that sounded very, very far away.

"Oh no," I whispered a split second before I began to run.

Thomlinson's door had slammed by the time I hit the top of the steps. I raced down the deck toward the gangway that dead-ended in a door that was welded shut. The water was still rippling below where someone—McConaway—had ended up in the water.

Goddammit. I've gotten him killed already.

"Get me out of here," his voice whispered weakly in my ear. I looked over the rail again.

There he was, bobbing like a quickly freezing cork.

I swore again and grabbed the nearest thing that might clear the thirty meter drop to the water's surface—an old fire hose—knotted a quick loop, then tossed it into the water.

It must have been a trick of the light or my panicked brain, but I could have sworn I saw some kind of giant, glowing hand bat the damned loop toward McConaway at the very last moment. He struggled into the loop, tangling his arms around it, and I started hauling back, cursing every inch of the way.

The water, you idiot? Really?

As I hauled him toward the rail, I could've sworn I saw something move below him.

Then, as I hauled him over the rail, sopping wet and freezing, all I could see was his ashen face, pale with chill and fear, his eyes wide with shock.

"There's something down there," he whispered as his bare hands tangled in my sleeves. They were warmer than they should have been, I reflected dimly as he repeated his whispered words. "There's something down there."

# Five

Was that fear in his voice, fear he was trying to mask under stark certainty? I stared blankly at him, trying to kick myself into gear and shake off my initial shock at the fact that he could still move and still talk—something that should have been an impossibility after he'd hit water that cold. "What do you mean? What's down there?"

"I don't know." He cradled his head in his hands. Rarely had I ever seen a man so shaken. Then again, I'd never seen a man go into the Bering Sea in nothing put pants and a parka and live to tell the tale. "But it's big, it's angry, and it talked to me."

Once again, I questioned the wisdom of my choice to volunteer for this shit. "It talked to you." It's official. He really is crazy. "Something in the water talked to you."

It must have been written all over my face. "I'm not crazy, Brigid," he snapped. "It's a guardian."

"A guardian." His lips were turning blue. I needed to get him inside, and fast. I reached for his arm.

He jerked it away, teeth chattering, arms tightening around himself as he hunched to conserve what heat he had left in him. "Yes. If Thomlinson tries to take a core sample any deeper, they're going to tap something the world isn't ready to deal with. Something we can't handle even though we'll think we can. That's what it told me and I believe it. We'll hit something and the box'll be open and we won't be able to close it."

"Uh-huh." He's cracked. Auditory hallucinations. They're going to love this back home. I reached for his arm again and this time he let me take it even as he glared up at me.

"Damn it all, Brigid! Ask Yoshuda. He heard it, too."

"How do you know?" I asked as I hauled him upright. The parka was already starting to stiffen up as it froze. Not good. Probably a lot of water sucked up in that down fill.

"Because he called us here."

I winced. Oh geez. Either Ballard had told him, or he'd seen something I hadn't in those files. Or Yoshuda told him himself. I tugged him toward the hatch. "Come on. You need to get dried off. Now." I put an arm around him and helped him down below, out of the wind and cold, back to the cabin. His movements became slower, more sluggish as I dragged him along, but he didn't collapse or stumble on the way. The chattering of his teeth just became a bit more violent and I questioned the wisdom of leaving him in the soaking wet parka and pants once we were inside the corridor, heading down the stairs to the next level.

It didn't mater. The cabin wasn't that far away now. We made it the last few dozen feet and I shoved him inside with half-hearted anger. Worry had begun to nibble at the edges. Letting my partner—crazy or not—freeze to death on our first mission probably won't look good for me in the long run.

"Strip down," I ordered. "All the way to skin."

At least he had the good grace to blush and turn his back to me. His hands shook slightly as he started to disrobe, clothes forming a wet puddle on the deck.

I barely managed to turn away as he got down to the innermost layers. I tried not to stare at the scars across his back that came into sight as he yanked off his sweatshirt and everything underneath in one firm motion.

Where the hell did those come from? I wondered, feeling heat wash into my cheeks. This was voyeuristic and unlike me. There was no reason for me to be looking at him like that, starting to wonder about where the scars came from—if he wanted me to know about them, I would have known already.

I turned away. Stop thinking about it. He needs dry clothes. Warm bed. Blankets. Hot fluids. It might already be too late, but the fact that he's still moving is promising. I refused to think about the fact that he'd been in the freezing water for more than a few seconds before I'd gotten to him—that by rights, he should have died the second he hit the water.

I couldn't think about that. If I thought about that, I might as well check myself into some kind of asylum the minute I got home because there was no way that could have happened.

Chalk it up to miracles and luck and leave it at that. It's all you can do.

Crouching, I rummaged around in his bag until I found some dry clothes, held them out to him. He took them, mumbling thanks.

"Under the covers," I told him when I was fairly certain he was dressed. "I'll bring down something hot for you to drink."

"Talk to Yoshuda," he mumbled as he buried himself under his blankets. I threw mine over him, too, on top of his own. It'd have to do for now, since I certainly wasn't going to be getting into bed with him to warm him up.

"I will. Stay there until I tell you otherwise," I ordered, then left him there. Let him sleep off the crazy. Maybe he'll be more coherent when he wakes up. I had every intention of slipping something into whatever hot drink I brought him, something to make him sleep.

I had this nagging suspicion it wasn't going to help, though.

Yoshuda caught me halfway to the galley.

"He talked to it, didn't he?" His voice was a bare, almost awed whisper. "It talked to him."

"I have no idea what you're talking about." My stomach flip-flopped. I hope the insanity isn't contagious. I might have to shoot Agent Ballard if it is. If I ever make it out of here. I started to ease past him. He grabbed my arm.

"McCray went over the rail. I saw him. You fished him out of the water. You were talking. The guardian spoke to him, too, didn't it? It warned him, too. That we should stop, leave well enough alone." Yoshuda was almost breathless, face flushed with excitement and fear.

I licked my lips, heart starting to pound against my breast. What kind of rabbit hole are we down out here? "I'm not really sure what's going on here, Dr. Yoshuda. I'm not sure I want to know." But that's why I'm here. To find out. Orders are orders, and I've got mine. I almost sighed. "For all I know, this is some sort of hallucination from something that's in the water." That somehow hasn't affected me, Dr. Thomlinson, or Yuri. This doesn't make any sense.

"Please tell me that you believe me, Lieutenant."

I tried not to wince. I couldn't give him that reassurance. "I need to get something hot into McCray, Doctor."

He stepped out of my way. The look he gave me was one of desperation. I wanted to reassure him, but skepticism stayed my tongue. I didn't want to lie to the man.

At this point, all I could tell him is a lie. I don't know enough, and I sure as hell can't believe what I just heard.

