Rising Tide

by Rajan Khanna

  I managed to convince Lewis to let Miranda work from the house, so that she can continue her research, and so that she can be more comfortable. As a result, it’s now covered in microscopes and papers and samples, and a steady stream of boffins and messengers are in and out of it all day.

  I sit on my chair, and Miranda sits propped up in her bed. I’m proud of the bed. They burned what Sergei had slept on, so I bartered, rather aggressively I might add, for a mattress. Right now it’s coming in handy, since it’s where Miranda spends most of her time.

  She looks paler than she’s ever been. Even more than when we had fallen from the Cherub into the ocean, cold water pooling in the bottom of our raft. Tired, too. Dark circles ring her eyes, which are bloodshot. Her face looks hollow. I try to get her to eat, but it’s hard. We’ve mostly been sticking to a simple broth that she can manage to get down.

  She’s fighting on two fronts, really. One with her mind, trying to find a way to cure this disease, and the other with her body. One of them seems to be a losing battle. I’m pinning all my hopes on the other.

  And yet I’m just sitting here, doing nothing, and it’s driving me crazy.

  Miranda’s eyes flick up to me and she smiles. “How’s the book?” she asks.

  I look down at the worn paperback in my hands. I conjure up a smile to flash back at her. “Not bad,” I say. It’s something of a lie. What I have read is pretty decent—it’s a thriller—but I’ve been rereading the same few pages for most of the last hour, unable to get my brain to focus on it.

  What the fuck am I going to do?

  Stay with her, the voice in my head says. Try to make her smile. Be her strength when hers falters.

  I nod my head. I didn’t stay with my father when he Faded. I couldn’t. I ran. But I’m not going to run from Miranda. No more running. No more flying.

  This last thought would normally have stopped me cold. Chilled me. Made me want to fight or do anything to get back into the sky. But while I brace myself for that feeling, it doesn’t come. For the moment, at least, I’m content to be right here. On the ground. In fact, there’s no place I’d rather be.

  “A lot going on in there,” Miranda says, tapping her head.

  “There’s a lot going on everywhere, Miranda.”

  “I suppose.” She wraps her arms around herself and shivers.

  “You cold?” I ask.

  She nods, her face all weariness. I get up, move the book aside, and gently lower myself onto the bed. I take her in my arms. “Is this better?” I ask.

  “Much,” she says.

  We lay there like that for a while. Silent. Warm. Connected.

  After Miranda drifts off to sleep (she sleeps much more these days), I get up to stretch my legs, taking care not to disturb her. I’m hot from shared body heat and the air in the small place feels close, so I go outside, inhaling the fresh air and the scent of the sea.

  Tamoanchan feels quiet. Dead. People stay indoors these days, fearing the disease despite Miranda’s vaccine. Fearing the unknown. The next threat.

  Waiting for the sky to fall.

  I may have made up my mind to stay with Miranda, but the truth is I feel useless.

  It was almost better when I had Hector to worry about. He was alive. Tangible. Something in the real world that I could focus on. Put my efforts toward. This thing? I can’t touch.

  I excuse myself during one Miranda’s conferences with the other boffins and go for a walk.

  After wandering for a while, I end up at the rabbi’s place. I’m about to sink onto a bench when he comes up to me and puts an arm around me. “I am sorry, Ben,” he says. “I heard about your friend. Sergei, was it?”

  “Yes,” I nod. Something heavy and thick is stuck in my throat, and my limbs feel leaden.

  The rabbi scrutinizes me. “Ben?”

  My breath comes fast and shallow. “It’s Miranda,” I say. “She’s sick.”

  “Oh, no,” Rabbi Cohen says. “Ben. I am so very sorry.”

  “She’s fighting it, of course. Because that’s Miranda, but . . .”

  I squeeze my hands into fists, and I feel like I want to punch something.

  “I’m scared,” I say.

  “I know,” he says. “Of course you are. You love her, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” I gasp. And of course now I can say it. When she might be taken away from me.

