Hope & Fury (Heroes & Demons Book 2)

Rick did not swim slowly up from sleep like he usually did. He didn’t feel groggy or even hungover. There was a clear sharp sense of alertness that sprang into existence the moment his eyes snapped open and took in the world around him with hungry arms. Something was wrong, he felt it so deep in his being he didn’t know where it was coming from.

Fresh sunlight streamed in through the pothole near his hammock, out of which he could see only ocean. But there still was something wrong. The world was too quiet. Much too quiet, even the seagulls had quit their yapping out this far. There was the soft lapping of the waves against the side of the hull but that was it.

He quietly slipped off his hammock (much harder than in theory) and landed barefoot on the linoleum floor beneath him. He still wore his BioSuit, but the boots were nearby. He decided not to wear them, not to alert anyone that might be around to his presence. He moved silently through the galley towards the sleeping area where two bunk beds were on either side of the corridor. There was a moment of utter stillness and then quickly he rushed forward and slapped a hand across the mouth of the only occupant – Andrew. Andrew struggled beneath him but as his eyes flashed open he saw the look of warning on Rick’s face.

Seconds later the sunlight dappling off the ocean and from the sky that poured in through the portholes was cut off as someone swiftly moved past them. A second later it happened again, someone following the first figure. He glanced back down at Andrew and let go of his hold. Andrew nodded quietly and too slipped barefoot from his bed.

They shared a look and Rick quickly and quietly gave out the orders with his own rudimentary sign language. Andrew teleport outside, stay hidden – he goes up the stairs. Rick handed him one of the pistols from his belt and prepped his own for use. Andrew disappeared a moment later as Rick headed for the galley door and the stairway beyond.

He moved towards the entrance to the only proper bedroom on his left and slowly swung open the door without a single creak. There was a split second where he held his breath as the black-clad figure he could see reflected stood in the bathroom, holding open the shower curtain. He rushed forward stealthily and slammed the hilt of his pistol into the back of the man’s skull hard enough for there to be the first sound of the morning – a dull crack. The man sagged in his arms and Rick caught him before he could thud to the floor and alert his friends.

He lowered him gently to the floor of the bathroom and took a moment to check out his equipment. He had a walkie-talkie that Rick clipped to his belt, along with a rather large machine gun which seemed like something out of a game. He slung it across his back and checked his pistol. He made sure the safety was off as he headed back for the bedroom door (minus one Mia), moving into the corridor as silently as he had entered before.

He held the gun ready as he moved up the steps towards the door to the outside world. He still heard no sounds or shouts of alarm, indicating that for now, Andrew remained as covert as he. Slowly he reached out for the handle of the door, hoping no one was there to see but it burst open as a black-clad man kicked it swiftly with his boot. There was a moment of hesitation on both sides at the suddenness of the encounter but Ricky was the first to shoot – one into the man’s vest and one through his shoulder. He yelled in pain and collapsed to the floor even as Rick sprung forward and kicked him swiftly in the head.

He ignored the flare of pain in his unprotected foot and scoured the stern of the boat for any more intruders. There were two men, both of them securing a line between their sleek black boat and theirs. They turned to him in surprise even as Rick fired twice, one going wide of the mark and the other hitting one of the men so hard in his vest that he fell backwards, over the railing and overboard.

He dived to the floor as the second man raised his automatic weapon and let loose a slew of bullets all crashing into the wall behind him. He felt wetness against the side of his face and saw that he was lying in a pool of blood that had finished spreading from the corpse of Mia. Her cold lifeless eyes stared at him, the bullet hole between them red and ugly. He felt the slight prick as splinters rained down over him.

Then there was a sudden scream, a dull thud and silence. He picked himself up and saw Andrew standing over the unconscious man, looking back at Rick in a muted horror.

“Are you hurt?” he snapped, but Rick shook his head.

“It’s Mia, Andrew,” he explained, “They must have killed her first.”

Andrew’s eyes widened as he stepped over to him, enough to see the smooth cocoa skin of her legs protruding from behind the lounge chair. Rick wiped the blood from the side of his head as best he could and rushed forward to where the two unconscious men were

“Is there anyone else?” Rick asked of Andrew, who shook his head.

“Not up here,” he explained, keeping his grief in the tightest check he could, “But I saw them lowering a submersible into the water. They’re probably looking for the entrance to the Library right now.”

“Then we need to go down after them,” Rick decided.

“You’re right, but how?” Andrew asked him, “We don’t have a submarine.”

“We have something better,” Rick told him, “Me.”

He stepped to the railing, climbed up and flung himself over. A moment later and he was plunged into the icy cold water of the deep, juxtaposed so intensely with the heat of the Mediterranean sun. He let go of himself, felt something deep inside take over, an instinct he couldn’t fully comprehend. It washed over him like the waves above and he felt no longer cold. His mind seemed to expand, to reach out to the water around him.

Did his body change? He didn’t know. He only felt the line between himself and the water around him blurred so strongly he didn’t know where one ended and the other began. Saying he was in his element was only a shadow of the truth. He felt a school of fish wisp away from him a kilometre to the south. He felt the vast craggy ocean floor beneath him so deep he could only just sense it.

He felt the submersible in the water, now stationary and he sensed the ship beyond, somewhat strewn across the side of the rising sleeping giant that held it precariously, as one would hold a butterfly. As he sensed it, he moved towards it and suddenly he was there. There was no pressure, no cold crushing depth...just a sense of disconnection. Suddenly he saw, rather than sensed, the opening on the bottom of the boat. He rushed forward towards it, hardly feeling himself moving a muscle and burst out of the ocean depths into sweet air, his body slamming back into collusion with his mind. The two suddenly became one once more and yet two at the same time. He slipped out of the ocean and into the trapped air inside the vessel with ease.

