The Bedrock

by Shelbi Wescott

The woman tugged on her skirt, which hit mid-thigh and showed the smoothness of her uncovered legs—tanned and hairless, a strange sight. So old-fashioned. It hit him with a sort of sickening revulsion that she had dressed with fashion as her priority. The word itself, fashion, seemed a foreign concept rooted in a world that no longer existed. His intruder desired clothes and a manicured appearance; she was hoping to impress and impose with shock. She looked like she was from the future—unlike anything or anyone he’d ever seen.

  Kozo felt nauseated.

  She had no power over the ocean. That was absurd.

  He kicked his legs and tossed and flipped himself to a sitting position, hopping forward a few inches, his teeth bared in pained frustration—but the kid behind him flipped a knife forward and poked the tip into Kozo’s cheek, just hard enough to create a small feeling of pain and pressure. Kozo stopped advancing.

  “Don’t move,” the man hissed.

  “Who are you?” Kozo asked again.

  “You haven’t figured it out by now?” she asked with a wink on her voice. “The other ships were unbelieving at first…that after all this time, we still cared about making sure the plans set in place, stay the course.”

  They were a long way from home.

  He knew who they were.

  The law of the ocean dictated the rule to hide from the powerful Islands to the West at all costs. It was the first time he’d heard of the Island inhabitants taking to the ocean or boarding ships. He let his mind rattle to the SOS. It had been a lure after all.

  “You,” Kozo rattled. The destroyers of the earth. They were the little gods who walked among them making big God decisions. “I’ve read about you.” Kozo remained as still as he was able, the blade unmoving on his cheek. “Your Islands on the Sea are the things of our dreams. A legend. As a kid, I knew of no such place and I used to think my mom had made up the stories to cheer us up. But there’d been travelers…a few…who talked of the Islands…”

  Even as he spoke, he wished he didn’t sound so eager to know more.

  The woman’s eyes narrowed and she appeared angry he’d mentioned travelers or the Islands in general; she watched carefully as he kept talking, her mouth turning into a sneer.

  “How can you live in such beauty and want to cause harm to people living in just poverty? You already took everything.”

  “Clearly, not everything,” she replied with a laugh and threw a hand over the things in his galley. “Look at this lovely kitchen.”

  Kozo’s eyes wandered and he noticed she had a small speck of blood on her ankle. Just a single drop, nothing more.

  The woman followed his gaze and then took several large steps forward, each clack of her shoe against the tiled galley floor a triumph of sound and announcement. She lowered herself to face him fully and Kozo couldn’t help but stare straight into her bright blue eyes and wait for her to give the order to slice him open, unzip his skin and let his body pool to the floor.

  Instead, she cupped his chin and adopted a firm grip like she was about to plant an unwanted kiss.

  He held his breath; the galley went quiet, the lapping of the water the only sound.

  “I’m Blair Truman. I’m going to take your ship now like I took the others. I left no survivors on the others because that’s how it all worked out. But you, you’re sixteen? You have a sister, yeah? Well, Kozo, you get to live. Isn’t that fun?”

  He wondered if the name Blair Truman should hold any significance, but it didn’t.

  He couldn’t place her in his own life or inside the history of the ship. He’d read all the logs; he’d read all the history books he could find. Blair Truman was just a name like any other—someone lost to time; someone who still wanted to claim significance in a world that no longer cared who she was or what she wanted.

  “I don’t know you,” Kozo replied.

  No one breathed. Even Megumi’s pounding trickled to nothing.

  “It hardly matters if some Trash Baby knows my name,” Blair said, leaning closer, her voice soft and intimate. “Here’s the bottom line, so listen carefully. You weren’t supposed to be born, Kozo,” she whispered, striking deep into the soul of his secret insecurities. And he jerked his head, the knife following, scratching his cheek with a searing pain. How could she have known that?

  “I said not to move,” the man chastised and Kozo didn’t care about the warmth of blood on his cheeks or the way he could feel his heartbeat in his head in a rapid rat-a-tat-tat-tat, rat-a-tat-tat-tat, which felt irregular and angry.

