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  “But hey, it rhymes,” Feret offered.

  Hani lowered the machete to the port side of the deck, no longer in need of its reticent blade, and inched closer to Makrigga.

  “Drink it. The blood keeps your feet flexible.” Makrigga passed his cup to Hani.

  “No venom?”

  “If you are concerned, then give me back the bucket.”

  “Don’t leave me here with my lips parched,” Feret said, before taking his own gulp. “I can stop rowing long enough to drink some adder blood. It awakens the rowing muscles.”

  Feret passed the bucket to Hani.

  Hani hesitated as he brought the bucket to his lips.

  “It’s perfectly safe,” Sage assured him. She smiled at Hani’s obvious doubts.

  “No snake ever scared me. Why should I be afraid of a dead one?” Hani said before taking a sip from the bucket.

  “There are more reasons to fear the dead than you know,” Makrigga said.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  HECTOR

  Hector was awake in his cot, listening to the howling outside the door. Drops of water echoed through the corridors. He wore a grotesque Victorian mask, dirty white with an elongated nose and oblong eyes. It wasn’t comfortable, but he liked wearing it. People didn’t mess with him when he wore his mask.

  Next to him, Vector, his twin brother, snored like a hyena. Above him, the ventilation system whined like a motor that was about to run out of gas.

  Drrr. Drrr. Drrr.

  Perhaps it would be better to die hunting sharks, and rid him of the headache. Why did the place have Whalers? If there were designated Whalers, then there should be designated shark hunters. They would be called Sharkers, and Hector would be their Captain. Hector, Captain of the Sharkers. He would sail the South Atlantic with his grotesque mask. A scourge to predator and prey alike.

  For Hector, the storm was as good a reason as any to mope about. He lied on his metal slab of a bed in his half awake, half groggy state. He debated whether it was worth it to stumble out of bed and funnel some water from the faucet into his body. No. He was too tired. And nothing came out of the faucet when he tried earlier anyway. It was usually like that during big storms.

  He tried to ignore the hum from the air ducts, a drone followed by only more hum.

  Drrr. Drrr. Drrr.

  They never stopped. Occasionally, they sputtered with the promise of quiet, but that hope was brief. It was never quiet, even as far as he was below the ocean surface. If it wasn’t enough, the high-pitched wind whistled outside his door. He knew when a Roughneck entered or left the platform because the whine would suddenly get louder.

  He dozed into a light slumber that ended with a start. He blinked, and rubbed the gunk out of his eyes. Something in the pod was off-kilter. “As though this storm was not enough,” he muttered.

  Dawn was some hours off. The bioluminescent strips were largely hidden, which kept the room dark, but a faint neon glow peeked out of the corners of the light covers like a long thin night-light. He did a quick scan of his body, lifted up the blanket, and strained his eyes.

  Something else was in the bed.

  He could feel it without touching it. It was something sticky, and not just with him, but on him. He looked down the gap in his blanket, focused on the exposed skin, and cringed. He threw off the coverings from his light strips and with the sudden glow that permeated the pod, belted a sort of screaming cough. He leapt off the slab in a panic as he pulled and yanked three, then five, then seven black ocean leeches off his skin. Their flat, slippery bodies left a trail of grating mucus. Little droplets of fresh blood flew with their well-fed bodies. Everywhere he looked he found more of the black worms feeding on his blood.

  He scraped at his skin and clothes, straining to see if he missed any, if any were still latched to his skin, and chucked them at the grey walls, where they left black and red marks of mucus. They were dazed, unmoving on the floor. His heart rate elevated. He was not used to this exertion. He clawed and scraped at his skin, his face and arms, imagining that he was still covered, their suckers still flattened and committed to his body. He looked at his arms and chest and saw streaks of black mucus, remnants of leeches that he already pulled off of his body. He scraped his skin raw.

