Kronos Read online

  “Please, God, kill me now,” Atticus said, sure his head would burst from the agony.

  “It’s not that bad,” Andrea said as she stretched her weary body under the sheets of the bed they occupied. During the night of phony conversation, they’d also tended to each other’s wounds, applying ice, gauze, and gentle gestures, but nothing beyond normal doctor-patient behavior. They were most likely being watched, and certainly recorded.

  But when Atticus extinguished all the lights except for the bathroom, its dull glow barely reaching the edge of the bedroom, they settled into bed, expecting sleep to come fast. But they talked instead, first about Giona, then about Abigail. When Andrea began crying, Atticus turned on the music. While Kenny G wasn’t exactly appropriate for the moment, neither was letting some peeping Tom get a kick out of her pain.

  As Atticus held her, Andrea told him all about Abigail, how well she played the piano, how funny she was when she danced, and how much she loved playing basketball. They’d been close. A single mom and her daughter forging their way through life together—a team. But a year ago, some jerk drank too much and decided to go for a joyride. He ran a stop sign, sideswiped three cars, then plowed up onto the sidewalk, where he ran over Abigail and continued on without tapping the brakes. The car turned out to be stolen, and the man was never found.

  Beyond feeling sorrow for her loss, Atticus felt a deep, welling shame. She’d borne a burden as heavy as his and had continued on with her life. While he was prepared to die for his vengeance, she’d mourned the loss and kept jumping out of helicopters to save other people’s lives.

  As Andrea calmed under the soothing effects of Atticus’s fingertips through her hair, she snuggled up against him. They shared the embrace for several minutes without speaking, listening to Kenny’s sax ballads, until Atticus couldn’t stand it any longer.

  Having broken the silence, Atticus felt Andrea’s spirit lifting. She’d revealed the darkest moment in her life, and the confessions of her tortured soul further strengthened the old bond between them. At first, Atticus found it hard to believe that his love for Andrea could have returned so quickly. He worried that his feelings resulted from the desperation and sense of loss he felt; but now Giona was alive, and with that hope came a fervent desire to be with Andrea.

  “You know,” Andrea said. “When I first found you…”

  “On the Titan.”

  Andrea sighed. “When you were…when I rescued you on the yacht.”

  “Oh, that boat.” Atticus wasn’t sure where she was going, but hoisted his head up from the pillow and rested it on his propped up hand to let her know he was listening. He continued to stroke her arm as she spoke.

  “When I found you, you were dead.”

  Atticus felt a lump, like a cancerous tumor, suddenly grow in his throat.

  “When I flipped you over and saw your face again, I felt something in me change. Whatever walls I’d put up after Abigail died came crumbling down. I worked on you for a minute straight before you came back. At first, I honestly thought you might hate me for saving you. I heard the anguish in your voice. The pain. Bringing you back meant you’d have to live with that pain for the rest of your life. That’s why I didn’t tell you before. But now— I just thought you should know. I don’t want to los—”

  Atticus leaned forward and kissed her hard on the lips. As he leaned over her, embracing her, his back wrenched with pain, and he grunted.

  “You okay?” she asked, ready to pull him down but sensing his pain was genuine.

  “Just my back,” Atticus said.

  “Roll over, let me take a whack at it.”

  Atticus rolled onto his stomach. Just as the bed finished absorbing his pressure points, Andrea had mounted his backside. “Where does it hurt?”

  “Pretty much everywhere,” Atticus said with a smile.

  Andrea dug into his back, working the muscles up and down, locating knots and easing them out. Atticus felt his tension forced away, in part because of the physical attention, but also from the love he felt pouring into him with every squeeze. After several minutes, Atticus flexed and stretched his back.

  Andrea’s noted his movement. “Did I get all the kinks worked out?”

  Atticus rolled over beneath Andrea so that she sat just below his waist, which was exactly where he wanted her. He smiled craftily in the dark, and though he doubted she could see him, he knew she heard the intention in his voice. “All but one.”