Not yet, anyway. Not until I've got more evidence to back up all this crazy-talk.

I continued on my way down to the galley, breaking into a jog once I rounded the corner and was out of Yoshuda's sight.

Once I started to jog, it didn't take long to get there and I was oddly relieved to find that I wasn't alone down there. Yuri stood in front of the stove in the galley, half humming and half singing what sounded like the hymn from The Hunt for Red October. I bit the inside of my cheek to stop myself from saying something about the irony of that act.

"Dr. Tursenko?"

He glanced at me, still stirring whatever was in the pot on the stove. "Good evening, Lieutenant! Did you want some chowder?"

I shivered. For someone who spent as much time on the water as I did, I wasn't a big fan of fish—or crustacean, or bivalve—soup. "Not unless it's corn chowder, Doctor, but thank you. Do you have any hot water on anywhere?"

He pointed to the hotpot plugged in on the countertop beyond the stove. "There's tea in the cabinet there. I assume that's what you want."

I frowned slightly as I snagged a mug from the pile of clean ones sitting near the sink and then rooted around in the cabinet above for the tea. "How did you know?"

"Take said that someone fell off the rig," Yuri said, pausing in his chowder-stirring. "I didn't believe him at first when he said it, but if you're here and only mostly dry, then he must have actually seen it happen."

What the hell is going on around here? I blinked. "If he saw McCray go over, why didn't he come and help me pull him out?"

Yuri's shoulders slumped as he sighed and looked at me sidelong. His pale eyes were twice as tired as mine. "Understand something, Lieutenant, and do not take this the wrong way. Take is my friend, my colleague—I love him as if he were my brother, my own flesh and blood. But he's been strange lately, since we saw it."

It. What is this "it?" "I hope you're going to explain that."

A smile ghosted across his face. "Of course, of course. It was two months ago, when Mira began to take the deeper samples. That's when it started. Back then, there were five of us working here, not three. The other two left before Take asked you to come here."

So he did ask us to come. "Do you know why?"

"Why they left or why he asked you to come here?" Yuri shrugged slightly. "Racine and Harry left because they didn't like the bedfellows that Mira was making. The corporations, they're interested in her research, though I'm not entirely certain why. It never quite made sense to me."

He'd mentioned Thomlinson's corporate entanglements before, but this was the first time he'd admitted he didn't really understand them. I filed the information away in the back of my brain and shook my head slightly. "What about Dr. Yoshuda?"

"Neither of us like it, but it's none of our business—or at least it wasn't," Yuri said, then sighed again. "Not until Take started talking about hearing voices. That's why he called you here. He's convinced that there's something out there in the water and it's been talking to him."

Bile crept higher in my throat. I swallowed the sour burning and suppressed a shiver. "What does he think it's telling him?"

Yuri shivered. "That we're going too deep. Something sacred is about to be violated, something that we're not equipped to handle—mentally, physically, spiritually. He thinks whatever the thing in the water is has been trying to warn us for two months."

"Warn you that Dr. Thomlinson's trying to drill too deep?" I didn't remember filling the mug with hot water or unwrapping a teabag, but I had, because the ceramic was bleeding heat into my palms.

He nodded. "Take can't talk her out of it without telling her why, and he won't tell her why it's dangerous when she asks. He heard about...you people...and made a call."

You people. Does that mean he knows who we actually work for? I frowned slightly. "We're just the Navy, Doctor. Just checking up."

Yuri smiled a knowing smile and turned away. "Of course," he said softly. "I only meant that Take decided it would be best to call you, have you check on the situation here, assess the platform and the area. I know we don't have much strategic value here, but the Navy seemed more prudent than the Coast Guard. Especially if what we saw was some kind of unknown weapon."

That's the second time he's mentioned something they saw. McConaway saw something, too. Yoshuda and McConaway heard something. What if it is some kind of weapon—some kind of sub- or ultrasonic weapon that not everyone is aware of? Subliminal messages? I frowned again. Bloody hell. Couple that with whatever Thomlinson is up to and this shit just gets better and better, doesn't it? "What did you see out there?"

"I thought perhaps it was a whale," Yuri said. "Then I took a closer look at the pictures we took and I realized that I couldn't match it to anything in the computer." He found a ladle and slopped some chowder into a fist-sized bowl. "I didn't stop Take from calling because of that. I don't know what it was that we saw, but it's either something we've never seen before or it's something unnatural." He held out the bowl to me. "For Mr. McCray."

I took it with a slight nod, even though my stomach turned over at the smell of it. "Do you still have the pictures?"

"Oh yes," he said. "Digital and prints. I'll find them and give them to you in the morning, if you'd like."

"I'd appreciate it." A close look at those pictures will tell me if we're looking at a weapon or something natural—whether my partner's hearing something someone designed to affect other people's minds or if he's actually going crazy.

The idea that he—and Yoshuda—was going crazy was more terrifying than the prospect of someone testing a weapon prototype—probably some kind of submarine, if it was a weapon—in the waters around this installation. I wasn't sure who would waste the time and money on developing a submarine that looked like a whale, but that had to be what we were dealing with. Maybe the Chinese, maybe North Korea. They were the major threats in the Pacific these days. Iran didn't have the resources. The Taliban might have, but I didn't think so. They were too busy in the fragmented Middle East anyhow.

"Are you all right, Lieutenant?"

"Just thinking about who would dedicate the time and resources to a project like that," I said.

"Might not be a nation, Lieutenant," Yuri said. He looked pained, sad for a moment. "Corporations, someday, will be the ones doing it. Could be that they're doing it already, getting ready to sell it to the highest bidder."

That shot more shivers down my spine than the prospect of McConaway and Yoshuda being crazy. What if that's what she's actually up to? Covering Bachmann-Koch's testing of some kind of weapon?

"Well," I said, trying to sound optimistic. "It might just be a whale. A very old one."

"Perhaps," Yuri agreed. He turned back to the stove. "You should probably get that into McCray while it's still hot."

The mug of tea had been scalding my palm for so long I barely felt it anymore. "I should have been getting it into him ten minutes ago. Thanks, Doctor."

"My pleasure to help, Lieutenant. I want to know what's going on as much as you do."

Once I got my hands on those pictures, I'm sure quite a few things would become much, much more clear.

• • •

"You were gone a while," McConaway murmured as I ducked back into the cabin. Blankets covered most of him, leaving only his eyes and nose visible beneath the pile. "Something happen?"

I barely managed to suppress a sigh of relief at finding him alive and conscious. "Doctor Tursenko was in the galley making chowder. I brought you some."

"Thank you." It was another minute before he started to struggle free of the mountain I'd piled on top of him.

I watched as more of his face appeared. His lips were still a little more blue than I was comfortable with. "Are you warmer?"

