Pacifica

  “We’re running out of fuel,” Ross told them. “And there’s oil beneath Lower Noram. To clear the way, she and my father, maybe others too, invented Pacifica. All the ads, the pictures, it’s all made up. Maybe the erosion problems are too, I don’t know. They’d planned to send the Shorelings to that island—to Careytown—the whole time. She paid Luc to take them.”

  Adam’s eyes widened. “Your dad did this?”

  Ross couldn’t look directly at him. “I think so. Yeah.”

  Adam’s hand squeezed his shoulder, and he’d never been so grateful for such a small gesture.

  “When we came here, I was next to a guy from above the cliffline,” Adam said. “He had information that had gotten him in trouble, that’s why he’d been arrested.”

  Ross remembered a man with the Shoreling prisoners who had been wearing a suit. He’d told Ross that Adam had been left behind in the trash.

  “What kind of trouble?” Ross asked.

  “He said he was supposed to doctor satellite images of an island. Make it look like something tropical. He thought it might be about Pacifica, and when he started asking around, he ended up in a cell.”

  They’d fallen into deep, murky water, learning things none of them had been intended to know. Part of Ross still held out hope of his father’s innocence. The bigger part of him knew better. It was like all the walls in his life had suddenly been made into windows, and he couldn’t close his eyes or turn away.

  Adam continued. “He said there was a whole team in the department of safety working on it. Fixing pictures, making ads. Making Pacifica.”

  Ross grit his teeth. When Roan Teller had brought up phase two at the dinner, his father had acted reluctant, not confused. Was that because he’d wanted to ensure the Shorelings would be gone by then? What was his plan for the future, when they wanted to contact family back home, when they wanted to visit the mainland again? Adam had been gone a day and Ross had gone looking for him. If he’d been sent away to a mysterious island, never again to be heard of, Ross would definitely be asking questions.

  He thought of what Roan had said to Luc—that the president would blow up the island. Maybe his father’s plan had been to pretend the first five hundred were dead—that the ship had sunk in a storm on the way to the island.

  “I keep thinking this is a dream,” Adam said. “I just need to wake up.”

  Ross knew the feeling.

  “Did that guy say anything else?” he asked.

  “No.” Adam shook his head. “But … people talked about a lot of stuff. They said they’d seen boats leaving with construction supplies for Pacifica that came back empty, and whole apartment buildings in the docks that had been cleared by arrests.” He pulled at the collar of his shirt.

  “The construction supplies could have been dumped in the ocean,” said Marin.

  “How many people know about this?” asked Adam. He glanced around him, as if someone might be listening.

  “Probably the same number who know the Eighty-Six were dumped with the trash,” said Marin.

  “We need to tell my dad,” Adam said, wrapping his arms around his chest. “He’s known something’s been wrong the entire time. He can stop this.”

  Ross considered this, feeling like he was betraying his own father for even considering it. Noah Baker had been true to his convictions throughout his time in office. He’d never agreed with the relocation initiatives, even when they made him unpopular in the political district.

  “Does this ship have a radio?” he asked. Marin nodded toward the steering column, where a black box sat above a circular scanner, marking their coordinates.

  “We didn’t have the radio’s access codes on the last boat to call out,” said Adam. “It was locked when I tried to let them know where I was.” Marin nodded in confirmation.

  Frustration pressed down on Ross’s hope.

  “Could always check with your friend down below,” Marin said.

  “They’re still out,” said Adam, checking through the circular window of the hatch.

  Ross glanced at Marin, and found her face scrunched in concentration.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “Nothing.” She frowned. “Just … why would the Oilers give weapons to Luc so that he could attack the Armament? I guess if the Shorelings overpowered the patrol in the riots, there’d be no one to contain the mess. But why don’t they just attack the Armament? Why pay a middleman?”

