Page 18 of Music of the Ocean

The tightness in his chest was worse, too. The isolation room took on a different quality as the hours ticked by. The low thrum of the air exchangers vibrated through him. He smelled the faintest whiff of ozone from the sterilizers. His hearing sharpened.

He picked up the faint click of boots in the corridor, the low mechanical whine of an old lift somewhere down the hall. He kept thinking about the dreams. And the thing that had spoken to him. Try it, it had said. That was what it said to him. In his dream. He’d heard it clearly in his mind, even though he hadn’t seen anyone… or anything. And he’d listened and tried.

Was it a dream?

He wasn’t so sure anymore. He wasn’t certain about anything. But a threat had been issued. It was getting harder to deny something had happened to him on that planet and that some sort of creature was contacting him telepathically.

Apparently, changing his DNA as well. But that was crazy talk. Wasn’t it? Shit like that didn’t really happen. Right?

Fatigue rolled over him once again, and he wanted to sleep, but every time he closed his eyes, the black water rushed in, cold and inviting, startling him awake.

He wasn’t sure he wanted to sleep because it was getting harder to tell which world he belonged to. And the possible answer intrigued him more than it scared him. And that was the thing that actually scared him. He needed to talk to Vance, but he was so sleepy. He’d talk to Vance in a second.

Just a second.

A VOICE, not his own, threaded through the silence. Not the AI. Not Vance. Not a voice he’d heard out loud, but one he knew. That voice belonged to the water. It belonged to the thing in the water.

Time is running out. Come to me. The words were a tidal pull in his chest. A call and a command.

The door to the isolation chambers shimmered in the dark, edges fuzzed by the low light. Even though he knew Vance was supposed to be monitoring the cameras, he had the sense that Vance was gone. Or at least, distracted.

Saxby rolled off the cot, the blanket falling to the floor as he moved to the door. It slid open, but no alarms sounded. They hadn’t when he’d gotten off the bed, either, and they should’ve.

He stumbled into the hallway, the lights swimming, outlines smearing with every step. The corridor was empty. There were no alarms from Medical, which was weird. Where was Vance?

Shit, am I dreaming again? I must be. An alarm should be going off.

The world around him was too bright, the edges blurring and snapping into focus with every step. He noted the ship’s time. It was late, so the passageways would be empty except for the distant sweep of a maintenance bot.

Saxby padded down the corridor, still in his white pajamas, shivering, his skin hypersensitive to every tickle of air. He kept moving, even though his chest was pounding, and he couldn’t get enough damned air.

Distantly, he heard the increasing chime of an alert, the way a storm siren rises when the funnel cloud is actually visible. The ship’s AI was waking up, realizing he was gone. It sure took its sweet time.

He should’ve been panicking. Instead, he felt calm. The voice in his head wasn’t just calling him. It was guiding him, pouring instructions into his hindbrain: left at the junction, down the ladder, ignore the bot at the first intersection, keep moving.

He followed.

At a certain bulkhead, he paused. The world shuddered and doubled, his vision flickering between what was real, like the corridor and what was a dream. He reached up and touched the side of his neck.

Tender. The skin had a weird texture, almost like a scab healing but not quite. He pressed, and something beneath the skin flexed, like a muscle he’d never used. It hurt, but it also felt right.

A shriek cut through the corridor. It was a real one, not the AI, and had to do something about a “crew emergency.” He ducked his head and kept moving.

He remembered the starboard-side service lift, the way it was always a little out of spec, and he ducked into the maintenance corridor. The lift doors parted for him as if expecting him. He blinked at the control panel, eyes not quite focusing, and jabbed the button for the shuttle bay.

Saxby leaned against the wall. The taste of salt in his mouth was overwhelming, and the world tilted around him. He felt the ship’s vibrations, its pulse, as if he could sense every molecule of water in the pipes and the air.

He didn’t want to be here. Didn’t want to be on the ship anymore. This wasn’t the place for him. Now, he craved the ocean. He craved the planet’s surface with a desperation that left him breathless.

The lift jerked to a stop. He staggered into the bay, nearly colliding with a technician. The man opened his mouth, probably to yell or ask what the hell Saxby was doing out of isolation, but Saxby’s hand shot out and gripped the man, applying pressure to specific nerve clusters at the base of the neck and shoulder.

The technician’s eyes rolled back in his head. Saxby gently eased the unconscious man into a pressurized containment area so he wouldn’t get sucked into space when Saxby opened the shuttle bay door.

Saxby hurried toward the nearest shuttle, the hatch still open from routine inspection. He moved inside, fingers flying over the start sequence. The shuttle recognized his biometrics. No one had locked him out yet, and the console blinked to ready.

Alarms sounded. First one, then multiple ones. Then, Saxby heard a comm call go through the launch bay. “Unauthorized launch! Shuttle three, stand down!”

But his hands danced over the controls, prepping for takeoff. He didn’t have his pilot license, hadn’t had enough time logged, and had never flown without a pilot, but here he was.