  “Have you told her?” he asks.

  I look at him. “No,” I say. “I haven’t been able to.”

  “Maybe now is a good time,” he says. “I can’t make any promises—and what happens will be what happens—but love can sometimes accomplish small miracles.”

  “You’re right.” I nod to myself. He’s right. “I should go. Now.”

  “I will pray for you both,” the rabbi says. “And, Ben. I’m always here if you need me. Even if I’m not.”

  “Thanks, Rabbi.”

  I hurry back to the house, and to Miranda.

  She’s talking to two boffins when I walk in. She looks up at me for a moment, a small smile on her face, then returns to them.

  “Can we have a moment?” I ask.

  “Ben,” Miranda says. “We’re in the middle of something.”

  “It’s important,” I say.

  “Okay.” She looks at the boffins. “Give us a minute?”

  After they leave, I sit down on the bed next to her. “I need to talk to you, Miranda.”

  She smiles. “I got that impression.”

  “I know you’re dealing with a lot right now, and I don’t want to add to that, but I’ve been thinking. About, well, lots of things. The future. The past.”

  Pull it together, Ben.

  “I’ve been thinking about what I want. About what I can do. I was worried that maybe I couldn’t be happy on the ground. Or in one place.”

  “I know,” she says. She pats my hand.

  This isn’t going the way I thought.

  “I just think . . . things have changed. I’m here now. You’re here. This can work.”

  “Ben . . .”

  “Hang on. I . . . it’s just that when I picture it all in my head, or when I used to, it was just me, alone, here. But I’ve come to realize that I’m not alone.”

  “No, Ben, you’re not.”

  “I know that now. And I also know that it makes all the difference. I think that this is what I want. Being here. Now.”

  “I’m glad, Ben.”

  My heart is hammering in my chest. My mouth is incredibly dry. “Miranda—”

  “I need to say something,” she says, interrupting me. “Because I don’t know how much time we have left and, well, I need to say it.”

  “Okay . . .”

  “You’ve probably sensed that I was a little distant. Hesitant.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I was having a hard time reconciling things.”

  “What things?” I ask, confused.

  “Your past. What happened with Malik.”

  “Oh.” I slip my hand away.

  “I guess I just had this image of you, who you are now, and I didn’t like being reminded of who you were back then.”

  I feel my stomach turning.

  “But it’s only because . . . because I’m really proud of who you are now. And I like the man you are. With me.”

  “Miranda—”

  “And I understand, now, having to make hard decisions. I can’t judge you for those things. I wasn’t there.” She grabs my hand again. “I’m sorry,” she says.

  “It’s okay,” I say. “I want to tell you something. I need to—”

  I’m interrupted by the sound of an explosion somewhere outside. Miranda looks at me in alarm, and I shake my head. Then another explosion, followed by the sounds of gunfire.

  “Wait here,” I say.

  I run to the door. The two boffins are waiting outside. Looking up.

  In the sky, coming off the coast, is a formation of enemy airships, guns blazing.

&nbs
p; Tamoanchan is being invaded.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  “An attack?” Miranda asks. Her voice sounds high and thin.

  I nod wearily. “They failed at quiet, so now they’re trying loud.”

  “How many?” she asks.

  “Enough,” I say.

  She shakes her head.

  “I think we should think about getting you out of here,” I say.

  “You want to run?”

  “No. I don’t want to run. But I’m not going to risk your life in this attack. We’ve come too far for that.”

  “Ben,” she says, her voice small, something wet in the back of her throat. She beckons me closer. I move to her, and she grabs my hands. Hers are cracked and dry, one fingernail bloody where she bit it down too far.

  “Ben.” A pause. “I’m no closer to cracking this thing than I was a week ago.”

  “That’s why I want to get you out of here. Give you time to do more research.”

  She squeezes my hands. She feels so weak.

  “I don’t think I have much time left.”

