We listened, but the only sounds were the familiar ones of pylons creaking in the tide, the rattling of rusty metal, and the ever-present drone of seawater under pressure, turning dross into gold.
“Why is it so quiet?” I whispered.
Sula shook her head.
Perhaps everyone was asleep or unconscious. Maybe the prisoners had been moved. Or maybe there were no longer any prisoners. Maybe the bodies had been dumped into the ocean to decompose and disappear.
Our eyes adjusted, and then we could see a single light leaking from beneath a closed door—the only sign of life, but at least it was something. Sula unclipped an explosive cap from her belt. “Stand clear,” she commanded.
I nearly tripped as I backed into Will. He was holding on to a steel box that protruded from the wall. We barely had enough time to cover our faces when the cap blew, spewing smoke and steel into the corridor. The door swung open, spilling light into the hallway. Plastene and metal flakes filled the air, twirling, sparkling, then settling into darkness.
Sula advanced cautiously, hand on her harpoon. I trailed two steps behind. We stepped gingerly around the strewn metal, over the fallen door, and into the yawning opening of the cramped torture chamber.
There, facing us, gun drawn, sat Nasri.
“Welcome,” he said. Then the lights went out.
CHAPTER 18
I was never certain which came first: the gunshot or the scream. My head hit the floor, and all was still. In the darkness there was only the blur of motion—faint outlines and shadowy imagination. In that split second between vision and nothingness, I couldn’t distinguish between the two. Was I injured? Was I dead? I was surprised by how peaceful I felt, how tranquil and serene. I lay on the floor, and all was preternaturally calm, as in the moments before a sandstorm. It was Sula’s voice that awakened me from my reverie. “Vera? Vera?”
So I was not dead. Or perhaps we both were.
Then the lights flickered on. Nasri’s chair had tipped over. The harpoon jutted from his chest. His lips were peeled back in a deathly grimace, and his eyes were fixed open. He looked like a man who did not expect to die and had left the earth as he had emerged: howling in agony.
Sula stood over me. “You’re bleeding,” she said.
I felt my face. My hands came away sticky. A great lump rose up in my throat, and my breath caught on something hard. “I’ve been shot?” It was a question more than a statement, because I didn’t feel wounded—although I had begun to feel cold and shaky.
“Sit tight,” Sula commanded. Her hands were in my hair, then on my head, pressing and probing. I tried hard not to panic, but the top of my head burned, and my forehead was wet with slickness.
Will stopped short when he saw me. “Vera?” he began, but could not finish. He looked to Sula for reassurance, but she was too busy examining me. There was nothing he could do but take my hand.
A bullet had grazed my scalp, Sula concluded. It had cleared a tiny path like a trail through the geno-soy fields and burned off the top layer of skin. A flesh wound, literally, but it bled like something worse. Sula tore off a sleeve from my shirt and bandaged it as best she could.
“It’s not pretty,” she said. “The scalp bleeds the worst. But it’s nothing to worry about. When it heals, you won’t even know it was there.”
I tried to smile but feared I would cry. “I always wondered what it was like to be shot.”
“Now you’ve lived to tell the tale.”
I touched my scalp where Sula had wrapped the cloth. It still burned, but it made me feel important. I’d been wounded in combat. Anyone could break a leg or dislocate a shoulder, but how many people got shot? I could tell by the way Will was looking at me that he was impressed too and not a little bit jealous. I would have quickly traded the head wound, however, for a glass of clean water.
“Who shut off the light?” I asked.
“I threw the switch,” Will said. He’d been leaning against a box that controlled power for the floor. He cut the voltage as soon as he’d heard Nasri’s voice.
“Quick thinking,” Sula remarked. She leaned over to pull the harpoon from Nasri’s chest. I covered my eyes in the crook of Will’s elbow.
“Where are they?” I asked, my voice muffled by Will’s arm.
“Not here.”
But Sula was wrong. A low moaning interrupted her efforts to retrieve the harpoon. In the dark corner of the small room—hard to believe we could miss it—a pile of blankets stirred. I ran over and tossed them aside.
“Ulysses!”
His face was battered and bruised; dried blood caked his beard; his trousers were sheared at the knees and crusted from his wound—but he was alive. His eyelids fluttered, but he couldn’t open them. He tried to speak, but no words emerged.
I put my lips next to his ear. “It’s okay,” I whispered. “I’m here. We’re going to take care of you.”
I wasn’t sure Ulysses understood me, but I kept repeating the words in the hope that he would.