CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Not dead again. Still couldn't move. Something was moving. Some part of me. No, not a part of me. Inside me. Inside my arms and legs. Inside my chest. Inside my stomach. Inside my lungs. Inside my head. I felt like I was on fire from the inside out. My blood vessels themselves turned against me. I writhed on the upright operating table, jerking and spitting, and suddenly, all at once, I stopped completely.

Abernathy stepped over, "Nux? What has happened? Can you hear me? This is not correct."

"Yes it is," I said, as I pulled my arm free of the restraint and wrapped my fingers around his throat like a vice.

Abernathy tried to scream, but the only sound that came out was a gurgle.

"Cat and I figured you'd inject me if I was caught. That's why she got me ready. She gave me the primer serum already. I'm not really sure how it all works, one serum activating the other and all. Then again, not sure if I need to know all the science, do I?" I freed the rest of the straps and slammed Abernathy against the bulkhead. "Where is she?"

"Two decks up. The interrogation room," he croaked. "They didn't…didn't believe her."

"I believe her," I said, pushing my grip closed and crushing his windpipe. Abernathy, whatever his real name was, slid to the deckplates. For some reason, a thought popped up that now I'd have to cover his surveillance shifts, too. Some people just aren't good team players.

I made my way up the two ladderwells without seeing anyone. Seemed the Russkies kept only a small crew on the sub, most of the agents running around the city, keeping tabs on everything and everyone. The serums meshing in my veins made my head pound. I felt like I was stronger than ever, and I was, but I felt like I might explode at any moment.

I pulled up to a hatch that looked promising, and twisted the level too quickly, tearing off three dog-clips from the frame. Wrong. Not Cat. Inside were a dozen red-headed girls, standing together, hunched over, actually, holding sea slugs onto each other's faces. One pulled a slug off and began to vomit, then looked over at me.

"Whoops, not the men's," I said, as I slammed the hatch and skirted away.

The next hatch, I was more careful. I had to remind myself of little things like that, and breathing, and standing upright. The serum threw off my body's internal mechanisms. I put my ear to the door and listened inside. I heard a man's voice, and a woman's. He was screaming in Russian. She was screaming right back. It was Cat. I yanked the lever, and charged into the room like bull at one of those clowns.

The KGB officer took my shoulder in the chest as he turned to look, and I didn't stop until I'd put him halfway through the bulkhead.

"It's time to go," I told Cat. Our eyes met. She knew what had happened to me. I could also see, instantly, they hadn't fixed her aging. It was getting worse. She already looked five years older than when I'd last seen her, only hours ago.

"Not just yet," Cat said. She took my hand and headed to the ladderwell.

We rose two more decks, and came to the control room. There were only two Russkies on duty. Within minutes, there were none. Cat moved over to the steering column and drive mechanism.

"This must end," she said with a voice of steel.

Cat dialed in the bearings for the sub, and activated the motor. The giant screw screamed and we all lurched forward as the underwater warship groaned out of its nest on the side of the trench. Cat slammed forward the column, dropping us twenty-five degrees down bubble and drove directly for the heart of the light mass.

I grabbed her hand, "We have to go."

She made a motion like she wanted to stay, but I wasn't hearing it. I pulled her forward, and with only a touch of my newfound strength, she was unable to decline. We made our way thought the deck and ladders to the airlock with the bathysphere. Anything that hadn't been bolted down was raining down on us from above as the sub pitched forward even more, at one point we fell as the sub clanged against the side of the trench wall.

We arrived to the bathysphere, and I worked the screw motor as Cat disengaged the airlock. The light was so blinding, I couldn't make out the dials and buttons on the controls I was using. Muscle memory kicked in, and I heard the motor being to whir to life, nearly deafened by the cacophony of metal and rock from the Soviet sub outside.

Cat came back over to me, "we're free," she reported. In more ways than one, I hoped.

I angled the bathysphere up and opened the throttle to full speed. With the engine not yet at full power, it might not be enough for us to get out before the submarine, loaded with torpedoes, gave us another kind of freedom.

At some security briefing I'd only half paid attention to, I remembered hearing something about how shock waves underwater are totally different than on land. I probably should have taken notes. The explosion stole all of our senses. Sight and hearing were gone. Touch, smell, even taste were taken, too. The only sensation at first was pure nothingness.

For a moment.

The next instant, our bodies were flung against the thick glass of the bathysphere, and bounced back against the other side like a kernel of corn in a popper. I knew, thinking, at least three of my ribs felt like they'd disintegrated. The vehicle rocked forward and back in the water, the engine fighting for control as we went end-over-end more times than I could count. The trajectory was upward, though, and we shot out of the trench at speeds never before seen by a rating on a little bathysphere.

Straight into the bottom of Rapture.