by Kyla Stone
Simeon held up a hand, his eyes kind. “Your emotions are your weakness. In war, compassion is a flaw, a risk. Don't let your feelings for anyone get in the way. Especially your brother. Do you understand?”
His throat tightened. He wouldn't let Simeon down again. He wouldn't let the cause down. “Yes, sir. But—”
“You attend to your duty, and I will ensure that he's out of harm's way.”
“Yes, sir.” They turned back toward the bridge. The wind swirled around them. The sky darkened, the horizon deepening like a dark, pulsing bruise.
“Take a moment, son.” Triumph thrummed through Simeon's voice. “We have officially taken command of the Grand Voyager.”
13
Amelia
Ten minutes into dinner, another headache struck Amelia in the back of her head. The pain pulsed from the base of her neck to her temples.
The holo-stars shimmering above her head dazzled like diamonds. But the light only hurt her eyes. At the captain's table, the captain was conspicuously missing. Declan huddled with one of his advisers just outside the Oasis dining room’s main entrance, his expression strained. Senator López hadn’t even bothered to show up.
The remaining guests talked in hushed, agitated voices and repeatedly checked their disconnected SmartFlex cuffs. Among the strained whispers, she heard the word Hydra mentioned more than once, whatever that meant.
The passengers were tense—upset over what might or might not be happening back home, irritated over the canceled shore excursion in Belize coupled with losing their net connection, and now this—lousy weather to top it off. The waves were choppy. Some people looked green as the floor rolled beneath them.
She scanned the opulent dining room and caught sight of Gabriel standing outside the starboard side doorway. He lifted his fingers to his lips and mimed a smoke.
Her stomach turned over. She wanted to see him. And her father wasn’t there to stop her. “I'm getting some air,” she said to her mother. She tucked her clutch under her arm and escaped the Oasis dining room.
She breathed in the scent of brine, the wild and salty sea. The wind whipped her hair across her face. The ozone-tinged air raised goosebumps on her arms. For a moment, she closed her eyes and just listened to the crashing waves and the roar of the wind, willing herself to calm down.
“Did I miss the costume party memo?”
“What?”
Gabriel eyed her dress. “The Greek goddess getup.”
She blushed and smoothed her gown. Three crystal-encrusted straps wrapped around her shoulders, with another glittering belt at the bust line. The soft fabric draped around her, the shimmering microfilaments hardly visible. If only she felt the way she looked. “My father picked it out.”
He raised an eyebrow. “He picks out all your clothes?”
“Of course not. It's . . . complicated.” She didn’t feel like trying to explain.
Gabriel peered through the Oasis doorway. “Have you seen my brother? I want to make sure he’s okay.”
“The waiter, right? The shy, cute one with the glasses?”
“Add a book to that picture, and you’ve got him pegged.” Gabriel glanced over her head at something. His voice was light, but his expression was anxious, a thick line appearing between his brows.
A wave slapped the hull. She shifted against the railing for balance. “Is there something wrong?”
“No, nothing like that.” But Gabriel’s face tensed, his shoulders hunched as if warding off something. Or preparing for it. “It’s just—he and I aren’t exactly talking right now.”
Amelia thought of Silas, the parting words he'd hurled at her during their fight yesterday on the beach in Ocho Rios. He’d accused her of being just like their mother. Weak and subservient. Pathetic. She winced. “I know the feeling.”
“I want to make sure—oh, never mind.” He sighed and turned his gaze back to her. “Are you okay?”
“I'm fine. A bit of a headache.” Just one more lie to pile on top of all the others. She took a closer look at him. “Are you okay?”
A muscle jumped in his cheek, his jaw set. A shadow crossed his face, something in his eyes she couldn’t quite read. He shook his head. “A bit of seasickness. No need to worry about me.”
“Who says I’m worried?”
He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Certainly not me.”
