The stranded, p.13
The Stranded, page 13
“You had my sister taken,” she says.
Mother looks at the ceiling. “This is neither the time nor the place.”
“I told you when this all started that I’d take on whatever mission you assigned to me. But I wouldn’t risk my family. I wouldn’t let you recruit my sister. That was our agreement.”
“Your behavior threatened the mission. Perhaps with your sister now part of the rebellion, your dedication will be renewed.”
“My dedication? I’ve given my life for this. I’ve proved my loyalty over and over.”
“That was low, even for you, Mother,” I say. “You traumatized a sixteen-year-old girl.”
My mother looks at me for a split second, and it’s obvious she feels absolutely no remorse. “I made the difficult decision to use Esther because I believed Cadet Crossland would stop her reporting the incident to the Coalies. Involving Corporal Weston in your care entailed too much risk of her being exposed. It remains to be seen whether the antivenom she stole—the antivenom that saved your life—will result in her cover being destroyed.”
“I’ll kill you!” May screams.
She lurches toward my mother. I leap after her, grabbing her around the waist to hold her back. She strains against me. I feel her lungs pressing out with each breath.
“May, stop!” I say.
“Does she know anything she shouldn’t?” Mother’s voice is like silk, but there’s danger in it. The hint of a threat.
From his place at the side of the stage, Silas stares at May like he’s growling silently. Waiting to hear whether Esther is a problem he has to deal with.
I step in front of May and pull her into me, half holding on to her and half stopping her from getting at my mother. I can hear her raspy breaths, feel the heat of her anger. I put my cheek against hers. “She’s relying on you keeping Esther quiet. It’s messed up, and it’s wrong, but you have to make them believe you’ll be able to do it,” I say into her ear, so quiet only we can hear it.
She’s breathing hard, shaking with rage, but she raises her chin as I take my place at her side again. “No, she only knows what happened to her. I haven’t given her any details about our organization,” she says. She glares at my mother without flinching.
“And has she been talking to anyone about her experience? Her boyfriend perhaps?”
“She hasn’t spoken a word. And she won’t.”
“Keep it that way. Get her out of here.” My mother gives a signal, and a couple of men emerge from the shadows.
“They can’t do this. They can’t keep us apart. Nik, do something,” May says. The men usher her down the steps. “Wait! Let me just say something to him. Please, I’m leaving. Please let me just say one thing.”
There’s no sign of emotion from my mother, not a scrap of sympathy for either me or May.
Halfway across the room, May tries to get back to me. All I can do is stand and watch as the men grab one arm each and pull her backwards. The doors are opened. She shouts something I don’t catch.
In fifteen seconds, our last days together have been torn away.
I’ll never forgive my mother for this.
Good morning. It is 06:00 hours on Monday, November 1, 2094.
This is the captain of the cruise ship Arcadia.
It has come to my attention that a quantity of illicit material was distributed in the Lookout café a week ago. I will provide all possible assistance to Commander Hadley of the Arcadia Special Task Force as he works to apprehend the culprits.
I urge all passengers to remain vigilant at this time.
Daily reported Virus cases: zero.
Days at sea: 15,942.
Chapter 21
Hadley
Hadley crouches in the shadow at the end of the corridor. The floor is layered with sheets of cardboard. A useless attempt to soak up wetness. Anticipation makes him light as air, even though he’s weighed down by his extra layer of body armor.
In front of him, Grimson uses a mirror to peer around the corner, checking the corridor for Neaths. This is an internal deck, no windows, no sea view. Shoebox cabins open straight onto communal corridors with their peeling paint and dim light. Would’ve been the cheapest fare you could buy when the ship was used for vacation cruises.
Grimson signals for the team to advance, two fingers flicking toward the door. Go! Go! Go!
They move. Long strides. Weapons pointing. Reaching the cabin in seconds, Grimson steps to the other side of the door, her hand clutching a cylindrical flashbang. Other officers take up position, covering them from every angle.
