Through the Darkened Sea

Lane took a deep breath to ground herself. The air smelled heavily of ash and engine oil, but she had become accustomed to it over the many months she’d spent fighting this war. The beach she stood on was bleak, the sky overcast, though whether that was a feature of the weather or the accumulation of smoke was hard to say. It almost always looked like this. She surveyed the ruins of the tanks, the scattered guns and the debris of combat with a heavy heart. The bodies had been cleared away by the clunky B units half an hour prior, but she could easily make out where they had fallen. Her job was simple; she came in after the battle was done to gather what information she could, so that they had a better chance of ending the conflict with the creatures.

The monstrosities came from the deep. That was all they solidly knew. There was talk of the possibility they were an invading alien force, but there was no science to support it. The only conclusion the military had come to was that somehow, the creatures had always been here. They dealt death in as many ways as a person could imagine dying, and some they could not. The creatures were heavily resistant to most of the damage people could inflict upon them, but resistant did not mean invincible. Throwing everything they had at the creatures all at once seemed to be the only way they went down, and it took some doing.

Lane’s job brought her face to face with the most disheartening part of this war—the aftermath. Casualties were heavy at every skirmish. She had been through more than thirty of these devastating events as a foot soldier before her promotion, which even she could admit was an unusually high amount to survive. She pulled off her gloves, stuffed them in her pocket and moved through the wreckage of men who were not so lucky as she had been. As she went, she brushed her hands against bits of tank, guns and other detritus, catching glimpses of the dead soldiers’ thoughts and actions, their fleeting fear, determination and desires. She felt the intense longing of one soldier for her lover, from another, the grim acceptance of never seeing his family again. She touched one gun and felt despair wash over her like an icy deluge. Lane knew she could go on like this for hours without finding any useful information, and she was prepared for an afternoon of it. She was therefore startled to find, upon kneeling in front of the remains of a troop transport a few minutes later, a plasma rifle with one of the strongest signatures of fear she’d ever touched. She picked up the rifle and gripped it tightly in both hands, focusing on the fallen soldier’s last moments.

Donal’s hand gripped the strap in the troop transport with bruising force. The sounds of battle drew nearer with every second; his other hand clutched the rifle at his side—he thought fleetingly about how useless it was against the creatures. Somehow he’d made it through five battles armed only with this hunk of metal and a few grenades, so he’d named it Aletha after a girl he’d loved in the sixth grade. He caught a glimpse of one of the creatures rising from the sea between the bodies of the men on the other side of the transport, terror coiling in his stomach at the sheer mass of the dark figure. He frowned as he tried to comprehend what he was seeing. There was a rumor among the men that the creatures could not truly be looked upon without the beholder going mad, but try as he might, Donal could not tear his gaze away. Tentacles lurched from the enormous undulating body and began grabbing whatever was closest to them, whether human bodies or machinery brought to end the creatures’ lives.

Donal felt violently sick, but still he held the creature in his gaze; he felt so close to understanding what he was seeing, and he felt too that the mysteries of the universe would unravel themselves to his enlightened mind once he did. They were tearing his brethren apart, but there was something methodical about it; it did not seem without reason. The transport ground to a halt and nearly threw Donal out on his ass, but he clung to the strap still. He was in it now.

“Lane!”

Her entire body jolted at the sound. Lane’s hands clamped so hard her nails dug little half-moons into her palms. She blinked and looked down at her hands—the gun was gone and so was the beach. The cool grey light of the overcast morning had been replaced by harsh fluorescents, but the room was far too clean. She turned toward the voice. The woman before her was almost through middle age, with limp, graying brown hair and a bright turquoise blouse. Tina, she reminded herself sharply. Tina looked a little scared.

“Where do you go?”

Lane blinked. She was in the office, she knew that. Where had she been? “I guess I was day-dreaming,” she said slowly, running a distracted hand through her long blond locks. She tried to blink the soft fuzziness away. She felt completely out of it. She wondered distantly if Rob had kept her up late again.

“Is that finance report done?” Tina asked. Her features had shifted from afraid to annoyed.

Lane blinked once more. “Yeah, it’ll be in your inbox shortly,” she replied. She shook her head minutely. Why was she feeling such a strong pull to go to the beach? It was at least sixty miles away, and she’d never been fond of it.