In the distance, flickers of lightning lit up the menacing black clouds. Her dress lashed at her legs. Electrons singed the air with nervous energy. “Maybe we both need to be worried about that storm.”
“That's miles away.”
“Looks like we're headed right for it.”
“Appearances can be deceiving.”
She knew that better than most. “Then why are the outside decks closing?”
“Safety precaution.” Gabriel lit a cigarette, hooding the flame with his hand, and handed it to her. “Nothing to worry about.”
She hesitated for a moment. Silas’s words rang in her ears. You’re just like her. She needed a distraction. She took the cigarette and inhaled.
Gabriel raised his brows. “Are you sure you’re okay? You seem upset.”
She kept her gaze on the water crashing below. She couldn't talk about the anxiety roiling in the pit of her stomach, the fights with her brother, how her father's contempt filled her with a dark, writhing shame like a living thing. “I'll be fine. I just need—I need a minute.”
“Let me take you down to the officers’ deck. It's out of the wind. They've got a gourmet coffee bar, lounge chairs, a hot tub.”
Her stomach fluttered against her will. He was so close, she could see the stubble on his jaw, his long, thick lashes. Heat crept into her cheeks. “Aren't you supposed to be working?”
“Aren't you supposed to be in there?” He gestured in the direction of the Oasis dining room. “Come on. Can't you feel it in the air? Something wants to happen.”
She arched her brow skeptically.
“What? You don't believe in fate? You don't believe some things are meant to be?”
Her headache was a dull thud against the back of her brain. She remembered that terrible look of disdain on her brother’s face. You're as bad as she is. The whisper was still there, tormenting her. Was he right?
Helplessness and shame cramped her stomach. She hated it, hated that feeling. Her mother never did anything. Her mother let it happen, over and over. But so did she. Silas was right. She was turning into a younger, meeker version of their mother, doomed to spend the rest of her life crushed beneath their father’s iron will.
The thought suffocated the breath from her lungs.
No. The whisper was so deep inside she barely heard it over the roar of the wind and the waves. If she didn’t do something, if she didn’t make some choice for herself, however small, she was sealing her own fate. Her future would snap shut over her head like a steel trap.
She took one last drag of her cigarette. “Yes.”
14
Willow
“Told you I'd destroy you.” Finn grinned wickedly as he hefted his golf club over his shoulder.
Willow glared at him. She planted her feet on the sleek white surface and aimed her club at New York. They’d chosen City Icons as their course, each hole a glimmering holograph of a different city or monument.
She sent the neon-blue digital ball spinning between two glowing skyscrapers and over a little bridge, narrowly dodging the Empire State building. It went straight into the Hudson River.
Finn scored another hole-in-one, his bright yellow ball wobbling into a holo version of Central Park like it had a mind of its own.
She snorted. “You failed to tell me you’re some kind of mini-golf prodigy.”
“That's the hustle, darling.” He checked the leaderboard that automatically tallied their scores and gave her a crooked grin. “Only fifteen shots behind with one hole to go. Remember, you're about to owe me four hundred credits. Don't let the pressure get to you, Gwyneth.
”
“Save your pity.” She shoved her hair out of her face. She hated the prospect of having to admit she didn't have forty credits, let alone four hundred.
Flashes of light threaded through the clouds. Finn rolled his shoulders. His oversized polo flapped against him like a flag snapping in the wind. “Wanna make more excuses for your lame-ass skills?”
She refused to tell him she didn’t have time for any games. At home, she juggled classwork with daily shifts as a groundskeeper for a landscaping company to help pay the bills. She trimmed hedges, pulled weeds, hacked errant branches, and lugged forty-pound bags of mulch and fertilizer with the best of them. Metalheads could do the work, but human labor was cheaper, at least in landscaping.
She shook those thoughts out of her head. “I don’t spend all my leisure hours playing mini-golf, unlike you.”