He nodded. "Yeah, quite a bit." He wrapped one of the blankets from the top of the pile around his shoulders and took the cup of soup from me. A wedding band hung loose below the knuckle of his right ring finger. I'd never noticed it before and couldn't help but stare for a second longer than I should have.

"My father's," he said quietly when he saw me looking. "Died when I was thirteen."

"Why do you wear it?" I asked him.

He stared at the ring on his finger as he lifted the small crock of soup to his lips with the other. "So I don't forget what happened to him and my mom. So I don't forget that sometimes, doing the right thing comes with a price." His eyes met mine. "I've always tried to do the right thing. It's cost me these past three years. Cost me almost everything I ever gave a damn about."

I barely suppressed a shiver. It was like going into that water had opened up some kind of dam inside of him, letting things come to the surface that he'd kept under lock and key. Things that he's not supposed to talk about. How close to dying was he really? How long was he really in that water? How cold was it, actually? "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," he mumbled. "Maybe. I can feel my fingers and toes and I don't feel like I'd bleed ice anymore, which is how I felt when you fished me out of the water." McConaway rubbed his brow. "Why did I jump in that water?"

I set the mug of tea near his foot and retreated to my own bunk, sinking into the mattress as I leaned back against the wall. "I was going to ask you the same thing."

He got that thousand yard stare again for a moment, fingers tightening around the soup cup. A shudder wracked him and he exhaled, relaxing a fraction. "There was something in that water. Something big. Something old and profound and...I can't quite put it into words. I felt its voice in my bones. In my soul."

"You're starting to sound crazy again," I said, struggling to keep my voice gentle. "Just like you did when I fished you out of the drink."

"Of course I do," he said, covering his eyes. "Let me ask you something. Hypothetical."

Whenever someone says they're going to float you a hypothetical scenario, odds are it's something that's actually happened. "All right. Hypothetical."

"Say someone told you that they didn't die in an accident like you thought they did," McConaway said quietly. "They came back, seemingly from the dead, and find out that everyone they loved was told that they'd died. Imagine that.

"Then imagine that they tell you that they spent the two years since that goddamned accident as a prisoner someplace where some jackass aliens wanted to make them their weapon against your own people.

"Imagine watching them sell your best friend like he didn't matter, like he was nothing because he doesn't have some kind of something inside of him that you have that makes you useful—but powerless to stop them from doing what they want." His free hand curled into a fist on his knee.

"Then you come home and find out you've lost two and a half years of your life and you're told that you've lost your mind three dozen times before some suit in mirrored sunglasses shows up and tells you that he knows you're not nuts, but the only way you can stay out of a fucking mental ward is to join a super secret organization that has more in common with a science fiction television show from ten years ago than it does with real life."

"So that's what you meant," I said. "When you said you didn't really volunteer. That you didn't exactly have a choice." I didn't want to believe him. Every ounce of my common sense said that I shouldn't.

But I remembered what Jade did on the Daedalus's flight deck and I knew there was far, far more out in the world—in the universe—than I'd ever known or could hope to know. That was why I'd joined up. I wanted the answers. I wanted to know.

This is what you signed up for. Deal with it.

"Yeah, well." He swallowed hard, looking everywhere but at me. "At least I got a couple concessions out of the spook before I signed on the dotted line."

"Is that how you knew Yoshuda asked for us to come?"

He shrugged. "That. Some other things." He set his empty soup cup down and picked up the mug of tea, still steaming. "You were assigned to the carrier Daedalus and served with two psychics. You watched one of them heal the other and save his life. You're the only one who remembers seeing it. One of them managed to make everyone else forget. No one's quite sure whether it was McCullough or Kanton, but they know it was one of them. Somehow, you weren't affected."

I sat forward, heart fluttering like a caged bird. How does he know that? Jade's psychic? Michael is too? That doesn't make any sense. "How do you know that? There's no record of any of that." I knew because I'd written the reports myself and sanitized the rest. Jade's were sealed. Unless...

"It was part of the deal," McConaway said in a harsh, pained whisper. "I got to know what I was walking into—go in with eyes wide open. Ballard told me. I'm not reading your mind or anything like that. My promise to God." His eyes were bright, even in the dimmed lights of the cabin.

Tears. He was crying and didn't care. He was afraid—afraid I wouldn't believe him, maybe?

I swallowed twice. "What else?"

"Ballard was lying. We were always going to be partners." McConaway stared into his mug, cradling it between his palms. "Half of what we saw in that office was a show designed to heighten the mystique of the program in case we both washed out." He met my gaze. "Mostly you."

"Ballard doesn't think I'm serious?"

"I don't know what he thinks," McConaway said, eyes sliding closed for a moment. "I do know what I think, though."

I was almost afraid to ask. "What do you think?"

"If you weren't going to make it, you never would have let me into your apartment." He tilted his head back, shivering a little. "When you opened the door and let me inside, I knew. We're both in this until we're dead or we get a better offer." His fingers loosened around the mug. I got up and took it from him, touched his shoulder. He blinked blearily up at me.

"Go to sleep, Merlin," I murmured, reaching for his blankets.

"It's just Tim now," he said as he slumped sideways toward his pillow. "Merlin died in Iraq."

Maybe. Maybe not. I pulled the blankets up over him. "Okay." I said quietly. He closed his eyes. I padded to the switch and turned out the lights.

"Brigid?"

I paused on the way back to my bunk. "Yeah?"

"Thanks for believing me."

A faint smile touched my lips. "I'd be a terrible partner if I didn't. G'night, Tim."

"G'night."

I eased into my bunk and for the first time since that day in Ballard's office, I didn't go to sleep thinking my partner was crazy and would probably get me killed.

Odds were it was the other way around.

# Six

"What are those?"

The photographs Yuri took of whatever he and Yoshuda had seen two months ago in the icy Arctic waters were strewn across one of the tables in the mess. I sat in front of them, staring, frowning, a cup of coffee by my elbow.

"Photographs of the thing in the water," I muttered, scrubbing my hand roughly over my face.

I hadn't slept well the night before and had been up since four in the morning. Yuri brought the photos at six. I'd been sorting through them ever since. My eyes were starting to get gritty. My coffee was cold.

McConaway's brows knit as he kept staring at me. "There are pictures of it?"

"Dr. Tursenko snapped some," I told him. "He saw it, too, a couple months back. I don't know what it is. Neither did he. It could be something natural that we've never seen before or it could be some kind of submarine that's more advanced than anything I've ever seen. I'm trying to figure out which it is."

He stared at the pictures. "You should have woken me up."

"You needed the sleep," I said, shaking my head slightly. "Feeling better?"

