“Thank you, spotter.”
“Any time,” Indra panted, bent over, exhausted with his hands on his knees, but he was smiling.
But the storm wasn’t over. On all sides, shapes roiled and surged in swarms so thick it looked like the ship was surrounded by a solid wall. The FireRunner’s battered crew, terrified passengers, and growling dog huddled around Aliyah and Rowan, preparing for the next wave.
“Jay, count of three, fast as you can.” Stefanos’s high-beam eyes flashed, pointing the way across the deck. It wasn’t far, but right now, feet looked like miles. “And hold the door.”
“Right. Okay.” Jay nodded tensely, eyes so wide the whites almost showed all around, face was slick with sweat.
Stefanos kept one metallic eye on Jay and one on the ghosts that flew around them like circling vultures. “Annie, cover him, and I’ll cover you. You two…” He looked at Shiloh and Indra. “Keep your heads down, soon as there’s a break, follow Jay. Don’t look back.”
“Where’ll you be?” Shiloh couldn’t help the question that slipped out.
“Carrying them.” Stefanos crouched by Aliyah and Rowan, ready to pick them up and run. “One, two—”
Another howl. Before any of them could stop him, Dandy bolted from their small huddled group and charged down the length of the ship.
“No!” Annie yelled, jumping up and taking a couple steps before she was pulled back down by several hands. As she watched in horror, Toto-Dandy ran to where the Ash-ghost had stood and reared up, huge front paws coming down on the railing with a metallic clatter. His blue eyes beamed out into the storm, like miniature beacons in the heavy gloom, and he howled again, sharp teeth flashing.
The wolf’s cry seemed to shock the storm itself. Every single ghost stopped their wild circling and floated where they stopped, as if hanging suspended in the air on strings. Even if only a few of them had clearly defined heads and eyes, it seemed like they were staring at the FireRunner crew, and waiting.
“What’s happening?” Shiloh whispered, staring. “What do they want?”
“I don’t know.” Annie shook her head. “And what’s Dandy doing? I’ve never seen him do this before. Stef?”
Stefanos didn’t answer and didn’t let go of her shoulder either. On his other side, Jay and Indra silently watched the wolf toss his head, flare his blue eyes, and wave his tail like a banner—as did hundreds of ghosts, all around. Then Toto-Dandy leaped overboard.
Every frozen ghost snapped back into motion, flying after him as the shocked humans stared in confusion and horror. Shiloh shielded xir face, covering xir eyes as the ghosts whipped past. The noise was deafening; hurricane winds melded with Dandy’s fading howls. But gradually, the roar faded. After around ten seconds, it was calm enough for Shiloh to open xir eyes—to find that while the storm still raged, Toto-Dandy and the ghosts were gone.
“What the hell just happened?” Indra held onto the railing, shaking.
“Figure it out later. Take care of them now.” Stefanos nodded at Aliyah and Rowan, immediately shifting the focus from the remaining storm and toward their injured friends.
“Wait one second,” Annie said quickly as she replaced Aliyah’s oxygen mask, covering her nose and mouth. She checked Rowan’s mask as well, but froze for a second, startled. There was a dark, hand-shaped lesion forming around their throat.
“Are they breathing?” Jay repeated through clenched teeth.
“They’re breathing. So we get them inhalers," Annie murmured fast, eyes narrowing at the handprint mark around Rowan’s neck. “I don't know what that is. I've never seen that before.”
“Me neither!” His voice was tight with increasing panic. “Maybe because it shouldn't exist!”
Annie looked up, seeming much calmer than Jay, but no less grim. “It does. Help me get them to the infirmary.”
Without a word, Stefanos bent down to pick up both unconscious forms and, after a moment, Jay jerked out of his shocked reverie to help as well.
Shiloh looked up and squinted in the suddenly bright sunlight. Xie’d never been so glad to feel the answering stab of pain in the back of xir head. The sun was beginning to break through the angry thunderheads, filtering through the dissipating Tartarus vapors. The howling wind died down; soon the air would be still and silent as ever. Tartarus' storms came on without warning and moved on just as quickly.
