Pacifica

  Frantically, she looked for something sharp to cut her bindings loose, but the gray sky made it difficult to pick out anything sharp or metallic on the ground. There were plenty of places to hide, but each was only a temporary fix. She needed to get her hands on a weapon.

  “Turn around,” Picker ordered.

  A cold sweat dripped down her brow.

  She faced him, eyes locked on the gun he aimed low at her belly, and his thumb, resting on the trigger on top.

  “Bang!”

  She jumped, and stumbled backward, landing on her backside in a slushy puddle. The ground beneath her trembled, and then dropped an inch, like an empty box buckling under her weight. Scrambling away from the spot, she rolled to her knees, and then climbed to a stand, the roar of Picker’s laughter cutting through the rain.

  Her breath came in short gasps. A quick glance down at the puddle revealed what she had suspected. The water was lower than before she’d fallen. Not just because of the splash she’d made. Because it was draining.

  She’d found a boca.

  Her chin lowered in determination.

  “Coward,” she spat. “Why’d you bring me out here if you were just going to shoot me? Thought you would’ve done that in town where all your friends could watch.”

  He picked at a scab on his cheek, a symptom of the tar he loved so much.

  “Maybe I wanted a chance to say goodbye.”

  Giggling a little, he stepped closer, and she rotated, just the slightest bit, so that when he faced her the weak spot in the ground was at his back.

  The warm metal of his weapon came to rest against her collar. When she twisted away, he grabbed her by the hair, and snapped her head back.

  Her eyelids fluttered in an attempt to block the driving rain, but she didn’t cry out. She wouldn’t give him that satisfaction, even as the gun barrel slid up, beside the pulsing vein of her neck. Her breath held, trapped in her lungs as she waited, waited, waited.

  “Like my new hardware?” he said. “Look at it. Look, Marin.”

  With his fist knotted against her skull, he tried to turn her head, but though pain seared across her scalp, she refused to let herself bend to his will. The toe of her boot collided with his shin, forcing him back a step.

  Just a little farther.

  The short silver barrel of the gun pressed against her wet cheek with bruising pressure. Twisting his wrist, he turned it so that she could see the autofocus, and below it, the silhouette of a black bird.

  “Fancy, right? I have three more just like it.”

  “I’m so impressed,” she said between her teeth.

  “You haven’t seen the armory,” he said. “There’s enough firepower to take over the world.”

  “It’s not going to matter.” She kicked him again, and was rewarded, again, with his slow retreat. “You’ll be outnumbered five to one once the Shorelings get here.”

  Visions of them breaking from their prison ships and raiding Careytown filled her mind. Maybe it was a fool’s hope—Hiro certainly wasn’t a warrior—but they’d survived a lot in Lower Noram. They were fiercer than Luc was giving them credit for.

  “Outnumbered?” mocked Picker. “Who says we’re fighting against them?”

  She hesitated.

  “Luc’s raising an army.” A slow, manic smile lifted his scarred face. “We’re going to take down the terrenos.”

  He turned her face so that their eyes could meet. He was too close for comfort, so close she could feel his warm breath on her lips.

  “That’s impossible.”

  “Oh, you’ve missed out, Marin. While you’ve been scavenging and fixing your little machines, Luc’s been preparing the captains for war. We’re about to get back everything that’s been owed to us.” His lips twisted into a pouting frown. “It’s too bad you won’t be able to see it.”

  Her mind couldn’t wrap around this. “You’ve all been taking too many dips in the tar jar. Even with the Shorelings, we could never take the mainland. The terrenos have guards, not to mention the high ground. There are thousands of them above that cliff.”

  “We don’t need to go ashore,” he said. “We just need to take down the Armament. The Shorelings are already doing the rest.”

  Images of fire and bloodshed ripped through her mind. Luc was taking the refugees from the mainland and turning them against the Armament. She’d already seen the crates of weapons in the library—Gloria had been outfitting the Shoreling rioters for weeks.

