Brice saw his own breath in front of his face, a haze that drifted off as the beam moved.
A peal of thunder washed through the forest, and the lightning lit the sky with an orange glow. There was no forking, just a flash, as if someone had found a light-switch for the clouds and had flicked it a couple of times. Brice instinctively flinched.
But the creatures didn’t seem bothered. They were more concerned with the light from his torch.
That was important. Again, he remembered Cathal spasming in the light. And now, he didn’t want to be out here anymore.
“Brice?” Ryann’s voice came up from the hatch, just by his feet now. He looked down. She had one hand on a rung, as if she were about to climb up, and one knee was raised.
“Coming down,” he said, then took one final look around the trees, bathing them with the light that seemed to send the creatures scurrying away.
“They’re angry.” Ryann’s voice was barely audible. “And…something else.”
Brice nodded, but didn’t know if she saw the movement. Thoughts raced through his head as he spun the rotary plate to seal the hatch.
“What happened to them?” she asked when he drew level with her. But he held up a hand. Before he said anything, he needed to be sure.
He ignored Tris’ comment and Keelin’s look when he entered the main room. He stepped across to the bunks.
With the blanket covering his body, Cathal looked like he was deep in peaceful sleep. For a fleeting moment Brice wanted to swap places. He wanted to be laid out, unconcerned with the world outside, blissful in ignorance. He wanted nothing more than to close his eyes and make this all disappear.
But he stepped closer, breathing through his mouth in anticipation of the stench. He couldn’t be distracted. He kept the torch beam angled to the floor, the yellow light following his footsteps. A flick of his thumb focused the beam, and then he raised it. The beam crawled across the floor and up the side of the bunk.
As it reached Cathal’s head, the man moved. His eyes remained closed, but they flickered. His head twisted violently to one side, and spittle flew from his mouth.
Brice moved the beam away quickly, up to the wall. If he was going to check this out, he needed to do it properly.
Brice pulled back the blanket and unbuttoned Cathal’s shirt with one hand. He gagged at the stench, and looked down at the worryingly familiar black covering that reached almost across Cathal’s chest now. He thought of what he’d seen hiding in the trees.
“What are you doing, Brice?” Ryann was by his shoulder, but she wasn’t trying to stop him.
“Not sure,” he said, and it was only partly a lie.
He brought the beam round on the wall, and then lowered the yellow glow onto Cathal’s chest.
And this time, there was no surprise when Cathal started to thrash about.
Somehow, Ryann knew what was about to happen. It made sense, like the pieces of a puzzle falling into place.
Cathal spasmed. Where the light fell on him, his skin rippled. The darker, leathery patches stretched and bulged, and a fine mist rose, like sweat evaporating. But it carried the stench of his wound with it, rancid and pungent.
An arm shot out, striking her leg before flailing in the air. Cathal moaned, and there was a low hiss at the back of his throat that grew into an angry rattle.
His body buckled, his back rising from the bunk. His other hand smacked against the wall with a crunch. The hiss grew into a cry of pain. Through her connection, Ryann felt his lattice flare bright, burning up, and a thousand synapses sparked.
“Enough!”
Brice looked at her, then back at Cathal, his mouth open, like he only now realised what he was doing. The beam jerked to the floor, illuminating the pool of water by his feet. And Cathal grew still once more.
“Tell me.”
She sensed Tris and Keelin, her hand on his shoulder, and his fist clenched. She considered sussing, but she needed to concentrate on what Brice had to say. They all did.
Brice didn’t meet her eyes when he spoke, and his voice was quiet but steady. She heard each breath he took.
“Outside,” he started, “I changed the light setting. Something startled me, and my finger slipped. I started running through all the settings, just to see what happened. Then I got to one setting, and those things…reacted. It was like they were hiding from the light, like they were scared of it. And then…well, I needed to be sure. I wasn’t trying to hurt him.”
Ryann never thought he was. But Brice wasn’t saying that for her benefit, was he?
“And Cathal reacted in the same manner as the creatures outside?”
He shook his head. “They hid from the light.”
“Which setting.”
Brice held the torch out to her. “I can’t read it. The setting it’s on now.”
Ryann held a finger over the control, and pulled the data up. Intensity, luminosity, angle, remaining power, streams of other figures. But in large letters, displayed in the most prominent data field in her lens, was the name for that setting.
“Sol,” she said.
“They’re scared of daylight?” Tris’ tone suggested confusion but also disbelief, and Ryann knew he wasn’t alone in that. Sol was, indeed, the closest artificial simulation of sunlight. It was what they used in communal areas in Haven, replenishing vitamin D and keeping them healthy. It was the basis of the light in the greenhouses. It was vital for life, and yet these creatures shunned it. And, if Cathal’s reaction was any indication, with good reason.
“Or something in its make-up. Might be a particular wavelength. We can’t know for sure.”
“That’s why they live in caves,” Keelin said. “That’s why we’ve never seen them before.”
Ryann nodded. It was a decent enough working hypothesis. But where the creatures came from wasn’t a priority at the moment.
Brice