  She leaned down and kissed him, giving his chest the same treatment his back had just received. As she sat up, tugging her shirt up, Atticus caught movement out of the corner of his eye. He immediately tensed and stopped moving. Andrea followed suit.

  “What is it?” she whispered.

  Three silhouettes suddenly blotted out the light from the bathroom.

  “No!” Atticus spat as he spun beneath Andrea’s body, reaching for the .357 on the nightstand. But a sharp sting in his shoulder and a gasp from Andrea told him he’d never make it. His hand slid away from the nightstand and fell limp to the side of the bed. As consciousness faded away, Atticus heard a single word that would fuel each and every nightmare he’d have while unconscious.

  “Aloha!”

  Atticus woke to a blaring headache and a light so bright he could barely open his eyes. Each pump of his heart brought a throb of blinding pain. He opened his eyes again, but the light assaulted his visual senses and caused him to double over. He fell to the hard floor, eyelids clenched. The pain in his head was coupled with dizziness and nausea. He worked on his breathing first, calming himself, using his other senses to probe the room. He smelled metal and paint. He body felt hot and sticky with sweat.

  With his head still bowed to the floor, Atticus opened his eyes again. When he saw the stark white floor below him, he clenched them shut again. The brig. The white-hot, no-way-out brig of the Titan. He cursed himself for letting his guard down. He shouldn’t have trusted Trevor.

  Andrea.

  Atticus opened his eyes again, fighting against the pain, and scanned the room. He found Andrea slumped atop one of the wooden benches. She looked unharmed and unmolested. He crawled to her and placed two fingers against her wrist. Her blood pulsed strong beneath her skin. Remus could have easily killed them both but didn’t. He couldn’t be sure, but he imagined the man wanted them awake when he finished them off. And after a few more hours of roasting, Atticus wouldn’t have much fight left in him.

  43

  Kronos

  The impenetrable darkness that enveloped Giona consumed her senses. The smell of rancid fish and the reverberation of the giant’s beating heart clouded her mind, keeping her thoughts from solidifying into anything useful.

  The realization that she would sooner or later be digested had defeated the best mental defenses she possessed. She sat cross-legged on the undulating floor of the chamber, rocking back and forth like a forgotten child. No one would be coming for her.

  Hours earlier she’d experienced the most grueling experience of her life, topping the previous, which had involved being eaten alive. The…thing she would soon provide nourishment for had become a volcano of movement, just minutes after she’d fired off her camera and gotten her first glimpse of her sickening surroundings.

  At first she’d thought the camera’s flash had somehow disturbed it, but when thunderous explosions began echoing through the chamber, muffled by the beast’s flesh, yet still ear-shatteringly loud, she had realized the creature was under attack. For a moment she had felt a surge of hope. But after a near miss sent a shock wave of pain through her body, she realized that if the creature died underwater, she’d go down with the ship like an ill-fated captain.

  The creature’s movements became so quick and violent that Giona knew a mortal wound had been delivered, causing the creature to thrash in its death throes. As she slammed into the fleshy walls, her hand clung to the camera. If she let go, it could have struck her again, but she also didn’t want to part with her only source of
light. As the thrashing intensified, Giona felt sure her neck would be broken, but giant muscles, hidden beneath the vein-filled flesh, contracted and squeezed the chamber. If the walls had moved any quicker, she’d have been folded in half. But she had time to adjust her body so that the walls squeezed in around her. She felt like Luke Skywalker in the Death Star trash compacter, but since R2-D2 wouldn’t be stopping the encroaching walls, she took a deep breath and waited to be crushed.

  As soon as her capacity to move was completely eliminated, the inward clutch stopped—locked in place—surrounding her on all sides by tight walls of flesh. Her breathing quickened as her lungs failed to fill to full capacity. Her eyes widened as thoughts of asphyxiation surged through her wearying mind. As her panicked breaths quickened, glowing orbs filled her vision and her fingertips tingled. An agonizing roar slammed through the tight chamber, so loud that her teeth vibrated within her clenched jaw. The beast was hurt. For a moment Giona had felt sad for the creature, but then the tingling in her hands moved to her head.

