LAUNDRY PILES

They came ashore on the beach at the base of the wharf. Moonlight silvered the waves in the channel, but here in the shadow of the island, it was dark. A large boat was moored back along the wharf, but there were no lights and it looked deserted, so they decided to ignore it and carry on. If anyone was on board, they were well asleep at this time of the morning.

They hid the fins, weight belts, and oxygen bottles behind a pillar beneath the end of the wharf but left on their masks to hide their faces from the security cameras.

Rebecca started off down the wharf but stopped after just a few yards and touched her hand silently to Tane’s arm to stop him also.

She squatted and cupped her hand around the end of her flashlight so it couldn’t be seen from a distance. Before turning it on, she instinctively also put her back to the island, to shield the light from any watching eyes. In the dim light, Tane could see something on the ground.

Tane squatted with her and examined the find. It was a cloth of some kind. Made of a soft pink material. He picked up one end of it. It immediately resolved into a distinct shape. It was a woman’s nightie. A smaller, separate shape slipped out of the end as he raised it, and Rebecca caught it with the light. It was a sensible, white pair of ladies’ panties.

“Seems a strange place to leave your laundry.” Rebecca’s voice, low and soft in his ear.

Tane nodded his head, unsure of what to say. It was a disturbing thing to find.

It took them a while to find the entrance to the path, even though they had been here once before. Tane risked a quick flash of his flashlight.

“Over there,” he whispered, and followed Rebecca as she trod lightly and carefully up the concrete pathway.

He looked back at the water just once, before it was obscured by the trees surrounding the track. It was dark and deep and peaceful. It had been that way for millions of years and would still be the same in another million. Just looking at the expanse of water gave him a steadiness and a resolve to complete this mission, no matter what.

He caught up to Rebecca and whispered in her ear, “Kids will read about this in history books one day.”

He felt her smile rather than saw it in the darkness.

After only a few paces, Rebecca stopped again. Another pile of clothing, this one a small mound. She separated it with her flashlight. A white lab coat. Inside of that a bright red T-shirt and a pair of jeans. Inside the jeans, which were still done up, a pair of blue boxer shorts. Underneath the clothes was a pair of Nike’s, complete with socks. A watch fell out of the sleeve of the lab coat when she moved it.

“This might explain the nightie,” Tane said with a grin. “Maybe a couple of scientists out skinny-dipping for a bit of a lark.”

Rebecca nodded, as if she agreed, but said, “In other circumstances maybe. But not here. Not now. And why are the jeans still fastened?”

The pathway leveled out as they approached the top of the rise and emerged from the native bush into the cleared area that housed the laboratory complex. Here they were no longer in the shadow of the island, and the flat area in front of them was bathed in moonlight.

They found no more piles of “laundry” as they silently approached the building complex.

They had both memorized the security code for the gate, but the moonlight brushed it with silver, and Tane could see that there was no need. It was not locked. It was not even shut.

He looked at Rebecca, and the moonlight shining into her diving mask showed a furrowed brow. Why was the gate unlocked?

They moved through the gate and crept forward along the short concrete path that led to the lab.

Back at home, and on the Möbius, the plan had seemed simple. Open the gate with the keycode. Open the door to the lab the same way. Snoop around inside and just like in the movies, surely they would instantly find all the incriminating evidence they would need to shut down the project and save the world from extinction.

But no one could have planned or prepared for the reality. The door to the lab was open, swinging idly in the light breeze that blew in from the east, here on the more exposed top of the island.

Not that long ago, a red-haired professor with a big bright smile had opened this door for them and welcomed them into the lab. But nobody was here to welcome them this time. The light from inside spilled outward from the doorway, clearly illuminating the smashed doorjamb and ruined hinges.

“Something’s really wrong here,” Tane whispered. “That door’s been smashed open. Someone’s broken in before us!”

Rebecca grabbed his arm and pulled him down into a crouch beside her. Enough light spilled out from the broken doorway for him to see her eyes, stark, wide, and terrified inside the scuba mask.

“No,” she said. “It’s worse than that. Much worse. We’ve got to get off this island now!”

“What is it?” Tane asked, wondering what had her so spooked.

“Look at the door, Tane,” she said. “Look at the hinges. Someone—or something—has smashed that door open from the inside!”

All the breath in his body suddenly froze. What the heck…

He rose slowly and took a step backward. Rebecca’s hand slipped into his. Another step, then another. Walking backward, unable to take their eyes off the smashed door and the carelessly spilling light.

They were just back past the gate when the bright spotlights crashed on all around them, twenty or more, brilliant white lights that hurt his eyes, which were still adjusted to the darkness. He spun around and instantly recoiled, shielding his face with his arm, desperately frightened, unsure whether to turn and run or to stand still.

Rebecca screamed and clutched at him. In that single instant, he felt like a possum on a highway at night, transfixed by the headlights of an onrushing car, knowing that this was certain death but paralyzed beyond saving himself.

A voice—deep, authoritative, American—shouted at them from behind the screen of lights, “Drop your weapons. I say again, drop your weapons and lie on the ground, facedown, toward my voice. Drop your weapons, or we will open fire.”

Weapons?! Tane tried to scream, “It’s just a flashlight!” but his throat wasn’t functioning.

“We are unarmed!” Rebecca shouted. “We are unarmed.”

Tane found his voice and joined in. “We are unarmed,” he called, lying facedown as he did so. “We’re just kids!”

He saw only dark dirt as strong boots thundered around him and strong arms twisted his arms up behind his back before some tight plastic wire was pulled harshly around his wrists, and he was hauled to his feet.