He grinned. “My parents are kinda weird. We love mini-golf. Get this. Before the divorce, we even had board-game night. Sorry, Candy Land, Monopoly, the whole deal. Mega-lame, right? It’s a blast though, once you put aside your pride.”
“I guess. My dad liked poker back in the day.” She tried not to think of the time before, when her family was whole. Her dad taught Benjie how to shuffle cards, how to use sleight of hand, how to bluff. Back before he had to take on a third shift to keep the bills paid. In his exhaustion, he’d wrapped his ancient, manual car around a tree.
Her heart twinged. She pushed the dark memories out of her head. This was her escape, her time to herself, her moment of fun. Her mom was so worried and stressed all the time, she was miserable.
But not Willow. Not today.
Before she could hit the last ball, a crew member made his way out to them, maneuvering around the massive red and black funnel looming three stories above them. It blocked the entire mid and front of the ship from sight. Behind him, a metalhead directed a hover cart piled high with lounge cushions.
“We're closing the decks due to inclement weather!” he shouted.
“What inclement weather?” Finn shouted back.
“Very funny, sir,” the guy said. “My job is to clear the decks of all potential debris. I'll go ahead and take those.”
They handed him their clubs. After he left, Finn turned to her. “I guess it is colder than Jack Frost's balls out here.”
She wrapped her arms around herself to keep from shivering. “That's one way to put it. Let’s get out of here.”
She took several steps before she realized Finn was no longer beside her. She turned around, the wind a dull roar in her ears. Finn leaned over the railing, shielding his eyes with his hand. He didn't speak, only pointed. She edged a few feet closer and looked.
The dark sea heaved far below them. Her stomach lurched, her head spinning. She was about to leap back from the edge when something caught her eye.
Boats. Four—no, five—of them, speedboats traveling fast, coming up along the starboard side of the Grand Voyager. The boats looked almost like toys, if not for the cluster of men on each boat. They wore dark clothes and carried little sticks in their hands.
Her stomach dropped to her toes. “What—who is that?”
Finn turned to her. The whites of his eyes were huge. “I'm no expert, but I believe those are pirates.”
“What?” She imagined cartoon peg-legs, feathered hats, patches over eyes. She'd heard of pirates taking boats, but cargo ships and oil rigs over in Indonesia and Malaysia and South Africa, countries and continents she'd never been to and never would. Back in the Philippines, she had a second cousin who'd been arrested for piracy a few years ago. But she never imagined anything like this.
They stood, frozen in shock, unable to do a thing but watch in growing horror as the boats closed in. Something small and dark flew through the air and caught on the lowest deck. A rope with a grappling hook on one end. Then another and another. The pirates climbed the ropes, hand over hand like scrabbling spiders.
“Oh, hell,” she breathed.
A half-dozen security officers burst onto Deck Four, gesturing wildly, guns in their hands. They aimed at the pirates. A few pirates slipped and fell into the snarling sea.
There were too many of them. Another crawled up to replace the one they lost. Past the ship's lights, the boats swerved, skimming like shadows.
Further down the lido deck, two other officers raced to a large, dark shape. They uncovered an object that looked like a small satellite.
“What are they doing?” Willow asked.
“That's an LRAD, a sonic cannon,” Finn yelled in her ear.
The security officers aimed the sonic cannon at one of the boats. The boat jerked and parried, then spun a few times and sped away.
The men appeared to be falling to their knees. One fell out of the boat, arms pinwheeling. Undeterred, the four other boats sped closer and drew parallel to the Voyager.
“Look out!” Finn grabbed her arm and shoved her down. She stumbled and fell, scraping her elbows and knees on the deck. She lifted her head in time to see a bright orange ball carve a graceful arc toward the ship.
A firebomb exploded on the lido deck. The world flashed orange beneath her eyelids.
After several moments, she climbed to her hands and knees. The hover cart from earlier was tipped on its side. The metalhead lay next to it. Its scorched silicone skin had peeled away, revealing the metal, wires, and nanotubes of its insides.
