Ghost Ship (NUMA Files 12)

The water began rushing away from him. The ship was rolling. Suddenly the harness pulled taut around him, dragging him toward the door. It pulled him free and then snapped with a loud twang.

He dropped back into the sea.

Dazed and barely conscious, he tried to kick for the surface but knew he was going deeper, pulled down by suction from the sinking yacht. The flashlight on his arm pointed downward, and Kurt saw the blurry outline of the yacht disappearing into the darkness below.

He turned his gaze upward, caught a glimpse of the silvery light, and then watched the darkness close around it. Everything went black. Until a hand grabbed him and pulled him above the waves.

Kurt woke up quietly. Unlike all the other nights he’d woken from the memory/nightmare, this time he returned to consciousness in a state of peace. He could hear a soft beeping and the sound of a ventilating duct. He opened his eyes slowly and found himself bathed in blazing light.

He was not at home but in a hospital, with a white ceiling, walls, and floor. His pupils, dilated by some medication, were letting in vast amounts of light that turned the dimly lit room into a blazing solarium.

He raised a hand to block the glare, but the IV line taped to the crook of his arm made it awkward. He let his arm fall and noticed a pulse meter attached to his finger, which was in turn connected to the monitor emitting the soft beeping sound.

He guessed that meant he was alive.

Looking through the glare, he saw a figure across the way. It was Joe, sitting in a chair, on the far side of the small room.

Joe looked like he’d been up forever. Three days of stubble covered his face, dark circles rested beneath his eyes. He had a cup of coffee in one hand and a comic book across his knee.

“Didn’t know you were a Manga guy,” Kurt said.

Joe looked up, a warm smile cutting through the haggard look. “I just look at the pictures,” he said. “Especially when the words are in a foreign language. As far as I can tell, this one’s about an orphan robot who befriends a boy and girl with mutant powers who have a penchant for samurai swords and cupcakes . . . Though I could be wrong about that.”

As Joe held the comic up, Kurt could see the surreal drawings and the Korean lettering in bright red. “Sometimes pictures don’t tell the whole story,” he said, thinking about his own experience. “What am I doing in a hospital?”

“Don’t you remember? Your girlfriend tricked you into zapping yourself.”

“ ‘Zapping myself ’?”

“In the tunnel under the DMZ.”

It took Kurt a minute to recall the extracurricular activities beneath the DMZ, but thankfully he did. He even remembered falling after pressing the button on the screen of the woman’s remote. “Considering the quality of care,” he said, “I’

m going to assume we’re in the South. How’d we get back here?”

“We made a run for the border, Zavala style,” Joe said. “Basically, I saved you . . . once again. And you missed the whole thing . . . once again.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Kurt said. His eyesight was returning to normal. “How long have I been out?”

“Three days,” Joe said.

“Three days?”

Joe nodded. “They did some minor brain surgery on you,” he explained. “I pointed out to them that any brain surgery on you would have to be minor, but they didn’t get the joke. Lost in translation, I guess.”

Kurt chuckled. “You’ve been waiting for me to wake up just so you could say that, haven’t you?”

“Pretty much,” Joe said. He put down the comic book and slid his chair over to Kurt, presenting him with a clear plastic vial. Inside was a tiny metal fragment half the size of a Tic Tac. A microchip.

“What is it?”

“Simple device,” Joe said. “It emits an electronic signal that short circuits your brain every time they expose it to a certain frequency. The doctors say they’ve tried similar systems on patients with Parkinson’s to control tremors. Or on people who’ve experienced emotional trauma, in an effort to rewire the recollection and reduce the emotional pain.”

Kurt looked at the chip. He wondered if its removal had allowed his memory to clear or if the jolt Calista had given him was so powerful that it had somehow overridden the false memory.

“According to the docs, the little thing has to be triggered by a transmitter,” Joe added. “Hearing that, Dirk sent a team to sweep your house. They found a transmitter hidden in your garage.”

Kurt considered all the trouble the tiny chip had caused him. “That’s why the nightmares stopped once I left D.C. And, I’m assuming, why I can remember being on the yacht now. I even remember you pulling me out of the water.”