Hadley kicks the door as hard as he can. It splinters around the flimsy lock, ancient wood giving barely any resistance. It slams back against the inside wall. Grimson throws the flashbang inside.
Hadley waits for the explosion, so loud it rattles his eardrums even through his helmet. The flash like a solar flare. Then smoke blooming from the doorway.
His officers flood inside. The screaming starts.
There are ways to get things onto the ship. Throw the crew of a sewage tanker a bribe, and they’ll turn a blind eye to a couple of boxes changing hands. Extra food gets slipped into the official rations. Every now and then, someone tries sending things in on a small motorboat or even a rowboat. Once it’s on the Arcadia, stuff follows the smuggling routes that grow through Neath territory like weeds. They reach the market and the residential decks. There’s not a person on the ship that’s innocent. They’ve all tasted a fresh apple or bought a couple of pills to treat a toothache.
Hadley pretends not to see most of it. He doesn’t care about a few extra calories, or a bottle of antibiotics, or even the steady trickle of unauthorized screens and comgloves. He watches the connections until he needs his meds or some piece of intel about what’s going on in the underworld. Like now. He wants to know who’s been trying to get hold of antivenom. Smugglers will give him the answers.
After a few seconds, he walks into the cabin, keeping his visor down over his face to shield himself from the stench of piss.
Officers drag two Neaths out from a back room and throw them, quivering and sniffling, onto the floor in front of Hadley. An old couple. Coughing on the smoke. Their eyes stream. The woman’s long gray braid snakes between her bony shoulder blades.
Hadley watches the deputy flip up his visor, the skin of the younger man’s face pale with sweat and guilt. The kid’s not getting into the swing of these raids. He’s still oozing compassion. The old Neath couple watch Hadley from the floor. He feels his mouth curl in disgust. Filthy smugglers. Filthy Neaths.
Grimson’s smashing cups exuberantly in the kitchenette. That’s how you’re supposed to conduct this kind of raid.
“Search the whole place. Throw whatever we don’t need over the railing. Make a show of it,” Hadley says into his visor. “And take the deputy with you.”
Grimson pauses as the order is relayed into her helmet. She picks up a pile of clothes and tramps to the door, trailing stuff behind her. Hadley catches a glimpse of the deputy’s tear-filled eyes before the kid closes his visor and follows Grimson’s lead. Pathetic.
“Jared Alba,” Hadley says. The old man looks up at him, white beard against wrinkled skin. “I’m looking for something specific, Mr. Alba. And I’ve heard you’re involved in the unlawful movement of medicines.”
“Not me, not me.” The old man wobbles his head and keeps his eyes pinned to the ground near Hadley’s feet.
“We’ve got meds, sir. All kinds,” Grimson says. She throws him a pointed glance as she drops a box onto the ground in front of the blubbering Neaths before marching off.
Hadley stoops, snatching up a bottle with a label he’d recognize anywhere. He holds it up to the light, the tiny blue pills inside glistening as he turns the bottle.
“I need to know about antivenom,” he says, turning his back on the Neaths momentarily, so that he can slip the bottle into his pocket. That stroke of luck will keep him going a little bit longer.
“No. I wouldn’t smuggle anything like antivenom. Only criminals would need antivenom. I only do medicine. Only the things people really need, Commander Hadley, sir,” Alba says.
Hadley opens his visor. The smell of the cabin floods in. Wet cardboard and urine. He grabs a few of the meds and reads the labels on the vials, throwing them down one after the other. Tranquillizers, painkillers, anti-inflammatories. No antivenom.
Another dead end. If the shooting was fatal, his officers would have found a body when they went down that elevator shaft the next day. There’d have been a funeral. Or at least whispers about someone dying violently. Ship people aren’t good at keeping their mouths shut. No, his gut tells him that whoever it was crawled off to lick their wounds—they had help, and they got the antivenom they needed. So why can’t he find any trace of it?
“The respectable face of drug smuggling. You just want to help people, don’t you, Mr. Alba? Maybe your boss will know more.”
