Robin Cook - Abduction

“What the hell are you doing, man!” Michael questioned. He pushed Perry’s face away, which was inches from his own.

“I was doing mouth-to-mouth,” Perry said. He got to his feet. “I didn’t think you were breathing.”

“I’m breathing!” Michael insisted. He made a face of disgust and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Believe me, I’m breathing.”

Richard’s coughing jag came to an abrupt end, and he blinked away the tears it had brought on. His first concern was Michael. When he saw that his buddy was alive and well, he glanced around the room before looking up at the others.

“What’s going on?” he asked. “What happened?”

“That’s the million-dollar question,” Perry answered.

“Where the hell are we?” Richard asked. His eyes took a second quick dash around the room. A perplexed expression clouded his face.

“An equally interesting question,” Perry said.

“Were you looking for us on your dive?” Donald asked Richard.

For a moment Richard merely looked confused. Then Donald’s question helped restore his memory. “Oh, my god!” he cried. “We were on a nearly thousand-foot sat dive! We didn’t decompress!” Richard struggled to his feet. His legs were wobbly, especially on the slippery floor. “Michael, we’ve got to get into the DDC!”

“Take it easy!” Donald said. He grabbed Richard around the upper arm to calm him and keep him from falling. “There’s no DDC here. Besides, you’re all right. Obviously you don’t have the bends.”

Richard’s confusion deepened. He extended his legs and his arms to check his joints. Blinking repeatedly, he looked around the room again, and while doing so noticed the umbilical connecting him to the base of the collapsed sphere. “What the hell is this?” he demanded. He grasped the composite group of hoses and wires and immediately let go. His lips curled in revulsion. “Jeez, it feels soft, like I’m holding someone’s intestines.”

“It has to be some kind of life support,” Suzanne said, speaking up for the first time since the divers had emerged from their shells. “Considering the shape you’re in without decompressing, I guess it had something to do with that as well.”

Richard gingerly touched the device attached to his stomach. It was the size and shape of the head of a toilet plunger. As soon as he touched it, it detached. Catching it in his hand, he looked at its business end. To his horror a series of wormlike appendages protruded from it, their wriggling heads soaked in blood-his blood.

“Ah!” Richard cried. He dropped the device, which quickly retracted into the base of the flattened sphere like a disappearing vacuum cleaner cord. In a panic Richard unzipped the front of his neoprene suit down to his pubis. When he looked at his stomach he cried out again. There were six puncture wounds in a circular pattern around his navel.

After watching Richard, Michael struggled to his feet and hesitantly looked down at his own stomach. He was dismayed to see a similar apparatus. With an expression mirroring Richard’s, he reluctantly touched it with his index finger. To his relief it immediately detached and retracted. Opening his dive suit he found the same peculiar pattern of oozing stab wounds around his umbilicus.

“Holy crap!” Michael voiced. “It looks like we were stabbed a bunch of times with an ice pick.” He shivered. “I can’t stand blood.”

Richard zipped his suit back up and then tried to take a few steps on shaky legs. He reached out and supported himself against the wall. “Man, I feel like I’ve been drugged.”

“I feel like I was run over with a goddamn truck,” Michael said.

“Where’s Mazzola?” Richard asked.

“We wouldn’t have any idea,” Donald said. “What happened during your dive?”

Richard scratched the back of his head. At first all he could remember was getting into the DDC for the compression, but then, with Michael’s participation, they both were able to remember sketchy details of the descent in the bell and entering the water.

“Is that it?” Donald asked. “Nothing after you left the bell?”

Richard nodded. Michael did the same.

“How come you guys all look like you’ve been in a pigpen?” Richard asked. He didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, he looked more closely at the walls. “What is this, some kind of hospital or something?”

“It’s no hospital,” Donald said. “We can’t tell you much else other than how we got here, but that includes how we got dirty.”

“That’s a start,” Richard said. “Fire away!”

Donald explained while the two divers slouched against the wall. It was a hard story to swallow, and their eyes narrowed in disbelief.

“Oh, come on!” Richard scoffed. “What is this? Some kind of a put-on?” He regarded the trio with suspicion. This had to be a prank. Michael nodded in agreement.

“This is no put-on,” Donald assured him.

“Just look around this room,” Suzanne said.

“Listen!” Donald said, trying to be patient. “Can’t either of you remember anything about how you got here? Didn’t you see anybody?”

Richard shook his head. With his foot he pushed around the deflated segments of the sphere. The material was now limp instead of rigid and brittle. “Are you serious about us being inside this stuff? You said it looked like glass. It sure doesn’t now.”

“It did just a short time ago,” Suzanne assured him.

“What we think is that this is a Russian submarine base,” Donald continued.

“Correction!” Suzanne interrupted. “That’s what you think.”

“Russians?” Richard echoed. “No shit!” He visibly straightened up. He looked around the room with renewed interest, as did Michael. Both put their hands against the highly polished walls. Richard rapped on the glossy surface with his knuckle. “What is this stuff anyway, titanium?”

Suzanne started to answer but was interrupted by a hissing noise. Everyone looked back to the locations where the spheres had stood. A vapor billowed out of the exposed holes. Quickly an acrid smell pervaded the sealed chamber, and everyone’s eyes began to tear.

“We’re being gassed!” Suzanne cried before she was overcome by violent coughs.

The group shrank back in terror, pressing themselves against the cold metal walls in a vain attempt to get away from the gas. But before long everyone was coughing and squeezing their eyes shut against the burning sensation.

“Get on the floor!” Donald cried.

Everyone except Perry flattened themselves on the floor while trying ineffectually to cover their mouths and noses with their hands. Perry stumbled back to the door to the cavern and began pounding on it, while screaming for it to be opened.

The door did not budge, but Perry had the presence of mind to notice something despite his panic and physical torment. He was not blacking out nor was he even feeling the slightest bit dizzy. The gas seemed not to have the lethal effect he most feared.

With strength of will Perry held his coughing in check and managed to crack his eyes for an instant despite the discomfort. The room was thick with the foglike vapor. Perry couldn’t see far, but he noticed that his arms were suddenly bare.

Curious as to what could have happened to the sleeves of his jogging suit, Perry squinted. He saw that his sleeves had fallen into tatters. They were hanging in shreds as if he’d dipped his arms into acid.

Aware that his whole body now felt cool, Perry patted his hands along his chest. His jogging suit-indeed, all his clothes-were suffering the same fate as his sleeves. The fabric of the clothing itself was progressively losing its structural integrity.

Perry had had nightmares in the past when he was under stress that he was naked in public. Suddenly it was coming to pass as he felt his clothes peel from his body in strips. He clutched at them and felt them disintegrate in his hands.