“They’re punishing you,” Hwa realized. “You stayed the night, after Layne died, and they know where you are all the time, and now you’re being punished.”
“I suppose you could read it that way, but—”
“This is bullshit,” Hwa said. “Nothing happened!”
“I know.” He sounded very tired. He’d probably woken up early just to tell her this. It was 03:45.
“You were just being nice. My friend died, for shit’s sake. You were just being helpful.”
“I suppose you could read it that way,” he repeated, after a long moment. “In any case, I wanted to let you know myself. And tell you to be careful.”
“I’ll try and avoid the Big Bad Wolf, b’y.”
He laughed. “Please do. Wolves are a threatened-enough species as it is. My heart bleeds for the wolf who meets you on the road.”
*
Naturally, her period came the night before they were supposed to travel. She was regular as clockwork, but had secretly hoped that just this one time, she might be a little late. Because very few things sounded less appealing than taking a seaplane—a beer can with wings—all the way up Newman Sound while bleeding like a stuck pig. The water taxi to the seaplane jetty did nothing to help. It bucked across the waves so hard her teeth clicked.
“Rough one out there, today,” the taxi driver said. “Real cunt of a current.”
“How come nobody ever says it’s a real dick of a current, b’y? What’s with that?”
The driver said nothing more.
Being on the water meant getting a better view of the rig and the site of the future reactor. The rig looked sadder, these days. Only a couple of the pumps were still working. Just enough to claim some tax credits. But the signs proclaiming progress on the reactor were brightly lit, even at this hour.
FUTURE SITE OF FLEMISH PASS BASIN EXPERIMENTAL REACTOR, the signs read. Diagrams of the reactor awakened and projected as the taxi bobbed past. It looked sort of like a Chinese steam bun with a big egg yolk inside. Only the egg yolk was really a wad of experimental matter, and the pastry was several layers of bio-crete. It would have been more impressive if one of the projectors hadn’t been hacked to play old footage of Chernobyl and Fukushima and Three Mile Island to the tune of “Where or When.”
The rough currents on the North Atlantic were matched only by the turbulence of the skies above it. And in the seaplane, they felt every peak and valley in the pressure. After the third time Hwa bounced out of her seat, she started to wonder if her cup would manage to stay in place the whole trip.
The turbulence did nothing to reassure her. It did give her an opportunity to learn more about the team Security had sent to watch over them at the event. Apparently, Silas Lynch had picked them himself. He’d only sent their profiles over the night before—his assistant had apologized profusely, of course—and Hwa spent a good portion of the night going over their histories with Prefect. Their names were Theodore, Christiansen, McGuire, and Beaudry. Most of them were athletic white guys who hadn’t scored hockey scholarships or, for that matter, any other kind of scholarships. Not that Hwa had any room to judge. They were all about Hwa’s age, and good-looking. In the file, Silas had said something about finding “camera-ready security” and “putting an attractive face on protesters’ concerns.” Beaudry had applied to the Mounties, but he washed out of the basic psych exam. He was the one Hwa worried about.
The four of them spent the whole flight texting and laughing about the goings-on at a party they’d all been to on the weekend. Hwa made her status invisible, and used Prefect to peep their channel. She watched the conversation flow across her specs as Joel went over his notes for the next day’s meeting.
B: then we spitroasted her
T: fuck I missed that
B: I know u poor bastard
C: u missed out
M: more for us
T: shit
B: it will happen again tho no worries C: Silas likes to reward loyalty M: parties > bonuses
B: f’real
M: bonuses > parties
B: wrong—nowhere to spend that money in that shithole T: point
C: we should get hazard pay, not hookers M: you won’t say that if the rig blows up again M: you’ll wish you got your dick sucked more B: me I just want more anal
B: that firecrotch threw down without batting an eye like a real pro M: oh yeah Eileen
M: cum on Eileen
B: shit we sang that song so many times C: I think I got tennis elbow that night, playing that game T: it’s a shithole, for sure, but it’s also like the perfect island of pussy B: yeah no wonder the riggers won’t leave T: “i can’t leave all this p00n!”
M: soon none of them will be able to afford it M: it’ll just be us and the other lynch guys B: THE LYNCH MOB
M: holy fuck
M: that’s hilarious
“Are you all right?”
Hwa startled. She ripped her specs off and looked at Joel. “Eh?”
“Your knuckles are white.”
Hwa looked at her hands. She licked her lips. “Oh, aye. Turbulence, b’y. Just turbulence.”