“Rat farts! Where’d she go?” Imogen’s shout burst firework red across Far’s eardrum, making him wince. “Sorry. But who is she, Farway? She acted like she knew you.”
“It’s a long story. I’m pretty sure I don’t know the half of it.” Far stepped into the middle of the deck and did a 360-degree sweep of the ship. There were plenty of places the girl could’ve gone, but based on her dress, Far figured his previous route was the best bet: up the iron staircase by the second crane, through the swing gate, into first-class territory.
He started running.
“Your clothes!” Imogen warned.
Clothes be hashed! These trousers were better for running in anyway. Far vaulted over stairs and gate alike, blasting past a steward on his way to the door. Through it, he caught sight of the yellow gown: Marie Antoinette was a whole quarter of a Titanic away, clutching the case to her chest. The corridor between them was ill lit, but Far could’ve sworn the queen of France was smiling as she slipped through the door. A silken ghost—there and gone.
“Oi! You!” It was the steward. “You can’t be here! First-class passengers only!”
“Farway, you’re being noticed,” Imogen’s voice jittered through the comm, shaken double by Far’s sprint. “This is bad. This is bad, bad. The Corps is going to figure out we’re here and haul us off to jail for the rest of our lives. Who’s going to feed Saffron? I can’t go to jail, Farway!”
So much for her grass is green on any side attitude.
Far tore down the red carpet corridor, past B deck’s berths and lavatories, barreling through the door back into the Grand Staircase, making eye contact with at least four very startled late-night socialites as he did. All of them gasped. None of them wore yellow gowns.
Which way had she gone? Up? Down? Forward? There were too many choices and no time to choose. The steward was shazm hot on Far’s heels. He’d be swinging through the door any second now—
Canary fabric flashed through the gaps in A deck’s banister. Far looked up to see Marie Antoinette leaning over the railing. She wasn’t even breathing hard….
“There she is! Go up, Farway!” His cousin hyperventilated useless instructions as Far ran for the staircase. “Go up! Go up!”
The girl was gone by the time he reached A deck. All Far found were settees full of wide-eyed passengers and the glory-honor-angel clock, its hands ticking closer and closer to T time.
“There!” Imogen caught the yellow this time, with Far spotting the color a second later. Again, it was a flight of stairs away, quick to vanish. “She’s going out to the promenade!”
It struck Far as eerie, that this girl knew exactly how he’d arrived on the ship, knew exactly what item he was looking for, not to mention the fact that she was A HISTORICAL HOLOGRAM FROM HIS FINAL EXAM SIM.
She acted like she knew you.
Did she? If so… how?
Far ran outside, cheeks burning, arctic air knifing his lungs. Wind, water, sky, everything around him was moving. Their vastness accented the fact that the promenade deck was empty. He climbed to the base of the smokestack, where a full view of the Titanic’s top decks pooled out under starlight.
Marie Antoinette and the Rubaiyat were nowhere to be found.
“What the Hades?” he hissed at the night.
“Um… maybe she went back inside?” Imogen suggested. “Or maybe she’s getting a head start and hiding in one of the lifeboats?”
Maybe. Far didn’t have time to play detective. The doors to the Grand Staircase opened to reveal the steward, flushed and fuming. He’d collected a wake of curious passengers, who trailed him onto the deck.
So much for going unnoticed.
Far scanned the promenade again, but of all the gowns belonging to the scandalized ladies who fluttered after the steward, none were yellow. And beyond them? No one. Nothing but the void of surrounding ocean and… an iceberg.
The iceberg.
It was a small thing at the moment. If Far hadn’t already known it was there, he would’ve passed over the faint silhouette, just as the lookouts in the crow’s nest were doing now. Just as they’d keep doing until the chunk of ice was undeniably there, scraping back the steel hull with curtain-like ease.
Imogen saw it, too. Her breath cut against the comm: “You have to come back.”
Even though Far’s hands clutched the ladder rungs, they felt so empty. He couldn’t leave without the Rubaiyat. He just couldn’t. He hadn’t failed a mission yet….
Then again, he hadn’t failed a Sim exam, either, until this girl showed up.
The iceberg rose higher, higher. How couldn’t the watchmen see it? Even the tip was a minor mountain, close to one hundred feet high, according to Imogen’s study of eyewitness accounts. Far suspected, as he watched the ice draw closer, that it was really more in the range of one hundred and twenty or so. All of that doom and death, sitting on waveless waters, and the Titanic plunging full speed toward it.
“You don’t have time to chase that girl!” Imogen warned. “All Hades is about to break loose on that ship, and I am not sending Gram down there to rescue your tail from drowning.”
A sharp cry left the crow’s nest, but it had come too late. The path was set; the Titanic’s fate was sealed. The unsinkable ship under Far’s feet would soon be dragged down to its grave of darkness, swallowing all these people with it. Maelstrom swirling vortex black cold drown gently down no need to fight…
The end had begun. The ice of the headwind slid under Far’s skin, crackled through his joints. He hunched his shoulders, but the chill stuck, following him as he turned his back on the tragic past-future and hauled tail up the smokestack.
10.
THE GIRL IN THE YELLOW DRESS
IMOGEN WAS ALREADY DRAFTING HER NEXT ship’s log when the Invictus’s rear hatch opened, spitting in a wind-licked, royally peeved version of her cousin. His curls were everywhere, hands clenched into fists.
RMS FARWAY HAS TAKEN AN ICEBERG BLOW. ABANDON SHIP! WOMEN AND RED PANDAS FIRST!
No…delete that. It was too lighthearted.
None of this was funny: The look in Farway’s eyes as he stomped into the console room sans the Rubaiyat. All of those faces of all of those passengers Imogen saw through the datastream. The tooth-raking sound of ice on steel as the collision took place just meters below. It was an awful noise. Imogen covered her ears, and she wasn’t the only one. Both Gram and Priya paused from their tasks—booting up the nav systems, latching the Invictus’s door shut—to block it out.
Farway alone listened. He stood in the console room—eyes scalped, hands bare. She’d seen this look on her cousin only once before: the evening she force-fed him honeycomb gelato and found that exquisite real-paper message.
It meant the loss of everything.
When the iceberg and the Titanic parted, all was quiet. None of the Invictus’s crew wanted to be the first to test the wounded-animal look on their captain’s face. Even Priya, who always gave Farway a once-over for injuries, hovered to the side, scanning him with eyes alone.
This was uncharted territory. They’d never not pulled off a heist.