“Amy, what are you doing? Come on!”
“Don’t make me explain! Just go!”
Suddenly he understood: Amy did not intend to leave. Perhaps she never had.
Then he saw the girl.
Halfway down the pier, far out of his reach, she was crouched behind a giant spool of cable. Strawberry hair tied with a ribbon, scratches on her face, a stuffed animal gripped tightly to her chest with arms thin as twigs.
“Oh, no.”
Amy saw her, too. She sheathed her sword and dashed toward her. The virals were racing up the dock. The little girl was frozen with terror. Amy swung her onto her hip and began to run. With her free hand she waved Peter forward. “Don’t wait! I’ll need you to catch us!”
He raced down the seawall door. The bottom of the gangway was thirty feet away and closing fast. Caleb yelled, “Do it now!”
Peter leapt.
For an instant it seemed he had jumped too soon; he would plunge into the roiling water. But then his hands caught the rail of the gangway. He pulled himself up, found his footing, and turned around. Amy, still holding the girl, was running down the top of the wall. The gangway was passing them by; she was never going to make it. Peter reached out as Amy took five bounding strides, each longer than the last, and flung herself over the abyss.
Peter could not remember the moment when he grabbed her hand. Only that he’d done it.
They had cleared the dock. Michael ran down from the pilothouse and dashed to the rail. He saw a deep dent, fifty feet long at least, though the wound was high above the waterline. He looked toward shore. A hundred yards aft, at the end of the dock, a mass of virals was watching the departing ship like a crowd of mourners.
“Help!”
The voice came from the stern.
“Someone’s fallen!”
He raced aft. A woman, clutching an infant, was pointing over the rail.
“I didn’t know she was going to jump!”
“Who? Who was it?”
“She was on a stretcher, she could barely walk. She said her name was Alicia.”
A coiled rope lay on the deck. Michael pushed the button on the radio. “Lore, kill the props!”
“What?”
“Do it! Full stop!”
He was already wrapping the rope around his waist, having shoved the radio into the hand of the woman, who stared at in confusion.
“Where are you going?” the woman asked.
He stepped over the rail. Far below, the waters swirled in a maelstrom. Kill them, he thought. Dear God, Lore, kill those screws now.
He jumped.
Toes pointed, arms outstretched, he pierced the surface like a spike; instantly the current grabbed him, shoving him down. He slammed into the mucky bottom and began to roll along it. His eyes stung with salt; he could see nothing at all, not even his hands.
He fell straight into her.
A confusion of limbs: they were both tumbling, spiraling along the bottom. He grabbed her belt and drew her body into his and wrapped his arms around her waist.
The slack ran out.
A hard yank; Michael felt as if he were being sliced in two. Still holding Alicia, he vaulted upward at a forty-five-degree angle. Michael had already been in the water for thirty seconds; his brain was screaming for air. The screws had stopped turning, but this no longer mattered. They were being pulled along by the boat’s momentum. Unless they broke the surface soon, they’d drown.
Suddenly, a whining sound: the screws had reengaged. No! Then Michael realized what had happened: Lore had reversed the engines. The tension on the rope began to soften, then was gone. A new force gripped them. They were being sucked forward, toward the spiraling props.
They were going to be chopped to bits.
Michael looked up. High above, the surface shimmered. What was the source of this mysterious, beckoning light? The sound of the screws abruptly ceased; now he understood Lore’s intentions. She was creating enough slack in the line for them to ascend. Michael began to kick. Alicia, don’t give up. Help me do this. Unless you do, we’re dead. But it was no use; they were sinking like stones. The light receded pitilessly.
The rope went taut again. They were being pulled.
As they broke the surface, Michael opened his mouth wide, sucking in a vast gulp of air. They were beneath the stern, a mountain of steel soaring above them; the light he’d seen was the moon. It shone down upon them, fat and full, spilling across the surface of the water.
“It’s all right, I’ve got you,” Michael said. Alicia was coughing and sputtering in his arms; from high above, a lifeboat floated down. “I’ve got you, I’ve got you, I’ve got you.”
77
Carter’s eyes were full of stars.
He lay on the causeway, bloodied and broken. Some parts of him felt as if they were absent, no longer attached. There was no pain; rather, his body felt distant, beyond his command.