  She had a point. If the Shoreling riots escalated, the City Patrol would not be able to contain them. Without the threat of the Armament intervening, the chaos could easily travel above the cliffline, and civil war, his father’s fear, would become a very real possibility. But the SAF didn’t need pirates to make that happen; they had the manpower.

  “Because they’re trying to arrange a trade,” said Ross. “Oil for food…”

  He stopped. Stared at Marin.

  “Uh-oh,” said Marin. “He’s thinking.”

  “Luc wanted the warships to attack the Armament station,” Ross said. “Or maybe just get them out of the way…”

  “For what?” asked Adam.

  “For who.” Ross scratched absently at his neck, and the stubble that had grown in the last few days.

  He was back in the meeting room with his father, facing the screen where the leader of the SAF was asking for a trade. Oil for food. His father had come back with a proposal for an aid package, which had been taken like a slap to the face. At one point his father had mentioned knowledge of the SAF troops, mobilizing near their western border.

  Ross had asked if they were going to war, and his father had told him they were on the verge.

  Was this what the SAF was waiting for? A distraction, so that they could slip past the Armament and into Noram, just as they had eighty years ago in the last war? Surely if his father knew about this, he would be preparing the military to fight. If Roan was right, he’d sent his people away in order to drill for oil, but may have had no idea of the ripple effect caused by supporting relocation.

  “Ross?” Marin’s voice broke through the haze of his thoughts. He looked toward the hatch door, wanting to go below and shake Roan Teller and Luc until they both woke up and confessed the truth.

  But it would never happen. Even sober, they wouldn’t tell him what he wanted to know.

  “We have to hurry,” said Ross. “If we can’t call home, we have to get home. Fast.”

  CHAPTER 31

  THEY SAILED with the wind, galloping blindly through the darkness. Roan Teller’s boat was faster than the Déchet or even the Armament warship, and glided over the water like the hull had just been greased.

  Her crew was quiet. Adam had fallen asleep, curled into a ball in the back of the cockpit. Ross sat on the deck in front of the sails, perched on the slick fiberglass as if he’d never stumbled around a boat. He faced away from Marin, his shirt stretched against his broad back, arms hugging his knees. She stared at him for a long while, memorizing the shape of his shoulders and the taper of his waist, and knew that even if he left, he would not disappear as suddenly as he’d entered into her life. His presence would linger.

  Better to get it over with now than later, when she may not have the chance.

  After checking their coordinates, she hoisted herself up onto the deck, and took a seat beside him. He made room for her to sit closer, but she stayed an arm’s length away, needing the strength of distance.

  “What are you thinking about?” she asked.

  He kept looking forward, and this made it safer to steal glances in his direction. His hair stretched back in the wind. His thumbs tapped against his knees.

  “Nothing,” he said. “Everything.” Another beat passed. “You.”

  A strange thrill shivered through her. She waited, like she was standing on the edge of the world, toes off the ledge.

  “What about me?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said, looking out into the dark. “I wish we met someplace else
, I guess. I wish we could go somewhere we wouldn’t get shot or abducted.”

  “What fun is that, terreno?”

  He laughed quietly.

  Corsarios didn’t date really, though they did marry. There was nowhere to go on the island except the Blue Lady or out on the sea. She’d seen it in her time on the mainland, though. Shorelings going for walks together. Making each other meals. Laughing. Kissing.

  She would have liked to kiss him again.

  “If we hadn’t met this way, you wouldn’t have talked to me,” she said. It was the truth, though not one she liked the feel of. Soon enough he’d be back above the cliffline, and this time they had together would be only a memory.

  “You wouldn’t have talked to me either.”

  That was probably true too.

  “You wouldn’t have gotten shot,” he said, straightening one leg and dropping his chin. “You wouldn’t have gotten picked up by the Armament, or lost your boat in the storm, or had to go back to Careytown.”

  He wasn’t lying. But those things didn’t seem so grim in hindsight. Not when he’d been beside her.