  “What about la limpieza?” Marin asked. “The City Patrol? Did you forget about them? I’ve seen them go at the Shorelings. They play hard, Picker.”

  Picker scoffed. “They’re outnumbered by Shorelings ten to one. The only reason they play so hard is because they have the Armament backing them if the riots get out of control. We take out the Armament … you can figure out the rest.”

  Hiro had been in the shop when Adam had shown up there. A kanshu boy dies on our streets and they’re bringing in the Armament. If they couldn’t call in the Armament, the Shoreling rioters would overwhelm la limpieza in a matter of hours. It would be complete chaos.

  Her brother was starting a war. One they would lose. The Shorelings brought here may be armed and angry, but they were not sailors or soldiers. They were no match for the enormity of the Alliance’s military.

  So many people were about to die. And the one person who could get the attention of those who could stop it was now in Luc’s hands.

  She had to find Ross.

  “How will you even get them back to the mainland?” she asked. “You try to put that many people on the Señora, it’s going to sink.” Even all the captains’ boats combined would not have enough room for an army.

  “They’ll go back the same way they came.”

  On the ocean liner. Would Luc’s crew take it over? How? The thing would have to be crawling with Alliance soldiers to avoid a mutiny when the Shorelings realized what Pacifica actually was.

  “Shh,” said Picker. “Don’t worry about that now. Worry about me.”

  He stroked her hair, still keeping the gun against her throat. Chills raced across her skin. It was now or never.

  Jutting out her chest, she rammed into his body, causing him to fall back, then filling the distance, so that he had no room to move forward.

  With a grunt, she kneed him in the groin, and this time he folded forward. Before she could kick him again, he’d spun her toward the weak spot. Lip twitching in a sneer, he shoved her back by the shoulders, until one foot broke through the thin barrier of trash.

  She yelped in surprise, throwing her weight forward again. Her forehead collided with Picker’s nose, sending a jolt of pain through her skull. With a growl, he gave her shoulders a firm shake.

  “You think I’m stupid?” he crowed. “I’m trash-born, same as you. You think I don’t know what you’re trying to pull?”

  The gun was still in his hand. She could feel it resting against her throat as he fisted the thin strap of her shirt. Her foot was stuck in the mouth of the boca; a twist of her ankle revealed nothing but air beneath. When she tried to pull it free, her other foot began to sink. She had no idea how deep the hole went before it collapsed into the sea below. It could have been a few feet, or close to forty. Either way, the water beneath was churning and hungry, and once it swallowed her, she’d be dragged into the base of this giant iceberg, and held there until she drowned.

  “Oh, no!” Picker laughed. “The island has you now.”

  He let her go, and she crashed down to her knees. With her arms behind her back there was no way to grab on to anything. She pulled at the bindings wildly, sharp jolts of pain snapping through her shoulders.

  She couldn’t die like this. Not here in the trash, and not below, in the water, sinking down into the murky blue like her father’s still corpse. Too much waited for her beyond this island.

  She held Ross’s face in her mind. His grim, determined smile. His hair, wild in the wind.

  “Pul
l her up!”

  Picker turned toward the voice. Marin fell another foot, her legs swinging in the emptiness below. Sweat mingled with rainwater, throwing a shimmering curtain over her vision. With her fingers, she tried to reach for something behind her, but they slipped off every surface uselessly.

  “I said pull her up!” It was a woman’s voice, low and commanding.

  “What are you doing here?”

  Marin slid down another few inches. Her waist hung below the landline now, her wrists trapped in the muck. Picker leapt back to clear the sinkhole, and Marin leaned forward, every muscle taut, trying to inch her way back out.

  “You sorry, tar-sniffing bastard.” The woman was closer now, and even through the rush in her ears, Marin recognized her mother’s voice. “Do as I say.”

  “Can’t, Seema,” said Picker, though his voice wavered now. “Captain’s orders.”

  “I’m not going to tell you again,” her mother said, and even through the chaos, it prickled Marin with fear, and hope, and surprise.

