Jeremy Robinson - Kronos

“All of the rooms have hidden cameras,” O’Shea said softly. “Trevor is on the bridge right now, so no one is watching, but I guarantee he’s recording your room.”

Atticus squinted. He wasn’t surprised Trevor had surveillance, but he was a little taken aback that O’Shea didn’t want to be seen. “What’s wrong?”

“I’ll explain in my quarters,” O’Shea said, taking a step back.

Atticus knew when to shut up and follow someone. He stepped out into the hall, followed by Andrea.

“You’re not under surveillance?” Atticus asked as they moved down the hall.

“Trevor trusts me more than most, but that’s like saying you’d prefer baby poop on a blanket over dog crap on the rug. Either way, it’s still a pile of shit.” O’Shea glanced over his shoulder with a smile. “Something my father used to say.”

“A wise man,” Andrea said, her voice laced with sarcasm.

“What I mean,” O’Shea said, “is that while Trevor trusts me, he really trusts no one. He’s had my quarters under surveillance since I came on board.”

“Then why-”

“Are we going to my quarters over yours?” O’Shea finished. “I rerouted the video feed from my room so it plays back old loops of my quarters at the same time of day. When I’m not doing something…fishy, I let the cameras watch. But when I need to, I can sync a loop in and do as I please without Trevor or the Hawaiian gorilla knowing what I’m doing.”

“And what would a priest being doing that shouldn’t be seen?” Atticus asked, his interest growing.

“Honestly, at first I was just looking at pornography, but lately I’ve been selling corporate secrets.”

O’Shea paused as Atticus and Andrea froze, their faces flat. “Well, c’mon,” he said. “We don’t want to be found out.”

O’Shea unlocked the door to his quarters and swung it open. He motioned them within. Sensing O’Shea’s urgency, they moved inside without another word. But once the door closed behind them, Andrea spoke as she looked up at the massive crucifix hanging on the wall. It hung above a U-shaped desk with three laptops, which filled the darkened room with an electric glow. “So you’re a computer-savvy, porno-loving, corporate-secrets-selling priest?”

“Not all men of the cloth are pure, Ms. Vincent.” O’Shea laughed. “Of course, to be a man of the cloth, I’d have to be a priest. And that, good lady, I am not.

The Titan

“That’s a real shocker,” Andrea said with a snort. “You’re no more a priest than I’m Mother Teresa.”

O’Shea smiled as he sat in the black-leather swivel chair. He put his hands behind his head and leaned back. “And yet here I am, taking confession from one of the world’s most sinful men.”

Though impressed with O’Shea’s subterfuge, Atticus masked his face to show no surprise. He’d bought O’Shea’s priest routine hook, line, and sinker, believing him to be an eccentric priest rather than a phony. He just didn’t want anyone else to know he’d been so gullible. What other lies had he believed while blinded by his thirst for vengeance? “Why tell us?”

“Two reasons,” O’Shea said. “First, I need your help getting off the Titan. It’s becoming too dangerous. Trevor’s at a dangerous level of Cold War paranoia, and it’s only a matter of time before I’m found out. I may be in Trevor’s good graces now, but if that were to change, Remus would most likely have his way with me, and I’d just become another afternoon snack for Laurel.”

O’Shea sat back again, his smile fading. After chewing on his lip for a moment, he said, “You may find this hard to believe. Hell, I find it hard to believe. I’m a con man…was a con man. I’ve taken Trevor for millions of dollars while pretending to save his soul from damnation. And while most people would congratulate me for stealing from a man like Trevor…”

Andrea raised her hand and nodded.

“I can’t do it anymore. I’d like to say that after all this time pretending to be a priest that I’ve developed an inconvenient sense of morality. Hell, I’ve studied the Bible enough. It seems to have rubbed off, and besides…I just don’t feel safe here anymore. Sooner or later, whether or not he believes I’m helping save his eternal soul, he’s going to see me as a liability. I do not want to be on board when that happens.”

Atticus smiled. He was sure that it had taken equal parts brains and guts to pull off what O’Shea had. Trevor had the best security his money could buy, and yet a single man masquerading as a priest had taken him for millions. He wouldn’t have cared if O’Shea had stolen a billion dollars from Trevor. The Titan was a treasure trove of stolen artifacts. What comes around goes around.

“I’ll get you off the Titan, ” Atticus said.

O’Shea’s smile returned.

“But I’m going to need your help first.”

O’Shea nodded as though he knew an exchange would be necessary. “I’ve already started.”

Atticus furrowed his brow. He wasn’t sure what O’Shea could do to help, even though he had proved himself cunning and was still in Trevor’s good graces. But O’Shea seemed to have his own ideas.

The erstwhile “priest” swiveled around in his chair and rolled up to the desk. He used all three touch pads and the seventeen-inch screens came to life. On them, Atticus saw many of the same articles about the “New England Sea Serpent” that he had already read. Andrea leaned in close, looking at one particularly detailed sketch. “Oh my…That’s it.”

O’Shea nodded.

“How many people have seen this thing?” Andrea asked.

“Over two hundred reported sightings in the Gulf of Maine sine the 1600s,” O’Shea answered. “Most sightings have the general description correct. The way it swims with a vertical undulation. The shape of its head. The dark top and light underbelly. But details around the finer points, like the eyes, fins, and teeth have varied some. I would imagine anyone sighting it would have a hard time recollecting the details because adrenaline can affect the memory.”

“You got that right,” Atticus said, recalling his own faded memories of his first encounter with Kronos.

“The size has also come into question, with reports ranging from 50 to 150 feet in length. This is most likely because Kronos keeps a large portion of his body submerged while moving across the surface. In fact, given the way he swims, it’s impossible to see him all at once from the surface. At first I thought it was a new species-”

“There’s no way Kronos is the first of his kind, and I doubt he’s the last,” Atticus said. “The Gulf of Maine is probably the species’ spawning ground. That would account for the high frequency of sightings, especially if the species reproduces on a multiple-year cycle, rather than yearly.”

“That’s what I thought at first, too,” O’Shea said. “But if there were a population of these things, let’s say one thousand of them-enough to keep the species alive-we’d be seeing them all the time. Creatures as big as Kronos, especially those that breathe air, are impossible to hide.”

Atticus was about to ask O’Shea how he knew Kronos breathed air, but stopped when he realized that the con man was right. Kronos didn’t have gills. Unless the creature had some other way of extracting oxygen from the water, it breathed air like a whale. He kicked himself for not thinking of that before. There he was, an oceanographer, yet distracted enough to miss the obvious.

“But I have a new theory,” O’Shea said. “What if Kronos were one of a kind?”

“Impossible,” Atticus said. “Complex creatures don’t simply form out of nothing, and Kronos is more complex than most.”