  Then Kozo realized in a rush of embarrassment that Blair Truman hadn’t meant she knew about his mom’s anguish at bringing a baby into the apocalypse but rather that no one should have survived the apocalypse.

  Survivors ruined their vision for the future.

  He was an abomination to the future of the world. Blair didn’t just see him as a Trash Baby but as actual trash, easily used and discarded, without inherent value. His home on the sea should belong to her…because she was intended to survive, and he was not.

  Kozo’s head hurt.

  He knew if he spat at her, which his body instructed him to do from a deep part of rage inside his caveman brain, he wouldn’t feel the knife as it struck through his cheek. Self-preservation kicked in and he refrained from moving and he watched as Blair inspected him with both disgust and awe. It was like she was examining a confusing piece of food.

  She clicked her tongue and looked up and around the galley and Kozo knew she was looking for a weapon. Something tidy. She didn’t seem like the type who wanted to get dirty. Except Blair’s gaze landed on the wall instead and her expression turned from focused to bewildered. She walked away from him, her heels clacking, and Kozo didn’t dare turn to follow her as he understood the risk of moving.

  “Who did this?” the woman asked. “Where’d you get this?”

  Kozo felt a knot in his throat of anxiety and he shrugged.

  He had no idea if she was talking to him or someone else and what about.

  “Who drew this?” the woman asked again and Kozo let out a small breath. “Come on, let him turn,” she said and immediately Kozo felt a gruff hand on his shoulder yank him to the right, the knife temporarily removed.

  Kozo looked straight ahead and realized Blair was staring at a framed watercolor painting of a large metal tower out at sea. It was giant and gleaning, a city of the future on the water, built up in layers from the roar of the ocean. Floating in the corner, peering from the heavens, a god armed with sun, consumed instead by the storm.

  Even though he recognized the distinctness of Megumi’s art, he’d never seen that drawing before and he stared at the details with a growing sense of doom.

  That was new, colored no doubt, with tools from the kitchen.

  How had he never seen that before?

  But there it was: her signature swirl of the clouds—nearly identical to the painting in his room, his old room, his brain corrected—and the dreamlike tint to the reality. Each of Megumi’s paintings told a story but this was a story they didn’t share—the tower, the storm, the struggling Apollo—too far up to survive the waves and then beneath the waves, a sea monster lurked with stretching tentacles.

  Kozo shut his eyes.

  “Who drew this?” Blair now asked with a harsher clip on every word. “You?”

  “No,” Kozo answered, reeling. “My sister.” He hung his head, angry at giving her what she wanted. In that flash, he hoped the admission would save them both.

  Blair ran her hand over the canvas and he wanted to yell for her to stop touching the art, but he didn’t, and her face ran through a million different moments and emotions and he saw her knees shake.

  She turned and stared at him, a look of worry now in her eyes, “And did we kill her?” she asked, fully unknowing.

  “No,” one of the men said. “She’s in the freezer. A child.”

  Blair nodded and shook her head once, “A child,” she repeated before she closed her eyes and inhaled. Af
ter letting out a long measured breath said, “Get the needle.” She walked forward, back to Kozo, and kneeled once again, her blurry face within inches of his. “It’s your lucky day, Kozo. I need a sharp man like you to do something for me. When you wake, you’ll have instructions to a location. When you get to that location…you have one job. Find your sister. You follow all those steps, you can see her again.”

  Kozo ‘s dizziness resumed and he jerked his shoulder away from the guard.

  No, he wouldn’t do it.

  “No…” he tried to protest but the men gathered and it was futile. He heard Megumi’s pleas from behind the heavily walled doors and Blair looked up in that direction for a brief second before snapping her fingers and barking a command. Before she could tell him his job or how she’d know or what was going to happen next, Kozo felt the now familiar prick of a needle and the tingle in the back of his throat. The warmness overtook him again.

  Blair’s hazy face was the last thing he saw as he tumbled once again into the thick heavy blackness of drug-induced sleep.