  What to do? He reached for a stray board, bent to his knees and flattened the leeches as they tried to recover. His stomping left black and red stains of goo, leech flesh and human blood. He took a closer inspection of his skin and gagged.

  “Wretched parasitic waste,” he said. The leeches left distinct red marks from the prehistoric suckers. Blood continued to trickle out, and the bite areas swelled into pink mounds.

  Gathering himself, Hector turned the faucet knob. Nothing came out. He kneeled to the ground and scrambled for the emergency water. He poured a little into one hand and splashed the water on his face.

  He slipped into some loose fitting clothes so that he could make his way to the platform’s medical bay and its one doctor. A ragged t-shirt and some purple sweat pants.

  If leeches were in his pod, then they must be in others. And if they were on him, then they must also be all over Vector. He was certain that some of the more malicious occupants deposited the leeches in his pod.

  Jerks.

  They probably pushed them through those obnoxious air ducts, which never stopped whirring. No peace, no calm on the entire structure, and he would swear that his pod had the loudest ducts on the platform.

  Vector sat up in his cot, laughing.

  “You.”

  “Of course me. Who else?”

  Hector chucked his mask and a mangled pillow at his brother.

  “You look like a bunch of leeches just bit you.”

  “Gross.”

  Vector continued laughing.

  “You’re an idiot! I’m going to the surface. See the doctor.”

  “I’ll meet you up there later.” Vector was still laughing as his brother marched off to the medical bay. “I'm going to get some food! The rations should be out now.”

  “Whatever.”

  Hector stormed out of the pod and slammed the door behind him. He wobbled towards the ladders, leery of spotting further leeches. He held up his hands to the green phosphorescent glow from the corridor walls, but the colored light didn’t make the bite marks any more appealing.

  “Are you alright?”

  It was a woman’s voice. A young woman’s voice. Hector thought he recognized it, but wasn’t sure. He turned around.

  The Braided Woman was right behind him. Her head was tightly wound, even this early. She gave him a curious look, the look of someone of that wasn’t sure if they should be suspicious or concerned. No one could rationally suspect why he was standing in the corridors so early in the morning, little dollops of blood congealing all over his body.

  He should probably be nice to her. She was Sycamore’s Head of Security after all, as though there was anything more secure than a steel box at the furthest point of the South Atlantic. What did she have to keep secure?

  “Are you alright?”

  How long had he been staring at her? Why did she feel it was necessary to repeat the question? He heard her the first time.

  “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  He was annoyed that she even asked. He wanted to just walk off and get to the medical bay as quickly as possible, even if it meant cutting off the Braided Woman. Before he could turn his back to her and disappear down the corridor, she walked past him. Quickly, too. Apparently she was in a rush to get somewhere.

  Hector imagined that if he told her about the leeches having an all-you-can-eat buffet on his body, she would have told him to deal with it and run off all the same.

  If she can run off, then it was time for him to run off. He turned the corner to the nearest ladder to make his way to the surface.

  He stopped short.

  There was a line. A line for a ladder. Why was there a line? A
nd why would anyone be up at this early hour? He wondered what time it was, and looked at his wrist as though he had a watch. No watch. Just leech marks.

  The Braided Woman wasn’t in the crowd, so were did she go? She must have taken the long way around. That or these people let her go first. She was the Head of Security, after all. She could make them stand aside if she wanted. Hector didn’t have that kind of influence.

  Not today, he thought, but someday. Someday.

  The ladders with their rusted rungs were the only way to access each subsurface level. No stairs. No lifts. No personal submersibles. Just the ladders.

  The problem was that the retrofits for a civilian population below the surface didn’t have the time to consider how people would flow through the space, or how people would move from one level to another. The world was ending, after all. The imperative was to save as many people as possible. Not to save them in comfort. The result was a configuration of shipping containers welded onto narrow corridors connected by a network of thin ladders.

  This made for a very easy bottleneck. Hector wondered if Sycamore liked how you couldn’t get anywhere in this confined mess.

