Robert Walker - Titanic 2012

“All I cared about was finding my uncle, and I couldn’t refuse the money,” began Thomas, his hands raised. “A-And I couldn’t be without your well-reputed expertise.”

“Of course… of course.”

“Sir, I didn’t know you then, but I now know your heart is true. I’ll not give away any words between or among us.”

“A lot of good that does now with Reahall like someone’s hound on my heels.”

“He claimed he just wanted you out of his jurisdiction, but I suppose that was a lie.”

“We’re wasting time on this business!” shouted Ransom, realizing he’d frightened Thomas with his tone. “Let’s get this ghoulish work done, shall we?”

“Yes… yes, of course—” replied Declan, adding, “might say we’re all sacrificial lambs, eh?”

Alastair Ransom’s laugh now filled the operating theater.

“What’s so funny?” asked Declan.

“No one’s ever called me a lamb before! A lion, a tiger, a bear, yes, but never a lamb. And Thomas—”

“Yes, Mr. Wyland?”

“You tried to get me to leave for my own sake; I appreciate that, lad.”

“I don’t wish to see you behind bars, or under Reahall’s thumb, sir.”

“Oh come now, Tommie, so melodramatic!” Declan interrupted. “Once Dr. Bellingham sees what we’ve done here—our sacrifice, the authorities will applaud us all.”

“My God, Kelly—you’ve got them running around in circles; they’re turning the ship around to search for Alandale,” Ingles whispered in her ear as the others rushed along the corridor, going topside. “We’ve got to inform the captain of what we know.”

“No, we can’t!”

“Why in God’s name not?”

“We don’t know that the captain isn’t the carrier, David.”

“Juris Forbes? That’s crazy. Forbes has dedicated his life to this search mission and… and science.”

“Exactly… exactly what that thing would do—learn how to get back to Titanic . Why couldn’t that fool Ballard have left it alone… have left it to its fate, but no… damned glory hound in a sense raised the Titanic anew.”

“Hold on. When Bob Ballard found the Titanic , why didn’t you investigate him?”

“I did.”

“You did?”

“You bet, and for all I know someone on Bob Ballard’s team may well have been the carrier at that time; however, there was no way to get inside Titanic , to dive Titanic as we are about to do.”

“And the French team that came after Ballard?”

“Checked out and cleared. No one was killed among them, same as Ballard’s expedition.”

“That’s your measurement? No one died?”

“Afraid so. Remember we’ve only recently seen the development of dive technology that can get the carrier inside Titanic ’s hull at those depths. So he, or she, or it—whatever or whoever the hell it is today on board Scorpio , it has only come because there is a way now… a way to recover its young from the depths.”

“I… the—the thing that killed Alandale has been just waiting all these decades… waiting in the wings for technology to catch up?”

“Not waiting; continuing to survive… feeding.”

“I see.”

“It’s left a trail, but the trail hasn’t been one of reproduction but destruction—always obscured because it takes on another human form with each mutation—getting stronger with each feeding.”

“But it finally got it right—aboard Titanic in April of 1912.”

“Yes, and now its final hope at reproduction—to retrieve those eggs frozen in time… frozen inside Titanic .”

“Whoa… what eggs? You lost me. I know nothing about any eggs.”

She took a deep breath of air. “To be exact, they are egg-sacs, hatchlings first discovered during the Fiore autopsy.”

“Hatchlings?”

“The creature’s initial attempts at reproduction failed. The earliest attempts, aborted or rather miscarried, if you will—stillborn, but later attempts proved quite successful.”

“You’ve completely lost me now!” David closed his eyes and shook his head.

“You haven’t read far enough along in the journal, David! You have to read on!”

“Damn, if this thing can reproduce—lay eggs, you say! Then why doesn’t it just reproduce again rather than kill good men like Alandale?”

“I’ve surmised that after so many attempts, it can no longer reproduce. I mean, apparently, it has the ability to reproduce without a mate like a lot of creatures in nature, but it has only so many shots at it. At least that’s what I’ve surmised, and what my ancestor began to believe near the end.”

“Near the end? Did Declan Irvin die on board Titanic ?”

“You know how many died aboard Titanic .”

“By most counts it falls somewhere between 15-to-1600.”

“And Thomas Coogan? And Alastair Ransom?”

“Read on in the journal.”

“One of them—Thomas, Declan, or Ransom had to carry the journal off the ship; one of them survived.”

“And so too did the creature, unfortunately.”

“Damn… were they on the same lifeboat?”

“Possibly, yes. Really, no way to know. Mr. Ismay, the owner, was among the survivors—and while he was depicted in the press as having dressed in women’s clothing to get a seat aboard a lifeboat, perhaps that was not such an exaggeration after all.”

They each took a deep breath and held their silence for a time. She finally said, “I am sorry about Alandale—the real man, that is. But what is worse than allowing that thing to take out individuals, David? Imagine what might—no, what will happen— should it return to free its disease-spreading, awful progeny upon the masses.”

“Egg-sacs… Jesus help us. How many eggs are we talking about here?”

“Hundreds, maybe thousands. I don’t know for certain.”

“Each… each of which has the potential to infiltrate a human host?”

“No one aboard Scorpio will survive, and once Scorpio returns to Woods Hole and land there’ll be no stopping this thing. It will explode exponentially.”

“Presumably each would find a host…”

“Lay its own eggs.”

David quaked inwardly with the image. “This is all so freaking Stephen King.”

“No David, King deals in fantasy; try Crichton. There’s science in this, not supernatural but natural. This thing lived on Earth long before mankind arrived. You’ve got to believe me… and you have to read on in the journal.”

“I intend to… seeing Alandale like that… like Fiore’s body… like McAffey and O’Toole.”

“God, I have lived with this bottled up inside me, and all alone for so long.” A tear formed in her eye, but she quickly wiped it away, turning her face from him. “You must read on,” she insisted. “It’s so important that you understand the entire picture, David.”

“You’ve read all our files, haven’t you?” he asked.

“And I picked you because you went back for Terry Wilcox. Risked your life for a friend. I want you as my friend, David.”

“But you know Forbes; you’ve known him for years,” countered David. “How can you suspect him of such horrors as this? Of killing his colleague and friend, Alandale?”

“This thing has no friends or colleagues. Yes, I knew Forbes years ago, but even then he was aloof. Cold even, a real loner. He could be the carrier. I couldn’t confide in him. What if—”

“He has been stand-offish, true.” David replayed moments in his head. “But… but there could be many reasons for that.”

“I don’t want to sound like a TV psychiatrist, but David, how much do we really know about anyone?”