Tina seemed satisfied and turned away, leaving Lane to her stupor. She picked up the papers she’d printed out, worried when she couldn’t even decipher what was on them. She swiftly walked back to her desk. On it were pictures of her parents and her brother. She got a little choked up looking at it, but that didn’t make sense, did it? Her parents lived nearby, and her brother was at Cal State Long Beach studying marine biology.

Lane sat down in her desk chair and signed into her computer. Todd waved shyly at her from across the room. He hadn’t heard about Rob yet. She wasn’t looking forward to that conversation. She pulled her desk drawer open absent-mindedly to find a paperclip, but her fingers found a stray thumbtack first. The pain was sharp and unexpected.

“Lieutenant McClaren!”

Lane opened her eyes and lurched forward in her seat, gasping; she was in a troop transport hurtling down one of the back roads that led to base.

“Are you with us, Lieutenant?”

“I’m with you,” she growled to the tall frightened redheaded man next to her. “We need to go back, Sargent Anders,” she said, locking eyes with him.

“What the hell, Lieutenant? We just pulled you out of there. You need to see the doc,” he said firmly. “What the hell happened to you?”

“Take me back,” she insisted, “That’s an order.”

Lane felt the transport come to a gradual stop and do a clunky three-point turn. “Shit, Jensen! What are you doing?” Anders demanded.

“You heard the lady,” the driver replied. “She pulled rank on your ass. We’re going back to the beach.”

“Lieutenant,” Anders protested, “It’s my job to look after your well-being and pull you out if it gets too bad—”

“And you did your damn job, and I’m fine now, so calm the hell down. I have to go back. One of them saw one,” Lane said. She tried to tamp down her excitement, but some of it must have shown through, because Anders shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

“He’s dead, isn’t he?” the man murmured.

Lane nodded. “It . . . doesn’t work on the living.”

“The hand thing?” Jensen asked from the front seat, suddenly interested.

Lane shook her head. “Yeah, it doesn’t work unless they’re deceased. But I was in his memory, back there on the beach. He was so close to some truth, I’m not sure what it was, but then I . . . don’t remember what happened.”

She saw Jensen frown in the rearview. “Did you eat today, Lieutenant?”

“Yes, Private, I choked down my oats with the rest of you this morning.”

Anders swallowed thickly. “I have a bad feeling about this,” he admitted.

Lane glared up at him. “I don’t care about your feelings, Sargent, I need results and I think this is the breakthrough the brass has been looking for.”

“What if you don’t live to tell the brass what you saw—what he saw?”

Lane shrugged. “Then I trust you to tell them where they can find the info, so they can send another one of us.”

Anders frowned but said nothing else, choosing instead to study the wall for the rest of the short ride back to the beach. Lane stroked the inseam of his BDU pants when she was sure Jensen’s gaze was locked on the road. She saw the corner of Anders’ mouth turn up, but other than that, he didn’t acknowledge her. She withdrew her hand, reaching into her pocket to make sure her gloves had made it back with her. The feel of the leather against her palms comforted her. They all stayed silent. Lane understood she may have to do some groveling to get back in Anders’ good graces, but she wasn’t over-worried about it. The discovery was close, in Donal’s memories, she felt it.

They made it back to the beach, and Lane let Jensen get much closer to the thick of it before she called, “Halt! Here will do.”

He stopped the vehicle carefully, and the second it was motionless, Lane flung herself out of the back. “Lieutenant!” Anders shouted. “Be careful.”

“Where’s the fun in that?” Lane replied with a small smirk. She turned and ran to the wrecked transport where she’d initially found the plasma rifle. She breathed a sigh of relief. She’d dropped it only a few feet from its original position. She knelt slowly, picking it back up.  

Donal’s brothers were shouting his name. He couldn’t look away, even terrified he was curious. Staring at the thing seemed to reveal the darkest parts of himself, such as the time he’d thought about leaving his family without so much as a goodbye, disappearing from his class trip into the seedier underbelly of London, never looking back. Then there was the time he’d seriously considered sleeping with his girl’s best friend because she was there, seemed so willing and perfectly fun. Donal shook his head but could not look away. He heard a voice, sonorous and all-consuming. ‘Down you go’ it said, ‘deep, deep, and dream of the life you would have destroyed.’

“Ms. McClaren, are you with us?” A doctor who looked vaguely familiar hovered over her.

“Yeah. Did I black out again?” She asked slowly, taking in her hospital surroundings. It looked oddly civilian. “Where’s Anders?”

The doctor frowned. “Lane, you collapsed. You were having some sort of episode,” he explained. “You said this has happened before? Your parents are here.”