  One day, all of the subsurface pods would come equipped with ejection ports.

  The surface wasn’t as bad. That was part of the original design. Except for some additional crates, the surface had open spaces for the drilling equipment. This even meant that there were a few wide walkways and open stairs.

  Down here, Hector had no such luck.

  But it was an odd hour. The dim light through the portholes indicated that it was just past dawn, maybe a little later in the morning. Maybe the storm upset most ordinary schedules. Only a handful of people usually felt any need to go anywhere. Most just passed the time at the lowest subsurface levels. The only reason to go anywhere was because Sycamore wanted you to go somewhere. And to get food, but it was much too early for that.

  Nonetheless, there he was. Cramped. Waiting as the people in front of him jammed themselves through a corridor and then struggled with a ladder. They initially tried to push and shove each other through. Then they tried to push and shove Hector away. They complained and told him to be patient. They didn’t even relent after he showed them the array of marks from the leeches, red and bulbous, like a pod of giant tube worms.

  He was trapped behind some people that couldn’t climb the stairs.

  Maybe I should go around, he thought. How can these people take so long? Can’t they see his skin? The abrasions on his face? Wouldn’t someone naturally step aside to make a path for someone that was obviously having a difficult time? Apparently not.

  Hector looked at his skin and thought that he would step aside if only to avoid coming into contact with something so disgusting. He never even reached the civility and humanity of the problem.

  The Braided Woman at least had enough concern to ask if he was fine. Considering how frantic she looked, that was a small miracle. Hector considered the possibility that if he got her attention long enough, then she could make a quick and easy path for him to the medical bay.

  Instead, he was stuck behind these blockheads.

  Some clear puss oozed from a bite on his finger.

  “Hurry. Stand aside if you’re going to enjoy the view.” He pleaded to dead, mechanical ears.

  “If you go too fast, then your head will explode,” some old man on the ladder offered.

  “That’s not true. We are not that deep.”

  “It is true. Bubbles will form in your brain.”

  “The air is the same down here as up there.” Hector gave the guy a twisted snarl.

  “Do you see that black mark on his back?” Someone else noted.

  Hector’s blood curled for a moment. He missed one. He felt over his shoulder until his fingers met the sticky flesh and yanked it off his skin.

  The people around him gasped in revulsion.

  For good measure, Hector chucked it at the guy who told him that his head would explode. The leech sputtered to the grate a few feet from the old man’s feet. The old man quickly stomped on the creature, smeared its blood and mucus on the corridor floor.

  “Suit yourself, leech boy. See if I care if you can’t handle the pressure.”

  The open shaft hummed and howled. Gears scraped the steel components around him. Sometimes, the sound was loud enough to drown out the drone from the ventilation shaft.

  Drrr. Drrr. Drrr.

  Don’t they drill for oil with this thing? Why would there be a single joint on this place that didn’t have enough oil?

  He hopped around as though he was racing to a toilet, avoiding puddles and Squatters until he came to the rotary crank and opened a porthole to the surface. He stepped out and stomped towards the medical bay.

  He careened into the clean glass wall like an unlucky kookaburra bird and smacked his head, knocking himself out. He collapsed into the wall and fell with a thud to the ground. When his head cleared, he found himself sitting in a thick padded recliner in the medical facility. Light beamed onto his face through the glazed windows and disappeared. The spotlight passed over a window, illuminating every corner of the bay, then left the facility dim and wanting. He wished it was sunlight. Instead, bioluminescent strips lit the wide expanse of curtain partitions, steel slabs and white cabinets, keeping the place from suffering complete darkness. Hovering over him was a tall figure, draped in a rich blue, mouth covered with a surgical mask.

  “Are you always such a klutz?” the doctor asked.

  “Only when I’m covered with leeches.”

  “Were the leeches yours?”

  “No. My stupid brother.” Hector shivered as he sat on the doctor’s slab. “What a snot-head.”