  It seemed only a moment had passed, but the next sensation Giona had was of being free from the crushing grasp. She’d passed out again. Upon waking, she sat on the floor, shivering not with cold, for the innards of the monster were quite warm, but with absolute dread. She’d unwittingly entered an alien world where logic and human senses became useless.

  Exhaustion took over Giona’s cross-legged form, and her rocking slowed. She slipped back and leaned against the soft chamber wall. The flesh that met her body gave some and gathered around her back like a cushioned chaise. She closed her eyes—they were no good to her anyway—and tried to think about something happy.

  But she became distracted by a sensation on the back of her head. The cushion of flesh behind her head pulsed up and down. The movement wasn’t violent, merely a repeated rising and falling. With each pulse, she felt more energized.

  As though waking from a dream, Giona found her thoughts coming more easily. She realized that the palpitating behind her head came from a massive artery, pulsing blood from the creature’s heart to some other organ. Giona’s mind fought to gain some understanding of her new environment. Her fear ebbed slightly as reason began to take over. She’d been smart—scratch that—brilliant, before being consumed by this beast, but had since been reduced to a mindless prey animal. She longed for a return of her old self.

  As Giona’s curiosity climbed to the surface of her consciousness, she turned and placed a hand on the artery. It was ten inches from top to bottom and, she imagined, stretched the length of her prison. She pondered the meaning of her mental revival and remembered that some blood vessels, the arteries, weren’t merely the mass transit system for white and red blood cells, they also transported oxygen. She leaned in close to the throbbing vessel, which she could feel pulse with every thud of the beast’s heart, and took a deep breath. The air smelled and tasted of coppery fish, but the surge of energy she received confirmed that oxygen was entering into the chamber by osmosis through the giant artery. Her life-support system. Without it, she would have died long ago.

  But how long could she survive? She had no water, no food, and her body suffered for that absence already. Between the constant hammering pain in her skull and the agonizing knot in her gut, death couldn’t be far off. All the oxygen in the world couldn’t keep her from starving.

  An odd thought struck Giona. What if the creature wanted her to live? It certainly seemed that way. That the chamber existed at all was strange in the extreme, but she’d also been physically protected during the attack. It might have been uncomfortable to the point of her losing consciousness, but Giona knew that without the firm grip of those walls, she would have been beaten to a pulp. And now she’d discovered an oxygen supply.

  Giona lit her watch, feeling emboldened, and found her way to the oversized sphincter. Her nose crinkled with disgust at what she was about to do. She extinguished the watch light and pounded on the coiled muscle. “Let me out!”

  Emotions Giona thought she’d buried beyond reach resurfaced. She pounded with both fists, screaming. “Let me out! Let me out!”

  Tears broke free.

  “Please, God, let me out!”

  Giona sobbed and unclenched her fists to cover her face with her palms. When her sobs died to a whimper, she sighed. “At least give me something to eat.”

  A subtle change in direction caused Giona to slip back away from the fleshy spiral of muscle. The beast was rising. She could also tell by the rapidity of the chamber’s undulation that it was speeding up.

  Before Giona could wonder what would happen next, the sphincter burst open. A blast of cool, salty sweet air burst into the chamber, knocking Giona farther back. When she regained her balance, she realized she could see. A cool white glow lit the chamber from above. She looked past the opening, past the silhouettes of dagger teeth, and saw something she believed her eyes would never gaze upon again—the moon.

  An instant later, the moon and its light were gone. A roar like thunder filled the void and rushed toward her. A torrent of water surged into the chamber and slammed her against the doughy back wall. As the space filled with water, covering her head, Giona found herself thinking about the cool air and glowing moon. If they were the last things she experienced before drowning, at least the creature had given her that final joy.