“My . . . parents?” Lane asked, groggy and feeling as though her head was full of cotton.

“Jim, Linda?” The doctor said easily, turning to the slightly open curtain. “She’s awake.”

Her little parents tottered into the room. Her mother’s tight look of worry fell to delight as she approached the hospital bed.

“I left you in Vancouver,” Lane murmured.

“Vancouver?” Her mother asked.

“When the conflict started,” Lane clarified slowly.

“What conflict?” Linda snorted. “It’s the wrong time of the year for Vancouver, Lane. Did you hit your head when you fell, dear?”

“I’m . . . not sure,” Lane admitted. “I don’t think I fell.”

“Nonsense,” said her father. “Have you ever seen anyone faint without falling?”

Lane shook her head. “I don’t think I fainted—I was on a beach.”

Her mother’s brows knit together. “There’s no beach around here, Lane, what are you talking about?”

“This is all wrong,” Lane said, a wave of nausea washing over her. She clamped a hand over her mouth, inhaling through her nose. “The beach, Sargent Anders. I need to get back.” She moved to get out of the bed, but realized her ankle was attached to the side by a restraint. “What is this?”

The doctor looked at her like she was a child who required coddling. “You got quite violent at the office, Lane. Do you remember any of what happened?”

Flashes of this new history came to her. She was screaming. Todd grabbed her around the middle, pinning her arms to her sides. She bit him, he released her. Now Todd was screaming. She tried to make him stop. There was a pair of scissors sticking out of his leg. Blood. More screaming, source undetermined. Tina crouched in the corner, looking oddly calm, clutching a cellphone to her ear. Her lips were moving. Lane couldn’t hear what she was saying over all the screaming.

“That . . . didn’t happen,” Lane refuted. Something about the memory felt forced, like the feeling she got when her parents would show her a picture of herself and tell her a story about it.  

The doctor frowned down at her. “Todd Zaleski is being treated for several wounds you inflicted upon him elsewhere in the hospital. You really don’t remember?”

“I remember,” Lane started, “but it didn’t happen—”

Lisa let out a moan. “Lane, have you gone off your meds again?”

“I’m not on meds, Mom,” Lane argued. “None of this is making sense. I was on a beach, doing my job.”

“What job would you being doing on a beach?” Her mother wailed.

“I’m in the military, Mom. It’s classified.”

Her father frowned deeply. “You work in finance in an office, honey.”

“I really don’t understand you,” Lisa muttered. “You do very well when you take your meds.”

“What meds?” Lane yelled.

“Your antipsychotics!” Lisa whispered loudly. “Your brother is going to be so worried.”

“My—” Lane swallowed thickly as it hit her. Brandon was dead.

Her parents might have forgotten what she did for a living, where she did it, where they were supposed to stay and what was going on in the world, but there was no way they wouldn’t remember that Brandon had died. Her baby brother, the budding marine biologist, killed while attempting to study the creatures. Either they were mentally compromised, or none of this was real. Or they’re right and your crazy, something insidious in the back of her mind whispered. Lane could clearly remember two histories, and now recalled the part of the office incident she had been present for, when she’d blacked out on the beach. She marveled at how she’d accepted it—it had seemed so simply true. She mentally ran through her time in the office, and gasped. She’d hurt her finger and woken up. Maybe that was all it would take to jar her out of it again?

“Mom, will you please bring me some water? I feel sick. Can I be alone for a moment?” Lane asked.

The doctor and her father shared a look of mild concern, but at her insistence, they left the room. Her mother huffed on her way out, but she had a task and she had never been able to resist a request from her children.

As soon as the door shut, Lane searched her immediate surroundings for anything that might inflict enough pain to wake her up. She was at a loss, until she spotted the food tray near the door. She assessed her situation. Only one of her feet was bound, which made things difficult but not impossible. It seemed light restraint for a patient who had supposedly stabbed a coworker with scissors, but that just made her more certain of the falsehood of this place. She sat up and scooted forward, rotating her leg until it was underneath her and she was most of the way off the bed. The tray was less than ten feet away. She saw an IV pole much closer, and she hopped and stretched until she could reach it. The tray was on wheels, so she hooked the end of the pole on one of the corners and pulled. It took some effort, but she finally pulled the tray within reach. She grinned. The silverware was metal.

She grabbed the fork and, inhaling sharply, plunged it into the back of her hand.