  It takes a moment for the meaning to sink in. And by her tone, I know she’s being honest. She’s always straight with the science. She probably has calculated the likelihood of, well, everything. She’s run the odds, and they aren’t in her favor.

  I instinctively lean back, trying to pull away from what she’s saying. I feel numb. My whole body feels numb. The woman I love just told me she’s going to die soon—I should be sad or I should cry or I should curl into a ball at the news, and yet I just feel . . . nothing. Hollow inside. Ice.

  “Are you sure?” is what I manage to say.

  She nods. A tear spills from one eye.

  Still, the ice.

  “I’m not going to abandon my people. My work. Not now. Just to die somewhere far away. Not while people are out there risking their lives for me.”

  I nod.

  “So I’m staying,” she says.

  “Then so am I,” I say.

  “You should really be up there,” she says. “Maybe not shooting at them, but . . . you could fly circles around them.”

  “I want to be here,” I say. “With you. Besides, neither the Dumah nor the Pasteur would be any good in a fight.”

  She shrugs. “Then I guess that’s good for both of us.”

  I lie down again with my arms around her. I can’t fly, and I can’t fight, and it’s possible that some kind of bomb or gunfire will catch us here, together, as we wait to find out what’s going to happen. But I can be there for Miranda. I can spend however long she has left with her. And that’s what I’m going to do.

  The screams rouse me from the light slumber I fell into. My head jerks up, and I slide out of bed, reaching for my coat, my right hand finding the handle of the revolver.

  Miranda looks up, her eyes glazed from sleep.

  “Stay here,” I say. I reach into one of the coat’s pockets and pull out the automatic I had once lent to Maya, pass it to Miranda. “Keep this close.”

  She nods.

  “I’ll be right back.”

  “Be careful, Ben,” Miranda says.

  I open the door quietly, slipping out into the afternoon air. The wind carries the smell of smoke to me, though I have no idea of determining where it’s coming from. I hear another scream. Then another. A woman and a man. I run off toward the sounds.

  Tamoanchan’s streets, at least in this part of the island, are arranged into grids. I pass one intersection, then another.

  Then I catch sight of them. A man clutching at a bloody arm, his sleeve ragged and torn. A woman, close-cut hair of grey, supporting him. They stumble toward me.

  I move toward them and then catch sight of something big, moving fast.

  Coming at all of us. What they were running from.

  I focus on it, and the numbness I’ve been feeling wavers under a sudden flush of adrenaline through my system. It’s a Feral, bounding toward us. But not any ordinary Feral.

  This one is large, thick with muscles that bunch and unbunch as it races across the street on all fours.

  I flash back suddenly to something I saw when I was moving through Gastown’s helium plant. A Feral—huge and muscled like this one—that they fed prisoners to.

  The memory shutters, pushed down by the need for action. I draw the revolver and fire. I aim for a leg and hit, but the creature still comes on, pumping its grotesquely muscled limbs.

  I fire again, and the second shot takes it in the chest. The third misses. The next hits its arm.

  Still it comes, and it’s now just moments away from me. I hope the man and woman have kept moving.

  Somehow forcing my brain to take control, I fire again for the wounded leg. I hit it, and the beast tumbles, sliding against the ground, and I fire one more shot into its head.

  It stops moving.

  As I start to shake, the fear and adrenaline still rushing through me, I notice a few things. One, the Feral is naked. Dark hair and, now, blood are the only things on its skin. Two, it took me six shots—six—to take this Feral down. Three, I realize I’m hearing more screams.

  I get it, then. The Cabal has been breeding mutant Ferals. I know that. They are attacking Tamoanchan on two fronts—in the air with their ships and on the ground with the Ferals.

  We are well and truly fucked.

  I catch sight of more people running through the streets as I quickly reload the revolver. I grab a man with tear-stained cheeks and a look of horror on his face. “I need you to go find a Keeper,” I say. “Tell them they need to organize a force to come defend this side of the island.”

  The man nods to me, then goes running off, but I’m not sure if he’ll actually do it. Peacekeepers, I think, shaking my head. There’s no peace to keep anymore.