  Water suddenly cleared from her face. She took a gulp of air. In moments her whole head emerged from the water, then her torso, thighs, and knees. As the water continued to course out through some unseen drain, Giona lit her watch. The water-covered floor shivered, alive with movement. She could feel tiny bodies flicking against her feet. Thrashing water echoed through the small chamber, filling Giona’s ears with an unceasing static hiss. Needing to know whether or not she should be petrified, Giona aimed her camera down, closed her eyes, and snapped a picture. Even with her eyes clenched shut; she saw the bright flash through her eyelids as a pink glow. She blinked her eyes open and looked at the camera’s viewscreen. Then gasped. The reflection was brilliant, but the image revealed a mass of silver-bodied herring.

  Fish!

  Food! Giona’s mind shouted.

  Giona dropped the camera and fell to her knees. She completely forgot that she didn’t like sushi and began grasping the small fish in her hands. With a savagery long tamed by civilization but unleashed through starvation, Giona ripped into the fish, swallowing chunks of flesh, not knowing or caring whether the juices running down her chin were blood or bile. She ate for minutes, until sated, then slumped against the oxygen-supplying artery.

  She was breathing.

  She was sustained.

  She was alive.

  “Thank you,” she muttered, but to whom she was talking, she had no idea.

  44

  The Titan

  Atticus slapped Andrea gently on the cheek. She roused from unconsciousness with a grunt and blinked at the brightness assaulting her unadjusted eyes. She immediately recognized where they were. “Not again.”

  “Welcome back sleepyhead,” Atticus forced a smile, knowing it would do little to keep Andrea from quickly realizing their predicament. Atticus had been awake for an hour. He’d tried to rouse Andrea three times, but the drugs she’d been given had had a stronger effect on her smaller body.

  As he’d sat in the room, guarding Andrea’s inanimate form, he’d tried to distract himself with thoughts of his family: Mom, Dad and, Conner. Was Dad still in the hospital? Was Conner still waiting for him at home? But the thoughts came and went in a haze. He struggled to come up with some kind of escape plan, but his mind had been unable to concentrate.

  With Andrea awake, he felt a part of his mind refocus, but he was no closer to coming up with a useful strategy. He stood on wobbly legs and sat next to her on the wooden bench. His body sagged. “Hell of a first date.”

  “Second date,” Andrea said. “Our first included you jumping from a hospital window and scaling down the side of the building like Spider-Man.”


  A slight smile crept onto Atticus’s face. He couldn’t imagine ever having the energy to pull off a stunt like that. “I’m far from a superhero.”

  Andrea rested her head on his shoulder while rubbing one of her temples with her fingers, fighting off the same blazing headache still hammering Atticus. “Well, you’re my hero.”

  “You won’t think so when that door opens and the only thing I can do to defend you is shout obscenities.”

  She slid an arm up around his back and patted gently. “They’ve got bigger fish to fry…much bigger fish. I’m sure they’ve forgotten about us for now.”

  A resounding clunk signified that the brig door was being unlocked.

  “Or not…” Andrea said as she did her best to stand. Atticus could see she wouldn’t go down without a fight, and he’d be damned if she would have to fight alone. He stood and nearly collapsed as the world momentarily fizzled to black. His vision returned just as the white door swung open to reveal a black specter.

  “O’Shea?” Atticus said, not trusting his eyes.

  O’Shea bowed. “At your service.” He quickly handed them bottles of water. They twisted off the caps in an instant and chugged down the cool liquid.

  After finishing their drinks, O’Shea handed Atticus his dive knife and .357. “I was able to get these, but I’m afraid your other weapons have been impounded, or in some cases, dispersed among the crew.”

  Atticus checked the .357. It held six rounds. Not exactly enough to combat the entire crew of the Titan if it came to that, but if his aim was true, six shots would be enough to incapacitate six people—permanently—and do a fairly good job of intimidating the rest of the crew. The knife, on the other hand, would never run dry. And in his previous experience with the SEALs, it had ended the lives of more enemies than any other weapon he’d used. SEALs often relied on stealth, and nothing attracted less attention than a blade. Atticus slid the .357 into his belt and was about pocket the knife when O’Shea suddenly turned pale.