There’s nothing I can do at this point, and it’s only now sinking in. Swift must feel the fight leave me. Her arms relax, but she keeps her hand over my mouth, the other clenching my wetsuit. “Cas,” she warns, dropping her voice low. “He deserves this.”
Those are the last words I hear before Santa Elena pulls out the knife, and the trainer deck erupts into incoherent noise as the pirates cheer on their captain. But the trainees aren’t cheering. Lemon’s still folded up against the wall, Chuck and Varma are leaning close to each other, their faces set in stoic masks that hide what must be an ocean’s worth of turmoil, and I can feel Swift’s pounding heart against my back. This is their companion, their comrade who betrayed them and shattered the trust that had grown between them.
This is their traitorous friend, and he’s about to die.
I can’t look away.
Santa Elena takes Code by both shoulders and leans in close, whispering something that only he can hear. When she draws back, he’s crying, his face ashen, his hands limp at his sides. The captain turns the blade over in her hand, then draws it back, and he squeezes his eyes shut.
She thrusts the blade between his legs, flaying his inner thigh open, and a wash of red pours out in the knife’s wake. Femoral artery. Clean slice.
Code screams as he drains, his hands clutching the front of Santa Elena’s jacket, but all she says is, “Hush,” and his grip slips away until she shoves him backward. His arms don’t pinwheel—he flops into the NeoPacific with a wet slap, but he still struggles, still tries to swim even as the waves lift him toward Bao.
Don’t do it, you shit. Don’t you dare.
Bao tilts his head, and I can feel everyone on the deck lean forward to get a better view of the inevitable. Code has stopped screaming. He’s reduced himself to messy sobs that grow weaker and weaker with each breath he draws, and the Reckoner looms over him, beak dipping down to sample the bloodstained waters that wreathe him.
Don’t do it. Don’t—
My thoughts are worthless. Bao lunges forward, his jaws snapping shut, and then Code is in half. His torso disappears down Bao’s gullet, and it’s merciful because finally, finally, finally his sobbing stops, replaced only with the surge of the monster’s body against the sea.
I’ve never hated Bao more than I do in this moment.
Swift’s holding me so tight that she’s practically strangling me. She must feel it. Must feel how I’m a beast in my own right, waiting to strike, ready to surge at Santa Elena the second her hold lets up.
She’s ruined Bao, perverted him even more than he already is. He’s been given human flesh as a reward for coming to his goddamn beacon, and I can’t erase that. And even worse, Bao’s proven her right. He doesn’t need fancy training, with beams and noises and beacons to tell him what to destroy. He’s already the monster she needs, and I raised him. I could have killed him, but I raised him.
I did this.
I let myself go limp until Swift’s the only thing keeping me standing. I keep my eyes fixed on the bloody stain, on Code’s legs sinking into the depths, on Bao as he plunges after them.
When Swift lets me go, I run.
21
The crowd parts. That’s the first surprise. The second is that Swift takes the time to wait for the captain’s approval before sprinting after me. I see Santa Elena nod to her as I glance back over my shoulder. My bare feet pound against the trainer deck as I leap through the hatch and take off down the hall.
“Cas!” Swift bellows from behind me, and it’s like a spur in my side. I skid around a corner and scramble up a set of stairs.
I still don’t fully know the ins and outs of the Minnow, but I know where I can go to escape her. It’s somewhere on the ship’s second level, near the stern, nested between a set of heating pipes that run down into the engine rooms below. Swift’s bootsteps come thundering up the stairs just as I spot it. I open the door, throw myself inside, and slam it behind me.
The harsh scent of ammonia and other weird cleaning solvents washes over me as I clutch the handle of the janitorial closet’s door. It feels so familiar, like no time has passed since the first hours I spent on this ship. If I root around on the floor, I’ll probably find that little blue capsule again. It’s tempting.
The handle jerks under my grip, and I hear Swift grunting on the other side of the door. “Goddamn it, Cas,” she groans, but I keep my hold. “What was that shit you were trying to pull back there? Do you want us both killed?”
I’m so out of breath, so disoriented that it takes me several seconds to reply. “You held me back. You stopped me from—”
“You wouldn’t have saved him. You would have just gotten us killed along with him. Jesus, Cas, he needed to die. He tried to kill us.”
“No one needs to die,” I gasp. “You’re so messed up, all of you.”
“Cassandra Leung, you’re a filthy hypocrite and you know it.”
“Leave me alone,” I scream. I don’t want to hear anything she has to say, not after what she’s just done. It’s like the nightmare when we hit the bucket, all over again. Swift takes the captain’s side no matter what. She’s killed for that woman, and she’d die for her.
“You fucking listen to me, Cas. All your life you’ve killed people like Code. You’ve sent beasts at us that shred us, that swallow us—you measure their success by the percentage of death they deal. And you do it because they attacked you first. There’s no difference between what the captain just did and what you, as a trainer, do every goddamn day.”
“You—”
“What was I supposed to do? Let you tackle Santa Elena? Let you push her into the water with your killer beast?”
“You could have—”
There’s a hollow thud on the other side of the door, like Swift’s just punched it. “There was nothing I could do but save your stupid life, like I always do. Every—every single—”
I can feel a storm building inside me, a fury that won’t quiet. Swift has the nerve to compare Reckoner justice to the brutality I just witnessed. She’s nothing but the captain’s pet, a dog at the end of a very short leash. She’s seen nothing of the world I know. “You’ve never once saved my life, you piece of shit,” I growl. “Everything you do, you do to save your own neck.”
I expect her to scream back, but there’s nothing but empty silence on the other side of the door. I keep my fingers winched tight around the handle, ready for her to wrench it open at any minute, but there’s only stillness.
Then I hear her sigh faintly, the metal between us warping the sound until it rings. “Did it ever occur to you that your neck might matter to me at least as much as mine? Actually, probably more than mine?” she says.
I freeze, suddenly aware of how my breathing has slowed. I’m trying to picture her on the other side of the door in this moment, but an image doesn’t settle. She could be standing, arms folded, wearing that confident smirk that she always puts on when she’s teasing, but I seriously doubt that’s what’s going on. The Swift I picture on the other side of the door is the one that she doesn’t let the captain see. Her forehead’s pressed against the metal, or maybe buried in her hands, or maybe she’s got one hand clutching the handle of the door, waiting for that opportune moment to twist it open.
I don’t know what to say. I knew she cared for me, but I didn’t expect her to come out and say it like this. Sleeping with her arm folded around my waist feels like an eternity ago, a frozen moment in time that I can’t fathom going back to. After everything that happened this morning, what did she think this would accomplish?
“Swift,” I start, but I don’t know what to finish it with.
“Forget … forget I said anything. It was off base. I—”
“Swift, I’m a goddamn prisoner on this ship.”
“I know. I—”
“We aren’t on equal footing, not in the slightest. You realize how messed up this is?”
“Cas, I didn’t mean I want to—”
“I’m in no position to be thinking about any of that shit right now. I’ve got bigger problems to deal with than you and your feelings.”