  “You don’t want to do that,” Picker warned.

  Marin blinked, and watched as Picker lifted his gun again, this time toward Seema.

  “Hey!” Someone from behind snapped her attention away from Picker and her mother. Again, she blinked, and recognized the Shoreling face with the dark, clean-cut hair. He had a few more bruises now, including a split lip, and he lay on his belly, reaching in her direction.

  Adam.

  A single moment of joy filled her. Ross, she thought. I found what you’re looking for. And then she realized, with a cold, foreboding despair, that it wouldn’t matter if she didn’t live to tell him.

  “I … can’t…” She couldn’t turn or stretch out her arms.

  “Where’d you come from?” Picker turned back, seeing Adam, just as Marin tried to twist her body toward him in one great heave.

  A shot was fired. She lifted her elbows, and pedaled her feet through the empty space. It was too much for the thin surface to hold. The ground gave way and broke off around her, not with a great rumble, or a crack of thunder, but in near silence, drowned out by the pouring rain.

  She was sliding backward, sucked into the belly of this cursed place, a silent scream trapped in her throat. Something pinched her shoulder hard, then slid beneath her arm.

  “Come on!” shouted Adam.

  With a groan, she flexed her body all at once and snaked toward him, chest and face making imprints in the sludge with each desperate movement. Adrenaline coursed through her veins, driving her to climb and free herself from the gateway of death.

  Finally, her chest and hips were on solid ground. Then her knees. Her breath came in hard heaves. She turned to see if her mother had survived Picker’s shot, and found that Seema had not fallen. She was very much alive, standing tall, and picking her way through the trash toward them. Water dripped from every angle of her small body, and a silver gun extended from her right fist.

  She was familiar, and yet different, and looking at her Marin was reminded of the aftermath of the storm, her fists knotted in Ross’s drenched shirt as they floated on the wreckage of her precious Déchet. Words had formed in her barely conscious mind, and slipped from her lips like a prayer. Hail Mary, full of grace. Her mother’s words. A chant she didn’t even really understand, learned from a woman she’d never really known.

  On the ground, an arm’s reach away, lay Picker, but Marin only saw him for a moment, because the pit was still swallowing, the mouth closing and opening in strange, hungry bites. It pulled his body into the abyss, and then sealed itself with a fizz of bubbles, as if the hole had never opened in the first place.

  “You all right?” Seema asked her.

  Marin nodded. She rose, and Seema cut her free with a knife from her pocket. She could feel her mother’s hands shaking, and hear the tiny gasps of her breath she tried to hide. Adam didn’t seem at all surprised by Seema’s presence, though his face was pale as he looked at her gun.

  It took a moment for Marin to form the words waiting in her head.

  “I need to find Ross,” she said finally.

  “Ross?” asked Adam. “My Ross?”

  “Gone,” said Seema. “Luc took him in the Señora. Just has a few men with him.”

  Dread pooled in the base of Marin’s stomach. What plans had Luc made in her absence? Had he already contacted the mainland for a trade?

  She never should have told him who Ross was.

  “Where did they go?”

  “Same place he goes to meet the terrenos,” she said. “Oil rig number four. They haven’t been gone long.”

  Marin rubbed her wrists, feeling as though the bindings had transferred to her lungs. Luc always traveled with backup in case he ran into trouble, though usually he was the one causing the trouble.

  “I need to get on a boat.”

  The same ripe terror she’d felt when Picker had aimed that gun at her chest slammed the blood through her veins. Every second here was a second wasted, was another moment Ross was with her brother.

  “The boat we came on is empty,” said Adam. “They docked it out there.” He pointed in the opposite direction of Careytown, over the swells of trash that faded in the distance.

  “How do you know that?” asked Marin.

  “The guys who brought us weren’t in the Armament,” he said.

  She stared at him, glancing down at his leg. He favored it, all his weight clearly on the other side. But though the bandage Hiro had applied was dirty, it looked as though it had held.

