Anton Strout - Dead Waters

She looked to Wesker for an answer, but he waved her off, perturbed. “Don’t ask me,” he said. “I’m the one who kept failing to destroy the damned thing, remember?”

All eyes turned to Trent. “I’m not sure, either,” he said, his voice weak. “The few times we actually succeeded in our test footage, destroying the film took care of whatever we had pulled out of it. But now that he’s using blood to sustain it, I don’t know. I was never a part of this blood ritual of Professor Redfield’s. He kind of raised the bar for crazy on us all, now, didn’t he?”

We all stood there in silence for a minute before Jane broke it.

“I could give you some good news if you like,” she said.

“We could use some,” I said.

“I was able to get a reading off that computer you brought in before it died on me,” she said.

“Really?”

“What did it say?” Connor asked.

“It couldn’t tell me much,” she said, “because it wasn’t up and running, but I did get a reading on it as far as the damage it took.” She picked up the laptop from the workbench next to her and held it up. “See along here, where it’s all crunched in? I could tell at what time the various parts of it stopped working by their last notations before equipment failure. Judging by the size of these marks and what the machine could tell me, I think it was done by something with enormous tentacles. An octopus or something.”

“In the East River?” I asked.

“I don’t make sense of these things,” she said, putting the laptop back down and holding her hands up. “I just report them.”

“I’m not attacking you about it,” I said. “I’m just surprised. And tired.”

“Thing is. . .” she said, “judging by the crush points, I have to say we’re looking at a pretty big one at that. Abnormally big.”

“I’ve heard of mutant alligators around New York City,” Connor said, “but mutant octopi might be a first.”

“Perhaps we will all be better served with a good night’s sleep,” Allorah said. “I know I’ve spent too much time on this today with little results. The only plus to it was that now that we’re understaffed, I was able to skip out on several Enchancellorship meetings.”

“What we need is a way to get ahold of the rest of your fellow students in crime,” Connor said to Trent. “We need answers from them.”

“I think I know a way to lure them in,” Trent said.

“Fine,” I said, “but anything we’re going to do can wait until morning.” I walked over to Jane. She wasn’t looking so hot. Whether it was being overworked or the power of the mark draining her, I didn’t know, but for once I hoped it was simply the former.

The second I got Jane back to my apartment in SoHo, she showered for an eternity, and when she was through she zonked out immediately, but I couldn’t sleep. My mind was wrapped up in too many things. Jane’s mark was just one in a long list of things bothering me, along with the Inspectre showing signs of his age in the face of dealing with his recently reborn friend. Both those things were out of my control right now, but there was one thing I could help myself with—learning to control my power better. If I was going to absorb downloads of raw emotion from some of my psychometric readings, I needed to learn how to contend with them better.

I went to the built-in bookcase in my living room that took up the greater part of one wall. The backlog of moneymaking collectibles that I had been nabbing with my powers were starting to take over, not only the shelves but the rest of the room. I could work on controlling my powers using them, all the while sorting much of this stuff for return to potential buyers at the same time, but not tonight. I had a feeling that the metal plate I had pulled from the boat-wreck salvage in the lighthouse would be chock-full of all the emotional power I wanted to contend with.

I grabbed a bowlful of Life Savers off one of my end tables and placed it on the floor next to me. I snagged my shoulder bag off the couch, pulled out the piece with SLO etched into its rusting form, and pushed my power into it. My one concern was that I might be visited in the vision by Cassie or Mason Redfield as I had back when I started shopping for dressers for Jane, but I had to try. I hoped that slowly coming to terms with hunting down a dresser for Jane, albeit unsuccessfully so far, would help keep it at bay.

The good news was that I didn’t feel any panic over the tattooist or Mason Redfield rising up as I entered the psychometric vision. The bad news was that a wave of completely different and instant panic rose over me instead. It was daylight on the river, and whoever’s body I occupied was drowning. I felt deep gulps of river water sliding down their throat, filling their lungs. This isn’t really me, I thought to myself. I’m not really drowning. Try as I might, the sensations were all too real and I could feel myself giving in to the panic. The person I was flailed their hands and one of them came down on a large piece of floating wood. Their fingers wrapped around it and grabbed on. Using their last bit of strength, they pulled themselves up out of the water onto the sizable piece of wood, coughing up large streams of water and the contents of their stomach.

Now that I had a brief second to catch my breath, I took in what I could. I was male, dressed in clothing styled like those of the turn-of-the-century ghosts out on the Hell Gate Bridge. The board beneath the man bore a full version of the metal plate I held in my hands with the word SLOCUM etched into it. My personal panic started to calm as I slipped into my investigator mind-set, but I could feel that the man was only starting to panic more. I could see why.

Fire and chaos were all around him on this cloudy day. The remains of the General Slocum were sinking in large, fiery pieces all around him, the cries of the dying and drowning filling the air. Ships didn’t sink this way. I had seen Titanic and a few other disaster films. Ships went down as whole objects, maybe even a few pieces. This steamer was shattered . Had the woman in green done this? I didn’t see her in any of the surrounding chaos, and frankly, I wasn’t sure she even had this kind of power over water.

As I sat on the board, holding on for dear life, I got my answer. The surface of the water broke before me and the roll of something gray and slimy passed by until one end of it poked up. A tentacle. It belonged to something huge . It rose up out of the water several stories before crashing back down on one of the large pieces of ship that was still floating, tearing it in half.

The man didn’t have time to take it all in. Another tentacle rose and wrapped around the floating piece of wood he was on. It tugged it under the surface, dragging him down. This time he was lucky enough to have gotten a deep breath in, but his luck was about to run out. I felt a crushing sensation against his spine from the tightening of the tentacle, and as he went deeper a shape rose up to meet him. Even with daylight up above, it was hard seeing through his eyes in the murk of water, mud, and blood, but one thing stood out as his breath left him and he began to fade. An enormous yellow eye.

I never wanted to be stuck in someone’s death. I had no idea what effect it might have on my brain or if it would be like needing to wake up while falling in a dream. I pulled myself out of my vision and checked my vitals. My heartbeat was steady, but not thumping in my chest, which was a good sign. The hypoglycemia from using my powers kicked in, but that was to be expected. I still felt a little bit of emotional strain of the victim in my head that I couldn’t shake, but I was thankful it didn’t belong to any of the other people who had been haunting my visions. When Jane’s hand came down on my shoulder out of nowhere, I nearly screamed.