carried her toward light and air, she had wondered if that would happen. If it does, she had told herself, I’ll drown like a bug in a soda straw.
That some kind of atmospheric turbulence was pounding Scapa Flow had been no surprise to her. The clouds had been gathering, growing more ominous and heavy-laden, when she had first stepped onto the Orkney mainland, in sight of the old stone cathedral stuffed with its bogus monitoring equipment. And if the storm’s fury had been unleashed while she was locked away in a little bubble of stilled time, that made sense as well. Given what Sarah had witnessed, the things she had seen, the past made visible and tangible-given all that, it would have been little wonder to her if this world’s sun and moon had crashed together, with wormwood and the stars tumbling into the ocean like hot coals.
“Just hold on!” The call came from the boat careening on the Flow’s dark, churning surface. She could just barely make out the silhouette of Wycliffe standing braced at the prow, while Zwingli behind him manned the oars. “We’ll be there in a second!” A wave mounting as high as Wycliffe’s chest slammed into the boat, nearly toppling him overboard. Zwingli’s frantic rowing clawed helplessly at the raucous water.
Just my luck, thought Sarah; the phrase had become the obvious refrain to the events around her. I would’ve been safer back down below. She knew that wasn’t strictly true; as it was, she had barely escaped from the Salander 3 with her sanity intact. There was no way she wanted to see those things again; once had been more than enough.
The foam-crested waves struck the platform, a hammer seemingly more solid than liquid. Her fingers gripped tighter to the doorway as the impact tore at her, then passed, the shaft’s tension snapping it down into the trough that came after.
“Here! Catch this!” Wycliffe had mounted into the boat’s prow again, a heavy rope coiled around his arm, one end of the rope fastened near Zwingli. He managed to synchronize his throw with the Flow’s swell; a knot and ioop sailed through the rain.
Sarah took one hand away from the shaft’s entrance; her hand missed the rope, but she pinned it against her side with her arm. It slithered like a coarse, wet snake, but she hung on to it, gripping and maintaining her balance as the platform rolled and tilted beneath her. She looped the rope over the projection of the doorway’s broad hinge, just above her shoulder, then used her weight to draw the line taut to the boat.
“That’s it—” A crevice had opened up in the storm clouds overhead, enough to let a thin sliver of moonlight onto Wycliffe’s face. Rain coursed across his brow and eye sockets, then into his open mouth as his chest labored with the unfamiliar exertion. His fanatic loyalty to the Tyrell Corporation and its human emblem was all that kept him standing in the small boat, his hands tugging at the rope. Behind him, Zwingli had pulled the oars alongside himself, turning where he knelt and grasping his partner around the waist, securing him against the next wave to hit.
The boat swung around and hit the edge of the platform broadside. Wycliffe leaned down and forward, catching the raised metal lip with his fingers, straining to hold the boat tight against the force of the water drawing it back. “Miss Tyrell—” His drenched face looked up at her. “You must—” The words came out as gasps. “Jump —”
She let go of the rope, getting to her knees and then half falling, half scrambling into the boat. A smaller wave tilted it; her back struck the other side, sending a quick stab of pain up her spine.
“Are you all right?” Zwingli had grabbed her forearm and pulled her next to him.
Sarah nodded. “I’m fine.” She pushed her sodden hair away from her face.
“Let’s go—”
“Wait a minute—” Kneeling at the prow, Wycliffe still grasped the rope in one hand; the knot at the far end had snagged against the hinge of the shaft’s doorway. “There’s somebody else there. Look!”
A glance over her shoulder, and through the sheets of rain Sarah was able to make out the small figure standing just inside the entrance to the shaft, clinging to the edge. The little girl’s face was filled with both awe and terror at her glimpse of the outside world’s unlimited size and violence.
“Who’s that?” Wycliffe looked back at Sarah. “Who came up with you?”
“Wait a minute.” She turned her gaze from the child to the man at the boat’s prow. “What are you talking about? Are you trying to tell me . . . that you see her, too?”
