Reborn Page 3

  He shook his head, red-faced and upset. He pointed at her chest. She looked down. No incisions. No stitches.

  Also no clothes.

  It didn't matter. She just needed to get out. "Where the fuck are your keys?" she hissed dangerously.

  The guy blinked and pointed at a desk by the door.

  "Don't you fucking move, you fucking sick motherfucker," she roared.

  He nodded, swallowing and closing his eyes like he just wanted this nightmare to go away.

  She backed slowly away, picking up a dissection knife from a prep tray, never taking her eyes off the man. "Do you make a habit of sticking live people into refrigerators, you sick fuck?"

  "Listen, ma'am, you're in the county morgue. You were dead. I swear to God. You were dead," he pleaded.

  Tanis kept the knife up as she opened the desk drawer with one hand and found the keys.

  The guy started to step towards her. "Listen, I just need to get my supervisor. There's been some mix-up—"

  "Like hell I'm going to sit here waiting for you to get a supervisor." She picked up the chair and threw it. He cringed. "What? So this time you can make sure I'm dead, you fucking serial killer?"

  He looked like he was going to cry. "We checked! We checked everything! You were dead! You were in a really bad accident off the High Five. You were dead!"

  "Where the hell are my clothes?" Tanis screamed at him.

  "We had to cut them away!"

  She found the keys. She was getting out. She was going to be okay if she could just get out. "Which one is your car?"

  "The 1995 red Honda Civic. It's got a blanket over the backseat."

  He acted like he was going to walk towards her again. She picked up the metal wastepaper basket and hurled it at him. It hit the prep tray, clanging noisily, and the surgical tools flew through the air. He whimpered.

  "I will fucking kill you if you come one step closer. Do you understand?"

  He nodded again, shrinking as far as he could into the corner of the room.

  Tanis ran over and grabbed the paper sheet from the morgue tray. She wrapped it around her and ran out.

  The hallway was sterile and windowless, lit only by the bare bulbs of the overhead fluorescent lights. She jogged down the hallway and up a set of linoleum steps and stepped out into a foyer with marble floors and sandstone walls. Huge windows looked out on a parking lot. The county seal hung on one wall. A metal detector was set up in front of the door. The place was deserted. She pushed on the bar of the door. An alarm went off, but she didn't care. She just kept running. She had to get out.

  She ran down the granite steps. The parking lot in front of her held just a couple of cars. She doubled her speed. There it was. A crappy red, scuffed, and scratched hatchback. Safe. She was going to be safe. She flung open the door and climbed inside.

  Her hands were shaking. She couldn't even get the key into the ignition. She looked back and saw the guy from the morgue and another guy coming out of the front of the building. They were trying to flag her down. She jammed the key in and revved the engine, peeling the tires as she screeched out of the parking lot.

  She didn't know if she was laughing or crying. But she was alive. She got out of that room alive.

  What had happened? What? There was that moment with the accelerator. It was stuck. The sound of the car hitting the guardrail. The spin. The fall. The ground coming towards her. And then waking up in that box.

  What had happened?

  She pulled up in front of her mom's town house. The lights were on. People were moving around behind the blinds. It was like nothing had changed from the night she left on her birthday. Maybe it still was her birthday. Maybe someone slipped her something at the bar and it was all nothing but a bad dream.

  She turned off the car and grabbed the blanket from the backseat, wrapping it around herself like a bath towel. She walked up the steps to the door and jiggled the handle. It was locked. She could hear voices rumbling. She pounded with her open hand and screamed at the top of her lungs, "Open up!"

  Feet shuffled to the door. It swung open. Brett stood there, his face tearstained and his eyes puffy. He looked like he hadn't slept in days. The entire house was filled with flowers. But when Brett saw her, he turned as white as a sheet.

  Her mom asked from the kitchen, "Brett? Who is it?"

  Tanis heard a chair slide across the linoleum. Her mom stepped out of the kitchen. She gave out a half-choked scream and collapsed onto the ground.