The corner of his mouth twitched into a smile. "Yeah," he said. "Not likely to be jumping over any more railings, either." He collected my coffee cup. "I'll get you a refill and we can look at these together. Maybe I'll catch something you've missed."

"Thanks." I shuffled through the prints again, frowning. The only thing he could find that I've missed is any sign of a rivet or an antenna or something. My lips thinned. It looked natural. It could've been a whale. If it was, though, it wasn't any whale I'd ever seen.

And what would that mean? Am I going to shut down things up here until we can get some kind of biology team up here to check on the environmental impact? I could. I'm authorized. But is it necessary?

I frowned, remembering what McConaway had said, what Yuri had told me. It's talked to McConaway and Yoshuda—that's what they really believe, anyway. What does that mean?

What is this thing?

McConaway set a fresh cup of coffee down near my elbow and sat down next to me at the table. He reached over and slid a few of the prints away from my haphazard pile, studying them with a creased brow.

"Whatever it is," he murmured, "it's beautiful. And terrible. Like a sword or a storm."

"Yeah," I whispered. Almost worse than what Thomlinson might be trying to get to—but at least it seems to be on our side. My gaze flickered up toward McConaway. Is it why he's still alive? That water should've killed him. There's no way the drill and the geothermals could have kept the water warm enough for him to have survived. "Will you answer a question for me?" I whispered, feeling sick. I wasn't sure I wanted to know the answer to what I was about to ask him.

"You want to know why I'm not dead," he murmured, sifting through the photos and not meeting my gaze.

"Wouldn't you, if you were in my position?"

His shoulders rose and fell in a shrug. "Magic."

"Pardon? It was a serious question."

He finally looked up, pain deep in his eyes. "And that's the serious answer. That's...why they took me. There's some kind of something inside of me that lets me do things like survive a fall into the Bering Sea during the depths of winter and randomly appear in St. Petersburg bathrooms out of nowhere. I can't explain it and I can't always control it, but it's there. It's inside me and it's what I've got."

"Magic," I repeated.

He snorted softly and nodded. "Yeah. Magic."

"So what did you do, throw up some kind of ectoplasmic shield?"

"You've been watching too much SciFi Channel," he said. "All I did was make sure my core temperature didn't drop too low. Magic's energy, Brigid. That's all. I had some in reserve." He shuddered. "Just enough for us to be having this conversation now, apparently. I don't think I'd survive if I took another dip."

"That's good to know," I said dryly. "Don't take another swan dive and we'll be all set on that front."

McConaway snorted humorlessly and leaned back in his chair. "Are you angry at me?"

"For what?" I asked, reclaiming the prints. "Not telling me what you're capable of, or for you going over the rail in the first place?"

"Either. Both." His nose wrinkled. "I didn't exactly have a choice, you know. She'd have seen me if I hadn't."

"You're lucky to be alive and even luckier she didn't see you." I pressed my lips tightly together and dropped my voice low. "Did you find anything useful?"

"Nothing that will hold up in a court of law," he muttered. "Unfortunately. I didn't get out in time because I'd found this file on her desk that had memos from Bachmann-Koch and I was trying to find something useful to snap some pictures of, but then you said she was too damned close and I had to bail. Didn't get anything worth getting."

"Damn," I breathed, then shook my head. "Well, at least we're both still alive."

"Yeah, for now." His lips thinned. "We've got to find a way to stop them from drilling. Not just because of what I saw when I hit the water."

I nodded. Even the hints we'd gotten about Thomlinson's work were enough to make me think that we needed to temporarily put a stop to the drilling on the rig—if only until we got to the bottom of what Bachmann-Koch had contracted her to do for them. "I'll put in a call to Ballard."

"What makes you think you need to do that?" McConaway asked, his nose wrinkling. "Shut her down from here. We've got the authority to do it. Tell them that they have to suspend deep drilling until we can get a crew out here to inspect the drill. Make up something about it not being specced for the depth or something."

"I doubt it would be a lie. It's probably not." I tapped a fingertip against my lips. "She'll give me push-back."

"You're the ranking officer here, not her. You can lock her in her cabin if she protests. This rig is under American jurisdiction and we're here as representatives of the government." He smiled wryly. "Purportedly, anyhow."

He was right, and I was an idiot for not thinking of it. I leaned back in my chair, frowning. "Do you think we could get the other two on board?"

"They'd be relieved," McConaway said confidently. "They're worried about her."

"And Yuri's worried about Yoshuda," I muttered, frowning. Maybe he was worried for good reason.

Or maybe what they heard was real. Just because Yuri and I can't hear the music doesn't mean—

Dammit, don't get on that train, O'Connell. Don't do it.

"We're not as crazy as your head is trying to tell us we are," McConaway said softly. "I'd listen to your gut and your heart, first."

Both of those things tell me I should be listening to you. But how can I take that kind of leap of faith without a little more proof? I looked down at the prints again, eyes straining to find some hint of a rivet or seam. Once again, I came up empty, leaning back again with a sigh.

McConaway's hand covered mine. "B."

My eyes flicked to his. "Mat used to call me that."

"He thought you were a good friend," McConaway murmured. "I'm hoping that someday I can be half the man he was."

The pain in his voice and the guilt etched on his face made my throat tighten. I twisted my hand so I could squeeze his. "You're making a good start."

"Say that again when I don't somehow get us both killed." He squeezed back and stood up. "If today's anything like yesterday, she'll be up in drill control soon, getting started."

"You're thinking we should be there when she shows up."

"It's the only way to make sure she doesn't start drilling again."

I nodded slowly. He was right, and regardless of what I might suspect about his relative sanity, what we safely suspected about Thomlinson's work was more than enough to justify putting an immediate stop to her drilling.

We left the photographs scattered across the table and headed up to drill control to wait out our quarry.

The waiting didn't last very long, no more than half an hour after our arrival. McConaway and I sat in the darkness of the quite control tower. He stared out the windows at the star-strewn sky as I stared at the door.

"Do you ever wonder what's out there?" he murmured. "Beyond the sky?"

"From what you've said—and haven't said—it's maybe not that pleasant."

The ghost of a smile touched his lips. "Yeah, well. It's not all like that."

The door came open with a gust of chill air. Thomlinson snapped on the lights and stopped dead in her tracks as she saw jus there, waiting for her.

Her eyes narrowed dangerously. "I thought you two had gotten everything you needed from me. What the hell is this ambush?"

McConaway and I exchanged a look. I glanced back to Thomlinson before McConaway could say what I needed to.

"You need to suspend your drilling," I said, voice firm, tone brooking no argument. "This drill rig isn't specced for what you're doing. An inspection team will be here within the next week to do an in-depth assessment of the mechanisms. They'll be the final arbiters of whether or not it's safe for you to continue."