  I run back for Miranda’s place, and when I run into her room, she has the automatic pointed at me. “Nice form,” I say.

  “I didn’t know it was you,” she says.

  “Exactly,” I say. “You just keep doing that.” I move to a box I stashed in the other room. Call back over my shoulder. “It’s bad out there, Miranda. They’ve dropped mutant Ferals on the island. Like the one I told you about back in the helium plant.”

  “What?” she asks. I can barely hear her. “Here?”

  “Yes,” I say. I open the box that contains my spare ammunition and I load my pockets. All of them—coat, pants, the two chest pockets on my shirt. I take out another automatic and stuff that, too, into my pocket. Then I grab the shotgun that’s also nestled inside, adding ammunition for the two new weapons.

  Miranda’s eyes widen as I move back to her room. “That bad?”

  I nod.

  I lean in and kiss the top of her head. “Stay here. Keep the gun. I’m going to barricade you in.”

  “What?”

  “Luckily, the place doesn’t have any windows. I don’t want any Ferals getting in. If I can pile some things in front of the door, you should be safe.”

  “But then you won’t be able to get in.”

  “I’ll get in once this all is over. Once we beat them back.”

  “And if we can’t?”

  I meet her eyes. “Then it’s a moot point.”

  She nods.

  I grab my scarf and my hat and my glasses. I place a gloved hand on the side of Miranda’s face. “When I get back, we’ll have a long talk.”

  She raises an eyebrow. “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah.” I kiss her dry lips. “I’ll even tell you my middle name.”

  She smiles. “Deal.”

  “Good,” I say. “Now sit tight. I’ll be back later.”

  With my free hand, I drag a box outside, also a chair and whatever loose furniture I can move. I shut the door to Miranda’s house and pile as much as I can against it. It wouldn’t keep out a determined Feral, but they will be chasing the moving targets, the ones they can see. They have no reason to know that Miranda’s inside. At least, I hope they don’t.

  Once
I’m sure it’s reasonably secure, I move down the street.

  Toward the Ferals, not away.

  The streets of Tamoanchan are pretty simple affairs, dirt paths cleared of grass and debris, suitable for foot or rickshaw traffic. Houses or shops lining up on either side. They’ve even gone so far as to put in a few parks. They’re mostly areas where the natural foliage has been left untouched, but unlike the rest of the world, overgrown and overcome by vegetation, here it’s carefully groomed.

  On any given day, you can hear sellers hawking their wares, people stopping to have conversations with their neighbors, even laughter. There’s that low hum of humanity that usually, for me at least, brings a sense of comfort—that here’s a place where people have come together, survivors looking to build something.

  That hum has been replaced with cries of terror, screams, panicked noise, and the sound of weapons discharging. Above us the drone of ships—enemy and allied—thickens the air. Down here on the ground, gunshots occasionally rip through the daylight.

  The smell of smoke filters through the air.

  I’m crossing an intersection when a large shape leaps toward me.

  I whirl and fire the shotgun at the blur of its body, and it moves away from the blast. Another of the mutated Ferals.

  As it turns back to me, I see this one is female, though its breasts are lost in the mass of muscle on its chest. It roars at me and lowers into a crouch.

  I raise the shotgun, but before I can fire, gunshots come from the side street.

  The Feral turns, bounds toward the shots. I see blood leaking from at least one gunshot.

  I run after it. If it comes into contact with whoever shot it, the Bug could spread.

  I fire, running, and one of my shots hits the thing, I’m sure of it, but it barely slows.

  I see ahead of me a Keeper, rifle out, firing at the Feral. I’m behind it, firing at it. It’s almost on her.

  I stop, aim for the leg, and fire my last shell into the thing.

  I hit what I’m aiming for, and it stumbles long enough for the Keeper to get a shot in its head.

  I rush forward to her. “Did you get any blood on you?” I search for any splatter.

  “No,” she says. “It was too far away.”