The stranded, p.31
The Stranded, page 31
John flashes his gummy smile at me. He’s a stubborn one. Nothing I say will make him go against Enid’s orders.
“You gonna stand there, batting your eyelids, or you gonna go do something useful?”
I grind my teeth. No point staying. They’re not letting me back in. They’re not going to stop Enid from following this crazy course she’s plotted. Just hope she has enough time before the Coalies get here. Hope she makes it out in one piece.
I’ve got Alex to deal with.
I turn my back on the engine room and head for Deck Ten.
Chapter 63
Esther
It’s nervously quiet on board the ship. Like everyone’s holding their breath.
I concentrate on following the route orb. Dark, unfamiliar corridors stretch out in a maze. Every now and then, there’s the rattle of gunfire, or shouting, and once something like an explosion in the distance. I taste smoke.
When the orb comes to a ladder, it opens itself up and grabs the edge of the metal with its legs, pulling upward with the whir of some internal mechanism. I climb after it, pushing open a rusty cover that reeks of iron and drops flecks of orange onto my head. I peer through the hole. It opens into fresh air on the top deck, the captain’s complex rising like an iceberg in front of me.
The complex is a relic of the cruise-ship days, a rounded brick of offices sitting proud on the uppermost part of the ship. A contradictory place that’s essential to the smooth running of ship life, but hidden from its view. You can’t see it from the Lookout, or the market at the back of the ship, or the bridge that sits above the prow.
No Coalies stare back at me, so I push the cover past its tipping point, and regret it immediately. It crashes to the deck like a giant cymbal.
Don’t panic. You can do this.
I pull my hood up and duck down on the ladder, hiding inside the hole until my nerves stop ringing. Not wanting to piss Enid off, I scoop the route orb into my pocket.
Out here, the air is restless. It smells of storms and thunder. Drones swarm everywhere, more than I’ve ever seen, blocking out the sky. I wish it was darker, but the drone lights make it bright as midday. I summon my courage and climb onto the open deck. I have to expose myself to them. Faced with walking right under their watching eyes, my thoughts spiral out of control. They’re watching me. I can sense them staring, their lenses like the eyeballs of great flying insects.
Walk normally. Don’t attract attention.
My fingers reach for the reassurance of a wall, but I force myself to drop them without touching it. Skulking along the wall will only make me look suspicious. My only chance is that they’re too busy dealing with everything else to notice an upper-deck girl walking calmly around the ship.
There’s the entrance: glass swinging doors with bar handles across the middle. Once-white walls dulled by decades of grime.
One of the doors stands half open, a cobweb of cracks running through the pane of glass. I edge inside and find the air foggy and sweet with burning paper. As I push the door wider, there’s a swoosh and a tinkle from the paper and glass piled behind it.
Light streams from a door at the far end of the room. Creeping, I pass a small desk. Filing cabinets pulled open, their contents spewing on to the ground. A swivel chair. And the sense that someone was here until the second before I came in.
Smoke swirls around the door. The air crackles and spits and seems to warn me against going any further. Something’s happening here.
My foot hits something. The floor is littered with the remains of surveillance bots. Legs, lenses and bodies smashed and dismembered. There must be dozens of the things.
Shadows move in the next office. Back and forth across the doorway, carrying armfuls of paper to a smoldering wastepaper container in the center of the room. It puffs smoke and ash into the air with each ream dropped on to the fire.
“Hello?” I push the door open wider. It strikes me that this could be dangerous. The captain might already be gone. These figures could be Coalies destroying things they can’t use.
Two men freeze. They stare at me. Not Coalies, at least not ones in uniform. With a jolt, I recognize the rounded shoulders of the tall man I delivered May’s worm to.
The other man is tall, too, and broad. He moves as though he owns the ship, staring at me like I’m a trespasser in his space.
“Esther, what are you doing here?” he says.
I teeter. This is the captain of the Arcadia. This is the man whose voice I’ve listened to every day of my life.
“There’s no time for hesitation,” he snaps. “I’m going to ask you to find strength and tell me what you came here for. Do it quickly.”
I shake my head to rearrange the thoughts that are disjointed and threadlike. “Nik’s going to start the engine. The plan is going ahead. You need to get to the bridge.”
He looks at me carefully. “I know nothing about this.”
The wind drops from my sails. I scan the room for help. For something that will tell me what to do or what to say.
“Perhaps if we knew the codename?” he says.
“Landfall,” I whisper.
A grim smile spreads across the captain’s face. “Thank you. Gareth, weigh the anchor and load the new drone codes into the system. Let’s even the playing field.”
Gareth drops the pile of papers he’s holding onto the fire. He opens a filing cabinet and brings out a tiny box, then swings himself into the wheeled chair behind what must be the captain’s desk. He busies himself with a digiscreen. I look away when he opens the box to reveal the metal worm. That’s a memory I don’t want resurfacing.
“You’ve played your part. Thank you,” the captain says.
“What’s next?” I ask.
“Next, we attack the very heart of the Coaly surveillance system. Without their drones, they’re as blind as we are.”
“Then what?”