Her gaze flickered between McConaway and I for a second before her eyes narrowed even further. "Who really sent you?"

"The Navy," I said firmly.

"Why don't I believe you?" she growled. "You're on someone's payroll. Someone owns you."

"Just the United States Armed Forces, Department of the Navy," I said, shocked at how steady my voice was.

Her glare shifted from me to McConaway. "What about you?"

After the barest hesitation, he murmured, "No one owns me, Doctor. But I am Government Issue and I know how to follow orders." His voice was flat, almost mechanical. "My orders were to assess this operation and recommend it be shut down if I thought it was unsafe. Right now, like the Lieutenant said, I do. After the inspection team has a look, my assessment might change, but not a moment sooner." He looked at me. "We should inform the other two."

I nodded in agreement. "I imagine we'll find them in the mess shortly. You'll be in your lab if we need you, Doctor?"

The look she turned on both of us could have melted steel. "Yes," she said, her jaw set like a vise. "Yes, I will be. Pray you do not disrupt my research further."

She snapped off the lights and swept from drill control like a storm front on the Great Plains.

"That sounded like a threat," McConaway observed.

"It certainly did," I said quietly. She'd better not try anything funny. My report's already not going to be kind.

I took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly. "Come on. Let's go make some coffee and break the news to Dr. Tursenko and Dr. Yoshuda."

He nodded in agreement, pausing to glance out the windows again. I looked at him, one brow quirking.

"Are you coming?"

"Yeah," he said after a moment. "Sorry. I just...I thought I heard something singing."

"Singing?"

McConaway shrugged. "Must have been nothing."

"Probably," I said. "Come on. Coffee."

"Right. Coffee. And breaking the news." He smiled wryly as he joined me at the door. "Somehow, I don't think Yuri and Dr. Yoshuda are going to be that upset when we tell them."

"Maybe not, but Thomlinson is going to be a problem."

"Oh, B," he said with that same wry grin. "Of that, I have no doubt."

# Seven

Takemitsu Yoshuda stood next to the table we abandoned when we'd gone to make sure Thomlinson didn't start drilling again. His haunted gaze turned toward us as we returned to the mess.

"I didn't realize he'd taken pictures," he said softly. The manic gleam in his eye I'd seen the night before was gone now, replaced by the weight of weariness and knowledge—a weight so heavy that I could almost feel the burden myself. "I would have sent them when I asked you to come."

He really did call us, then. I frowned. "What do you think it was that you and Dr. Tursenko saw?"

He sat down in the chair I'd occupied earlier, sifting through the printed images. "A guardian," he whispered, his tone so reverent it sent shivers down my spine. "Something older than even these islands. Something sent here to watch."

McConaway didn't look at him or me, he just quietly began to make coffee. I sank down into a chair next to Yoshuda. "But to watch what?" I asked in a whisper, my heart painfully tight in my chest.

What if Tursenko, Thomlinson, and I aren't the sane ones here?

"I don't know. It never told me." Yoshuda just kept staring at the picture in his hands. "Something buried."

"Something lost on purpose," McConaway said as he slid into another chair. "Something we're not supposed to find."

Eyes shining, Yoshuda turned to McConaway. "It did talk to you! I knew it."

I knuckled my eyes and started to stack up the pictures. "You're sure it's not some kind of submarine or something?"

"Oh no, it's certainly organic," Yoshuda said. "Of that I have no doubt. You've seen these pictures, Lieutenant. Does that look like a machine to you?"

I had to admit that it didn't, though I had the deep-seated desire to say that it had to be some kind of machine.

Then I glanced up at McConaway and saw him mouth the words, "Just believe."

One deep breath later, I shook my head. "No," I said. "No, it doesn't."

Yoshuda nodded slowly and set down the photographs. "Then it must be something alive."

"It might still be something normal," I said before I could stop myself. "It could be a whale or something."

Yoshuda stared at me for a moment like I was crazy, then he started to laugh. "Oh, Lieutenant," he said between chuckles, "I have no doubt it's somehow kin to whales, but I can assure you that it's no whale I've ever seen, and I've seen more than a few in my time. I imagine you have as well."

I swallowed hard and just stared at the pictures. I wanted to swear, to scream, to deny that this was possible. How could I even begin to believe that the thing in the water—the thing they'd seen, the thing that McConaway said had spoken to him, the thing that Yoshuda may have heard as well—was some kind of prehistoric guardian? Something sentient, wise beyond measure—smarter than all of us by half?

Something supernatural.

My eyes slid shut. Answers. You joined for answers. Christ, you watched Jade save Michael's life. He should be dead right now.

So should Merlin, after he took a dip into the drink. There's more to this world than what's dreamt of in your philosophy. How do you expect to get answers if you're too afraid to accept that they might exist outside of your comfort zone?

"Am I interrupting?" Yuri asked softly from behind me. The door to the mess thumped quietly closed behind him.

"No," I said quickly, opening my eyes. "Not at all. McCray and I were actually intending to tell both of you that we're going to have to suspend drilling here on the rig for the immediate future until we can get an inspection team out to have a closer look at the drill mechanism."

Yuri frowned faintly as he took the fourth seat at the table. "Is something wrong?"

"We have concerns about the drill being able to handle the deep drilling," McConaway said. "It's not designed for what it's being used for and there are significant safety risks to take into account based on that."

Yoshuda nodded slowly. "They're right, of course," he said, his voice soft but confident. "The drill's been sorely used the past few years besides. Overdue for inspection, wouldn't you say, Yuri?"

The other scientist stared at his colleague for a moment before a slow smile broke across his chiseled features. "I suppose you're right. We've missed at least two scheduled inspections of the equipment, haven't we? The sooner it's all looked at, the safer we'll all be in the long run."

I breathed a silent sigh of relief. They're on our side. Probably know exactly what we're up to, too.

Yuri's expression turned serious as McConaway got up to start getting coffee all around. "Have you already told Mira, then?"

"She's been informed, yes," I said.

"She wasn't happy, was she?" Yoshuda glanced toward Yuri. "She'll make trouble if she's allowed the opportunity. We'll have to be careful that she doesn't try to disobey."

I arched a brow. "You think she will?"

Yoshuda laughed weakly. "Lieutenant, you've met her. You know almost as well as we do that she'll try. Whatever she's begun to do, regardless of her motivation and her corporate entanglements, it's become her obsession. She will not stop until she's achieved whatever goal she's set, until she's claimed whatever she's set out to attain."

My heart began to beat a little faster. "Do you have any idea what that is, beyond her core samples?" McConaway set a cup of coffee in front of me and I wrapped my hands around it, fingers tightening. "Can you think of anything?"