They had to move on quickly too. The skies may be clearing, but the danger was far from over.
The skies were clear and winds calming. Outside, at least. Inside, the storm continued. Running largely on adrenaline dregs and muscle memory, the shaken crew pushed through their fatigue to get the FireRunner to a safer location—minus a few very important hands. Meanwhile, Annie readied the sickbay for the unconscious Aliyah and Rowan, closing the infirmary door tightly behind them and denying any offers of help. Shiloh probably would have waited there nervously anyway, but at least now xie had the excuse of being assigned to wait and worry. When xie asked how xie could help get the ship moving, Jay’s second answer (less unbearable and more productive than ‘sit tight and don’t touch anything’) was to wait here and see if Annie emerged with updates or if she needed anything.
It sounded like a good plan at the time. Or would have been if it were anyone else doing the waiting.
An hour later it was almost more than Shiloh could stand not to knock on that door, if only to ensure everyone behind it was still alive. Xie thought xie’d left this kind of helpless, frustrating indecision behind along with Meridian’s barrier. But here xie was again, waiting for an answer. It hadn’t gotten any easier since. Hands behind xir back to resist the temptation, xie instead stared as hard as xie could, willing it to open—and terrified at the same time what would happen if and when it did.
“Leave it until she asks. You’d just get in her way.”
When Shiloh looked up, xie caught the glint of Stefanos’s eyes as he turned away with a slight shake of his head. The last remaining oasis of calm in a sea of anxiety-fueled chaos, Stefanos stood staring out a window halfway down the corridor at the clearing skies. Like Shiloh, he clasped his hands behind his back like a soldier in an at-ease position. Unlike Shiloh, he didn’t look like he was trying not to jump out of his skin. So xie headed over to stand beside him, hoping to somehow soak up some of his resilience like taking shelter beneath a sturdy tree.
“Is she really okay working alone? Is there anything we can do to help?”
“Ordinarily, Rowan’s the medic. But Rowan’s down.” Stefanos’s voice was as level and unshaken as the rest of him but it was flatter, more lifeless than Shiloh had ever heard it. “Annie’s spent years learning everything she can from them. She knows what she’s doing. The rest of us, not quite as much.” He shut his eyes, extinguishing their golden shine.
“But they’ll both be okay…right?” Shiloh turned xir attempt at reassurance into a question at the last second, like veering away from a road xie had no business going down. Not when xie couldn’t quite believe the comforting words xirself. Now that they were standing closer together, xie could much more easily see the exhaustion in his face and realized the hands clasped so tightly behind him were shaking. Both of them. “You have to have seen this a lot, people—”
“Physical contact with a ghost is unprecedented.” His eyes opened with a soft whir but he didn’t look down at Shiloh, staring out the window as he spoke. “Or it was, until Annie told us what happened on your way here. We don’t know why they’re becoming solid. They shouldn’t be…” He was silent for a moment, seeming caught on the edge of too many complications to voice. When he spoke again he sounded more focused, grim but determined. “We know inhaled vapors wreak havoc on the internal body. Tartarus gases sear the inside of the lungs, the esophagus, everything. People can lose the ability to speak. Or breathe on their own. We can get them clean, keep them on purified oxygen. Humidifiers. Annie’s a competent field medic, but even with a real hospital there’s just not much you can do.”
“What about that new antitoxin?” Shiloh grasped at one last hope. Fortunately it seemed like a good one. “Indra said Rowan was working on an injection, isn’t that supposed to be stronger?”
“It is. Yes. It’s also an untested prototype.”
“But it’s at least worth trying, right?” xie pressed, slightly surprised at xir own tenacity.
“Under normal circumstances, I’d be right with you.” Now Stefanos did slowly turn his head to look down and focus on Shiloh’s face, and xie was struck by how even miraculous mechanical eyes could look so haunted. “But it’s what I said before. Normal died when Parole was born. And Tartarus is another animal entirely. Yes, I’ve seen Captain Aliyah recover from things that should kill a man twice her size but that’s when she’s at her best. Nobody has been at their best out here for a long time.” He folded his arms across his chest and, for the first time, his eyes narrowed in a hard, cold glare. Xie almost took a step back but soon realized this quiet flare of frustration wasn’t aimed in xir direction. Or any. That might be part of the problem. “And Rowan… I don’t know.”
