“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.
“Well,” Raphael said, “he refers to himself as the Schist Ex Machina.”
Gabriel almost snorted. If the situation weren’t so eerie and repulsive, it would be funny. But as he saw the lip of the whirlpool quickly approaching, his sense of humor died very quickly.
“Hey, Gabriel,” Michael said. “You still have that empty vial, right?”
“Of course he does,” Raphael said. “He’s been carrying it this whole time. It’s next to the poison that he was touching some moments ago.”
Gabriel raised his eyebrows then gently patted the empty vial in his pocket. “I’m never going to get used to this whole telepathy thing.”
Michael chuckled. “You call it telepathy. We call it communication.”
Both slugs laughed, although the sarcastic albino slug several paces behind them laughed louder.
“My apologies, Gabriel,” Raphael said. “But yes, when we reach the edge of the maelstrom, it would be wise to use that vial to collect a sample of the Schist Ex Machina’s consciousness. However, be careful. They will try to do the same to you.”
“What do mean?”
“They’ll try to collect you, man,” Michael said. “And trust me, that’s not a party you wanna join.”
Gabriel reached into his pocket and took out the plastic bag. He quickly inventoried its contents again: the empty plastic vial, the photo of Yvonne on the beach, a photo of Melanie, the Schist vaccine needle, and the antidote. Oh yes, the antidote. The poison.
Anger rumbling in the pit of his stomach, Gabriel gazed out at the mass of Schistlings surrounding him. He had the poison right there in his hands. It would take less than two seconds to uncap it, dump the contents into the Schistlings’ breeding ground, and murder their entire toxic species, all before the slugs could stop him. He could finish them off right there and not have to waste his time with any of the Sky Amoeba business. Sure, he’d be betraying all of his slug buddies. Sure, all of those poor, innocent people infected with the Black Virus would die, but it was for the greater good. Wasn’t it?
No, he wouldn’t do it. He didn’t believe in fate, but there was a reason that his first escape attempt had gone so badly. Murder wasn’t the solution. Victor had said to trust him, and because of that trust, Gabriel had finally made it to the ocean. He had come so far; it was too late to revert back to his old ways.
Gabriel retrieved the empty vial then resealed the bag. The slugs stopped at the edge of the colossal hole at the center of the maelstrom. They were just close enough for Gabriel to see down into it but far enough away to avoid being sucked into its heartless center. A blast of humid air escaped from the hole.
Deep inside the whirlpool’s center, a hole that looked as deep as the Grand Canyon, the mass of blackness was forming into an enormous face then un-forming and then forming again. The face had distorted features and a mouthful of serrated teeth, each one at least double the size of Michael’s entire body. A throaty gasping sound erupted from the face’s mouth.
Gabriel shivered, holding the vial with both hands so as not to drop it. “This is it?”
“Yes,” Michael replied.
“I thought you wanted me to negotiate with it or something like that? Why not do that here?”
“Time breeds stubbornness,” Raphael said, “and it’s been a long time since the maelstrom began. That negotiation will still happen, but the Schist Ex Machina will never agree to it here. A sample must be collected.”
Gabriel looked down into the face’s bulging, house-sized eyes, and a tingle crawled up his neck. The eyes were watching him, waiting for him to make the first move. “Okay,” Gabriel said as he opened the vial. The stopper made a subtle popping noise.
