“All the cargo rooms are on the orlop deck, which is the second level from the bottom. You have to go through first class. Find the Grand Staircase…. It should be close.”
Far looked around. The night was clear and moonless, with stars, stars, stars overhead and glassy water in every direction. The Titanic’s boat deck stretched out, its pitch pine planks littered with chaise lounge chairs, edged with too few lifeboats. Imogen was right. The door to the Grand Staircase was close, literally a hop, a skip, and two short ladders away from the smokestack’s base.
“Got it.” Far ducked under the railing and down the first ladder.
“Good, good. Now, when you reach the Grand Staircase, you’re going to go down two floors, to B deck. While looking snazzy and dapper and all that. Don’t rush too much. Gentlemen don’t rush.”
“Why would I rush when I have so much free time?” he muttered.
Imogen’s don’t be a jerk, Farway sigh fuzzed through the comms. Far ignored it, pushing through the door into the Grand Staircase.
It was a nice place, for a ship. White tile floors bloomed with black geometric patterns. A vast dome of iron and frosted glass stretched over the stairs, netting the night’s shadows and pouring them into the halls. There were passengers here, chatting despite the late hour; faint conversations weaving beneath the notes of a pianist in the corner.
Far didn’t look directly at any of these people. Avoiding eye contact was the best way to go unnoticed. He kept a healthy pace to the first landing, where the stairs spilled into a grandiose show of oak carvings. At the center of these sat a very fancy clock, which caused Imogen to ooooooh through the comms and offer one of her Historian tidbits. “The clock’s famous, you know, called Honor and Glory Crowning Time.”
Far didn’t really care about the angels’ names so much as the time they crowned.
10:20.
T minus one hour and twenty minutes. Gotta keep moving.
Past the bronze cherub candelabra, down to A deck and another collection of chatty passengers. He was just curling around to the second flight of stairs, past a young couple seated on a settee, when Imogen spoke again.
“Um, Farway.”
That tone—stretched, a little sticky, the one that only meant trouble. If Far never heard it again it would be too soon. There were too many people around to reply to his cousin without drawing attention, but Imogen knew this and kept talking. “Gram just did a heat scan of the ship. There are 2,225 people on board. The manifest in the databases has 2,223 names. You’re 2,224, so… there’s someone else on board who isn’t supposed to be.”
Who? Who was the 2,225th? A Recorder? Or worse, security from the future who’d figured out what they were up to, come to prevent it? If that was the case, they were already hashed. Unless they dumped the mission and returned to Lux empty-handed. That would go over well: lots of screaming, guns pointed at them, the Invictus seized and given to another crew. And Far, back to square one…
No no no no. An old fear stirred inside him, whispering that he was on the wrong side of a dream, that this life could get torn away, that everything would crumble to nothing again and Far would never be what he’d hoped: heroic son, unstoppable wanderer.
NO. Fire threaded through his veins, fight hot. Running wasn’t an option. Far belonged here, sneaking through a soon-to-be-sunk steam liner like the spectacular thief he was. Besides, if it was Corps Security coming to intervene with this mission, there’d be more than one extra body. It was probably a CTM Recorder. All Far had to do was keep his head down, blend in like he always did, and keep walking.
8
A ROYAL GREETING
“THERE’S SOMEONE ELSE ON BOARD WHO isn’t supposed to be.”
Eliot fiddled with her bracelet as she eavesdropped on the Invictus’s comms. A few subjects ago this statement would’ve summoned a smile. As things stood, her pulse pushed between the tendons on her wrist, a scattershot tempo it had kept up since the afternoon, when she strolled up to the first-class promenade and saw everything she feared beyond the ocean.
“I hope I’m not boring you, Ms.—” the gentleman across the settee from Eliot faltered, blushing. “Forgive me, my memory has been wretched today. What did you say your name was?”
She stared at the sandy-haired man. Man? No, even at nineteen Charles was more of a boy. Baby fat clung stubbornly to his cheeks, and there was such a hope in his eyes. The kind that looked like fresh-smelt copper, before the world ate it away in cruel patina chunks. Eliot couldn’t remember the last time she felt so bright….
Unfortunately, the shine was about to end for Charles as well. She’d made the mistake of running his profile as soon as he’d sat down to chat. He wasn’t one of the 710 souls who survived the night. Throughout their entire conversation together, this knowledge boiled inside her: He’s going to die.
Eliot wanted to stay and give him a piece of happiness to hold on to when he plunged into the frigid water and his fingers, toes, arms, legs, thoughts, heart withered under the cold. That was the way destruction always crept: outside in. From the edges to the core.
He’s going to die.
Aren’t we all?
In a perfect world Eliot would linger on this settee and teach Charles some foreign curse words. It was a hobby of hers, learning obscenities in other languages: The French always sounded like poets when they swore, while Latin often felt dusty off the tongue. Her favorite insult was in Japanese: Hit your head on the corner of tofu and die! Charles would laugh when she translated it for him. Eliot would smile back. The Titanic would push on into the dawn, all the way to New York City.
The entire scenario was a paradox, though. ’Twere this world perfect, Eliot wouldn’t be here at all. She couldn’t spend the evening with Charles any more than she could warn the boy of his fate. If she didn’t go do her job, there were going to be even more deaths. A whole haze of a lot more than a shipful.
“I’m sorry,” she told Charles. And she really was. “I’ve got to go.”
With that, Eliot left the boy, beet-faced and stuttering. She walked fast so she didn’t have to hear him. It helped to have other voices buzzing through her comm.
“Once you get to B deck, you’ll round back to where the elevators are and go through the baize-covered doors. Walk to the end of the hall and take the door out to the deck.” The Historian was getting ahead of herself, Eliot noted, rushing despite her own instructions not to do so.
They could hurry all they wanted. It wouldn’t help. Subject Seven—aka Farway Gaius McCarthy—had failed before he’d even stepped foot on this boat, because Eliot had boarded first. She’d already combed through the cargo bay’s FRAGILE THIS SIDE UP crates, collecting splinters in her fingertips during her search for the Rubaiyat. To some, the book was a fount of wisdom: poetry that dissected birth and death and the life between. To others, the Great Omar was art bound in fortune, a collector’s dream.