  Brett and Tanis stood in silence.

  Finally, Tanis broke the spell. "Can someone tell me what the hell is going on?"

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The Black Sea

  Raise the ship.

  The message blinked in Heather Paxton's in-box. They went for it. The university went for it. They were behind her on this.

  Sending vessels to aid in recovery efforts. Do not abandon site, the e-mail directed.

  She looked out the door of the onboard laboratory at Captain Marco. He and his crew, her scientists, the entire mob, were coming towards her. And they were angry.

  Need more money, Heather wrote back hastily. We have had a death.

  It was the only way to keep them on her side.

  She leaned over towards the microphone, tucking her blond hair behind her ears. "Steve? I need you back up here. Steve?"

  He didn't say anything. Heather rested her head in her hands. It seemed like it had all started with that first load of artifacts they pulled up from the Byzantine boat. The events, logically, had nothing to do with each other, but it was that moment she pulled the first urn out of the water that things started happening.

  Heather remembered leaning over the science ship's rail, watching as the divers guided up the first artifacts.

  "Look at those!" Heather shouted.

  They came out of the ocean as pristine as the day they were made. It wasn't logical. "Quick! Get them on board before they oxidize!" she commanded. Seconds in the air could cause them to crumble.

  Her crew scrambled. They hung off the ladder as the divers handed the artifacts over. Gently, they passed them to the scientists above like firemen in a bucket line. The moment the first urn touched her hands was the proudest in her life. She cradled the urn like a mother with a newborn. Never, in all her years of study and research, had she seen anything like this find. "The seals are still intact," she whispered. "The contents might even still be inside." She placed it gently on a foam pad in a large saltwater tank.

  But the moment it touched the water, the ship lurched. One of her guys cried out. He was on the ground, clutching his leg. She ran and grabbed the urn that the scientist on the ladder had been trying to pass to him, terrified it might break. She rushed to get it to the bath before turning back. "Are you okay?"

  His face grimaced in pain. "I turned my ankle. I think I tore something."

  He had. She lost him and a second crew member as they rushed him in the dingy to shore. The next day, one of the divers got the bends. He survived it, but they lost the load to water as his partner tried to save his life.

  That evening, as they watched the sun dip into the sea, Captain Marco said to her and Steve, "The sea doesn't want us to have anything from this ship."

  Steve laughed, "Superstitious, Captain Marco? Don't let your fear link together random events."

  The swarthy Greek man replied, "They are only superstitions if they aren't true."

  "Can you imagine what it would be like if somehow we were able to raise the entire boat?" Heather mused.

  "It would be a death wish to us all!" spat Captain Marco.

  Steve ignored him. "If you could only see this thing. It's so perfect. I bet we could row it to shore."

  "I wonder if I should write the university," she said, "just to see if the funding is there…"

  She looked at Steve, hungry. A knowing smile crept across his face. "You should."

  Captain Marco spat into the sea in disgust, then walked away, muttering angrily.
>
  Heather laughed. "Tell me again about those forty lords. Tell me about their perfect bodies and perfect clothing—"

  Steve cut her off. "What would you say to trying to bring one up?"

  Heather looked out at the sea, her heart racing. "Yes."

  Now Heather looked out the door into the breezeway, watching the angry mob come towards her, and her heart raced for other reasons. "Steve, you need to get up here now. There has been a terrible accident," she said into the mic.

  They had been so careful. They had worked so hard. Heather looked over at the beautiful urn on the other side of the room. This project was bigger than her. This find was more important than a life. She was the protector of this find.

  Just a few hours ago, Steve had brought the corpse of the lord up to the diver. She should have just had Steve bring it all the way. But she wanted him to go back, to continue the retrieval. She needed those artifacts. She longed for them. She dreamed about them.

