Swift yanks him off the wall and shoves him toward the trainer deck door. I wait until she’s slammed the hatch behind her before sinking down onto the floor, the strength evaporating from my legs.
I should have seen this coming. I’ve let myself get so comfortable aboard the Minnow that I nearly got myself killed twice in one day. If Santa Elena hadn’t been quite as forgiving, if I’d walked onto the trainer deck without noticing something was amiss, I’d be just another corpse floating in the ship’s wake.
If it hadn’t been for Swift, that definitely would have happened.
I find myself wishing the captain hadn’t muddled the waters by tying Swift’s life to mine. I have no idea who Swift’s saving at this point. Obviously her own skin is her top priority, but when she charged onto the trainer deck to catch Code in the act, she thought he’d already done away with me.
And she was going to kill him for it. Of course, if I’m dead then she’s dead anyway. She fought like she had nothing left to lose, and she bled for it. But the way she asked about me, the venom in her voice when she thought Code might have killed me—it makes me reconsider what I know about her.
The facts are these. Swift has saved our lives on several occasions. The only thing I’ve done for our lives so far is not get eaten, shanked, or shot.
I’m still not sure if I’m in debt or not.
The engines beneath me fade to nothing as the boat slows. Santa Elena’s probably decided to stop while she sorts out Code. I don’t want to think about what that entails.
Bao bellows from the far end of the trainer deck. I get on my knees, crawl over to the LED beacon, and snap it off. He presses his beak against the still-warm lights, and I feel the deck shudder just a bit underneath me. At half the boat’s size, he’s easily powerful enough to push us around. If he were in a proper training environment, he’d be deemed ready to start escorting his imprint ship.
He’s probably big enough to take down the Minnow.
I peer into the water, watching as the trunks of his forelegs sway back and forth in his shadow. They’re huge against his body, now that he’s grown into his adult proportions. The sun is setting on the other side of the boat, and the long shade of her guns stretches out into the sea like ragged claws. My heart still thunders in my chest, and Bao watches me with eyes the size of dinner platters.
I don’t care that I’m not in my wetsuit, that I don’t have my respirator around my neck. I jump into the water headfirst. Bao shies away from me, the suction in his wake almost pulling me beneath the waves, but I fight against it, keeping my head over the water. Once he settles, I swim forward and grab onto his plating. I’m here, I will him to understand. Don’t forget.
I move down his side, checking for any signs of damage from the hull. Every time he draws a breath, his flanks swell out several feet, pushing me away before drawing me back in again. If I close my eyes, I can pretend that it’s Durga. I can pretend nothing’s changed. I can pretend I’m safe at home. It’s the same ocean, after all.
There are no wounds in Bao’s hide and no sign of bruising. I circle him twice, just to be sure. By the time I settle back by his head, clinging to a plate on his jowls, the sun has sunk below the horizon and my heart has stopped thundering. I haul myself up until I can stare directly into his eye. “Hey, little shit,” I mutter, and Bao pulls his head up, lifting me halfway out of the water, just like Durga used to. A bitter smile twists my lips. “Saved your ass today, and what do I get for it?”
Bao only blinks.
I shake my head and haul myself higher, slotting my bare feet into the gaps in his armor until I can clamber out on top of his skull. He’s used to my weight there. He keeps absolutely still, waiting for me to make my next move. There’s still a glow on the horizon that lights the sky afire, and I turn my face toward it, wincing as Bao releases a rancid breath from his blowholes.
They can try to kill me all they want, but I’m the girl who stands on the backs of the beasts of the NeoPacific. The Minnow blazes from within, promising life and warmth and villainy, but out here I’m mighty.
Or at least Bao’s mighty, and I’m with him.
I stretch my arms up toward the sky, where the first faint lights of the stars are starting to peek through the hazy cloud layer that’s settled over us, and remind myself of what’s important. I have to survive. Bao has to survive. And, after what happened today, I think it’d be kind of nice if Swift survived this mess too.
My clothes are drenched, and the chill of the night is settling in. I leap off Bao’s head and plunge back into the water, swimming to the trainer deck in a few quick strokes. The Reckoner turns tail as soon as I’m clear and submerges, his dark form plunging deeper and deeper below us. If he were still a pup, I’d be worried, but Bao’s fully bonded now, and he always comes when I call. I haul myself up onto the trainer deck and drag the LED beacon back to its usual resting place.
My eyes fall on the syringe of cull serum. Santa Elena had this on the ship the whole time. Only IGEOC agents are supposed to have this stuff, and somehow it ended up on the Minnow. And Code stole it. He knew what it was, what it was for.
And there’s something more, something I noticed that’s itching at the back of my mind. Swift knew what it was too.
I pick up the syringe and pitch it out into the inky November sea. One more mystery to unravel later.
I need dry clothes, so I lock the trainer deck’s hatch behind me and make my way to Swift’s room. She still isn’t back yet, and for a moment I worry that Code overpowered her before she could get him up to the captain’s quarters. I’ve got to start having more faith in her if I’m ever going to pay her back for saving me. I pull open her hatch—unlocked, like she always leaves it when she’s not there—and step in.
Swift’s room is starting to smell like home. There’s always that scent—the one that sticks in your memory but doesn’t really surface until you find it again and all of a sudden it’s crashing over you like a wave. I guess I’ve collected a lot of these scents over the years: the sickly sweet smell of amniotic fluid from Mom’s lab; the rough, earthy tones of a Reckoner’s hide; and now this, the sort-of-musty, sort-of-woody odor that characterizes the little nest Swift’s carved for herself in the middle of a den of pirates.
Her floor’s still carpeted with dirty clothes. I’ve yet to see her wash them, but I know she must because there’s definitely some sort of rotation going on, and there’s always clean stuff in her drawers. I nudge one of them open and root through it until I find a tank top and a set of shorts that I quickly swap into, dumping my soaking wet clothes in a less-than-convenient heap by the door. I shake out my hair while I’m at it. It falls in my eyes now. Maybe I’ll live long enough to grow it back to shoulder-length.
For a moment, I consider going back to the trainer deck, but all I can see there is Code with the knife, wearing the invincible grin of a boy who’s trapped an animal in a corner. Tonight, that place is haunted. Here is safe.
So I sit on the edge of Swift’s bed and wait until I hear the shuffle of her bootsteps in the corridor outside.
“Cas?” she calls as she sticks her head through the door. She rolls her eyes when she spots me perched on her bunk. “Should’ve known. You are aware that you leave a trail of water pretty much anywhere you go, right?”
“What happened to Code?” I ask, drawing my knees up to my chin as she pushes into the room and closes the hatch behind her. Suddenly my chest feels tight, like I’ve dived too deep and the pressure is crushing my lungs.