Still, the temptation to unscrew the attaching hardware and take the faucet with me is hard to resist. But I manage.
A couple doors down, two men in pajamas seem to have beaten each other to death with anything that wasn’t bolted down—including what appears to be some of the Dunleavy camera equipment—dying just inches apart in the suite, likely from blood loss. Nysus makes me grab the video equipment and any device that looks like it could have footage on it and pull it all into the hall.
Strangely, neither of the men have anything to do with the show, given that one is a former professional basketball player and the other an aging movie star.
I don’t recognize the basketball player—Anthony Lightfoot, according to Kane.
“Lightfoot may or may not have been involved with one of the Dunleavys,” Nysus pipes up. “Like secret sex vid involved.”
I wince. “Yeah, got it, Ny.”
“But it’s never been confirmed,” Nysus adds. The collected video equipment in what is, presumably, Lightfoot’s room seems to indicate some kind of connection, though.
But the actor is Jasen Wyman, most familiar to me for playing the doting grandfather in the kids’ fantasy adventure movieCastle Roarke. But he was famous for his heartthrob blue eyes and lust-inducing smile about three decades before that.
It’s surreal to see him here, what’s left of his famous face staring sightlessly across the room.
In the next suite, a skinny guy in a crew uniform hides in a closet, probably under the pile of furs that now float around him and surrounded by a small hoard of food. His arms and legs are huddled around his body, as if that would help with the cold.
We come across another famous actress, two more world-renowned athletes (soccer and golf) and their wives, a model that I recognized from a perfume commercial, and several more royals from various countries, per Nysus.
In all, fewer than half of the suites are… were occupied. But the deaths are all the same: suicide, murder, death from exposure. Over and over again.
The emergency crew bunk room across from the bridge is empty and mostly undisturbed. The sheets are pushed back—and floating—on one of the four mattresses, but the other bunks are still made tightly. Similarly, one of the metal lockers at the foot of each bunk is open an inch or two. When Kane opens it to look inside, it’s a random assortment of personal items. A change of underclothes, a comb, shaving kit, etc.
A locked door on the far wall reveals emergency rations and water stored neatly on shelves, seemingly untouched.
All of which supports my theory that whatever happened, happened fast. And, based on the deaths we’ve seen, violently.
Which may help explain why we miss the last passenger. At first.
We’re midway down the port side again, on our final cursory glance-through of the cleared rooms, when Kane stops me in one of them. “Wait. Do you see that?”
He gestures toward the bed in front of us.
At first I don’t see anything different than before. Pillows and a rumpled white comforter hovering above the bed. But then I glance down.
“Are those…” he begins.
“Yeah,” I say flatly.
Fingers just barely poking out from beneath the shelter of the bed. Attached, presumably, to a hand and a possibly whole person. Damn.
I push to the edge of the bed, catching hold to balance myself, and take a breath. Whoever it is is long dead. They can’t hurt me.
I bend down to shine the light underneath the bed, to see what we’re dealing with.
And she’s staring right at me. Or, she would be, if she still had eyes. The place where they should be is a smooth white strip. Like someone simply erased them.
I jerk back.
“Claire?” Kane grabs at me to keep my momentum from carrying me backward.
“You okay, TL?” Nysus asks. “Your vitals—”
“Fine,” I gasp. “I’m fine. Just… surprised me.” Nothing like looking under the bed and getting a face full of nightmares.
“She’s… something’s wrong,” I say, panting.