“Then I will do something I’ve wanted to do for the past twenty years. I’ll set a course out to sea, and I’ll steer the Arcadia away from this wretched shoreline and out of this purgatory we’ve been confined to.”
There’s a lump in my throat. Emotion making me want to cry. “I can help,” I say. “Shouldn’t you have people with you? Some guards or something?”
He smiles. “You’re right, of course. I have Gareth. We’ll be joined by more allies as soon as we finish our work here. You’ve done enough. Go home. Find your parents and stay out of danger. If all goes well, you won’t have to wait long.”
I can’t believe I did it. I can’t believe it’s over. I’m suddenly aware of the tension in my jaw and in my neck. I can go and find Mom and Dad. I should pack some things for when we leave. I turn to go.
“Esther.” The captain’s gentle voice comes from behind me. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For putting you through that night. For everything you’ve suffered. It’s a source of regret that you were treated the way you were. That your life has been so upended. That you’ve lost your sister.”
“I…I didn’t know it was you. That night. I didn’t realize until now.”
The captain nods, genuine regret evident on his face.
“Can I ask you something?” I say.
“I think you’ve earned that right.”
“You know Hadley, how much he hates us, what he plans to do. How did you work with him all that time? People call you a collaborator.”
Even as I’m saying it, I know I’m not just asking about the captain. For five years, I’ve been called one too. I never really believed it before. This is my demon to battle, too.
“Yes, I’m aware of that. The pretense of collaboration was necessary for the success of the rebellion. My duty is to work for my passengers. It remains my duty whether they love me or not.”
The captain turns back to his work, and it’s like I never existed.
I retrace my steps through the outer office, past the desk and the disemboweled filing cabinets. I swing through the glass doors without checking for Coalies. Ten feet from the captain’s complex, I lean on the railing for support, gulping fresh sea air. The drones suddenly look festive, strung up like fairy lights.
It’s over. That was my last act of rebellion.
Footsteps clomp behind me. An army of them. In my relief, I wandered out onto the deck, and I didn’t even think to check who was out here.
Stupid. Stupid.
How could I have let my guard down so quickly? I force myself to turn around and find a unit of Coalies coming toward me along the deck. Smooth as water. Their weapons raised.
I’m paralyzed with fear.
“Out of the way!” one screams, slamming me against the railing, and my ribs burst with pain.
This is it. They’re going to take me. I’ll be one of the disappeared. There’ll be no packing of treasured belongings. No comforting my parents. I just won’t be around anymore.
But they pass me by, and I watch, dumbstruck, as they pour into the captain’s office.
Shouts from inside. The captain’s deep voice raised in outrage. A shock wave that rattles the deck and the air and me. Then gunshots.
Run, Esther!
Too late. As fast as they entered, the Coalies reappear. The leader pauses, hand resting on his rifle. “Sir, this is unit four,” he says, talking through the microphone in his helmet. “The captain has been terminated.”
The visored face shifts until it’s looking at me. Sweat pops up on my top lip, and before I can control myself, I throw my head over the railing and vomit.
A hacking noise comes from the Coaly. He’s laughing. “All right, let’s move,” he says.
I stare down at the sea, so many decks beneath me it feels like I’m staring over a cliff edge. All I can do is concentrate on the harsh in and out of my own breathing and wait. Every second is a lifetime until I sense them moving away down the deck. The railing presses into my chest, but I stay there until I’m sure they’ve gone. Then, sobbing and shaking, I push myself up and go back into the captain’s office.
I have to check for signs of life.
First, I smell fire, then I smell blood. Metallic. Red and warm. A pair of boots, worn at the toes, stick out from behind the desk. This is where Gareth fell. Blood pools on the carpet. I know he’s dead. The bullet wounds are too numerous, too catastrophic. I check for signs of life anyway. Kneeling beside him, gently and methodically feeling for the place on his neck where the carotid artery passes close to the skin.
I find the captain’s body lying next to the fire in his office. He’s stretched out on his back, flames already licking at his fingertips. I can’t bear the thought of his skin charring and turning black. The smoke’s thickening by the second. With one hand, I cover my face; with the other, I grab the captain’s arm and pull. He’s like a rock, but I manage to drag him just clear of the flames. As his hand hits the floor, he releases a deep moan. He’s alive.
The smoke’s getting too thick to stay in here. Heat from the inferno licks my face. My skin tightens. I grab his shoulders. Pull with both hands. It’s no good. He’s too heavy. I make it a little way, just out of reach of the fire. I can’t leave him. But if I stay I’ll die here too.
“Esther.” A noise croaks from his lips. His chest is a lake of blood, the bullet wounds marked by deep red circles.
My eyes stream and prickle with the smoke. I lean closer, taking his hand.
“The screen…Gareth almost did it…Stop the drones…You have to do it …” Tears stream from the corners of his eyes.
I’m separated from the desk by a bank of fire. I can feel my hair crackling in the heat as the flames grow fierce around me. I have to find the digiscreen that Gareth was using. I leap over a low patch of burning paper, and I’m standing in front of the wide wooden desk. It’s piled up with papers and books. Some of them are already smoldering in the heat, ready to burst into flames. No digiscreen. I pull my sleeves down over my hands and use them to push stuff around on the desk.
