“Don’t worry. They’ll never be able to follow us into this ocean, no matter how hard they might try. To them, the place we’re going doesn’t exist.”

“But it still affects them?”

“Yep.”

Gabriel looked up at the moon. The salty scent of the ocean water filled his nostrils. He listened to the waves, the rushing tide, the seagulls. He looked back at Bright New Day, and a happy feeling overcame his anxiety. Yes, the escape was really happening. He was free.

The beach slowly disappeared behind them as they sailed into the moonlit horizon.

Chapter 48:

Harry

“He did what?”

“He, um… escaped,” Harry Brenton said, blood rushing into his cheeks. “Mr. Schist is no longer in the building.” Harry looked down, unable to find a rational explanation for the catastrophic event he’d just witnessed. He couldn’t quite put into words what had happened.

“Harry,” the administrator said, “Gabriel was on the Guggenheim unit. He’s been practically comatose for weeks. Since the new security system was put into place, we’ve had no breakouts. How did this happen?”

Harry wiped sweat from his brow. “I don’t know what else to say, sir.”

“Well, where is he going? God, Harry. Just help me out here before I have a heart attack. Do we have any idea where that man is headed?”

“He said he was going to the ocean, sir.”

The administrator stared at him, his bald head shimmering in the florescent lights. He placed his hands on his hips, an authoritative stance he only used when he was really angry. “Kid, are you serious? The ocean?”

Harry nodded. “Yes, sir. Well, that’s what he said.”

“Okay.” Irving rubbed his eyes. “We need to get the ball rolling on this. I know we’ve got our people out there looking for him, but if we don’t move fast, Mr. Schist will be dead by morning. We need to call the police. Did you seriously say that he was heading to the ocean? What the hell?” Irving picked up the phone. “You can get back to work, Harry.”

With no small amount of relief, Harry left the office. In about thirty minutes, he’d have to start his evening rounds. Such was the nature of healthcare. No matter what happened, everyone had to stick to the routine and take care of the other residents. Though Harry loved helping people—he even loved Bright New Day—he hated the institutional system that plagued the healthcare industry. He hated the understaffing, the cut corners, and the depersonalization. More than anything, he wished that all of the staff had more time to spend with each resident as an individual, instead of having to constantly rush around in order to get all of the work done.

Harry reckoned that if nursing homes could be structured more like homes instead of hospitals, then maybe nice guys like Mr. Schist wouldn’t run away in the first place. Maybe they wouldn’t decline so fast, either.

Harry punched out for his break then walked to the front lobby. The lights were off, but the full moon poured a liquefied white glow in through the bay windows. He snagged a cup beside the cooler and filled it with water. God, I hope Mr. Schist is okay. He’d never forgive himself if his friend got hurt.

He stepped over to one of the windows and looked outside. Gabriel was out there, somewhere, in the dark forest that surrounded Bright New Day. He peered out at the wooded landscape of white birches and pine trees that stretched on for miles. Poor Gabriel Schist was lost somewhere in that dark forest, stumbling between the trees, desperately searching for some kind of beach.

Harry sighed. His job was at Bright New Day. His floor had thirty-six sleeping residents that needed him. All he could do was cross his fingers and hope for the best. Wherever the old man was, Harry hoped he was okay.

Chapter 49:

Oversaturated

The slug infantry continued their journey across the ocean. Gabriel reached down to run his fingers through the cold water. He looked up at the moon. God, the Atlantic is gorgeous tonight. He marveled at the thousands upon thousands of tiny slugs, swimming alongside him like an ocean of multicolored pebbles. The shoreline had disappeared a long time ago. No boats could be seen.

“We have one more stop to make,” Michael said, “and then we’re off to the Sky Amoeba.”

“Where are we stopping?”

“You’ll see. Soon.”

Gabriel shrugged and sat back to enjoy the ride. On such a bizarre, fantastical journey, he’d learned the value of patience, if nothing else. Minutes later, he spotted something that he at first thought was a trick of the light. He sat up straight so he could see better.

Ahead, the water was black, with no shimmer to its waves and no reflections of light, like a matte hole cut into the ocean. The dark mass stretched on for miles. At the center lay an enormous funnel that channeled deep into the ocean’s belly, ripping it open like a mortal wound. A raspy whispering emanated from the black water’s surface.

“We have reached the maelstrom,” Raphael said.

“Good God,” Gabriel muttered.

On television, the maelstrom hadn’t looked quite so monstrous, but it was the size of a small island, and the area appeared to be spreading. An image of an atlas with black oceans instead of blue ones appeared in Gabriel’s mind. The vial of poison in his pocket felt as heavy as a loaded gun.

“Tell me about it, man,” Michael replied in a fearful, hushed tone. “Makes me sick.”

This is the place. This is where I need to drop the poison, right in the collective’s black heart.

Michael craned his neck to the side. “And hey, man, don’t even think about taking out that poison in your pocket and uncapping it. Keep a lid on it, brother.”

“Understood,” Gabriel muttered. Still, he couldn’t resist touching the vial. The lid was on tight. So close.

He withdrew his hand from his pocket and braced himself as the slug infantry steered directly into the giant black mass. Fortunately, the mass didn’t swallow them whole or scald their flesh. Despite the whirlpool at its center, the perimeter remained rather calm, other than the harsh whispering.

The dark water was like a maggot pit of baby Schistlings, with millions of the squirming black monsters intertwined with one another. Their little sharp-toothed beaks occasionally rose into the air, gulping in oxygen, then dove back under the water. The maelstrom emitted a metallic smell, much like blood but more pungent.

The slugs pushed onward, proceeding carefully through the mass of Schistlings. The Schistlings did not react, which made Gabriel wonder if perhaps in their home, they couldn’t do anything. The other, more frightening possibility was that he and his slug friends were heading into a trap.

“How much farther do we need to go?” Gabriel asked.

Raphael crawled up Michael’s side. “We are going to the center. We need to get a piece of the core and take it to the Sky Amoeba.”

Gabriel flashed back to the helicopter footage when they’d first shown the “toxic waste spill” on television. He remembered seeing a wicked face somewhere in the maelstrom’s center, an image that made him shudder.

“The Schistlings are a collective consciousness, correct?” Gabriel whispered.

“Indeed,” Raphael replied. “But all collectives have a center. A source. One might be tempted to call this center a leader, but that would be inaccurate. This leader is not an individual creature but the sum total of every Schistling.”

“I saw a face when this was on television. Is that…?”

“Indeed it is,” Raphael said. “Their center is the first Schistling, the first being who crawled into the ocean and called upon his brethren to follow him, to become a part of him. He is the reason that all of the now-conscious immune systems are rebelling against their human bodies. They want to become a part of him.”

“Where did he come from?”

“A Massachusetts man named Kyle Harris. With Kyle’s death, the first Schistling was born, then it made its way out here.”

“Does this first Schistling have a name?”

Raphael glanced up at Michael’s antennas, which were shakier than Gabriel would have expected. Evidently, being in the maelstrom was getting under their skin, too. The giant slug leader looked back at Raphael and nodded.