“You don’t know if they’ll make it?” Shiloh didn’t feel at all energized or determined or tenacious anymore. Now xie just wanted this conversation, and this entire nightmare, to end.
“I don’t know anything, because what happened shouldn’t be possible.”
“Because ghosts aren’t solid objects.” Shiloh didn’t veer it into a question this time. Instead xie remembered the nauseating crack of Annie’s bat as it connected with very thick bone. Lakshanya’s warning that unless something contained Tartarus now, nobody could predict how it or the ghosts would advance next. Now it wasn’t the look in Stefanos’s eyes making xir shiver. “They’re not supposed to be real.”
“That’s right. We don’t know what happens with bites, or scratches, or… that. Because they don't happen. This wasn’t supposed to happen.” Stefanos shook his head, turning to face the window again but with none of even the illusion of his previous calm. The motion was jerkier than his usual deliberate smoothness and another slight movement caught Shiloh’s eye—a sudden twitch in his mechanical hand that he immediately curled into a fist and re-clasped behind his back. “In a whole lot of ways.”
“So we’re just giving up?” Xie couldn’t help one last try. The words just came out.
“Nobody’s saying that,” Stefanos said, but his voice was heavy with fatigue instead of its usual warmth. “But I’m saying… just be careful where you place your faith. Untested prototypes, long shots, gambles like that?” He seemed to catch himself or maybe catch the slow-dawning despair on Shiloh’s face, because a tired one spread across his own. “Well. Maybe it just means we’re happier when the long shot pays off, that’s all.”
With that, he turned and walked down the length of the corridor and up the stairs leading to the bridge. Shiloh started to follow him then, as xie’d been doing so much in the past hour, stopped short. Instead, xie turned to rush up to the infirmary door and knocked—much more quietly and slowly than xie wanted to.
“Annie?” xie called, not at all sure if this was the right choice but sure xie couldn’t stand another moment of not making one. “Could you use some help? I don’t know much, but…I’m here if you need me.”
The door opened after a few seconds to reveal her pale, exhausted face. Her eyes were dry, but her thousand-yard stare was one Shiloh hadn’t seen since their first day together and never wanted to see again. Xie’d seen it much too soon, just now on Stefanos’s face.
“That sounds great,” Annie said in a dry whisper, hand shaking as she opened the door the rest of the way. “Thanks.”
Before they could move, wailing alarm klaxons broke the quiet and flashing lights bathed everything in an urgent red.
“Everybody who can hear me, proximity alarms are going off!” Radio Angel’s voice came through the P.A., layered so it sounded like several of her were yelling the words, while more of her echoed the warnings. “Looks like a SkEye vessel, right behind us and gaining super fast—pretty sure we’re about to have company. You know what to do!”
* ☆ *
“Who is it? Who’s after us?” Indra panted, hurrying to catch up with Shiloh and Annie as she led the way down one of the FireRunner’s innermost corridors.
“Turret.” Annie almost spat the name. “Who else? I knew we couldn’t trust him, even if it looked like we were on the same side! I knew it!”
“He’s coming after us with a whole ship? Like with people, soldiers?”
“Of course he is!” Annie shot him a glare that probably wasn’t really aimed at him, before turning a corner and continuing down a tight stairwell. “This is a raid! He’s bringing everyone he’s got. Now, I locked the infirmary, it’s got its own shields. Nobody’s getting in there. Aliyah and Rowan should be safe. Radio Angel too, she’s barricading herself. Safest places in the ship. Follow me and I'll get us safe too.”
Troubled by something else, Shiloh had only been half-listening, and almost missed the next step. “Do we know who he has with him?”
