On my nature trip up to Ucluelet, we spent a lot of time on the beach. My friends—or at least, my classmates—wanted to find hermit crabs. I tried to tell them that hermit crabs were more tropical, but they didn’t listen to me.
Not the point.
When Alice and I visited Telegraph Bay, the fungus was starting to grow and cover everything. We watched the water coming in. The air was full of spores, and I couldn’t stop sneezing, but the waves rippled and shimmered just like they always had.
I’d never been much of a beach girl, but I couldn’t help but notice the tiny footprint trails in the layer of spores that covered the sand. Were my classmates right? Or was this something else?
I’m tempted to believe it was something else, but part of me hopes it was hermit crabs.
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Location Unknown, Location Unknown, Time Unknown
- - - - -
The team recovers quickly, to their credit.
Within a few seconds, their rifles are waving around as they check the thin spit of sand we’ve found ourselves on. Everywhere they step, the crunchy, thick sand turns blue—the longer they stay in one place, the more brilliant it gets. The color’s brightest near their vomit puddles.
“James, information? Can you connect to the whole team?” I ask.
[Yes. Overriding secondary command and control protocols. I’m in their augs directly. That will allow Director Ramirez to maintain contact,] James says. He sounds distracted, and for a second, I’m furious about that. [JAMES Unit communication incoming. Current reality status incomplete. Reality levels are medium-low to low. Atmosphere is breathable. Lieutenant Rodriguez, report landing conditions to Command at your convenience.]
“Got it,” Rodriguez says through clenched teeth. “JAMES Unit, can you analyze the ground? What’s going on here?”
[Already running analysis. Analyzing. Analysis complete. Start moving.]
“Where?” Daley—L4-4—says.
[Anywhere. Don’t stay still.]
The ground where the team landed starts to collapse on itself. It’s like there’s nothing under the thin layer of sand we landed on. I scramble back, away from the blue below my feet. Strauss is already moving. The rover beeps in panic and floors it down the beach; two wavy blue lines follow it as one of its saddle bags falls off. It drops into the void below.
“Come on!” Rodriguez shouts, and we start jogging down the beach after the robot.
Behind us, the world slices into chunks as the ground cracks and collapses behind the robot.
----------------------------------------
Forty-five minutes later, I spot the ship.
It’s enormous—a cruise ship or an oil tanker. I can’t tell from this distance, even though I’ve seen them in Victoria’s ports before. Strauss sees it a second later. “Lieutenant, we’ve got something. Possible place to hole up and get our bearings?”
“Negative,” Rodriguez says. “Our mission is to acquire a Voiceless Singer. We keep moving until we find one.”
[Ma’am,] James says, [the odds of finding a Voiceless Singer by wandering are quite low. However, they seem to be interested in L4-3. Further, the beach is not a safe place to gain a powerful anomaly’s attention. The ship may not be subject to the same anomaly as the sand is—the fact that it’s still here suggests it’s stable. That would give us time to create a course of action.]
I roll my eyes. “We can’t stop anywhere else.”
The lieutenant seems like she’s wavering. A chunk of sand falls into the nothing, and she makes up her mind. “Fine. Command, we’ve encountered a ship. I’m recording video—expect highly compressed images at low framerate. The JAMES Unit and L4-3 have convinced us to investigate.”
“Very well,” Director Ramirez’s voice comes in over my helmet. “L4, approach cautiously and be prepared for anomalous behavior from the vessel.”
The others have their guns out and ready, so I draw my Revolver and take point. Rodriguez nods, and we head for the ship.
As we get closer, it seems to get taller. It’s not a cruise ship, that’s for sure. I’ve seen a few moving across the Salish Sea, and they all have windows and slides and stuff. They’re white and clean, and they seem to float like clouds. This one’s a rusted hulk with a single towering bridge halfway down its deck and a second raised area at the stern.
Its hull is broken, too, and thick, black oil oozes from the port side onto the sand between the front and back halves of the ship. The beach doesn’t turn blue or collapse, though, and Strauss heads straight for the oil. He puts a foot on it, and it stays solid. “Confirming that it’s the sand, and that it’s got something to do with…uh, reality level issues?”