The two scientists exchanged a look. Yuri sighed. "I wish we had some clue, but as I've said, she's been stonewalling us for weeks. Perhaps if we offered to help--"

"I tried that, Yuri," Yoshuda said quietly. "She laughed at me and said I wouldn't understand it anyway. She's rather...dismissive...of our abilities as researchers and scientists."

Yuri frowned nodding absently to McConaway as he was handed a cup of coffee. "Well, we may as well try again. She might take us up on the offer now that's technically not supposed to be using the drill. She may try to recruit us to help."

McConaway snorted softly. "Is she the type to try to pitch the lieutenant and I over the rail and deal with the consequences later?"

Both men winced. "I wouldn't put it past her," Yuri said. "She's been strange lately."

"You keep saying that," I said. "But are you sure this hasn't just been a side of herself she's been hiding?"

He shrugged slightly. "I suppose it's possible, but I find it unlikely. Something's changed. I can't say what, but this unhealthy obsession is...new. She's always been driven, but this is extreme even for her."

I exhaled quietly. "Well, regardless, if she behaves, fantastic. If she doesn't, then we'll have to deal with it and I can't guarantee that it'll be pleasant."

"In fact, we can guarantee that it probably won't be," McConaway muttered. I kicked him under the table. He just looked at me innocently.

Yuri gave us a knowing smile. "She can be difficult," he said quietly. "We'll do what we can to curtail her."

"She's in the lab right now," I said.

Yoshuda stood up. "Then I'm going to go down and offer my services."

McConaway took a deep sip from his cup of coffee. "And I'm going to go keep an eye on drill control," he said. "Would you mind relieving me in a few hours, Lieutenant?"

"Bundle up," I told him.

He grinned. "I intend to." He glanced at Yuri and Yoshuda. "Good luck keeping the bitch under wraps."

Both of them stared at him for a moment before Yuri burst out laughing.

I buried my face in my hands and tried not to groan.

One of these days, his mouth is going to get us both killed. I already know it.

# Eight

The sky was vaguely lighter, entering that strange twilight that colored winter mornings above the Arctic Circle. My breath steamed in the chill air, the winds mercifully calm for the first time since our arrival on the rig.

I hoped against hope that was a sign of smoother waters ahead.

The inspection team we'd promised was coming had been duly dispatched from a post in Washington State with the promise that they'd arrive within the time frame we'd indicated. It was all part of the illusion, I told myself—and all part of doing our job. Even if there really wasn't anything to find up here, at least we'd make sure the rig was safe.

Still, we had a week to get to the bottom of what Mira Thomlinson was actually doing.

I should have poked my head into the lab before I came up here, but I think that just would have resulted in another explosion of temper. I'll have Tim check on her after I relieve him.

I crossed the deck toward drill control, rounded a corner.

A dark-haired figure in a parka was sprawled on the deck between the rig's interior and the stairway up to drill control, blood freezing against the metal and concrete of the decking.

I stopped dead in my tracks.

"Tim?"

He groaned, twitching slightly. My brain started sending signals to my legs again and the next thing I knew, I was crouching next to him in the chill air of a Bering Sea morning, on an old oil rig in the middle of nowhere.

His head was still bleeding, too.

"Damnation," I muttered. "Are you—"

"She hit me," he said abruptly, peering at me, eyes bleary at first and clearing slowly. "She had a gun, I think. Think that's what she caught me with." He probed at his wound. I grabbed his wrist.

"Don't. It's still bleeding."

"Head wounds do that," he muttered, then jerked free of my grasp, looking toward drill control. "That bitch pistol-whipped me on her way to drill control. They were right. She's not going to let us stop her from doing what she wants."

Jaw setting, I followed his gaze. "She assaulted you."

"I've had worse."

"Of course you have, that's not the point." I stood up slowly. "You were doing your job. What she did—"

"Pressing charges isn't going to do us any good if we don't get off this rig alive, B, and if she starts drilling again, we might not."

As if in response to his words, deep, rumbling hum of the drill's engines started up, shivering the deck. McConaway moaned, holding his head. "Oh no."

"That bitch." I started for the stairs.

Where are Yuri and Yoshuda? They were supposed to be helping us keep her away from drill control. Instead I find Tim lying on the deck with a head wound...

What was going on?

"They're up in drill control," McConaway said, one hand, pressed tightly over the split in his scalp. "I let them go up before she showed up. Yuri was going to disconnect some things, just in case Thomlinson decided to try something like what she's done. I guess he moved on it too late. Yoshuda went with him." He shuddered slightly. "They tried to warn us, B."

"I know," I muttered. "Dammit." The sound of the drill's whine grew louder. It was biting deeper now. I could tell by the sound.

"Hurry," he said, his voice tight with strain. "She's getting close and it's getting angry. I can hear it between my ears and it doesn't feel very good."

"Right." I squeezed his shoulder. "Are you going to make it?"

"Once you make it stop, I think so. Go."

I nodded and jogged toward the stairs to drill control. I'd only gone a dozen feet when I heard McConaway start screaming behind me—a scream that had a twin somewhere ahead of me—Yoshuda, if my partner was right.

At that point, I was laying pretty good odds that he was.

I broke into a dead run.

I don't remember climbing the stairway to drill control or kicking in the door. I do remember seeing Yuri holding Yoshuda, who was a boneless, writhing heap on the floor and Dr. Thomlinson aiming a gun at me.

"Mira, stop the drill, please!" Yuri was shouting. "It's not safe! They told you it's not safe."

"They just want to keep me from finding what I need to find—keep me from my breakthrough. Shut up and stay out of my way, Yuri. They're not taking this from me. No one will."

I cursed under my breath.

This isn't good. It warned us for a reason.

Either we're about to open Pandora's box, or that thing in the water is going to find a way to stop us from doing it.

I was laying more odds on the latter than the former.

"You know I can't, Yuri." Thomlinson didn't sound terribly sympathetic. "This is the key to pursuing my life's work. I can't waste any more time on their say-so. I give Bachmann-Koch what they want and they'll give me what I want. It's more than the government ever did for me." She pointed the gun at my chest. "What are you people good for, anyway? All you do is stop things. Stop this project. Evacuate this site, bury it. Cease and desist on my say-so because it's a matter of Homeland Security. Well, you're not going to shut me down, Lieutenant. I can't let you. I'm too close."

"There are other sites, Doctor," I began, keeping my hands where she could see them. I'd faced off with gun-toting crazies before. I didn't want her spooked and shooting anyone. No. No sudden movements until I was sure I could take her down without anyone else getting hurt in the process.

I'd done it before. I could do it again.

I was going to have to.

Her eyes gleamed with madness and determination, meeting my gaze steadily. "Not like this one." Each word was a bullet made of ice. "This one is the one I need. It's here. I know it's here."