  Chapter Six

  Kymberlin Island

  the Atlantic Ocean,

  off the coast of the former state of Maine

  THEA

  The best medical team available followed Thea from the recovery room on Arukah back to Kymberlin and into the Island’s infirmary. The burns, mostly second degree, would heal with minimal scarring they told her and sent her back to her suite on the Western side of the Tower, facing the shore. What was left of the Maine shoreline was barely visible from her palace 250 feet above the roaring ocean.

  For the first few hours, she had a steady rotation of guests: investigators, politicians, her uncle Gordy.

  His visit was the worst of all.

  “Do you want to know her name?” he asked her, sneering over his tablet.

  “I’d rather know how she gets to suffer,” Thea answered instead and mustered a wince as she sat up halfway to grab her glass with the steel straw.

  “Copia, no doubt,” Gordy answered. For a moment his eyes flickered to the ceiling and in a subtle warning, he added, “Jail is fair until we decide if rehabilitation is in order.”

  Thea couldn’t contain a snort. “Please,” she answered, unamused.

  He controlled the cameras and the filming and the digitization of conversations. Couldn’t he speak frankly with her and then go erase the proof? She settled back down into her bed, wishing her mother hadn’t chosen this specific moment to disappear into her job. It was Gordy who brought her the news that her mom was hunting down a cruiser.

  He had no real understanding of what that meant, but it was cute to hear him say it with confidence like he did.

  “Hey now, Thea,” her uncle warned, leaning close. “Maybe it’s not the time to reveal this incident to the masses since I know she wanted to keep this trip quiet…and it would draw attention to her absence.”

  She ignored him and waved him away.

  “When she left,” Thea said with a nod to the closet, ignoring his implication altogether, “she was wearing her favorite shoes. You know she’ll be inconsolable if she gets them wet with water or blood.”

  “You’re evil,” Gordy answered with pure appreciation.

  “Honest,” Thea winked. “I’m honest.”

  “Same thing, same thing,” Gordy said. “So, I’ll ask again. You want a name?”

  Thea didn’t know if she cared who poured tea on her; who wanted her permanently scarred with a message from the rebellious Islanders. She handed back her glass to her uncle and flipped her long blonde hair over her shoulder.

  “Sure,” she replied and motioned to the tablet. “What should I know? Oh, by the way, she talked about Drowning Chambers.” Thea laughed and stopped; the humor hurt her burns.

  “Not since the underground systems, ridiculous,” Gordy responded.

  “I know. But that means…”

  “We’re looking for someone instructing these people who has been around since the beginning,” her uncle answered. He patted the empty space on the bed and let out a long sigh. When he looked at her, his eyes were full of pity and Thea drew back. “My sister means well, Thea, but you should know that once she’s done with her ocean adventures…I think it’s time for a recalibration of her duties. You can look forward to your mom spending some more time at home…”

  Thea knew exactly what Gordy implied and she lurched up on her elbows.

  “You’d maroon her here? Why?”

  “Our dad is sick,” Gordy began to explain but Thea had heard it all before. “It’s time we focus our attention on executing his final wishes.”

  “And focus on the Islands,” Thea repeated with an eye-roll. “It’s not the Islands that are a threat…”

  But Gordy wouldn’t let her finish her sentence before he reached down and pointed to the bandages across her chest. If anything, that was proof: the threat was in their own land.

  “You’re such a little soldier,” he said, “but you are my evidence…if there is a group here on the Islands resorting to violence, who’d hurt a Truman and embrace Copia…that’s our focus. Not the oceans, not the land. We haven’t had an intrusion in fifteen years…”

  Thea mustered up grief and put on a tremendous pout. “I’m in so much pain, Uncle Gordy…can we not talk about this for one stupid moment?” She fell back into her bed and closed her eyes. When he tried to reach out to her, Thea grumbled in pain.

  A nurse assigned to her from the medical ward stepped forward and asked her uncle to leave with polite sweetness saying she needed her rest and to let the pain killers fully set. Thea was certain that was a lie because she was feeling more than spectacular—her entire body floated and she could barely feel the burning sensation anymore.

  Gordy stood up and apologized for his intrusion. He pointed to a bouquet of fresh flowers sitting on the coffee table in her main room.