[Affirmative,] James says. [Reality levels here are both low, but the discrepancy is almost exclusively in the sand.]
The oil’s sticky beneath my feet, but the sand doesn’t collapse, and even the rover can fit on the stinking black goop. Strauss breaks out a rope—he’s got everything for this expedition—and we climb aboard the wreck. As we do, I pass a faded painted name, and I shiver.
The ship’s name is the SS Pendleton.
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We secure the bridge, and Lieutenant Rodriguez calls in what she’s learned.
I ignore her. James is talking. [The Pendleton was a real ship from our reality, Claire. She has nothing to do with you. She sank in the 1950s—ninety years ago—off Cape Cod in the United States. They pulled a bunch of sailors out of the water, but the ship was lost, and they missed a handful of crewmates. We’ve just found her, though.]
“It’s not a coincidence,” I whisper.
[It is a coincidence. We could easily have ended up in any of a dozen different realities. This one happened to be where the Mergewalk spat us out. Director Ramirez and I are attempting to troubleshoot why the merge generator malfunctioned and get you and Lambda-Four back on course. In the meantime, hold tight onboard the Pendleton and wait for orders, okay?]
I don’t say anything. I’m busy staring at the rusted deck below the bridge. It’s covered in tubes and tanks, arranged in what should be a pattern, but it looks haphazard to me—like vines and pumpkins, not oil storage. Oil covers the deck. It’s everywhere; the whole inside must be full of it.
A scream echoes across the deck. My Revolver’s in my hand a second later, but none of the L4 troopers react. They don’t even move. “What the fuck was that?” I ask.
“Ghost ship,” Strauss says casually.
Munroe nods. “You’d be surprised how often this happens. You board one or two anomalous ships, and it’s just another day at the office. Usually, they show up near lighthouses. This is my seventh. What do you think? Captain’s guilty conscience?”
Strauss laughs. He’s digging through his bag. “I’m guessing lost souls from a failed rescue mission or possibly distraught wife. That one’s pretty common.” He sets up a battery pack and activates a device; both my ears pop and start ringing.
“What’s that do?” I ask.
“Poltergeist-Be-Gone,” Munroe says. He laughs.
“Seriously?”
Strauss is fiddling with it; the ringing changes tones as he works on the dials and knobs. Then it cuts off suddenly. “The official name is Post-Life Entity Auditory Dispersal System, but no one wants to call it the PLEADS. Begging ghosts to leave you alone doesn’t work. The Poltergeist-Be-Gone does.”
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The next scream’s a lot quieter. The rest of Lambda-Four don’t even notice. It’s like the voice isn’t even there. But I notice. It’s screaming for help, and it doesn’t stop. Eventually, I stand up. “I’m going for a walk.”
Rodriguez holds up a hand. “Top deck only. Don’t go below. Last time we sent someone below on a ghost ship, they got possessed within seconds. It took weeks to fix, and that L5-4 had to be taken off RST duty.”
I shrug. “I’ll be careful.” Then I add a fifth Inquiry to my list, filling it up.
►How can I put the Pendleton’s ghost to rest?
I start out listening to Lieutenant Rodriguez; there’s a massive crack in the deck leading down into blackness that stinks like oil and rotten flesh. And chrysanthemums. I avoid it for now. Instead, I follow the railing along the hull toward the ship’s bow. It’s half-buried in the sand. The Pendleton isn’t going anywhere, even with the tide coming in.
Neither are we. The water’s up past the hanging rope midship, and even though no one’s told me not to touch it, something about the rising tide makes my spine shiver.
“What if this is a trap for me?” I ask.
[The odds of the Voiceless Singers having a ship from our reality with your last name are incredibly low. However, it’s not something we should discount, either. They seem very interested in you.]
“They do.” I stare out at the white sand beach and the nothing below it. “How does this reality work, and why didn’t the Pendleton sink?”
[It broke in half in cold weather,] James says. [It was a common problem with this model of tanker. But I’m not sure why it didn’t trigger the sand below it, or why the oil didn’t trigger it. I have a guess: the ship itself is anomalous, making it interact differently with the beach. But that doesn’t explain why your footsteps trigger the sand, so that’s not a complete answer.]