  “It wasn’t all bad, was it?” she asked, thinking of his arms around her, and his lips against hers, and of right now, sitting beside him on the deck of a stolen boat.

  “No,” he said. “That’s the worst part about it.”

  She buried her chin in the crook of her elbow, resting on her knees.

  “My mom used to tell this story about a gull and a moonfish,” she said, cheeks warming. “They used to meet every day at the shoreline and talk about running away together.”

  “Did they?” he asked.

  “Where could they go?” she responded.

  Her mother used to tell that story when she asked why they couldn’t go back to the mainland, live as Shorelings like her grandfather. We are too different, Maman would say. A fish might love the land, and a bird might love the sea, but where would they live?

  Right now it felt like that story had always been about Ross.

  “You think you can fix this?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. I have to try.”

  She breathed in the salty air, feeling the breeze dance across her skin. Of course he had to stop it. It was what made him him. Important. The kind of person she was willing to sail across the ocean for.

  “All my life, I’ve been a corsario,” she said. “I wanted to be my father, even after all the things he did. I wanted to sit at the captain’s table, and have my own crew. Even when I left, I wanted to go back. I thought if enough time passed, they might forgive what I’d done. They might want me again.”

  He looked her way.

  “But now I’m not sure I want them anymore.”

  She blew out a breath, thinking of her father as they’d fought on that last day. How he’d tried to force her to push a bunch of kids overboard. How he’d pointed his knife at her.

  If she’d gone back, she would have become Luc.

  “My people are who they are because of that island,” she said, imagining for a moment what her life would have been like if she wasn’t trash-born, if she wasn’t raised to cook drugs, and rob people to stay alive. “If someone had stopped what had happened to the Original Eighty-Six, you and I might have been neighbors. I might have gone to your fancy school. You might have been the one taking me out on a fancy boat.”

  It made her feel better to think that even if history had replayed a different way, she and Ross could still be here, right now, listening to the waves and the luff of the sails.

  But it hadn’t been that way. And soon, there would be too much happening for a proper goodbye. She’d never said one before to her mother, or gotten the chance with her father. For once, she wanted to do this right.

  “Ross, I—”

  “Where will you go?” he interrupted.

  She wasn’t sure. It wouldn’t be as simple as dropping him off and sailing away. She was in a stolen boat, holding a government official and a corsario captive beneath. If she were able to get away, she’d have to hide, maybe for the rest of her life. Even if she went back to the library, she wasn’t sure she could make and sell tar for Gloria again. That was what corsarios did, and she wasn’t a corsario anymore.

  At some point she’d need to find work, a place to stay. A home, and a family, like her mother had said.

  An unfamiliar longing pulled at her ribs, slumping her shoulders. There were things she wanted, but they seemed too delicate for her callused hands to hold. I must believe there’s something better out there, Hiro had said.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know where I fit in anymore.”

  His hand rose around the back of his neck, and he gave a small laugh. “I know what you mean.”

  You fit in with me, she thought, but she didn’t dare say it. She wasn’t a Shoreling. He wasn’t kanshu. They were both stuck somewhere in between.

  He reached for her hand, threading his fingers between hers as they’d done on the Déchet before the storm. It was still new for her, and she wasn’t sure if you were supposed to feel tied up in knots, right in the center of your chest, but she did.

  “Let’s go see that peacock,” he said.

  He pulled her closer, so that their legs touched. His thumb moved over her wrist and it sent whispers of heat across her nerves. She held her breath until he spoke again.

  “I’ll take you,” he said. “We’ll go to the nature preserve, and then we’ll eat oranges, and reminisce about the time I got kidnapped by pirates.”

  She laughed, but it was watery and hiccupy, and felt a lot like crying. He turned a little, so that they faced each other, and touched her cheek with his thumb, and the pads of his fingers. Her heart was racing as she leaned into his touch, and let herself have this good thing, for just a little longer.

  “And the time we sailed through a storm,” she said.

  “And how you found Adam.”

