Page 20 of Adrift!
And that had summoned a monster?
Nehivar tapped at the device on his wrist. “Suvan? Sensors have been unable to decipher the anomaly’s presence, but you’ve been physically monitoring its wavelengths in the capacitorus. Did power levels change at all to indicate any activity with the anomaly?”
Felicity’s larger datpad, which she’d set on the couch beside her, suddenly projected a ghastly protruding eyeball overhung by the glaring miniature lightbulb of a deep-sea predator fish. Remy leaned back from the abrupt and repulsive appearance. No wonder the chief engineer hadn’t shown itself at any of the cruise gatherings.
“Move over, Lub.” With a sharp chitter and a flash of fangs in an even more protruding underbite, the projection just as abruptly disappeared, replaced by poorly rendered image of half a scowling, angular face. “Containment did not fail,” the engineer snapped. “My capacitorus has been continuously powered, the anomaly controlled within established parameters. I have the readings to show it.”
“But isn’t energy always changing?” Remy mused. “What if—?”
“Did not fail,” Suvan repeated obstinately.
Felicity leaned into Remy’s shoulder. “Don’t mind Chief,” she semi-whispered. “He’s been stuck down in the ship’s guts for too long and loves his engines more than anyone.” When the engineer sputtered, she added in a slightly louder voice, “I’m working on him.”
“Stop torturing my chief,” Nehivar growled. “Suvan, could you compare those readings to any variances in Ikaryo’s implants to confirm something like…resonance?” He glanced at Ikaryo. “If you agree.”
Ikaryo straightened. “Of course. If it will explain any of this.”
While he tapped at his own datpad, Remy’s gaze followed those deft gestures. The cybernetic components didn’t light up as when they’d kissed…
“Give me a moment while I calculate,” Suvan grumbled.
“What if—” Ikaryo glanced at Remy. “What if it’s not a separate energy phenomenon? Or not exactly, but somethingweare generating or enhancing or…” He hesitated when they all stared at him, then rallied. “Mariah might explain it better.”
Remy doubted that. “Like we sang the monster into being?”
“It’s not a monster,” Felicity objected, rising to face them all. “When we captured it, I felt like it just wants to make a connection. As if it’s lonely.”
Even as Remy exchanged dubious glances with Ikaryo, the captain reached out one big paw to gather the cruise director under his arm.
“I know you take the mission of the IDA seriously.” His deep rumble was affectionate. “But might you be projecting a bit, azeeli?”
She rested her hand on his chest where the ruff of his mane overflowed his uniform in late-80s hair band glory. “Maybe. But I think I’m not wrong.” She left her possessive hold in place when she looked at Remy and Ikaryo. “When Ellix and I kissed”—the captain coughed out a slightly startled sound—“right here in this salon actually, the anomaly responded powerfully but not just to the…er, bioelechemical stimulation. It felt…beyond that.”
“Like everything coming together,” Ikaryo murmured. When Remy looked at him, this time he didn’t meet her gaze. “Like all of me had found a place where…”
She desperately wanted to hear whatever he was going to say next, but Felicity’s datpad lit up with scrolling symbols.
“Containment held.” The arch confidence in Suvan’s voice sustained the barest crack. “But something did change. Ikaryo’s implants are simple, operating within limited constraints, nothing like my capacitorus. However, during the time in question, when combined with Ms. McCoy’s vocalizations, the waveforms aligned. Like an echo, or a bridge between them.”
Remy stiffened. She’d just been comparing the kiss to the bridge of a song. In music, the bridge might shift the chord progression or the rhythm, both connecting and crucially pivoting the arc of the song.
They’d bridged to a monster?
“That synchrony may have allowed a sort of quantum tunneling,” Suvan continued, “which manifests as a ghost of the anomaly outside the capacitorus. But not a true escape,” he emphasized.
“The distinction eludes me,” Nehivar rumbled, and Remy had to agree with him.
“I compared the waveforms to other sensor data from earlier in the cruise,” Suvan said. “Monitors weren’t set to capture the exact same readings, but there seem to be similarities. Other moments when the pattern of the anomaly in the capacitorus now and previous baseline energy signatures aligned.”
Felicity angled her datpad. “Show us when.” As Suvan’s finding scrolled, she flicked through another list. “According to my itinerary… During the dancing. Every time the sunsets eclipsed. The knitting circle when everyone was so happy being together. And of course”—her cheeks pinkened—“kissing. At least the ones we know about. But these other spikes…” Her face went all red and she blanked the datpad. “Well. Those I think we can guess.”
Suvan’s profile appeared again, partly obscured by the ugly creature he’d called Lub. “Guess? We need specifics, not guesses. What happened during the spikes?”
“Chief.” Nehivar’s low voice was a cautioning redirection. “What do the patterns show?”
“I guess”—Suvan rolled a pale eye resentfully—“they are more connections. Resonant harmonics analogous to the cyber-enhanced song that result in quantum entanglements.”
Remy dragged a hand through her hair, reluctantly sympathizing with the engineer’s clueless confusion. “I don’t know what any of that means.”
