Rising Tide (2 page)

“So now that I know, now you toss me in the ocean?”

His face goes serious. “No.”

“No?”

“No. Your companion and I—”

“Miranda.”

“. . . Miranda and I came to an agreement.”

My head is still swimming, and none of this is making sense. Mal is alive. And wants to kill me. Yet
I'm
still alive. And he made a deal with Miranda?

“We always have need for people with medical training,” he says. He shrugs. “She made her skills known to me. But . . .” He pauses for a moment. “She's quite shrewd. She insisted that she demonstrate her skills. On you.”

It's such a nice piece of negotiation that I can't help smiling. It's the kind of thing I usually try to do—identify a need, make myself useful, benefit. She not only secured a safe space for herself, but she saved me in the process.

“All I can say is that you're very lucky,” Mal says. “None of my people would have worked on you. Not in your state. Not without quarantine. And you probably would have died, otherwise. I locked her in here with you, with some medical supplies, and she worked on you through the quarantine period. That you're alive, and awake, is a testament to her abilities.”

“She's one of the best.”

He nods. “That, we can agree on. How she chose to associate with you . . .”

“People change, Mal.”

The look he gives me sends chills through me. It's like being in a room with a wild animal—a wolf or a cougar. Mal clearly hates me. He has lots of reason to, I'll admit, but he also has all the power here. I keep trying to kick my brain out of the painkiller fuzz, but it's slow going, all uphill, and gravity's pulling at me. Miranda had been thinking quickly, making herself useful, saving me. Now I have to do my part. “Mal, I—”

He quiets me by holding up his hand. “Please don't, Benjamin. I can see the achingly slow grinding of your mind's gears. You're going to try to give me reasons not to kill you.”

Damn.

“The thing is, Benjamin, I had a plan; one I thought poetic. I would leave you in the ocean, all alone, with no wings to carry you. With no friends to aid you. Leave you in the great vastness and just . . . sail away. I could take odds on what would get you first—a shark? some other ship? drowning?”

The thought scares me more than I ever imagined it could.

“But I'm not.”

“Why?”

Mal rubs at a spot on his left glove. “That was the other part of my agreement with Miranda. Her terms were that she get to demonstrate her skills on you, and . . . that I keep you alive until we reach our destination.”

Thank God
, I think.

He must see the relief on my face because he says, “What I promised her, exactly, was that I would keep you on the ship. And that I wouldn't take any action to harm you. And so I won't. Because it doesn't matter.” He smiles at me. “Once we arrive, however, I will have my moment. Believe me when I say that I've been imagining all the many things I might do with you at that point.”

Another scary feeling, this time one that sticks like a rock in my gut. Just then, my mind clears a bit more and I realize what he just said and that the rocking sensation I'm feeling isn't completely from the drugs. “Did you say ‘ship'?” It's not an airship—I would know if it was. “Are we on the water?”

“Your speed is as remarkable as always,” Mal says.

“Cut me a little slack,” I say. “I've had a lot of painkillers.”

“I am aware,” he says, glaring at me. He sighs. “Yes, you are on board a ship right now. A warship. She's called the
Phoenix
.”

“You stole her?”

He looks at me, sharp, assessing. Like a bird. “I recovered her.”

Of course you did
, I think.

“She was secured in a naval facility. My people and I liberated her.”

It's a score, of course. Military targets have long been a flame the foraging moths have flown to over the years, but as a result the pickings are slim. Even if you do find something intact worth taking, the effort of getting it operational, being able to run it, is often too much. There are plenty of rotting old hulks in naval yards and off the coast. That he found one and managed to get it to work. . . .

“It took years to get it running,” he says. “Time during which my people were vulnerable.” He smiles. “But in the end we were triumphant.”

Jesus
, I think.
A warship. In Mal's hands
.

“The weapons?” I ask.

His smile grows wider. “Almost completely operational. That was one of the most difficult parts. She was partly stocked, but making sure everything worked and was loaded properly took some time.”

“I don't believe it,” I say.

His smile is predatory and triumphant. “That is because you have no imagination. We achieved a great victory, here, my people and I. And it will be our salvation.”

The word makes me uneasy. Especially in the Sick. “So you live here.”

He nods. “In some ways, the ocean is safer than the sky.” I find the words distasteful, but they make me think of Tamoanchan, an island settlement I recently visited. I think of Diego and Rosie, Sergei, even Clay. All the people Miranda and I left behind. I thought that sacrificing the
Cherub
might have saved them from attack, but that didn't mean more wouldn't be coming.

I needed off this ship.

“Where are you sailing it?” I ask.

“Hawaii.”

A legend of sorts. I've met people who determined to go there, lured by the promise of old magazines and books. “You know it's overrun with Ferals, right?”

He shrugs. “That's the rumor. But it's a series of islands. And by now the Ferals should have dwindled, equalized to a stable number. We can take our time to clean them out. And if the idea of it keeps others away, then all the better. If their maps already say, ‘Here there be monsters,' then why disabuse them of that notion?”

I shake my head. “That's the life you're going to lead? Doesn't seem suited to someone like you.”

“Things change,” is all he says.

I chew on it for a bit. Mal was on his way to a leadership position the first time I met him, but he seems to have taken it quite seriously. Seriously enough to risk his life on a dream. Miranda bought me some time. But then what? Even if he doesn't kill me right away, we'll be stuck there. With no way of getting off.

