Pacifica

  She belonged here, in a way he wasn’t certain he belonged anywhere.

  After a moment, she moved to the tall pole rising from above the hatch that led below deck, and cranked a wheel that lowered the sail. Momentum carried his weight forward as the boat suddenly slowed, and he braced himself against the siding with straight arms. When he looked up she was struggling to tie off the rope, a grimace on her face.

  He stood and wobbled toward her. “Tell me what to do.”

  She turned away, guarding her hurt wrist against her chest. “I’ve got it.”

  Instead of arguing, he simply reached around her and grabbed the rope in her hand. The move brought them close; her back was an inch away from his chest. She must have noticed, because she went absolutely still.

  “It wouldn’t kill you to ask for help,” he muttered.

  She slipped to the side, putting some space between them.

  “I’m not used to anyone offering,” she said. And then, after a long pause, she added, “Why were you running from the Armament anyway?”

  He lifted a shoulder. “I knew where that road would take me.”

  Straight back home. Back to Center. Back to his armed security.

  But not to Adam.

  “And I’ll take you somewhere else, is that it?”

  He nodded.

  She cleared her throat. “Thanks for getting me out of that cell.”

  He couldn’t quite look her way. “You shouldn’t have been in there in the first place.”

  She told him how to tie the line in a figure-eight-shaped knot around a metal spool, making him do it again when he didn’t get it right. When he’d finished, he returned to his seat on the crate.

  If he’d thought slowing would ease his seasickness, he was wrong. The boat seemed to roll in a circular pattern—up, down, and around—and his stomach went right along with it. Saliva pooled in his mouth, mixing with the bitter taste of bile climbing up his throat. The only thing that stopped him from puking was the way she was staring at him, as if she expected him to do so.

  “Well?” she asked.

  He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Where’s the gyre?”

  Crossing her arms over her chest, she leaned back against the wheel.

  “West, but we’ll head northwest to stay out of the patrolled zones. The Armament will figure out soon enough that the boat they towed to their station isn’t with the rest of the wreckage. They’ll be looking for us.”

  It took a moment for her meaning to dig its claws into his gut. Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t return to Noram. Not on this ship. They’d be gunned down before they even made it past the California Islands. There was nowhere to go but forward.

  There were no landmarks visible through the clouds. Nothing to swim toward if this boat sunk like the other one. His heels began to bounce. When they were moving, the clouds had parted around them, but now they seemed to press in, leaving only twenty feet of water on all sides before fading to nothingness. He couldn’t even tell what time of day it was. Near sunset, from his guess, but the gloom made it impossible to tell.

  “How long until we get there?”

  “It’s not a specific place,” she said. “The gyre covers thousands of miles.”

  His shoulders dropped. “You’re kidding.”

  “You don’t have any specific coordinates?”

  “No.” He doubted the steward would have known that information if a special detail was in charge of moving the prisoners.

  “It’s a day to the closest edge with strong wind. Longer without. It’s halfway between Noram and Hawaii.”

  He nodded, the two points of reference providing him only a little comfort.

  “We’ll keep to the edge,” she added. “Don’t want to get dragged into the gyre’s center.”

  “Why is that?”

  Her gaze turned toward the water. “Might not get back out again.”

  That wasn’t exactly reassuring.

  “Have you been to the gyre before?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  He remembered what Captain Ingold had said about her being dangerous, and wondered if it was possible that she’d escaped from this prison, or base, or whatever it was. At the moment, nothing seemed impossible.

  “There’s a jail?” he prodded.

  “Not that I’ve seen. It’s been a few years, though.”

  So either it was new, or she wasn’t an escaped convict. If the gyre covered thousands of miles there was a chance she just hadn’t seen it.

  At this rate, he was never going to catch up with Adam.

  “What were you doing out there?” he asked.

  She stared at her feet, then lifted one across her knee and pulled off the wet sock. He caught a glimpse of her slender ankle and looked away while she moved to the next.

  “Sailing.”

  “In this thing?” He was still amazed it floated at all.

  Her chin lifted, and he got a very strong feeling that she was about to dump him over the rails.

  “This thing,” she said, “is called the Déchet, and it’s the only reason you’re not sinking to the bottom of the Pacific back there with your dad’s friends.”

  Her tone put him more on edge.

  “I just didn’t know boats this small went out that far, that’s all.”

  “Small?” She huffed. “What do you know about it? It’s not the size of the boat, but the wind in her sails, my friend. I built the Déchet with my bare hands, by myself, from the scraps your Armament left behind. I know how she works, and how fast she flies. You do your thing and leave the sailing to me.”

  “And what exactly is my thing?”

  “Looking pretty,” she said. “Fixing your hair.” She ran a hand through her own, then gave it a dramatic shake. “Wearing those special goggles that make it so you can’t see the rest of us.”

  “You don’t know me,” he said.

  “You’re the son of one of the richest men in the world,” she said. “That’s all I need to know.”

  “It’s not that simple,” he argued. “It’s not like I’m eating money for breakfast and sleeping on the crushed dreams of poor people.”