“Do you want a complete answer?” I ask.
[I’m overtaxed right now. So no, not really.]
I shrug. I do want a complete answer. The screaming voice is stronger outside the bridge, but it’s not an infohazard or a meme. If it was, James would have activated a filter or warned me. “Do you have anything to filter out Post-Life Entities?”
[No. That’s not how they work,] James says. [You can’t filter out a ghost. RST teams force them out with PLEADS devices, solve their puzzles, or contain and remove them. We don’t have the firepower for that right now, though.]
“Right.” I throw a piece of rusted metal off the ship’s deck. It arcs through the air, glinting in the sun, and hits the beach with a thump. The sand around it goes blue, then collapses. I repeat the experiment, this time with a pipe.
The result’s the same. I’m filling out my mental equation for this whole scenario. The first problem is that every time I run it, there are so many variables—so many Xs and Ys—that I can’t get a good, confirmed answer. Either the ghost needs my help or it doesn’t; either the ship’s part of this reality or it’s not. Both answers keep coming up, and neither answer helps me because I don’t know enough to solve for the truth.
The second problem is that the ship’s status in this reality and the ghost’s status in the Pendleton don’t matter—not really. Rodriguez is working with Ramirez. They’re going to figure out our position and try picking us up with the merge generator again. We’ll recalibrate and try to find that Voiceless Singer we’re supposed to be hunting. The Pendleton doesn’t matter. Neither does the beach.
The voice inside screams again.
I turn and head back for the bridge. As much as I want to solve this Inquiry, it’s not important. What is important is getting back on track and solving the other ones.
But when I get back to the bridge, it’s chaos.
Rodriguez is gone.
----------------------------------------
Strauss asks, but no one saw anything. Not even James. One second, Rodriguez was there. Then I opened the rusted door, and they all looked my way. Then she was gone.
She’s not picking up on our comms, either. Her channel’s completely dead—not even static, just silence.
It’s weird, though, because the sun’s still out, the sand’s still bright, and if it weren’t for the void below it and the decaying, rusting ship, this would look like an ideal place for a vacation. It doesn’t feel like a horror show in the making. We haven’t even seen any signs of death on the Pendleton other than the stench, and that’s just how different realities smell. I wouldn’t know what happened to the tanker if it weren't for James.
But still—Lieutenant Rodriguez is missing.
“We need to call it in,” Strauss says. He opens the channel with SHOCKS Headquarters and starts talking.
“I’m going after her,” I murmur. It’s a trap. It’s one hundred percent a trap—the equation’s become a lot more clear all of a sudden. But the truth is that even if it’s a trap, I’m still going after Olivia Rodriguez. We can’t leave her here, and the only place she could have gone is into the ship’s hull.
I stare at the gaping black crevice between the Pendleton’s bow and stern halves. It looks like a grin—like the ship’s leering at me. It knows I have to go after her. It knows what I’m about to do.
“Copy,” Strauss says. “Holding position until we know more.” He looks up. “Alright, L4, we’re holding position and readying a Reality Anchor. Whatever we’re dealing with is ignoring the Polter-Be-Gone, and I don’t feel like begging. Let’s get to work.”
The others—Daley and Munroe—get to work helping Strauss out, but I just stand there, feeling useless. I clear my throat. “She’s in the ship. I’m going after her.”
“Negative,” Strauss says. “Orders are to hold here, set up standard multi-threat defenses, and await instructions and information. According to Command, the JAMES Unit is processing possible anomalies based on previous experiences with ghost ships. Until we know what we’re dealing with, we wait.”
“No.” I stand up and pull my best—and only—card. I probably out-firepower RST Lambda-Four, and I definitely out-tough them. They’re baseline humans, and I’m bordering on Xuduo-Danger. Maybe I’m already there. And James is even stronger in his own way. But that won’t convince them. This will. “I’m going. You can come with me and try to keep me safe or you can stay here.”
I walk to the door, half-expecting Strauss to try and stop me. When he doesn’t, I put my hand on the rusted latch. The door creaks open, and I start down the steep, crooked stairs. I don’t check to see if Lambda-Four’s with me. They will be. They don’t have a choice.