  Questions whipped through her mind. Had the corsarios taken the ship bearing the prisoners? Had they beaten out the Armament in an attack? If she took a boat the entire Alliance was searching for, it wasn’t going to end well.

  “Talk fast, Adam,” she snapped.

  “After I was arrested”—his bottom lip twitched at the word—“they put us in these cells somewhere outside the city. We didn’t stay there too long—maybe a few hours while more Shorelings were brought in. Before dawn they loaded us up in this ferry, and shuttled us across the bay. I think maybe to the California Islands, or the Armament base … it was hard to tell.”

  “The offshore station,” she said. “An old oil rig.”

  “Maybe.”

  She motioned with her hand to hurry up.

  “They moved us to another boat,” he said. “We were kept below deck, but the guy who came to bring us food and water had a tattoo on his neck. Like yours. He was wearing a uniform, but I’ve never seen another person with a mark like that.”

  Marin’s fingertips prodded the “86” below her ear. The corsarios were working with the Armament? Did they know that Luc planned on raising an army against them, like Picker had said?

  “When we got here, they weren’t wearing the uniforms anymore,” said Adam. “They tied us together and made us walk across the trash. A few of us were holding up the line so they cut us free.” He glanced at Seema. “I followed them this way. Do people live here?”

  “I found him when I was looking for you,” said Seema, ignoring his question. “He’s the one who spotted Picker dragging you through the gomi.”

  Seema touched her wrist gently, and in that touch a lifetime of words were held. For once, Marin wished they had more time.

  “I suppose it will do me no good to tell you not to follow your brother.”

  “No,” said Marin.

  In an instant, she was eight years old, sitting in her mother’s kitchen while fixing a radio. Her stomach grumbled with hunger, but Seema would not let her eat until she was done.

  She’d always thought her mother was cruel and her father kind, but now she wasn’t so sure it wasn’t the opposite.

  Seema gave a curt nod. “It will not be long before they wonder what happened to Picker.”

  “Come with me,” Marin told her.

  Seema could help—she’d be a valuable crewmember. After, they could go somewhere. Maybe the mainland, if it hadn’t been torched to the ground.
r />   Seema offered a half smile.

  “Soft to the end,” she said, though it didn’t feel much like an insult. “Go, and I will make sure no one follows.”

  It was her goodbye, and it hurt like a punch to the gut, because Marin knew this would be the last one. She would never see her mother again.

  “We have to find Ross.” Adam looked between them, eyes dipping every few seconds to the gun.

  “I’ve heard that line before,” Marin muttered, eyes tilted up to the gray skies.

  Seema released Marin’s wrist, mouth drawn tight, brows flat.

  “It’s time for you to go, mouette,” she said. “And this time, to stay gone.”

  CHAPTER 26

  LUC’S MEN were not easy on Ross.

  As they dragged him through town, they shouted his name, and welcomed those around them to take their shots. He was cursed at, kicked, hit. His hair was pulled. His clothes, stretched and torn. The corsarios threw things at him, cups and cans that splattered against his chest or bounced off his body to splash in the mud. The Shorelings watched from the tavern, afraid.

  When he’d hung his head and accepted his sentence, he clung to one final image: a skinny girl with wild curls, driving the boat she’d made with her bare hands into the wide open sea. He thought of Marin, not because she was one of the 86, or because she’d brought him here. Because she was the bravest person he’d ever known, and right now, more than ever, he needed to be brave.

  * * *

  When he woke, he was propped up on the deck of a boat, arms tied to the mast behind him. His whole body felt like one stiff muscle, and when he moved, his bones seemed to creak. Still, nothing appeared to be broken. His mouth tasted like blood, and his face was sticky with it, but apart from smelling foul, he was in one piece.

  The sky above was that same perpetual gray, though he was learning to differentiate the intent of the clouds. These were high and wispy, not the wall of black, boiling thunderheads he’d seen coming toward them in the storm. The wind was behind them, and ahead, the ocean met the horizon. It took him a minute to recognize the boat as the one they’d passed in the dock outside Careytown.