The rig was beginning to shake. Yoshuda's screams were pitched so high they were almost silent.

Thomlinson kept staring at me. "All I need is one last core, Lieutenant. Then it'll all be over. I'm so close. So, so close."

In more ways than one. I shook myself, biting back the words. They were right. For the love of everything holy and sacred, they were right. There's something down there and it's going to swallow us alive if we don't stop this now.

It might already be too late.

Please, let it not be too late.

Metal screamed somewhere below. Everything began to tilt.

Oh shit.

Thomlinson's eyes widened. She spun back toward the drill controls.

While she was distracted, I gestured at Yuri. Get Yoshuda clear, damn you. I don't need this to turn into some kind of psychotic shooting gallery when I go for her.

As Yuri started to tug Yoshuda toward the door, quiet as a church-mouse, I prayed silently that my partner would be able to gather enough of his sense and get to the chopper. Whatever was big and angry in the water below us, I was willing to bet it was going to stop that drill any way it could.

"What are you doing?" Thomlinson spun back toward me. "You—what did you do to the leeward supports?"

I shook my head. "Nothing, Doctor. I didn't do anything."

She snarled, starting to shake. "Your partner was in the water doing something. What did he do?"

"We have to go." I told her, taking a step closer.

She leveled the gun at me again, her voice dropping to a dead calm that made my heart freeze in my chest. "What did he do?"

Breathe, O'Connell. Breathe. Take control. "Nothing! He wouldn't know how to sabotage anything underwater if he tried."

"Bullshit, Lieutenant! He's Navy, like you. Special ops!"

He's a pilot, you moron. He wouldn't know what to do with SCUBA gear if it hit him in the head. I bit down hard on my annoyance. It wasn't going to help me get us out of this mess alive. "He fell in, Doctor! He fell!"

"Bullshit! Who owns you, Lieutenant? Who the hell owns you?"

We were definitely standing at a thirty-degree angle now. Whatever had happened to the leeward supports, they were starting to fold in on themselves for certain and there was no way to stop it. "This thing is collapsing, Doctor. We have to go."

"Not without my sample." The gun never wavered. "And if we go under before I get it, then I'll be damned if I don't take you with me."

Death by drowning because I was too cold to swim had never been high on my list of ways I wanted to die.

I dove at her knees.

The gun went off.

I caught her full-on around her thighs and sent her crashing backwards into the console. The gun went off one more time before I got my hand around her wrist and slammed her hand into the console. I heard a satisfying crack amidst the creak and scream of comprised metal and the gun bounced away out of reach and out of sight. Thomlinson howled, but only for a moment—a hand shoved against her mouth and nostrils, cutting off her air, dropped her pretty fast.

I considered leaving her there.

That consideration lasted about fifteen seconds. I'm no murderer. I threw her over my shoulder and scrambled down the ladder to the deck below the control house. Blood thundered in my ears, almost drowning out the sounds of tortured metal and the drill.

Oh shit. The drill.

As quickly as I'd scooped her up, I dumped Thomlinson back onto the deck and raced back to the drill controls, cursing myself for a fool. The rig was collapsing and I was worried about a damn drill that was trying to take a core sample it would never finish drilling for. The shaft was probably about to snap as it was.

And yet I was up in the control house, shutting the damn thing down.

There wasn't any time to sort out what I was supposed to use to kill the drill. I smashed buttons on the console until the sound stopped.

The floor was at a forty-five degree angle. I couldn't hear the helicopter.

We're all going to die. Where the hell is the 'chopper?

I slid down the emergency ladder. Thomlinson was gone. I cursed again.

"Lieutenant!" It was Yuri. "Down here!"

The launch. There was something mean and big and undoubtedly angry in the water, and he was lowering the damned launch.

It occurred to me that the launch was preferable to the rig. I made a mad scramble toward his voice.

"Do you have my partner?"

"Who?"

I almost shouted, Tim, do you have Tim? and barely stopped myself. "Specialist McCray. Do you have him?" I was almost there.

"Yes, he's here. He's almost as bad as Take."

We'll deal with that later. I scrambled to the edge of the platform and slid down the ladder, landing between the sprawled, semiconscious forms of Yoshuda and my partner. I pulled my knife and grabbed one of the belaying lines. "Get your knife and cut the other one. Fast."

He blinked for half a moment, then yanked a knife out of his pocket. We sawed at the lines until they snapped, the sound lost amidst the screaming of tortured metal.

We dropped like a rock.

As the boat splashed heavily into the water, bouncing so hard it almost capsized, I was suddenly aware that McConaway and Yoshuda weren't screaming anymore. The water and wind were frigid, waves tossed us as we drifted away from the rig, waves churned up by something very large moving in the water. It was turning, headed for another of the support beams.

"What is it?" Yuri asked in a hushed whisper. I barely heard him over the wind and the sound of screaming metal, roaring waves inside this small pocket of open water.

"Don't know," I murmured, grabbing an oar. "We need to get moving. If we're too close when that thing collapses, it may well take us down with it." I tossed another oar to Yuri. We started paddling.

Near my feet, McConaway groaned. I almost kicked him. I restrained myself. At least he'd stopped screaming. I threw a glance back over my shoulder toward the rig, catching a glimpse of a ridged spine of some sort and a massive tail on course for a direct hit on the remaining support beams.

What the hell is that?

Something older than old. Something no one's seen in fifty generations. Not since the days of old.

In that moment, I wasn't sure that I hadn't gone batshit crazy, too.

There's magic in the world, Brigid, if you're willing to believe in it.

Metal screamed again as the thing in the water hit the rig squarely. The structure started to crumple like aluminum foil under pressure, listing sideways for a moment before falling. I didn't bother trying to judge if we were far enough away. If we weren't, we'd know it soon.

I shouted at Yuri over the shriek of wind and the dying rig. "Keep paddling!"

"I'm trying!"

It was another thirty seconds before the wave hit us, kicking us further out of suction range. Yuri lost his grip on his oar. As numb as my fingers already were, I couldn't blame him. I stopped paddling and turned to watch the rig slowly sink beneath the icy water.

Then, it surfaced.

I'd seen plenty of whales before, but this was unlike any species I'd been exposed to—and yet, I couldn't think of the behemoth as anything but a whale. Water sheeted off blue-black flesh, eyes the size of beach balls felt like they could see down into my soul as it peered at us sidelong. We bobbed next to it like a cork and it just stared at us.

My throat tightened. I'd never seen anything so beautiful and terrifying in my life.

I felt warm, heard a low rumble, a rumble that turned into a quiet, keening song—like whale-song, but deeper, older.

More powerful.