  They all waited as the diver continued his ascent. Slowly. So that the bends didn't get him, too. He was so close to the surface, just feet below the waves, close enough that they could see him. None of them saw the shark. There shouldn't have been a shark. It shouldn't have attacked. But she would see that red in the water until her dying day. Hear the diver's screams as he crawled his way to the surface. Repeat the film of him thrashing as the shark pulled him down, again and again, until he disappeared and was gone. They all stood there for an hour, looking into the water for any sign of him. There was none.

  And that body of the lord he was bringing up was lost, too.

  "Steve, we lost the body. There was a shark—"

  Steve's voice crackled in her headset. "Heather…the body…," Steve said. "That body is back here. On the deck. It is back here where I took it from."

  A cold chill washed over her. "What are you talking about?" she asked.

  Captain Marco strode into the room, interrupting her. "We are going. We are leaving."

  Heather pulled the headset off her head and hung it around her neck. "We can't. Steve is still down there. We can't leave him."

  Marco pointed his stubby, calloused finger in her face. "This is a cursed ship. Too many accidents. Too many deaths."

  "You can't blame the ship for a shark attack!" Heather shouted at him. "It isn't the ship's fault that some diver ascended too quickly and got the bends! That someone tore his Achilles. We are paying you a lot of money to finish this trip—"

  "You get him up here," Captain Marco said, "or we leave him here."

  She could hear Steve's voice in the earpiece. He was speaking fast. She put the headset back on. "I'm here, Steve. I need you to surface."

  His voice was panicked. "Heather…Heather, one of the symbols. It lit up. It was like a glyph. It lit up…Oh God! The eyes! Their eyes!"

  And that's when she heard his screams. Not the screams of someone who was startled or tripped or injured himself. They were the screams of a man being ripped apart.

  "Steve, I'm bringing you back," Heather shouted into the microphone. She grabbed the controls and switched command of the suit from the diver to the ship. "Steve! Talk to me!"

  The screams stopped. There was nothing but silence on the line.

  "What? What is it?" asked Captain Marco, looking over her shoulder at the monitor.

  "Something is wrong with Steve," she said, trying to remain calm. She could see the dot on her monitor that was Steve. Achingly it ascended through the depths on her screen.

  "Slowly!" Captain Marco said. "Slowly! You don't want to give him the bends!"

  "We don't have time!" said Heather.

  "You do it too fast and you will boil his blood! You will kill him!"

  "That suit will protect him. That suit can protect him from anything the sea can throw at him!" She sped up Steve's ascent.

  Finally, it looked on the monitor like he was at the surface.

  "Everyone, out to the deck, now!" she commanded the mutinying crew. "Look for Steve!"

  They all ran.

  The salt air hit her face as she scanned the waves. "Do you see him?" asked Heather, desperation in her voice. "Does anyone see him?"

  There was silence as everyone scouted the surface, looking for the telltale sign of Steve's yellow suit.

  "There! There he is!" someone cried.

  Like a dead man, the robotic suit floated facedown in the water, yellow metal against the blue of the sea.

  "Oh God…," Heather whispered. She pointed to one of the last remaining divers. "Take the winch. Get him on board!"

  "There are sharks in that water, bitch!" he shouted back. "My partner died an hour ago!"

  "Fine," said Heather, challenging anyone to stop her, challenging everyone to look at themselves and see their own cowardice. "Fine! I'll do it."

  She grabbed the clamp and turned on the winch, letting out the aircraft wire. She crawled down the side ladder, dropped into the ocean, and swam to Steve, swam to her friend as all of the other people watched from the safety of the deck. She fixed the clamp to the bar on the back of the suit.

  "Reel us in!" she shouted.

  She held on to Steve and allowed the boat to tow her in with him. "I am so sorry," she whispered. "I am so sorry, Steve…"

  She grasped the ladder, wiping the salt water and tears from her face. The winch continued to turn, lifting Steve out. He hung, lifeless, from the wire. Seawater poured out of his suit.

  "Oh God," said Heather. "The suit didn't hold."