“Things do change,” I say. “Let me prove it to you.”

Mal laughs. “You?”

I can't help frowning at him.

“Oh, Benjamin. I see what you mean. You've developed a sense of humor.”

“Mal—”

“No.” The word is as hard and cold as stone. “I don't care if you've changed. If you can grow wings or if you shit out my heart's desire on command. I have you. And I'm taking you with us until I can deal with you in the appropriate way.” He leans forward. “Do you get that? You are mine.” He turns to leave. “Meditate on that on our journey.”

Then he leaves me to my solitude.

They move me to something more resembling a cell shortly later, something that was probably a bunk back in the Clean. There's a simple bed, a sink, and a toilet. I suppose it could be worse. I could have to shit on the floor.

They feed me, too. Scraps and slop, but it's something. I guess Mal's sticking to his promise to Miranda. I can imagine him rationalizing it, too. Telling himself he'll punish me at a time and place of his choosing. He has an overdeveloped sense of honor. Something tells me that Miranda picked up on that and used it against him.

Thinking of Miranda sends a pang through me—not knowing where she is, or how she is. What she's doing. How Mal's treating her.

There's no way that he's going to let her see me. That will be off-limits, even if she wants to, but. . . . But there's this strange, nagging voice inside my head that says maybe she doesn't want to see me. I don't think it makes sense, but it still pipes up from time to time. I keep trying to stamp it down.

And this is the problem with being stuck with no one but yourself. With no books or music or people to talk to. You start having crazy thoughts. In one of these, Mal charms Miranda and, well, let's just say she responds.

I'm definitely going to go crazy in here.

Of course I search my cell for means of escape but, well, there doesn't seem to be any. The door to the room is locked from the outside, and there are no windows or other openings inside. There is the toilet, but judging by its dimensions, the hole beneath it would be too small for me to squeeze through.

Just one book
, I think.
One book.
It wouldn't even matter which one. Once, when I was holed up in an old house that just happened to sit next to a Feral nest, I read the same book four times. In a row. And it was about rabbits. Another time, when Dad had dropped me off on a rooftop, circling around to pick me up later (and got delayed), I read the same romance novel twice, the second time acting out all the parts. I sometimes go to great lengths to pass the time.

A short time later, my food arrives. Those scraps and slop. It's skins and rinds and cores, cartilage and bone. The vegetables are just shy of rotting, the fish is too soft and has a smell that almost makes me gag. Something that was once leafy and green is now a muddy smear. Yet I open my mouth and shovel as much as I can in. Because I need to eat, and I'm hungry. I need to heal. That I don't enjoy it doesn't really come into it. Much. It helps that I've been on my own and hungry for much of my adult life. I've eaten all kinds of things out of desperation. This is tolerable at its worst. Or at least that's what I tell myself.

Especially every time I start to gag.

I start marking the days on my mattress, scoring lines into the fabric covering. One. Two. Three.

I start talking to myself. Except that quickly that loses all appeal. I'm a terrible conversationalist.

So I start thinking about the old days. About the last time I saw Mal.

It wasn't a good time.

CHAPTER TWO

I
t happened back a short while after my father Faded, when I was still flying around with Claudia. This was back before she got the
Valkyrie
, when the two of us were living on the
Cherub
.

I had been telling Claudia that we could get by with foraging, but she wanted to do other things, take on jobs, try for the big score. I eventually agreed. I think we were both reeling from what happened to Dad and were trying to strike out into new territory. And, I can't speak for her, but I was definitely feeling a little self-destructive at the time.

So we spent more time around people. There was no Gastown back then, but there were other settlements, either fixed or roaming. It's hard to keep track of people in the Sick, but there are ways. When you move on, leave a message behind about where you're headed, and a radio frequency. If someone is looking, all they have to do is go to that location and scan for signals. Of course you have to do it in code so not just anyone can find you.

So we kicked around zep dives until we found what we were looking for. The ultimate score.

“A police storage facility,” Cheyenne said. She wore a cowboy hat and always seemed peppy. The smile on her sun-freckled face was as wide as the sky. We sat on a rooftop in San Francisco, our airships anchored around us, five folding chairs arranged in a rough circle.

“Forget it,” I said. Everyone looked at me. “Too much trouble. I've hit police installations before. Getting past security is tricky enough, and it's almost certainly crawling with Ferals. Not to mention that it's probably been looted before. Or maybe someone's living there.” A lot of police facilities had shelters in them. That made them attractive to anyone looking to hole up. Not to mention the weapons and ammunition they usually held.

“Don't worry about security,” Cheyenne said and winked at me. She actually winked. I looked at Claudia, who shrugged. We knew Cheyenne the least out of everyone involved with this job. But of course she's the one who came with the details.

“No, seriously,” Cheyenne continued. “That's what Malik is for.”

All eyes turned toward Malik standing quietly behind his chair. His hair was shorter then, and he favored a mustache over a full beard, but he otherwise looked much the same. He seemed preternaturally calm, unruffled.

Out of everyone involved in the job, I had known Mal the longest, excluding Claudia. We were about the same age, ran in similar circles. Mal was a forager, too, though he often trod the fine line between foraging and pirating. Oddly enough, he had a good reputation—he didn't kill or attack the vulnerable. And he seemed more interested in forming a group, getting like-minded people to work together. He had asked me to join several times, but I couldn't really see myself doing that. We had worked on opposite sides in the past, but also together.