"You're welcome," my partner mumbled, half pushed up to his knees, wavering and pale. He was staring at it. I reached for him even as I looked at Yuri. The Russian shook his head slightly. Whatever it had said, he hadn't heard it, either.

The behemoth made one last keening sound and disappeared beneath the chop, sliding between waves like smoke in the wind. Tim wavered on his knees. I caught him before he could find a way to topple overboard, lowered him gently. He leaned against my leg, head pillowed against my thigh.

"It said thank you," he mumbled, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment. "You couldn't hear it?"

I shook my head. "Heard a sound, then the song. Couldn't understand it." I could only feel it. My heart was still tight in my chest. There was something sad about the creature, something that left me aching to my core.

McConaway nodded, pushing himself up slightly. Peeking up over the edge of the launch, he stared blankly at the water, as if he could still see it even though it had disappeared beneath the waves.

"Do you think Mira made it?" Yuri asked quietly, breaking the momentary spell.

I grimaced. "I don't know, Yuri. Maybe. She was gone when I came down from shutting off the drill."

"She wasn't always the way she was the past few weeks, Lieutenant. She was...different. Better." He shook his head slightly. "So much about this planet...she just wanted to understand what we don't understand, Lieutenant."

I shivered in the wind. "I guess there's just some things we're not meant to understand, Yuri." I picked up my paddle again. "Get the beacon up. I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm ready to go home." I looked back toward where the rig had stood one last time and shivered. Something tells me I'm going to be running into a lot of that in this line of work.

McConaway curled up at my feet, hugging his knees to his chest. I reached down and tugged the hood of his parka up over his head. He glanced up at me and smiled weakly before tucking his chin against his chest again, teeth chattering. All curiosity about what might have happened to Mira Thomlinson vanished as I realized I couldn't give two shits about what happened to her, as long as it didn't come back to bite us someday.

Of course, in this line of work, something told me that it would. All I could do was hope that the day of reckoning would be a long time in coming.

# Epilogue

Back home, two weeks later, I was finishing my report on our mission when he showed up at my front door, this time with a pizza and a bottle of Irish whiskey. I buzzed him in and we sat on my living room floor, both watching the rain pound down out of a February sky.

"You know," he said as he worked his way through a second slice of sausage and green peppers, "you didn't tell me why you wanted me to come over. I thought you said you didn't need any help with your report."

"I don't. I'm guessing you still don't need any help with yours?"

McConaway shook his head, leaning back against my desk. "No. It's mostly done, I'm just waiting on you to finish so they go in at the same time. Ballard's going to shit bricks either way. I'm not sure if he'll believe us or send us to the rubber rooms I'm sure the organization's got set up."

I shot him a weak, thin smile. "He's the one that sent us. He doesn't get to flip out over us telling him that it really was something bizarre up there that neither of us can quite explain."

"I did come up with a couple theories on that," he said. "I was doing a little poking around the internet. We might be able to sell him on something as simple as a mutated sperm whale or something, maybe with some really gnarly squid scars."

"And it would have been attacking the rig why?"

"Vibrations from the drill fucking up its sonar?"

I scrubbed a hand over my face. "I don't know, Tim. I don't think he'll buy that."

"But he'll buy some kind of psychic thing in the water that was talking to Dr. Yoshuda and I and trying to warn the rest of you that the drilling needed to stop before some kind of batshit crazy ancient evil or biotoxin or something got released?"

"Either we tell him the truth or we lie through our teeth. If he wants to sanitize it for public consumption, that's up to him. I'm not going to lie in these reports, Tim. I joined this organization for answers and for the truth."

"And they hired us to make sure that kind of thing stays quiet." He sighed, staring out the window for a moment, watching as the rain outside slowly turned over to snow. "The public isn't ready to handle what we saw out there."

"Not yet," I agreed. "But Ballard's on the inside. He gets the truth, unvarnished. Now, if you want to give him a recommendation on how to cover it up, I'm not going to tell you not to do that."

McConaway snorted softly and shook his head. "Even if I came up with the best idea ever, he'd still find something wrong with it and come up with something else. He doesn't trust me."

"He'll figure out how to. I did."

He looked at me with pure gratitude in his eyes and a pain so profound it almost broke my heart. I reached over and squeezed his knee. He smiled for a moment, then looked back at his plate.

We lapsed into silence for a while, concentrating on our meal. I watched as he got lost in the labyrinth of his own thoughts and exhaled a near-silent sigh.

Now or never, O'Connell.

I set down my glass and stared at him. "I think that you should contact your sister."

He flinched, staring into his half-full glass of whiskey. He swirled the amber liquid around, brow creasing. "She thinks I'm dead."

"That's why you should. She's your sister, Tim. Don't you think she deserves to know you're still alive?" I reached over and squeezed his knee. "If I had a brother and I thought he was dead for a couple years, I'd want to know that someone made a mistake about that. I could even call her if you want and tell her that the military made a mistake. It's not a lie. We didn't know you were still alive until you resurfaced."

"What do I say to her?" he whispered. "B, what do I say? Do I lie and say I was a POW or something?"

"I think I'd go with the truth," I said. "If I can take it, I'm sure that someone with your sister's credentials can handle the truth and keep her mouth shut." I reached up and plucked my cellular phone from the desk above him. "Call her. Arrange a meeting or something. I'll even arrange it. They can't punish both of us for it, right?"

"They probably could," he said, staring at the phone in my hand.

Then he took it and started to dial with a shaking hand. He stared at me over that tiny phone, then put it on speaker as it began to ring.

"You're going to have to help me," he said quietly.

"I think I can do that." I squeezed his knee again.

A voice answered at the other end. "Hello?"

We stared at each other for another moment. I forced a smile.

"Hello, Dr. McConaway? My name is Brigid O'Connell, and I have some news about your brother."

The End

# About the Author

Erin M. Klitzke has been writing since she was an adolescent, though most of those early works will never see the light of day.  She got her BA in history and anthropology from Grand Valley State University and her MA in history from Oakland University. She lives in Detroit's northern suburbs and enjoys reading, sewing, gaming, and renaissance festivals when she's not creating her own worlds.  You can find her on the web at www.embklitzke.com, e-mail her at doc (at) embklitzke (dot) com, and follow her on Twitter at @EMBKDoc.

# Other works by Erin M. Klitzke

#### _Fiction_

_Epsilon: Broken Stars_

_Falling Stars_

_Awakenings: Book One_

_What Angels Fear_

_UNSETIC Files: Between Fang and Claw *_

_Epsilon: Redeemer *_

_When All's Said and Done *_

_Legacies of the Lost Earth: The Last Colony *_

_Awakenings: War Drums *_

#### _Non-fiction_

_Intersection with the Once and Future King:  Edward I, Edward III, and King Arthur_

*Forthcoming