  “Brought fresh from Paulina,” he announced. “

  Thea pretended to drift off to sleep and the nurse led Gordy out the door. The two whispered a few things to each other before Gordy said, full volume, “If my sister arrives…how about you give me a call.”

  Thea’s eyes fluttered open and she took in the sight of her mother: not concerned or perplexed, only bored and now relieved that her waiting was over.

  “That pain killer must’ve been heavenly,” Blair said without joy and stood up. “Second-degree burns only. You’ll use the rub and be better soon. I will travel down to Arukah tomorrow and have a discussion with the spa about safety—”

  “Arjana has an appointment for you,” Lark replied. “Week from now. Noon. Serum treatment.”

  Blair took in the news of the appointment and stared at the wall of their home for a long second before she let her shoulders slump.

  “Of course,” Blair said. She walked over to her dresser and palmed a small bottle of lotion, putting a dollop in her hand and rubbing it through, running her fingers through each other in a repetitive pattern.

  “If the spa isn’t safe anymore—”

  “The spa is safe,” Blair said.

  “Maybe the compelling evidence against that statement is me lying here in this bed with a bandage on my chest.”

  “Don’t be dramatic. You’ve always been hateable,” Blair said with a sense of amusement. “I seemed to have struggled to imbue you with tact…which means you will always be an easy target for people hoping to gain footing with some type of resistance, but it’s futile and already over.” Her eyes fell on the flowers. “Paulina. Fancy. You sleeping with someone I don’t know about?”

  “Ew. No. Uncle Gordy brought them,” Thea explained. “How was your trip to sea?”

  “Splendid,” Blair said dryly. “Found the cruiser. The lost one from the pack.”

  “Answering your SOS?””

  Her mother nodded.

  “Any hostages?” That was Thea’s main interest—the hostages. Who and why and whether or not they begged for death instead. “Prisoners?”r />
  “One. And about a dozen. But older, I’m afraid.”

  Blair put the lotion bottle down and didn’t elaborate.

  “Gordy said…ominously…that I’d be seeing more of you,” Thea offered, stoking the fire. She sat up in her bed fully and stretched her arms outward, feeling the tug of the bandage against her skin. “What’s that about?”

  “It’s nothing. It’s politics. I’ll take care of it.”

  “That reminds me…the bees…”

  “Enough,” Blair interrupted and spun around to face Thea, her eyes narrowed into a threatening glare. “That’s enough.”

  Thea abandoned the fight and slumped back down on her mattress. Living in a surveillance state was natural, but she didn’t understand her mother’s obsession with privacy since she controlled most of the tapes and audio clips. It was possible, but not probable, that Gordy pulled the room up on his tablet and was listening in, and it was easy for Blair to engineer a different dialogue.

  “There was a message for you.”

  “I’ll get to it. I’m sending the doctor back in an hour,” Blair continued, her tone changed. “Give you some more medication and then let you get ready for the courting ceremony…”

  “Oh, I don’t want to go to that,” Thea complained. “If the choices are to go back to Arukah and have some crazy lady throw hot water on me again…or go watch my cousin make an idiot of herself at the courting ceremony….I choose the water.”

  Blair laughed, perhaps more than the comment allowed, and she wondered if that, too, was for show.

  “I forgot it was her ceremony,” her mother said with a pouty smile. “You know I have to present and I asked if you’d come a long time ago…you said yes.”

  “I’m injured.”

  “You’re fine.”

  “Even you said the doctor had to come drug me up for this thing. Don’t try to pretend I’m not injured,” Thea pounded the side of the bed with a small thump. She blinked and continued to stare at her mom, not following the logic of the song and dance. The courting ceremony started early in the Islands bylaws as a way to ensure maximum compatibility. It was declared a scientific guarantee of love if love was enjoying the same types of movies and mentally sparring with someone of equal intelligence. The ceremonies didn’t stop the illicit relationships that sprang from more natural reasons: physical attraction, hormonal influences, or boredom. But those dalliances weren’t discouraged and were often seen as a function of youthfulness. But once an Islander decided to court they could say goodbye to sloppy kisses in dark hallways or fooling around at home: now they started their journey to Island Wealth and Health.