She Walks in Shadows(59)
Anna reaches out again and manages to get a hold of Bianca’s forearm. Bianca looks startled, and Anna tries to pull her away from the horror. Away from the vortex, away from the impossibly rising water. Bianca loses her balance and Anna manages to pull her, floating, towards the doorway.
“Apua!” Anna pants, all the words in the English language gone from her mind. “Run! Help!”
Bianca struggles to regain her balance. For a moment, she looks at Anna and there is a sad smile on her face. Then it is gone and she emits a manic laughter. She grabs Anna’s hand in a death grip and pulls her towards the center of the room.
“Stop!” Anna screams. Bianca’s fingers are like steel and she pulls on Anna with a determination Anna can barely match. She grabs onto whatever she can, but the wall is sleek and there is nothing to hold onto.
Suddenly everything stops. The buzz and hum dies out. Bianca stops pulling and the terror in the middle of the room raises its front tentacles. Even the vortex stops.
The cthulhu slams down its tentacles and time starts again. The vortex changes direction and Bianca is not prepared. She is slammed into Anna, who makes a final, desperate grab and gets one arm around a thick, round pipe. When it starts to give away, she realizes it is not a pipe.
The safety chain of the nitrogen bottle gives away and the bottle starts to fall. It goes into a slow, wobbly spin, almost regaining its balance before finally toppling over. The top hits the wall, the nozzle breaks, and the explosion sends the bottle bottom-first towards the center of darkness. The light flickers once more and goes out.
Anna struggles to get her head above water, but she doesn’t know which way to go for. She is thrown around by the vortex. Her legs are cramping and her sides sting from fighting the reflex to breathe.
Then there is only darkness.
Anna wakes up in the hospital hooked up to what feels like dozens of monitors and IV lines. The nurses are kind and speak good English, but Anna struggles with putting together the simplest sentence. Her lungs are on fire, her skin dry and brittle, her lips chapped.
“Water,” she rasps. Then, “Bianca?”
The nurses bring her water.
Later, Anna hears that campus security reached the lab a few minutes after the explosion. The nitrogen-bottle projectile had gone through the room and through the opposite wall. No one mentions the horror it slammed through on its way there. No one speaks of a vortex. Maybe no one saw it, save Anna and Bianca.
Bianca was not saved. The broken-off nozzle hit her squarely in the stomach. The guards did what they could, but she succumbed to her internal injuries in the hospital.
Anna had swallowed and breathed in a quantity of salt water. The security officers had found her unconscious and throwing up in a puddle, and saved her life by preventing her from choking on her own vomit. The hospital has tried to keep her hydrated to fight off the salt poisoning and she prevails.
Professor Jacobsen and Max visit her in the hospital. Max looks the same as always, but Professor Jacobsen has black tights under her skirt and no jewellery. They have a gift from the lab members: The laboratory has pooled their money to pay for a new cell phone for her. Anna feels uncomfortable taking it. It is far too expensive, from people she knows far too little. The phone is dripping with guilt. From police questions and now Professor Jacobsen’s explanations, she learns that everyone believes Bianca had a mental breakdown, destroyed the laboratory, and tried to drown Anna in a bucket of salt-water. Buckets and buckets of salt-water. There was also a pipeline break. Anna cannot understand how the story makes sense to anyone. Perhaps it doesn’t.
Professor Jacobsen is clearly distraught. “Maybe I pushed her too hard,” she says. Anna rasps in response that it was not anyone’s fault. There is nothing else she can say. How can you grant absolution when you don’t think you deserve it yourself?
Max the SAXS guy looks old and sad. “Poor Bianca,” he says. “Poor you. Take care of yourself.” He tells Anna that all of the cthulhu experiments were ruined by the flood in the laboratory. Little ghost-like patches of the cultures were found here and there, rapidly dying due to drying. Now the lab reeks of chlorine and cleaning agents, and will be rebuilt later. Anna wonders what happened to the rest of the creature — maybe the rest of it went down the drain in little pieces. Her eyes dart towards the bathroom. The door is slightly open. She has difficulty concentrating on her visitors.
Professor Jacobsen reassures Anna that they still have a complete data set and a publication can still be written. Anna feels sick to her stomach. Professor Jacobsen goes on and on — she seems oblivious to Anna’s discomfort. Max tries to interrupt her several times politely. He finally puts a light hand on her forearm and scowls. “Stop. Just stop. Not the time, not the place.” Anna looks at the pair of them and wonders when the hammer scientist turned into the lesser tool.
After they leave, Anna forces her aching legs to take the few steps to the bathroom. She grabs a towel, closes the door, and puts the tightly rolled towel in front of the doorstep. It is not watertight by any means, and it will be difficult to explain to nurses, but it still feels better than nothing.
The thought of the little cthulhus being washed into the drain, into the water treatment plant, finally out into the sea, fills her with dread. She tries to tell herself H. cthulhu should not thrive in the dirty sewage water where salt concentration is rapidly dwindling, nor in the low salt of the Baltic Sea. Not even in the moderately salty Kattegatt, should they float in that direction.