“Right there.” A puzzled expression crossed Wycliffe’s face before he pointed to the doorway. “Of course I see her; she’s right there.”
“So do I,” piped up Zwingli. He leaned forward, from where he crouched beside Sarah. “I can see her. Who is she?”
Sarah laughed, head thrown back, throat exposed to the rain. Even after all that had happened down in the Salander 3, the things she had seen both before and after her father’s murderous apparition had shown itself to her, it still struck that this was a weird place to be having a conversation like this.
Stuck out on a boat, she thought, in the middle of a storm that’s going to drown us all. And these two idiots want to debate the existence of an unreal thing, a total hallucination. The laugh died when another realization struck her; she gazed slit-eyed at the man beside her, then at the other one. She wondered what they were trying to pull, what scheme was being forwarded by their claim of seeing the little girl. She’s my hallucination—they had no claim on the child.
“All right; that’s it.” Sarah made a cutoff gesture with one hand. “I’ve really had enough of this.” The boat pitched in the water, rising to the crest of another wave and dropping again, banging against the edge of the platform.
She had to raise her voice even louder to make her words audible against the rush of the wind. “I don’t know if this is part of some little plan of yours, or what. But I’m not in the mood for it. You want to claim that you see a little girl there, fine; go ahead. But you’re not convincing me that you see her. Because I know she’s not real —”
“But, Miss Tyrell Wycliffe gestured toward the shaft’s doorway. “She’s right there!”
She looked where he pointed and saw the Rachael child, just as she had known she would. The child’s image—and the sound of her breathing, even the scent of her dark hair, everything that worked to make the hallucination seem real—had come up with Sarah from the Salander 3, all the way along the storm-buffeted shaft to the surface of Scapa Flow. The child had said nothing, but had gazed up at Sarah with her big and sad dark eyes, seemingly aware that some change was coming in her existence.
Or nonexistence, as Sarah had had to remind herself. Whatever part of her subconscious was responsible, in league with the influx of material from the ship’s bottled-up past, it was certainly doing a thorough job. The illusory child hadn’t remained as Sarah had perceived her down below, but had taken on the aspect of being caught out in a gale from the North Atlantic: her clothes, soaked through, clung to her small body as her wet hair tangled across her brow, the braid even heavier and darker against her neck. The water that had trickled down her legs and from her ankles had collected in a pool around her feet, shimmered by the gusts of wind.
“Look. Just drop it, all right?” Sarah spoke fiercely, drawing her arms tight around her body. “I’m cold and wet and tired. And believe me, I’ve seen enough of things that don’t exist. Including this little girl—which you can’t see, unless you’re as crazy as I am. All right? So let’s get back to shore. Immediately.”
“We’re not going to leave her here.” An obstinate expression formed on Wycliffe’s face. “We can’t.”
“I’m ordering you to. How’s that?” Sarah shook her head in exasperation. “We can play whatever games you want to later on.”
Wycliffe made no reply. The waves had slackened a bit, enough for him to loosen one hand’s grip on the platform’s edge and extend it toward the image of the little girl. “Come on,” he said to the nonexistent child. “I’ve got you.”
A few seconds later, the apparition who called herself Rachael was in the boat, next to Sarah. A few feet away, Wycliffe stationed himself in the prow, watching as the wind and rain whipped into his face, as though he was concerned that Sarah might do some impossible harm to the child. The boat moved away from the triangular platform as Zwingli applied himself to the oars.
“Some loyalists,” she said darkly. “I thought you were supposed to do what I told you to. Both of you.”
“I’m sure that.” Wycliffe shrugged uncomfortably.
“That you’ll agree that this was the right thing to do. When you’ve had a chance to reconsider.”
“I doubt it.” Beside her, the Rachael child pressed closer, trying to get warm; she tucked Sarah’s hand into both of hers, snuggling into the woman’s ribs. “Well. I hope you’re satisfied.” Sarah looked down at the image. The