Annie didn’t answer right away, just kept pounding down the stairs. When she did, her voice was hard to hear over the noise. “If Kari’s right, and she usually is… Your friend Brianna’s on that ship.” She didn’t see Shiloh’s look of equal parts dread and nausea because she was turning to face Indra. “And so is your mom.”
“Why?” Indra managed after a few shocked seconds.
“I don’t know, you’d have to ask her.” Annie stopped in front of a long, featureless stretch of metal bulkhead that looked the same as every other section on the ship and started studying it as if it were also the most interesting section.
“I—well—that doesn’t mean she’s on his side!” Indra stammered. “What if she’s really just here to talk? You’re right, Annie, I should just ask her myself.”
“You don’t want to do that,” Annie said shortly. “She’s not the only one here. There’s at least a dozen SkEye creeps boarding us right now and if they see you—just don’t let them see you.”
“But my mom—”
“Made her choice, if she’s here with him. Same for your friend,” Annie continued before Shiloh could cut in. “It sucks, but that’s how it is.”
“No, I can’t believe that.” Shiloh finally found the words to object. “Brianna’s not SkEye, she wouldn’t follow him by choice—she’s not here because she wants to be! She’s in a lot more danger here than any of us!”
“And we have to take care of ourselves first,” Annie maintained, not looking up. She ran her hands across the metal wall as if searching for something she couldn’t see. “Or else we’re no good to anyone.”
“So shouldn’t we get behind a barricade like Radio Angel, or at least hide, or something?” Shiloh didn’t like the idea of hiding instead of helping, but liked standing around out here in the open even less.
Annie felt around for one very specific seam in front of a particular section of metal bulkhead. She slipped a hand into a hidden slot, and pulled. The wall swung at an angle on hidden hinges, revealing an opening wide enough to squeeze through. “Yeah.”
Indra hesitated as Annie and Shiloh started to climb into the hidden crawl space. “It is very dark in there. And very small.”
“Uh-huh, most good hiding places are.” Annie looked back at him and waved impatiently for him to follow.
“But—what about the captain? And Rowan?” Indra looked increasingly nervous, and it could have been for several possible reasons. The most pressing one, however, looked like the crawlspace. “They haven’t woken up yet, they’ll be—”
“Fine,” Annie cut him off. “They’ll be fine, the infirmary’s under lockdown. Nobody’s getting in there. But you have to get in here!”
Indra didn’t move. “My mom’s on board,” he said in a much smaller voice.
“Yeah,” she said, looking increasingly frustrated. “She’s right here with Turret. And you are definitely go
ing to get caught if you don’t hide, now!”
He shook his head and took a step backwards. Still shaking his head, he turned and hurried back down the hall.
“Indra, come back!” Shiloh started after him, but Annie grabbed xir shoulder.
“We have to get out of sight. Now.”
“But he’s—”
Annie jabbed a finger at the ceiling—or the stairwell they’d just come down. Clanging footsteps were growing louder from above, as if someone were descending the stairs in heavy boots.
Reluctantly, Shiloh ducked down out of sight and Annie closed the crawl space door behind them. It was dark and small inside and very quiet except for their shallow breathing. They couldn’t hear the footsteps outside anymore. Or the ever-present engine hum. The entire ship was waiting.
* ☆ *
Rishika stood on the bridge of the FireRunner like she belonged there, even with her heart pounding and adrenaline burning through her veins. Back straight and eyes steady, she surveyed the pair opposite her and opened with a conversational tone. “Where is the Captain? I was hoping she’d be the one to greet me.”
“She’s indisposed at the moment.” Stefanos stood front and center and just as still. His large arms were folded across his chest and he stared back, pokerfaced, revealing nothing. “Where’s your Major?”
“Turret requested permission to search the vessel for contraband alongside his men.”
Stefanos snorted. “Well, good luck to him.”
“Yes, I doubt he’ll find much or you lot wouldn’t have had nearly as lengthy or notorious a career.”
“Good excuse to get rid of him, though.”
“Something like that.” She had to smirk. “And wasn’t there one more of you? The one with the goat’s horns.”
The Lifeline Signal Page 34