His mask was wrenched down and left hanging around his neck. One of the bright lights was shone in his face. He winced from the pain of the glare. Even with his eyes tightly shut, it was bright enough to hurt. It felt like a dream, like he was in some strange bright fantasyland where nothing made any sense and nothing was expected to.

“Where are the others?” the same voice shouted. “Where are the rest of you?”

If he could have, he would have helped them willingly. “On the submarine,” he would have said. But his throat had closed up again and he couldn’t speak.

Beside him he heard Rebecca’s voice. “There are no others! We are just kids!”

The man’s voice again, talking, not shouting this time. “Crawford, this is Crowe. Any more warm spots showing on the scope?”

As he spoke, the soft chop of a helicopter—a very quiet helicopter—slid smoothly through the dark sky overhead.

Then the man was back a few inches from Tane’s face. It was strange how muffled his voice was, in the midst of all the fear, darkness, bright lights, and confusion. As if the man were talking from behind a glass window. Or a mask of some kind.

“Where are the others? Where are the hostages?”

What others? What hostages?

When there was no answer from either of them, the man’s voice softened a little. “Get them back to the boats. We’ll interrogate them properly on board the ship. Crawford, remain in position. I want to know if a mouse farts on this rock. Red and Blue Teams exfil now.”

Strong hands gripped their arms, at least two fully grown men to each child, wrenching their arms up behind their backs so high that it brought tears to Tane’s eyes. He heard Rebecca cry out in pain, and a fierce anger flared inside him. How dare they do that to a girl. To Rebecca. But there was nothing he could do.

The frigate was the Te Mana. Her name was stenciled in huge letters on her side, near the stern. She looked very different from the side than she had from beneath the bows. They boarded her via thick rope netting hung down the side of the ship, a quick clip of some cutters behind them freeing their hands for the climb.

Compared to the darkness of the island, the deck of the frigate was a city of light. Men and women in naval uniforms kept their distance from the black-clad soldiers who had arrested them.

“Take them below?” one of the soldiers wanted to know.

“Not till we’re a hundred percent that they’re clean.” The soldiers all looked the same, but the voice was the first one they had heard on the island, obviously the leader of the team. “What does the RPAD say?”

A large man was scanning them with a handheld device connected to something on his back. All of the men were armed with an unusual, rounded-looking rifle, with some sort of sprayer attached to the front of it. They wore black, armored space suits, with oxygen masks covering their faces and a small flat TV screen pulled back over their heads, some kind of night-vision system, Tane thought.

“Nothing,” the man said. “No pathogens.”

There was a hiss and a click and the man with a red “1” on his shoulders pulled his mask away from his face. He was thin, with a face that looked to have been chiseled out of granite. Even when he spoke, there was no expression, no movement on his face except for his mouth.

“Where are the rest of your people? And where are the hostages?”

Tane looked at Rebecca. None of it made any sense. No sense at all. What people? What hostages? How had the soldiers known they were coming? Rebecca’s jaw was clenching and unclenching, and veins stood out in her neck. As long as we don’t get caught. That was what they had said from the very beginning. As long as we don’t get caught. I can’t afford to go to jail.

The man continued, “Where are you holding the scientists? Have they been harmed in any way? And what about the fog? How did you create that?” He glared at Tane for a moment, then switched his gaze to Rebecca. “Cooperate with us now, or things are going to get real ugly, real fast.”

Fog? What fog? It wasn’t making a whole lot of sense, Tane thought. Perhaps if they told them the whole truth, they would understand. They wouldn’t believe them at first, but they could show them the Lotto numbers and the other messages, and they would have to believe them, wouldn’t they? And they hadn’t actually committed any crime yet. They were about to, but they hadn’t had the chance to go through with it.

“We got a message from the future,” he said quietly.

“What?!” the leader asked.

Tane looked him in the eye and continued a little more strongly, “We found a way to detect—”

“Oh my GOD!” Rebecca screamed, staring wild-eyed at the island and holding up her hands to shield herself.

Tane jumped out of his skin and stared past the soldiers to the black shape of the island behind. He strained his eyes, desperately seeking the cause of the alarm but could not see what Rebecca was seeing.

He wasn’t the only one. There was not a man on the deck of the ship who did not instinctively turn to face the island. Those with weapons already had them raised, seeking targets, in an awesome display of instant reactions.

It all happened at once—the scream, the men turning to face the island, the slap on his arm—that he hardly noticed that Rebecca was running. Running away from the soldiers, away from the island, straight toward the side of the ship.

The leader shouted, “Hey!” But Rebecca was already three or four yards away from them and moving fast. A split second later, Tane was moving, too. One of the soldiers made a grab for him, but Tane ducked out of his reach and sprinted after Rebecca. The tall man with the scanner was there, but he had to drop the device to grab at Tane and that slowed him down, just enough. There were running boot-steps behind him but Tane didn’t look back.

Rebecca reached the railing at the edge of the ship and leaped up lightly, one-footed, onto it before diving down into the darkness.

Tane didn’t risk anything so fancy. He just grabbed the railing with two hands and hurdled it. Then he was falling, and falling, and falling.

The deck of the frigate was a long way from the surface of the ocean, and in the dark, it seemed to take forever to reach the water.

In that fraction of an instant before he splashed deep beneath the waves, he saw what Rebecca must have already seen, or perhaps had just guessed would be there. The dim, underwater glow of the Möbius, and the raised flat platform of the periscope buoy, just visible in the moonlight.