“No.” The old man’s face jerks to Hadley’s. He’s trapped. There’s Hadley and there’s his boss. Rock. Hard place.
“I’ve heard you work for Silas Cuinn. I could let him know you sent me over to see him.”
“No, please. We don’t know anything about antivenom. I pick up the medicines from the captain of the sewage tanker. I take them to the service corridor and sell them. I leave the money at a drop point. I never see Cuinn. I don’t go down there.”
The old man’s telling the truth, and it’s nothing Hadley couldn’t have figured out himself. He’s a two-bit drug dealer with no access to the real power. And there’s no whiff of antivenom in this cabin or anywhere else.
“Aw, Jared. You’ve spilled your guts, and I didn’t even get chance to chat with the lovely Mrs. Alba.”
The woman’s eyes widen. He drinks in her fear.
“Are you aware, Mr. Alba, that the Federated States has supported the ship with food and resources?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And we’ve educated your children? And repaired damage to your hull, and given you materials to improve the places that you live in?”
“Yes, sir.”
“It would be an ungrateful person who took all that was offered, consumed resources that could be used by the Federated States’ own citizens, and then ignored the very reasonable requests of their generous host country.”
The old man’s mouth works silently. Hadley waits.
“Yes, sir.”
The woman throws herself at Hadley’s leg, smearing dirty tears on his uniform. Hadley kicks her off. Her sobs irritate. They’re too needy. He likes defiance. He likes the pain of someone trying not to break. “Grimson, make her shut up.”
Grimson grabs the old woman by the hair and drags her out into the corridor between the rows of cabins. Her cries become quieter as she gets further away.
Everyone on the ship will share the same fate soon enough. Hadley despises the Neaths, but he doesn’t discriminate. He hates the rich upper-deck passengers who pretend to be Federated States citizens as much as the have-nots who live on the lower decks. The ones at the top are deluded enough to think their status means something. That somehow they’re better than the others, and that it will save them. In the end, they’re all the same, whatever deck they come from. Scrounging Europeans.
They’ve all been sucking life from the mainland ever since they dropped anchor. Taking without giving anything back. The ships caused a rift that almost tore the Federated States apart. Half the citizens wanted to let the refugees in. The other half wanted nothing to do with them. While the arguments raged, the ship’s food ran out. And what were supposed to be rations to stop the ships starving on their doorstep turned into daily transports of food the Federated States could barely afford.
It has its own problems. Its own battles. The southern border wall needs protecting. The farmlands produce only just enough food. It has plenty of poor and old and sick to take care of. Even if it didn’t, why should his people look after the feral displaced population of some far-off continent? It wasn’t their war. They didn’t bomb the hell out of each other. They didn’t reduce a whole continent to wasteland.
Every few years, there’s a new campaign, a new petition, a new debate in Conclave. A group of citizens opening their arms in welcome. Another faction insistent that the refugees will be used to score points against the Federated States, if they fall into enemy hands. There’s even some that argue for the ships to be returned to Europe, but that’s never happened, unfortunately. He’s watched it seesaw twenty times, all from within the ship. And, while they argue, the ships stagnate.
Alba whimpers. “Please, we’ve done nothing. Silas ordered us to keep our heads down, and we’ve done nothing—”
Hadley freezes at the door of the cabin. He turns back to look at the old man. “Silas Cuinn ordered you to keep your head down?”
Alba looks up at Hadley, his eyes dancing with hope. “Yes, sir. Yes.”
“Just you?”
“No, sir. Everyone. He’s ordered everyone that works for him to lie low.”
“Why?”
“Don’t know. Please, I don’t know. My wife knows nothing. Please.”
Hadley inches closer, leaning in so that the man’s personal space is eroded. “What exactly are your orders, Alba?”
“He’s ordered everyone to keep quiet. We do a few deals. Nothing big. Just enough to make it look …” He trails off.
“Talk, Alba.”