  “So it was a prank. Your brother keeps leeches?”

  “Not as far as I know. Maybe. I don’t know what he does.”

  “The farmers often encountered salt-water leeches in the algae fields. He could have picked up some from them. I don’t see how they could have reached the Alpine otherwise.”

  “Idiot brother.”

  “Truly.” The doctor paused as she leaned in, taking a closer look at the marks. She pinched a bit of skin around one bite mark between her fingers. Yellow puss oozed out. “There is a very specific procedure for removing leeches from the skin. You can’t just pull them off.”

  “Thanks.”

  “When you pull leeches off, you can’t squeeze them too hard. Otherwise, they eject their stomach contents back into the suction areas, like they did here. You can already see the inflammation. The bites are a risk of infection.” The doctor wiped some of the puss away with a towel.

  Hector squirmed at the news. “Gross.”

  The doctor swabbed rubbing alcohol onto the bites. “But do not worry. All things considered, you are fine. Just try not to panic next time you see a leech on your skin. These little vampires are not as bad as they look.”

  “Not as easy as it sounds.”

  “Well, try all the same. I will clean the bites, but don’t venture too far off. We should make sure the bites are not infected. In the meantime, I must return to the influx of storm injuries.”

  “I am in no rush to go back down.”

  “Of course, of course.” She held out her hand to shake, which Hector accepted. “In any event, I am Dr. Gossamer.”

  “Hector.”

  “Nice name. Noble name. Try to avoid matching it with such an old curmudgeon’s attitude. You are not in such a bad state compared to some of the others in the infirmary.”

  “I will try,” Hector said sarcastically. He looked around, realized that the place was packed with other people. What happened here? Were these people here the whole time?

  Most of them were Roughnecks, from the looks of it. All of the beds were occupied. Some people slumped over chairs. Others lay flat on the floor. Most were wrapped in bandages. Burned, bruised and bleeding. The doctor was right. He really didn’t have the worst of it. Leeches were gross, but not as bad as all of this.
/>   CHAPTER EIGHT

  SAGE

  The Whalers coasted along the algae fields.

  They kept their eyes fixed on the surf as they looked for any interruption in the uniform plain. The sailing was smooth, the breeze peaceful. They passed over a steep rise in the ocean floor, which gave way to a shallow sea-mount that provided a haven for meandering fish. It was a place of thick foliage, grasses, algae and seaweed. These were the farms. An oasis within the ocean.

  The drop-off from the sea-mount was crystalline blue. The pristine clarity unveiled the habitat of a wealth of aquatic species.

  The boatmen circled the fields.

  “They aren’t here. This is low rotten spit foul,” Feret muttered.

  “Enough. The water is churned up, but they are here,” Makrigga countered.

  “What do I care? I just sit here with the oars all day long,” said Feret. He took the oars and briefly held them in his lap before returning to his job.

  At first, the sun clung closely to the crimson and violet streaked horizon. Its early rays warmed their skin. The brightness forced them to look in other directions. The world gave way to bright blue skies.

  After several hours, the sun hung higher over the horizon. They could scan the entire circumference of the Earth’s horizon, limited only by the naked eye.

  “Let's push this along,” Feret decided.

  “I'll pour the chum,” Hani offered. Hani was the only one that wanted to handle the chum. “There might be sharks nearby.”

  “Go, Chum Man, go,” Feret said with a mix of scorn and amusement.

  The sleek boat skimmed along with four people engrossed in their work. The man with the oars, Feret Ferrero, was hunched and labored over his charge, huffing heavy clouds of cold vapor through a gaunt mustache, a scruffy patch of red hair overlooked by big grapefruit eyes. Hani Katharda, the chum man, hovered over a blue plastic oil drum secured to the aft section of the skiff. He ladled hefty portions of chunky liquid into the ocean waters, his own blend of parts and bits, ground bones and diluted blood. He watched it disperse into the salty brine, all to attract sharks to hunt.