  “Well, I know you’re not sleeping on the ground with the rats or wondering when the last time you had breakfast was.” She made a sound of disgust and stared out over the water.

  Ross couldn’t imagine what she’d described. Even in the worst case, if his father were ever impeached, they’d never be out on the streets.

  A strained quiet settled between them, and in it, he watched her lean into the waves, her body absorbing the movement. Part of him wanted to deny that this could be real. This girl was his age. She could have gone to Center. They could have sat next to each other in environmental history, and met in the supply closet between classes.

  Or maybe not.

  Instead, she was sailing a boat, using the kind of skill he didn’t possess for anything, and running from the Armament. She was tough, and sharp, and from a completely different world.

  “For your information, I don’t do anything to my hair,” he said. “It’s like this naturally.”

  In her profile, he caught a smirk.

  His eyes drew again to the “86” tattoo below her ear. It was faded around the edges, making him wonder how long she’d had it.

  “What’s that number on your neck?” Her fingers lifted to cover the black ink.

  “Definitely not a running tally of people I’ve kidnapped.”

  “Well, that’s great news,” he said.

  The waves slapped against the side of the boat, adding to the throbbing at the base of his skull.

  “My people all have this. You get it on your fifth birthday if you live that long.”

  He cringed.

  “Who are your people?” He was starting to get the feeling they weren’t Shorelings.

  “The Original Eighty-Six.”

  He knew the name from his internet search at home, but still didn’t know what it meant.
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  “You know how the Oil Nation attacked the Armament base and some warehouses in Noram all those years back?” She didn’t look back at him, and he saw she’d moved her hair to cover the mark.

  “Sure,” he said, pleased that he actually remembered something from school that Adam hadn’t had to reiterate to him. That small pride was another punch to the ribs. “That’s what started the war with the SAF.”

  She side-eyed him. “That what they teach you in your fancy school?”

  He nodded, thinking of just a few days ago, when he’d asked Adam about Shoreling school.

  “Well, it was your people that started it,” she said, “when they hoarded the malaria medicine. Kanshu, yeah? Guarding the vaccines like jailers.”

  He scowled. “What do you mean?”

  Malaria was a frequent topic in history classes at Center. After the Melt, people had to move inland. They crowded together in the coastal cities, dying from storms and heat and starvation. The only things that had thrived were the mosquitoes, and in a matter of years they’d wiped out five billion people.

  “Malaria made your medical companies a lot of money,” she said. “When the first wave hit Noram, who do you think got their shots first?”

  His grandparents had. Because they were educated, and responsible, and that’s what educated, responsible people did.

  “The people who could pay for it,” she answered for him. “And when they ran out of medicine, the people who couldn’t were turned away.”

  He hadn’t considered that people had to pay for the medicine that kept them alive. Then again, he hadn’t known you had to pay to ride the bus, either.

  “That … seems unfair,” he said.

  “The people that survived had nothing,” she said. “The fishing had all dried up. They had no money. No food.”

  After a moment, she moved to sit on a crate across the cockpit from him.

  “So one day this fisherman went past the California Islands. He hadn’t caught anything in a month, but his family was starving, so he pushed farther and farther out, past the Alliance’s boundary lines, because he knew if he did, he’d find something.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest and leaned back.

  “What did he find?” Ross asked.

  “Another boat. An Oiler boat.”

  “From an oil rig?”

  “From the Oil Nation,” she said. “And do you know what the sailors onboard promised him? Bread. And honey. And fish, because they still had fish in the southern waters. In exchange for a ride back to the mainland.”

  Ross heaved a breath, caught up in the story. “Was the fisherman an idiot? Who brings an SAF national to the capital without wondering what he’s up to?”

  Her eyes turned to slits. “You’d do the same if you were starving.”

  He wouldn’t know. He’d never been starving.

  “Five Oilers came back with that fisherman,” she said. “Five more the next week, and the next. For a while, things were good. His family had food in their bellies, enough to share with their friends and neighbors.” She took a slow breath, exhaled. “The attacks came from the mainland side—just a handful of men with bombs the Armament never saw coming.”

  Ross’s forehead crinkled. He’d just assumed the SAF had attacked from the sea, but she was right, the Armament would have been prepared for that. They regularly patrolled the Alliance’s seaboards.

  “Afterward, the patrol found out and rounded up the ones who helped them. Didn’t take them to jail. Oh, no. Jail was too good for them. Your people found their families, even their children, and had them all sent to an island on the stormy seas. A very special place, where there was nothing to eat or drink, where nothing could survive.” She shook her head. “Whatever they had done, it was not worth that death.”

  This felt off to Ross. Even terrorists were given a trial, weren’t they? Exile seemed barbaric.

  “But they did survive,” Ross said.

  “Yes,” she said. “The prisoners fought back. They drowned the men who’d brought them there. They burned their bodies in a fire pit.” Her stare was filled with bitter challenge. “The revolution of the Eighty-Six.”

  Tattoo number 86, thought to be in gang affiliation with the Original 86.