Further down the deck, both security officers manning the sonic cannon had fallen, their bodies unmoving. The LRAD was broken off its base and riddled with gunshot holes.
“We've got to get out of here!” She tried to move, but her legs were weak and sloshy as water. Terror pulsed in every cell of her being.
“Crawl around the other side of the funnel. I think they're only on the starboard side.” Finn started to crawl, shimmying on his belly.
She still couldn't move. She kept seeing the bodies of the security officers, their white uniforms blooming red.
“Gwyneth, come on!”
The use of the name she'd given him—her lie so much more grotesque now that they had to flee for their lives—jolted her out of her fugue.
Before she turned and crawled after Finn, she saw them. On Deck Four, a dozen shadows leapt over the railing.
15
Amelia
Lightning shimmered in the distance. The air was heavy with humidity. Damp strands of hair stuck to Amelia's forehead and neck. The officers’ deck was deserted and partially shielded on either side by the steel walls of the ship and the deck above it.
“Everybody’s either at the crew mess hall, working their shifts, or entertaining high-value guests. We've got this place to ourselves.” His walkie-talkie spat noise. A voice started to speak, but he turned it off.
“You don't need that?”
“Nah. Everything's fine.” He placed the walkie-talkie on a small patio table outside the doorway and shot her an appraising look. His brow wrinkled in concern. “You look cold. You’re welcome to the hot tub.”
Her cheeks flushed.“I can't.”
“Why not?”
Her mind flailed for an excuse before landing on the most obvious one. She fluttered her dress. “I'm a bit overdressed.”
“No one's here to judge you.”
She'd never been in a hot tub in her life. She couldn't. Too much heat was dangerous. But she was so tired of all the rules, all the don'ts, can'ts, and shouldn'ts governing her life.
“Maybe I can put my feet in.” She put her clutch on the table next to his walkie-talkie and kicked off her heels. She settled gingerly on the tiled edge of the hot tub, hiking her dress up past her knees. The water bubbled hot and soothing against her shins.
Gabriel sat down beside her. He tugged off his shiny black shoes and socks and rolled up his pant legs. “Your father seems upset. He's been on his SmartFlex constantly the last couple of days.”
“Have you heard what's happening on the mainland?”
Lines bracketed his mouth, his expres
sion taut. “I've heard enough. They’re saying the CDC declared a state of emergency. I have a friend in Baltimore who messaged me yesterday. He's sick. He's sick and he stood in line for six hours to get that damn shot. Your father's latest cure.”
“That's not his fault,” she said automatically. “The bat-flu is just one of a thousand strains. It mutates. By the time they synthesize a vaccine, it might be a completely different bug.”
He clicked his tongue between his teeth. “I thought it was for every strain, hence the term universal.”
She flushed. “Lots of things can go wrong with vaccines.”
“That's not what they advertised. They promised a miracle.” His gaze raked over her, his eyes hard, almost angry.
She blinked, breaking eye contact. “You say that like it's someone's fault.”
“Maybe it is.”
“Disease always spreads in dense, urban areas. It's been that way forever, since the flu epidemic in nineteen eighteen, the bubonic plague before that and all the epidemics since then—the India outbreak, the bat strain that wiped out half of Dublin five years ago. It's how outbreaks work. It's no one's fault. That's ridiculous.”
“Is it?”
“You sound like you're blaming my father.” Her words felt brittle in her mouth. Hollow. She thought of Silas. Of her mother, always defending her father, no matter what.
“Your father has made a fortune and a career out of the suffering of others. This universal vaccine. His so-called cancer cure.”
“It’s not a cure.” Her father had first gained world-wide fame when BioGen announced they’d discovered a nanoparticle treatment that permanently reduced cancerous tumor growth. But continuous, life-long medication was required, and her father had received intense criticism for its high cost.
“Close enough,” Gabriel said bitterly. “Now his Coalition wants to implant microchips in every citizen.”
