Kronos

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.