Overlord

42

Aston swallowed hard, a little appalled at the course of action he was considering. But he could think of nothing else. They would almost certainly die down here, one way or another. Lost and starving, or killed by mantics. Or even killed by the Annaki. He wasn’t sure if the Annaki had led them here to show them a possible answer to questions or to sacrifice them to this creature, but either way, he had lost all trust for the strange, pale race. He couldn’t help feeling a little like a cow led to slaughter. But if they were going to survive, they needed to be proactive. Running blindly along the dark passages wasn’t the kind of proactive they needed. They could go in circles for days, and then starve. Assuming they avoided all the other kind of deaths in the meantime. The chance of finding another way out was surely lowest on the list of possibilities. After all, how far had they come? How deep had they gone?

He looked back over his shoulder, thinking of all they had been through to get here. They could retrace their steps, possibly. But that would mean returning through the Annaki city. It would mean risking tunnels they knew were swarming with mantics. And even then, he would have to remember every twist and turn, every choice of route they had made, and he would need to remember it all in reverse. He didn’t think he could do that.

So it left only one option. There had to be some kind of hive mentality happening with these creatures. Some chemical connection that was triggered by the consumption of whatever the glowing green substance was that affected them all, some by-product of the vines or the greenium. Or both. Either way, if O’Donnell was telling the truth, it would allow Aston to see a way out. And if Digby was lying or simply delusional, well, they were as good as dead already anyway. And if the green stuff poisoned him, the same conclusion applied. He had to take a chance. It was the only chance he could think of.

Refusing to consider it any more deeply, he waded out next to O’Donnell and looked down into the water.

“Sam, no,” Slater said again, but he ignored her.

Aquatic life gathered around O’Donnell, some gently milling and floating as if in a trance, others feeding off the scraps that fell from Digby’s mouth. Every creature seemed to face the man, like they were somehow in obeisance to him. Or perhaps the man was irrelevant and they faced the burning idol. Fish, crustaceans, jellyfish, even a massive, albino tortoise with glowing green eyes, its shell as long as Aston was tall. They all watched O’Donnell like a dog watches its master.

Aston took a deep breath and ducked a hand into the water. He scooped up a fish about the size of his middle finger. Slater’s voice was panicked, screaming at him, trying to stop him, telling him he had no idea what he was doing, or what it would do to him. Syed joined in, and Jen Galicia too, all begging him not to do it.

“Let’s just go!” Slater yelled.

“We have to know where to go!” Aston said, and shoved the wriggling fish into his mouth. He bit down, chewed hard and fast. The flesh was ice cold and bitter. He felt the thing burst, tasted salt with the bitterness, and swallowed it all down as quickly as he could, suppressing the urge to gag. The others around him fell silent. He realized he heard no more gunfire either, and hadn’t been for a while. No shouting, no scrabbling of mantics. Were Larsen and his friends dead? All he heard was the lap of the shining sea, the bubbling further out.

He felt nothing else.

Digby O’Donnell stared up at him and Aston met the man’s eyes, saw madness there. What have I done? he wondered. Perhaps he hadn’t done anything at all. Would he simply go crazy like Dig?

Heat began to swell inside his gut. A strange dizziness swept over him, making him stagger, and for a moment he leaned forward, convinced he was going to vomit the half-chewed fish back into the ocean. He gasped a breath.

“Sam? Are you okay?” Slater’s hand on his arm was heavy, her grip trembling.

“I’m okay,” he managed, but he wasn’t certain.

He straightened, heard a soft chuckling laugh. Dig had his head tipped to one side and Aston looked into the man’s eyes again, saw the green brightness in them, the glowing idol held almost as if forgotten in Digby’s ruined hand. A slow smile spread across Dig’s face and Aston saw a frown overlaid on it. As if Digby were grinning and concerned at the same time. Then, with a shudder, Aston’s perception caught up with the simple view and he realized he was seeing two things at once. Both his view of Digby O’Donnell and Dig’s view of him, blurred together in his mind.

“The edibles are kicking in?” Slater forced a faint smile.

Aston couldn’t answer. He staggered, cried out in disorientation, as visions flooded through him. He saw the ocean from a dozen different viewpoints, he saw dark tunnels and glittering caverns, he saw the Annaki city and the lift to the surface. He even saw glimpses of the base, too bright to really determine clearly and he cried out. He didn’t want to be blinded like that. The images snapped away. He thought of his friends, and saw them from numerous points of view, through the eyes of the mantics nearby, and through Digby’s eyes. He saw them shimmering through a greenish haze and realized it was the view of every creature that drifted at his knees.

He sobbed out a noise of confusion, nearly fell, overwhelmed by the mass of sensory input. No wonder Digby had gone mad. How could he do anything but follow the man into insanity? No brain could process this. What had he done?

Dizziness became too much and he fell suddenly sideways. He heard Slater cry out, then ice cold seawater closed over him. He couldn’t suppress a gasp of surprise and sucked in icy brine, started coughing and gagging. Hands grabbed at him and hauled him from the water, dragged him to the stony shore. But the icy shock had been a benefit, helped him to find a center and push away the vast majority of input he was receiving.

As he sat coughing on the shore, he tried to think only of the route to the surface and a series of images flickered through his mind. Then again, and again, like a loop of film on repeat. From one mantic’s view to another, he saw the way out. Was he just remembering now, or was this truly a shared intelligence? A hive mind of incredible complexity? He felt the intent of the awful, chitinous creatures, and realized their malice was gone. He remembered Digby saying how they wouldn’t attack now, how they were one, he and the creatures. And now Aston was one with them too. Whatever impossible biological connection he had made, it gave him that power, and it was a valuable one. He knew the way out and he could protect his friends. How it had happened he might never truly know, but it had happened and he wasn’t going to waste the opportunity. Even if it drove him mad, it was worth it to get the others out, to save Jo Slater. He owed her that.

He looked up into her concerned eyes and smiled. “I know the way,” he said. At the same moment, he became aware of another consciousness, a deep, dark, unfathomable mind. It ached of eons and hunger, of isolation and loss. The giant creature in the sea, the overlord, whatever it was. He imagined the noxious Yog-Sothoth, the thing Lovecraft had imagined, and saw how Digby’s obsession would easily overlay that fantastic fiction on whatever this animal was. But it was no god, that he knew. Like he had told Dig, it had to be some giant, previously unknown cephalopod, a monstrous octopus or squid from some age before modern humans, long since considered over. But this one animal remained, alone and constantly close to starving. Better there was no life here at all, Aston thought, and this thing would die. But instead, it found sustenance in the inhabitants of the caverns, the offerings of the Annaki to appease it. And it lived on in terrible ravenous loneliness. It felt him, too. He sensed its attention boring down on his thoughts.

Then something seemed to crush his waist. Confused, he looked down just as Slater screamed and saw a slick black tentacle wrapped tight around him. He managed an “Oh!” of surprise and then he was snatched up, rising quickly out over the glittering sea. The speed of the abduction was enough to make his spine pop, his head spin. He was instantly high over the water, and saw a giant writhing black shape just beneath the glittering surface.