  “How did Noram not know their men had been overrun? Didn’t they send supplies? Or wonder what happened to them?”

  “My grandfather—Finn Carey—his first ship was an Armament skiff Noram sent from the mainland. After that, they didn’t send many more. Guess we weren’t worth the loss.” Her grin was sharp as the knife at her hip.

  We.

  His grandparents argued over wines. Hers had fought in wars.

  “You’ve been to this island,” he said slowly.

  “I was born there.”

  His insides felt hollow and cold as the warmth drained from his body.

  “The Eighty-Six are pirates,” he realized. “You are a pirate.”

  A slow smile tilted her lips.

  “We prefer the term ‘corsarios,’” she said. “But yes. I am.”

  * * *

  When she picked up speed, Ross retreated into the cabin, and maybe the greenish tint of his skin was enough for her not to ask why. Inside, things were only worse. He was tossed around the tiny space like a pebble in a bowl, smacking his head on the low ceiling, his shoulders on the side compartments, his knees everywhere else.

  A pirate. He’d hired a damn pirate to take him out to sea. And then, because he was the world’s smartest man, he’d broken her out of a cell, given her back her boat, and handed her a gun.

  A pirate. If it wasn’t for everything that had happened today, he wasn’t sure he’d even believe in them. But the way she’d said it, the fierceness and pride in that smirk, had held more truth than anything she’d ever told him.

  His mind fit together the accounts he’d heard over the years from Tersley and his father’s cabinet members. Pirates attacked freighters and commercial boats, running drugs and ransoming crews, and then sinking the stolen ships to destroy the evidence.

  His stomach was still churning from the motion of the boat as he searched through the below-deck compartments. He couldn’t believe the Déchet didn’t have some kind of radio, despite how it looked. The thought crossed his mind that he should find a weapon of some sort, just in case she decided to go back on her word and he needed something to defend himself.

  The light was fading, making it hard to see what he was doing. There were some matches beside the stove, and some strange tools in the cabinet beneath. The tomblike chute reaching toward the front of the boat was covered with a thin, hand-sewn pillow top, and when he searched beneath it, he found a storage compartment. A few buckets were inside, along with a large plastic jug of water.

  His mouth dried just at the sight of it, his tongue suddenly thick behind his teeth. After giving a brief listen above deck for any sign of movement, he retrieved the water, and twisted off the top. He could already taste the liquid relief as he brought it to his lips.

  “What are you doing?”

  She was crouching in the hatch, a few steps above him. There was something elegant and dangerous about her, and he found himself questioning if the things he knew about this girl were as frightening as the things people had told him about people like her.

  He didn’t think they were.

  “Shoreling,” and “pirate,” and “corsario” all jumbled in his head. Labels he’d heard used with words like “vicious,” and “predatory,” and “animal.”

  Labels given by people who withheld medicine and food from the poor, when they had more than enough to go around.

  “I’m thirsty,” he said, but immediately set the water down on the trunk.

  “You’d be better off drinking seawater,” she said, brows drawing inward. “That’s for cleaning the deck.”

  He looked down at the white sticker and the large black print, and groaned internally as she turned to go.

  “I’m catching rain,?
?? she said over her shoulder. “Not much cleaner, but it won’t kill you.”

  He’d never had unfiltered water before. He’d never given much thought to where it came from other than the tap from his home.

  He didn’t follow her above deck.

  His moves became more frantic as the last of the sky through the small overhead window turned black, and he could feel the sickness mingle with something more potent. The situation had seemed manageable in the daytime, but now, with the arrival of night, he felt the full weight of it, dragging him down into the water.

  He was with a girl he barely knew, on a boat in the middle of the ocean. His family, his friends, everything he’d ever known had slipped out of his reach. He was heading toward the unknown, after running from the Armament.

  He had lost his mind.

  He climbed the steps and gulped the night air. It was worse out here. He could see nothing. No sky, no clouds, nothing before or behind them.

  Sweat dripped between his shoulder blades. He stumbled forward to the edge and tipped forward for one dizzying moment.

  “Hey!” Marin grabbed the back of his shirt and pulled him back.

  “Let go,” he managed.

  He spun and tried to walk, stretch his legs, but there was nowhere to run. The cockpit of this stupid boat was only a few feet across, and he kept bumping into the siding or the pole that supported the sail.

  “Sit down,” she said.

  His remaining strength slipped away. The sky seemed to press harder from all around them, weighting down this boat into the murky, trash-filled sea.

  “Where are we?” He was breathing hard. “How much farther?”

  “I had to arc northwest to stay out of Alliance waters,” she said. “It’ll take another day at least.”

  “Another day?” He hugged his arms across his body. His throat burned.

  “You should really sit down.”

  His insides felt liquid, and scalding hot. His hands found the side of the boat, knees knocking against the crates as he fell onto them. If he’d had something in his stomach, he might have vomited. As it was, his stomach twisted and flexed, not relaxing long enough for him to inhale.

  “It’s too dark.” He could hear the water, but there was no reflection off of it. He couldn’t even see her. “Don’t you have some kind of light?”