I’m their ticket home.
The top deck’s pretty much clear already; all the tanks and pipes feel awfully suspicious, though. I press my ear to one of the pipes. It’s flowing. Not much, but some.
So that’s a weird variable I hadn’t thought about. Why is this ship dumping oil onto the beach? It’s been ninety years, according to James. It should be done leaking. The oil should have soaked through the sand and dripped into the nothing below. That feels significant—like it’s a variable that’ll actually help me solve the ship’s mystery.
It also points belowdecks, and that’s where Lieutenant Rodriguez has to be. There are no new gaps in the sand leading away from the ship, so unless she fell into the abyss, she’s still on board. And if she did fall into the abyss?
Then there’s really nothing I can do for her. I’m not willing to take that kind of risk.
“I’m checking below,” I say.
“Negative,” Strauss says again, like it’ll stop me. “Give me two minutes and I’ll have a drone up and running for overwatch.”
Two minutes. Okay. I can give him two minutes. I nod. He sets up on the hatch’s edge, near the massive split in the deck, and starts running pre-flight stuff on a four-propellered drone about the size of my helmet. It doesn’t have any weapons or anything, and he doesn’t get a controller out. He blinks, and half of his helmet’s face shield goes opaque.
“Streaming view,” Strauss says. A small window opens in the top right of my vision, across my own helmet’s shield. The drone takes off, and a moment later, it plunges into the ship’s depths. A red light turns on as soon as it gets too dark to see, and Strauss’s head moves back and forth slightly as he drives the drone past huge oil tanks and a maze of pipes. There are almost too many down there; he has to fly slowly, and the drone’s propellers’ whine echoes painfully until the sound cuts off.
Strauss leads the machine all through the ship’s interior, but doesn’t find a single hint of Lieutenant Rodriguez. However, a few doors look sealed and rusted shut, and the drone’s not equipped to open them.
The fly-through takes five minutes, and I can’t stop fidgeting the whole time. But eventually, the drone zips out of the crevice between bow and stern, landing next to Strauss. He stares at it.
So does everyone else. It’s covered in oil almost all the way up to its propellers. The camera pokes out from the dripping, shimmering oil. “Did any of you see something hit it?” Strauss asks.
“No.” Daley reaches out and scrapes a finger across the oil, then smells it. “Standard crude.”
“What does that mean?” I ask.
Strauss hesitates. “Command, we have an anomalous oil leak aboard the Pendleton. Lieutenant Rodriguez has gone missing, and L4-3 insists on recovering her. Please advise.”
Director Ramirez clears his throat. “Command approves the rescue mission. Proceed into the ship, but remember…remember that your main objective is keeping L4-3 safe and secure.”
“Copy that,” Strauss says.
I’m already climbing down the ladder into the ship’s belly. The moment my feet hit the floor, I’ve got the Revolver out and the reality skippers loaded up. The fire beam shots are a bad idea in here, and I’m concerned that the gravity shells might cause too much damage to the rusted hull—or worse, open one of the oil tanks. The whole ship stinks. It’s a mix of rot, seawater, and oil.
And the pipes are whispering. Oil keeps flowing through them. It’s flowing down and toward the stern.
The rest of RST Lambda-Four hits the floor behind me—except for Strauss. He’s got the drone up and running again, and he’s scouting out the other side of the Pendleton. “I’ll continue providing overwatch.”
“Copy,” Daley says. I can feel the tension in his voice—and in my shoulders.
I ready the Revolver and push into the maze of pipes and tanks. The deck creaks under my feet despite my attempts to move quietly. When I hit a dead end, my first thought is to Slither and Smoke Form through the rats’ nest of pipes. But the rest of Lambda-Four can’t follow me if I do that, so I start backing up.
It takes almost fifteen minutes of searching for a path, covering our back, and moving cautiously, but eventually, I put my hand on the first rusted and locked door. The spinning handle screeches, then pops open. Air whooshes into the space behind it, a series of steep stairwells leading deeper into the ship.
Something heavy and metal crashes down behind us, and the little bit of sunlight cuts off.