“Make it look like business as usual.” The old man shakes and collapses on the ground, sobbing violently.
Hadley steps out into the corridor. Faces pop out of doorways to see what’s happening and vanish as fast as they appear. One of his officers is attaching a board to the wall next to the cabin door. It will list all of Mr. and Mrs. Alba’s crimes. The smuggling and the drugs. And, once Hadley has sentenced them, the punishment. Death or deportation for hard labor at one of the prison camps.
Hadley stands with his hands on his hips. An unpleasant suspicion settles on him that what started out as a few leaflets dropped in a public café is actually something much more disturbing. Silas Cuinn has ordered all his people, the vast network of criminals and smugglers under him, to make it look like everything is normal. They’re setting something up. Hadley’s starting to see the shape of it, but he can’t figure out the punchline yet.
He needs the clearance order, and he needs it soon, otherwise his plan to get off the ship will go down the drain. Whatever they’ve got in the pipeline will be ruined as soon as he gets the go-ahead to clear the ship. The first thing he’ll do is put a bullet in the captain and the rest of the council members. That will end this rebellion.
Further down the corridor, Grimson has the old woman kneeling on the ground with her hands cuffed behind her back. She strides back to Hadley, pulling off her helmet as she walks, so that she’s no longer connected through the audio system. “There were memory suppressants in that box. They should probably be confiscated,” she says.
“I saw them. Thank you, Grimson,” he says. He checks for the bottle of pills stashed in his pocket. “Do the neighbors too. Let all the scumbags know what happens to those who don’t show proper respect for the Federated States.”
Chapter 22
Esther
Alex’s eyes pin me as soon as I walk into class. I know what’s happened before I look at the class ranking. My grades have slipped. Above Corp’s desk, flickering in the autumn light from the open window, are the holographic representations of me and my classmates beside our names. A reminder of our success. Or, in this case, my failure.
1. Alex
2. Kara
3. Esther
I’ve dropped to number three. Kara has taken my place. My hologram smiles out from her new position, cadaver-blue and unaware that she’s plummeting.
Raw shame burns through me as I drop into seat three, the empty place between me and Alex now reserved for Kara. I hide my humiliation by rifling in my med bag for my digiscreen and find it too quickly. The embarrassment overwhelms me, and I grind my hands into my temples, wishing the imprint of the miniature blue Esther would disappear.
At least she’s blue. Blue is good. Blue means pass. Blue means safe. If she turns red, I’m really in trouble. Red would mean I dropped off the threshold for a visa, and nothing short of perfect would let me claw my way up to a passing grade. I try to focus on the cooling breeze, let it chase the panic away.
Behind me, Seth, the pale red-haired kid from Deck Fourteen, is talking in hushed tones. I hear Oceania, and clearance and dawn raids.
Another voice, this time belonging to Anna, rises indignantly. “I just don’t believe it,” she says. “There’d have been an announcement if a ship was destroyed. Anyway, where would all the people go?”
“I heard they’ve got specially built quarantine camps. Basically, prisons, and if you’re sent there, you have to work for the rest of your life,” Seth replies.
“Come on,” Anna says. “That’s a conspiracy theory. It’s as stupid as people saying the drones can shoot you.”
Alex is watching me—I can feel it—like he’s analyzing me. He suspects I’m not being honest about the events of the past week.
He gives me an it’s OK half-smile. “Ready for the test?” he says.
Oh no.
Dread lurches in my stomach. I swallow hard.
I forgot about the test. It got pushed out of my mind by the thought that the Coalies might be watching us. I’m unprepared. Didn’t even open my textbook. If I fail, I won’t be scrabbling for the number-two spot any more. I’ll be lucky to stay above tenth place.
Alex’s face flickers, and I see he already expected this. The weight of shame pushes me lower into my chair.
He leans over the chair between us so that our heads are almost touching. Everyone else is caught up in their own conversations about ships and drones, disinterested in what Alex and I are saying to one another. “Don’t worry, I’ve got your back,” he whispers.