For a moment he sat, taking in the dank surroundings, the rotting wood and the stink of age. There was a metallic tang in the air and he suddenly saw why – there were hundreds of the golden coins in the hold. After a moment, drained from the experience, he unzipped one of the pockets of his BioSuit and brought out an earpiece. He clipped it onto his ear and spoke loudly into it,

“Andrew, pick up your bloody earpiece,” he said into it. He heard a crackle as it came to life,

“I forgot about these,” he heard Andrew mutter, “So what did you find?”

“It was awesome,” Rick explained, “I, like, was the ocean for a brief moment. And I could sense everything. I’m inside the ship, it seems to have some kind of trapped bubble of air inside.”

“Probably artificial,” Andrew offered, “I wouldn’t put it past these guys.”

“Anyway, there’s room and air if you want to come down,” Rick told him.

“What about the pressure and oxygen? It’s a little too far to dive without a tank and I don’t think I can teleport if I don’t know where I’m going.”

Rick thought for a moment, understanding the dilemma. He looked around him, then a thought occurred to him, rather unusually.

“Maybe you could do what I just did,” Rick suggested, “Air is your element, right? You should be able to sense it. Put your headset into your pocket again and then jump into the ocean. Then kinda relax and reach out with your mind. When you get a lock, beam aboard Scotty.”

“You’re serious?”

“Just do it.”

There was silence for a full minute before suddenly he heard a rush of wind and Andrew appeared fully-formed and dripping wet into the hold of the ship. Rick couldn’t help a smirk as he muttered,

“Wow, that really worked.”

“You didn’t know it was going to work?” Andrew asked him, angrily.

“I may pretend to but I don’t know everything,” Rick pointed out, “Now could we get back to business? I assume this is the ship he was looking at?”

Andrew glanced around them, “The coins would indicate that.”

“So where the hell are our friends?”

Andrew looked up to the ceiling where there was a delicately concealed trapdoor. He indicated with a nod and began to move across the upturned cargo towards it.

“Couldn’t that just open up to the ocean?” Rick asked.

“The Spanish ships weren’t that watertight,” Andrew explained, “There has to be air above here. I’m guessing some kind of cave entrance.” He reached up, grabbed the thick gold ring on the door and yanked it open. It opened easily into an upper (or perhaps lower, the ship did seem to be upside down) level. Andrew grabbed a handhold and yanked himself up, Rick following suit a moment later.

The two of them emerged into another level of the cargo hold – this one half destroyed. Most of the planks had fallen away, leaving a rather large entrance to a cavern that extended above. A small ladder led up the side of the wreck/cave wall which allowed him and Rick to get up into the cavern proper. The walls were smooth black rock, but there was plenty of light to see by thanks to a couple of lit lanterns left by a small pile of weapons and back-up torches. Rick frowned at Andrew, who shrugged. They obviously didn’t know they were here.

Rick led the way forward, carefully picking his way over the slippery volcanic rock. He picked up the shotgun and checked it was loaded. He continued to make his way across the rocks which slipped away from him and landed on the rotted floorboards of the ship below. Eventually, he came to the smooth platform which acted as the entrance to the cavern beyond. As he and Andrew rounded the corner they were met with a feast for the eyes.

The volcanic rock slipped away to reveal a cavern even larger than the entrance to the Temple, this one likewise adorned by two gargantuan Greco-Roman columns which stretched to the ceiling high above. A pattern of them was spread throughout the entire library, supporting the generously adorned roof painted with all manner of images of what Andrew recognized immediately were the Gods.

Watched over by the painted Gods above was a whole host of treasures the likes of which the world had never lied eyes on. There were treasures even Rick recognised as Egyptian – sarcophagi, hieroglyphs on artefacts dating back thousands of years. There were piles upon piles of gold coins, statues of gods of all shapes and sizes. Some were harder to define, one a depiction of a large chest Rick had a feeling he recognized a little too well.

They moved slowly but surely on one of the paths through the treasures, drinking it all in with their eyes. Andrew recognized the dishes of fire around from the last underground construction he’d visited – the Temple. They too burned with an unknown fuel source, brightly and hotly.

There were some leaks, slow drips that cut grooves through the walls throughout the years they’d been there. But otherwise, the place had remained well intact. Rick could hardly imagine Home Base surviving such lengths of time untouched by fire or flood. And this was bloody well underwater.

There were voices and lights at the back of the room. He and Andrew silently yet carefully (they were still barefoot) moved through the treasure troves towards their visitors. There were two of them, one wearing a standard wetsuit, the other a simple black BioSuit. The style Janet had first made fashionable in her End-Of-The-World range. Both were male and the BioSuit man seemed to be in charge of the proceedings, yelling something at his underling with enough force to make union leaders wince.

Rick rushed forward and, borrowed rifle at the ready, hid behind a large stone coffin of some guy who looked like Tutankhamun’s butch brother. Andrew joined him and they did their best to listen in, shivering with cold as Andrew was.

“And if it’s not here, ain’t that a kick in the teeth?” the BioSuit man lashed out at his colleague, catching him hard on the ear. His slap was worse than his sarcasm as his underling shrieked in pain. Rick saw a flash of recognition cross Andrew’s face and before he could stop him, Andrew stood from their hiding place and stepped into the light.

The two men turned, the BioSuit man was tall, muscular – his cut features carved from marble, his hair buzzed down to within an inch of its life. He almost snarled when he saw Andrew. The second man, shorter, sandy brown hair looked at Andrew in muted horror. Realising their cover was blown completely, Rick joined them both, raising his borrowed rifle as if in any form of defence.

“Andrew, what are you doing?” he barked at him.

“I’m saying hello to an old friend,” Andrew responded, his gaze fixed upon the smaller of the two men. “Isn’t that right, Daniel?”