Come on, come on, where is it?
Papers drop to the floor in a flurry of sparks. The fire’s gathering strength. Every breath harder than the last. The fabric of a chair ignites with a hollow woof, and a smell of burning leather fills the air.
It’s not here. The digiscreen isn’t here.
Breathing is like razor blades scraping through my lungs. I trained for this. What did Corp say?
Get low. Get beneath the smoke.
I drop to my knees, trying to find clearer air. And I spot it, a glassy rectangle poking out from beneath the splayed pages of a book. I grab it, the heat from its metal casing puckering the skin of my fingertips, and turn it over. The digiscreen blinks with blue font: Scan retina to execute command.
The ship shudders. A thrumming sensation rises up through my feet. So faint. Almost imperceptible, but it’s there, strange but definite. Nik did it. The Arcadia has a beating heart.
Somewhere behind me glass shatters. I have to get out of here. I lift the digiscreen to my eye and stare into the tiny camera embedded on its edge. A flash. I look at the digiscreen: Retina not recognized.
Of course it’s not recognized. Why would my eye unlock it?
The fire’s taken hold with merciless fury. The floor burns. So do the walls. Through the flames and the smoke, I can see the captain’s trousers are alight. All hope of pulling him clear is gone. I rake in a burning breath and clutch the digiscreen to my chest, then I hurl myself at the lowest point of the fire. Heat snatches at me. I collapse beside the captain.
“Captain!” I shout, shaking him by the shoulders.
He doesn’t respond. He doesn’t blink.
My heads spins. The captain’s gone. A foundation of my life, an inalienable part of the Arcadia, lies dead on the floor. Murdered. His voice, his guidance, as constant as the ship itself. Gone. Torn away.
Sobbing. Eyes and nose streaming. Grief and pain.
His eyes are closed. “I’m sorry,” I say as I push his eyelid up and bring the digiscreen to his face, moving it around until I hear the quiet bleep of the camera scanning successfully. I turn it over: Retina recognized. Drone system offline.
I drop the digiscreen and sprint away from the captain and the flames through the door to the outer office. In five strides, I make it to the glass doors, but as I push them open, I hesitate. On the wall, there’s a radio. A rectangular black box with a bank of buttons and dials. Above it, a line of clocks shows the time in DC, London, Tokyo, New Delhi. And there’s a digiscreen that displays just a number: 15,954. The number of days the Arcadia has been at sea. This is where the captain makes his announcements.
I have no idea how to work the thing, but I grab the receiver anyway, bringing it up to my face and pressing a button on the side. It crackles, and I clear my throat.
“Good morning. It is…a little before six a.m. on…Saturday, November 13, 2094. We’ve been stuck here for 15,954 days.” My voice echoes through the speakers.
My hands are trembling. Why the hell did this seem like a good idea?
“There have been no Virus cases, obviously, because saying we carry the Virus is just another lie the Coalies tell to justify keeping us locked up here—”
Behind me, something cracks and falls in the fire. I can feel the heat of it getting closer. I close my eyes, breathe deep to steady myself, try to figure out what I need to say. I press the button again.
“The Coalies are coming for all of us. Run.”
I drop the receiver and sprint out into the open. The miracle of clean air pours into my lungs. I collapse in a heap. The doors swing shut behind me. Smoke builds behind the glass like fog. The flames will take the captain and Gareth soon. A funeral pyre. It’s more than most will get today.
I run. I know that every step is taking me further from home. Further from my mom and dad. But Nik started the engine.
With the captain gone, someone has to steer the ship.
Chapter 64
Hadley
Hadley’s unit at the prow of the ship flashes orange as it moves across the digiplan. They’re under attack, gunfire sputtering in bursts. He touches a drone and drags it to the front of the ship.
His coffee cup holds down one curling corner of the digiplan. He glances at the rippling surface before going back to work. There’s a hum nagging at him. Barely noticeable, the hint of a rumble that climbs up his legs.
“Sir, we’re encountering more resistance than anticipated at the prow of the ship,” comes Grimson’s voice, crackling through her helmet. “The rebels are defending the bridge.”
“Copy that, Grimson. Backup on its way.”
He gathers a handful more drones and drags them northwards to join the—
It’s gone.
The drone he sent isn’t swooping around the front end of the ship. Must have gotten diverted. They’re programmed to prioritize threats, so it might have spotted something more pressing. He scans the digiplan, looking for the stray. But no, it really is gone. He scratches the stubble on his chin.
He looks at the coffee cup again, imagines the surface of the liquid is jumping.
He swats away the uncertainty. A technical glitch won’t dampen his spirits today. On the back wall of HQ, the pictures of the ship’s most wanted rebels are arranged in neat columns, and two minutes ago he had the pleasure of setting the captain’s image to Terminated. It was exhilarating.
Realizing that the old man had spent years working against him, siphoning off resources to fund his two-bit rebel organization, had stung. It made him feel naive. Like he still hadn’t learned the Celeste lesson. Hadley got a swell of satisfaction from crushing the man like a louse. Would have been more fun to do it himself, but a leader has to delegate.
