Up From The Deep Vaughn Jackson (book club suggestions TXT) 📖

froze when she saw the dead guard and Kurtis in the cell looking completely placid. Her face immediately contorted into rage.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Kurtis said, holding up his hands and instinctively backing away from the glass screen. “He was with Tempest.”

“Why the hell should I believe you?” General MacPherson slammed her hand on the window. “That’s another one of my people you’ve killed.”

“Actually…”

“Don’t you dare get smart with me.”

“Yes…ma’am.” Kurtis swallowed hard. The general had not been this frightening the first time he met her. “You want proof? Okay. By the looks of him, he’s just a peon. All of them have the Japanese character for ‘substitute’ on their backs. Check him.”

The general’s suspicious glance switched back and forth between Kurtis and the dead guard. She made no move to check him.

“I’ll check,” Raymond said, walking over to the body.

“What if it’s a trap?” the female soldier said.

“I’m sure it’s not, Ashleigh,” Raymond said, eyeing Kurtis for any indication to the contrary. He leaned over the body and rolled the man over, stripping off his body armor, and lifting his shirt. There, in sweeping calligraphic strokes were the two kanji that Raymond assumed must mean “substitute”. “He has the mark,” Raymond said.

The general’s face twitched with rage. “Lieutenant Greenwood. Organize a check for everyone in the base. Anyone with that tattoo or anyone who refuses to be checked, throw them in a cell.”

“General?”

“Did I stutter, Lieutenant?”

“No,” Greenwood said, “I’ll get right on it.”

“Inspector Dehane,” General MacPherson said, backing away from the cell window. Her face tightened in an obvious attempt to control her fury. “I leave the interrogation to you.”

“I thought I was working with you guys on this,” Kurtis said.

The general gave a humorless smile. “That would be in your best interest. If you’ll excuse me, I have an operation to run.”

“That just leaves me and you,” Raymond said. He searched the area for a chair and found one behind a nearby desk. He dragged it over to the cell window and sat down, stretching his back in the process.

“Did you actually kill her sister?” Kurtis asked.

“I’m supposed to be asking you questions,” Raymond pulled out a pack of caffeine gum and put a piece in his mouth. “I haven’t slept properly in a while,” he said. “But no, I did not kill Ms. Zhang. In fact, I tried to save her life.” He closed his eyes for a minute. “Death before dishonor she told me as she fell into the churning sea below.”

“You didn’t strike me as a killer.”

“I’d rather not be, if I can afford it.” Raymond said. “But that’s not why we’re here. Please, if you will, Ms. Ming’s plans?”

Interlude V

Darkness. Movement. Birth. Inkanyamba knows it’s happening. Here. Now. In the dark, saline sea. She had brought the storm and saved their lives, and now it was their time. The ocean streams around her, bristling with life, but barbed with death. Sharks rush past, pursuing the multitudes of fish she feels, pulsing in the water with each twitching forward push. Her back burns. The eggs stuck there are tearing off, floating into the water. She hears every heartbeat of her myriad children kickstart, pulsing in a chorus of percussion. The first one tears its way out and swims back down to join her, landing on her back and sinking its claws into her flesh to hold on. Then the next. And the next until finally all her children are present. Inkanyamba roars, a scream of exuberance that churns the water and frightens away all manner of sea life. Her children follow suit, sucking in that first breath of sea water and crying out alongside their mother. She appraises them. They look nothing like her, but they are hers. She can smell it on them. Her own scent, and that of their father.

The children bite into her back, tearing little bits of flesh, and pawing at the wounds. They are hungry, she knows. Her nest, where lay the corpse of their father, their first meal, is not far from here. She snaps at them, and they stop their biting. A shark, drawn by the scent of blood approaches, and is easily devoured by a pack of her children. The rest pine for the scraps. She calls to them and they return to her. Her powerful tail moves like the waves and propels her forward, her wings gliding through the water as easily as through air. They cling to her, but several drift off, snatched up by the water’s unrelenting force. She doesn’t go back for them.

Inkanyamba rises from the water and climbs her way up the slope of the island to the ruins that make her nest. Vornax’s remains lay amidst a patch of dried blood and discarded remains. She slumps and allows her children to disembark. They leap, howling and screaming, descending like a swarm over the decaying carcass, ripping, tearing, and gorging themselves on the flesh. Inkanyamba watches, surveying the nest and her spawn. A sound overhead calls her attention. One of the flying creatures from before hovers above, its spinning wings beating the air with a pulsing thrum. It isn’t making the whale noises, but she doesn’t trust it. She knows what happened the last time this creature was involved, and here it is now, near her newborns. She won’t have it. Protect.Kill.

She stretches out her long neck, feels the thrum of her electric heart pulse through her body, and opens her mouth. Concentrated electricity arcs from her mouth, a blue so pale it might as well be white. Her vision goes for a split second. She hears the explosion before she sees it, the creature plummeting to the ground and erupting in a ball of smoke and flames, still crackling with her electricity.

She sees more approaching, coming from the metal forest. These new creatures attack. They rain fire down on her and her children. The attacks do not hurt her, but her children scream in pain as several of them are