  She climbed up the ladder and stood shivering on the deck as they swung him over the side and onto the deck. The window to the helmet was cracked. Inside was a blob of pink and red. It was like someone had taken hamburger and molded it into a lump. The sea had crushed him. It was all that was left of Steve.

  Marco made the sign of the cross. "This boat is cursed."

  "It is not cursed," said Heather, suddenly snapping. "It was just an accident. Just a horrible, horrible accident!"

  "That is no accident!" said Marco accusingly. "You said that suit should have held!"

  "Well, obviously it didn't!" Heather shouted back.

  "We have to go," said Marco, waving at his crew. He turned around and pointed his finger in Heather's face. "You leave everything at the bottom of the sea."

  Heather stepped dangerously close. "I will not let my friend die in vain."

  He pointed at Steve. "Your friend is killed! Do you not see that he is dead? Because of you?"

  She turned to the crew. "I want you to remember. I want you to remember who was willing to jump into shark-infested waters to retrieve the body of our team member. I want you to think about who would give up everything for you. Do you want to leave now? The whole world is going to know about our find, and if we don't do it, someone else will. Do you want this, all of this, to be for nothing? So that someone else gets the Nobel? So that some archeological pirates can steal our artifacts and sell them on the black market? Because that is what is going to happen if we leave now. We are stewards of this ship. We are the protectors of this site."

  Heather walked back into the science laboratory, leaving them to fight and squabble among themselves. She opened her computer, wiping away the tears that blurred her eyes, to write the university and tell them what was going on.

  There was a new message from them: You have a $4M budget.

  Heather swallowed. Slowly, she pushed back from the desk and stood. She walked back out. Angry voices were shouting back and forth. Captain Marco's face was red as he tried to yell everyone down.

  Heather put two fingers into her mouth and whistled so loudly, it cut through all the arguing. Everyone turned and looked at her.

  "I have four million dollars’ worth of reasons to stay," she said. "And four million dollars’ worth of reasons why none of you are leaving."

  A bell clanged and a seagull cried.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Dallas

  Tanis woke, panic gripping her throat. The box. The darkness. She touched
her quilt. She was still here. It was just a nightmare. She turned her head. She was in her own room with her clothes still strewn on the floor and the piles of class notes everywhere and the trash she always forgot to empty. She sat up and put her feet on the ground.

  She wanted to pretend that the accident, that waking in the morgue, never happened.

  But Brett took her to the spot where he said she died. Last night, she stood there as the sounds of the freeway whizzed overhead. The concrete was cracked. She recognized the place. Sickeningly. She knew, as sure as she knew that she was breathing, that this was where she landed.

  "Sis, you were dead," Brett just kept saying.

  Tanis looked over at him, so frustrated. Between him and her mom, it was like a broken record. "How could I have been dead? I'm alive, right in front of you! People don't just die and come back to life."

  But as she looked up at the top level of the High Five, 120 feet above them, she knew there was no way she could have lived.

  "Tanis, I went down to the morgue myself. Me and Mom. We had just been sitting there, talking about this surprise party we were planning for your birthday. And then the cops said you were dead. I saw you, Tanis. I saw you lying on that slab. Your neck was broken. Your face was smashed. Your bones were sticking out of your arms. You were dead."

  "Well, you got the wrong girl," she replied.

  Brett looked up. "They said your car went over the guardrail."

  "It did," Tanis replied, shivering, unable to tear her eyes away from the freeway. Her car went over the side. She went over the side. She walked over and hugged Brett, needing desperately to remember that she was still alive. She squeezed him tight around his neck and tried to joke. "Guess you can't get rid of me that easily."

  He didn't say anything for a long time. Finally, he whispered, "Mom sure organized a really pretty funeral for you, sis."

  "Too bad I messed it up by living."

  "Shoot, even Dad's side of the family was going to show up."

  Tanis broke away, rolling her eyes. "The Toxoteses? Maybe we can pretend I'm still dead."

  "Tanis…"

  Silence hung between them. Tanis chewed on her thumbnail. "Was Dad planning on coming?"