Fornby sat in his office and cut the end of his second cigar. Brockmann had been silent since they left the ship—not the usual Brockmann lack of words, but truly silent. So, Simon reported what happened as best he could. The British gentleman listened to the story closely and never flinched, even when he reported they had come close to killing each other.

“Do you feel any aftereffects?” Fornby asked Brockmann.

The old man shook his head. “Nothing. Headache, but that’s probably a concussion from someone hitting me.” He didn’t say it as a joke, but Fornby smirked at the comment.

Simon looked at his bandaged hand and didn’t find it as funny.

“I hardly remember anything,” Brockmann said. “It’s like a distant dream, fading away despite my best efforts to remember it now that I’ve awakened.” Brockmann sighed. Simon saw the pain in his face—a weakness unusual for him.

“Anna will be in the hospital for a few days,” Fornby said. “A pretty severe concussion, but considering the amount of blunt trauma she suffered to her head, I think she’s lucky her skull wasn’t fractured.”

“What about the ship?” Simon asked.

“The coast guard picked it up, and it seems they aren’t reporting what they found there. Someone covered the whole thing up. Maybe the company the crew worked for—an insurance thing.” Fornby sighed and took a match to light his cigar. “Sure you don’t want one? You certainly deserve it,” he asked Simon, holding the cigar up.

“No thanks.” He didn’t believe it was an insurance thing. Anna had gotten a tip through her old network—a network that was probably more aware of what they were doing than they cared to admit.

“How did she hold up?” Fornby asked. “Is she Nocturne material?”

“By all means,” Simon said. He glanced at Brockmann, who was silent on the matter.

“Brockmann?” Fornby asked him directly. Brockmann looked up as if ripped from his thoughts, then nodded.

“Good, so we’ve got reinforcements. This is the second level 3 we got in three months. I don’t want to imagine what would have happened had this thing made its way back into the civilized world.”

Fornby took a breath from his cigar. “I pulled some strings and got all the files on that German sub, U37. It seems it had a mission to deliver this thing to the UK. Maybe a last measure to weaken the enemy. Obviously, the crew didn’t make it that far.”

Simon nodded. “Yeah.” He wanted to sleep. It was all he really wanted to do; sleep and not dream of the whispers.

“Well, then I’m glad this thing turned out so well. I think all of you deserve a few days of rest. I’ll take care of the whole thing from here on and make sure nobody goes looking for this sub again.” Fornby sighed.

“There’s something else,” Brockmann said. Both men turned their heads towards him.

“What?” Simon asked.

“Since 1989, we’ve seen nothing supernatural. Nothing,” Brockmann said.

“Well, lately, we had a few—” Fornby began.

“No,” Brockmann said.

Simon knew what he meant. “Brockmann is right. The monster here in Hamburg was created recently with the help of occult books. The Wormking wasn’t supernatural but more likely a leftover from prehistoric times. The strange man in the harbor? That seemed to be an unknown species that he dealt with. Not anything unnatural, just something unknown. We haven’t faced something like this before.”

Fornby nodded. “Which means what?”

Brockmann looked at him. “It means that whatever happened in 1989—whatever erased all supernatural things from the world—it didn’t affect this thing. It seems a few thousand tons of water isolated it from whatever happened back then,” Brockmann said.

Fornby nodded. “Yes, you’re right. A good thought. One worth further consideration.”

Simon looked at Brockmann. He understood it might mean that not everything was gone.

****

The headache was better, but not exactly good. When Anna opened her eyes in her private hospital room, she almost jumped; in front of her was Brockmann’s familiar face. His nose was stabilized by tape, and his left eye was still slightly swollen, but otherwise just stared at her, wearing his worn-out suit.

The man had tried to kill her, and she had tried to kill him, both consciously and under the control of the whisper. Now he stood there with a large bouquet of yellow flowers.

“These are from Simon. He needed some rest, but he’ll come by tomorrow,” he explained as he put the flowers aside.

“That wasn’t necessary,” Anna said and pulled herself into sitting position. How long had he watched her?

“Yeah. Told him the same.”

Anna couldn’t help but smirk. “I didn’t expect you.”

“I think I owe you an apology. For what I did to you,” the old man said.

“You didn’t do anything to me. I know who did it, what did it. I felt it, remember? It took me, too.”

“Yes, and you fought it for longer than I did.”

“I wasn’t as close as you.”

“Maybe. Maybe you’re stronger than I am. Anyway, I’m here to tell you that if you want in, you’re in.”

Anna looked at him for a moment. “I’ll think about it,” she said. Brockmann nodded.

“Fair enough,” he said and turned to leave.

“Do you remember anything?” she asked. Brockmann paused.

“Of the things I did? The thoughts that drove me? Less and less. But what I remember, I will take with me to my grave. As you said, we weren’t ourselves. We weren’t in control.”

“What do you mean?”

Brockmann heaved a deep sigh. “I mean, I remember that I didn’t kill Paul.”

Anna stared back, then slowly nodded. “Neither of us did, I think. Something else did.”

“Yeah. Something else,” he replied. “It’s still down there. Waiting another few millennia to escape.”

“Do you know what it is?”

He shook his head. “I don’t think we ever will. It isn’t a thing you can know or understand.” Brockmann waited a moment, then turned and left without saying goodbye.

Anna looked after him, then took out her phone. It wasn’t her private phone. This was her other one— the one with military encryption. She opened her messages and typed quickly.

I AM IN.

Then she put the phone away again and closed her eyes.

She could still hear it echoing somewhere inside.

The whisper.

THE END