  Her gaze dropped to his mouth, and his fading grin.

  “And when you kissed a pirate,” she said.

  He leaned closer, and she mirrored the move, watching his thick lashes dip as his gaze lowered to her mouth. She lifted her fingertips to his lips, feeling how soft they were. Feeling the black, starless sky like a blanket around them.

  He was a breath away. His fingertip circled her ear.

  She leaned in first, brushing her lips against his, and then tilting her head to kiss him. At first he barely moved, just smiled against her mouth, and she smiled back, but only for a moment before his hands cupped her cheeks and drew her closer. Her breath caught. Her eyes drifted closed. There was only the feel of him, the perfect mix of soft and firm, reassuring and kind, everything she never thought she’d deserved. Slowly, he pulled her into his world, carefully peeling back the already cracked shell around her heart, until there was nothing but her throbbing pulse, and the rasp of his breath, and the scrape of their teeth. His fingertip circling her knee. Her hand spreading over his back. The grip of his shirt in her hand, and the spark inside her chest that burned bright enough to read the truth by.

  If only for right now, he was hers.

  “Marin,” he whispered roughly, and the change in his voice brought an ache deep inside her.

  “Marin,” he said again, this time more urgently.

  Her eyes fluttered open. Turning, she followed his gaze over her shoulder into the night, where she saw the spray of water, like a fountain, barely visible in the stretch of the deck light.

  In an instant her heart was pounding in a different way. She jolted up, slipping on the deck before catching herself on her hands and knees. They should have left the lights off. She should have paid more attention.

  Another spray of water, and then a slap against the surface. It was unlike any ship she’d seen, but that didn’t mean …

  “Marin,” said Ross, and there wasn’t fear, but wonder in his voice. He grabbed her elbow and pulled her up. She stood, though everything within her screamed to fight.

&nbsp
; “I think … Is that…”

  She saw it then. The giant curve of a wet, petal-shaped fin, rising in the air, gleaming black in the dark night. Even at a distance of a hundred yards she could tell the entire length of it was taller than she was. The fountain of water hadn’t been the spray of a ship, it had come from a whale.

  Her hands covered her mouth. She hadn’t even realized Ross’s arm was around her shoulders until he squeezed, and laughed like she had never heard him laugh before. Like he had never seen anything so amazing.

  She didn’t blame him.

  Adam roused at the sound, but didn’t see what they had. It was a secret. Just like all the other secrets they’d shared.

  Tears filled her eyes, and this time neither of them bothered to wipe them away. She stared at that spot long after the lost animal disappeared, laughing, and crying, and silently telling her dad that she’d seen one too.

  CHAPTER 32

  THE SUN rose before they reached the California Islands. It burned through the clouds, a white orb in a haunted, gray sky. In preparation for relocation, security was on high alert. The Armament was stationed just outside the islands, in great white ships bearing the Alliance flag on its sails.

  “I think I’ll swim from here,” Adam joked, but Marin didn’t slow. She stared straight ahead, gritting her teeth and gripping the wheel as she had in those moments before they’d sailed into the storm.

  Ross couldn’t help but wonder if this might have a similar outcome.

  “They think we’re Roan Teller,” he told the others, feeling her presence below deck though she was still delirious. “We’ll just proceed as though we are.” Until we can’t any longer.

  The line of ships stayed at their regular intervals as they came within hailing distance. Ross’s gaze switched between their looming presence before him, and their position on the small black scanner beside the steering wheel. The red dots did not gather or come to meet them.

  He blew out a shaky breath, the lines gripped in his fists. As he had twenty times in the last hour, he stared at the radio on the steering console, wishing he knew the access codes so that he could call Noah Baker, or his mom or dad—despite everything, his father wouldn’t leave him out here. Adam was scanning the public frequencies, listening for any signal that they’d been spotted, but had yet to find anything but static. Even if he did, even if the Armament hailed them directly, they would not be able to respond without the proper contact codes.