“Good. Uh—so I guess you won’t be mad when I tell you I haven’t been rigging her to sink at all.”
Humphrey didn’t like the sound of that, but it didn’t surprise him. He clipped the radio to his waistband and trotted up the gangway and into the engine room where he was certain to find her.
She did not have on her strange cap with the leaping deer on the front. In fact, she was in exercise shorts and a tank top. Her face was covered in sweat and black grease. Her hair was tied into a sloppy bun on the top of her head.
Elias sat with his back to Engine One. He waved and offered a sheepish grin, as if to say, ‘what can be done with a girl like Summer?’
For the first time in Humphrey’s memory, she looked guilty.
She waved a wrench. “Don’t be mad. I know you said to rig her to sink, but I solved the problem with engine two.”
Somewhere in that statement was a logic only Summer could understand. Humphrey kept quiet. She needed to talk this through, so he’d let her.
“There’s this gasket that needed replacing—I can show you if you want to—uh, never mind. Anyway, I didn’t have anything on the ship to fashion a new one out of, but that little town is full of useful materials. I was able to make a new gasket.”
Metal parts, brackets, shafts, bolts, and pans of oil were strewn about the metal grated floor.
Summer flipped the wrench into the air and caught it by the haft. “So I guess you could say you owe me some thanks for getting this thing ready to make a fast run for this island of Dr. Carlhagen’s.”
“You could say that,” Humphrey mused. “But you’d be better off if you didn’t. How long will it take to get this back together so we can leave the island?”
She tilted the wrench side to side like a balance. “A few days. A week at the most.”
“What if Elias actually helps you instead of admiring your figure while you do all the work?”
Instead of producing the outrage he was hoping for, this comment made Summer grin. “Oh, he’s working all he needs to just by letting me look at him every once in a while.”
Humphrey had already taken Elias aside to warn him about certain indiscretions. He hoped Wanda had had a similar conversation with Summer. Wanda had promised she would.
“At least try to find something productive for Elias to do. It isn’t fair to the others if all he is doing is sitting around watching you.”
Summer tapped her temple with the head of the wrench. “I suppose you could have the others come in here and watch me. But only groups of two or three. It’s kinda cramped in here.”
Humphrey wasn’t sure if Summer was joking or not. He decided she was because Elias started laughing. But the boy got up and began putting the various pieces of Engine Two in order so they weren’t a tripping hazard.
“You have two days to get this ship ready to sail south. After that, Elias is assigned to Dajeet.”
Summer’s face fell, huge brown eyes glistening. “Don’t even say that. Dajeet’ll try to steal him with her old-soul eyes.”
“She’ll never steal my heart from you,” Elias said softly. He never said much, and his voice carried like a lullaby. Humphrey attempted the eye roll he’d seen Bethancy do several times during the conversation about toilets. It seemed to convey his disdain quite well, for Summer got back to work.
He was about to depart when Summer said, “I’ve already got a stencil ready with her new name.”
“Whose new name?”
“The ship’s, obviously.”
“Why does she need a new name?”
“Because that fleet you’re so worried about is looking for her. We need to make the old gal look different. I’ve already pulled the old winch off the aft deck and found enough paint in the town to give her a fresh coat of gray. I’ll need ten Scions to help with that, by the way. And make them good ones, not the puny ones.”
It was ridiculous to think that they could disguise the ship. But then, they’d already done several ridiculous things and had lived to see the dawn.
“I’ll give you five. But there’s no way you can paint the entire hull in a couple days.”
“Leave that to me,” she said archly.
“What’s the new name?” He almost didn’t want to know, fearing she’d name it Elias’s Abs, or worse.
“Even I’ll admit that Aphrodite was a stretch for this rusty old babe,” she said cheerfully, patting Engine Two. “But she is our ship, and she needs a name that represents us.”
“Just tell me.”
With a flourish of her wrench, she said, “Athena.”
The full impact of the name didn’t strike Humphrey until later, when he’d had a chance to look up the name. He had flopped onto his bunk in the Boys’ Barracks and borrowed a reader from one of the younger Scions.
Aphrodite—it turned out—was the Greek goddess of love and beauty. Definitely an ironic name for such an ugly, dilapidated ship.
Athena was the goddess of wisdom. That, too, was a bit grandiose for a freighter ship, no matter what it looked like. And Humphrey didn’t feel worthy of the association. Where was the wisdom in sailing directly toward his enemy? As someone rather skilled at chess, Humphrey knew his plan lacked—uh, a plan.
But what choice did he have? He couldn’t allow Dr. Carlhagen to keep Livy. He couldn’t allow Dr. Carlhagen to—
He was making his stomach knot up again. He took a few deep breaths.
Intelligence? Yes. The Scions were brilliant.
Wisdom? Not so much.
Truth was, they didn’t have time for wisdom. Mere survival doesn’t give a person much time to sit and reflect upon their choices. Their current situation was proof of that. Jacey had run off and gotten herself into all sorts of trouble. And here Humphrey was, voluntarily lying on the very bunk Mr. Justin had set up for him.
He felt a long way from wise.
But then he recalled Sensei’s words. In every minute, be the person you want to become. You’ll often fall. But you’ll fall forward, and that’s progress. Often it’s the only progress possible.
What was true for the individual should be true for the family of Scions as a whole, Humphrey decided. They had to be what they wanted to become.
Free.
Humphrey remembered the wonder in Leslie’s voice when she had noticed there was no fence around the ruined town at the docks. But wasn’t the ocean surrounding them a fence of sorts? And with their famous faces, they couldn’t go into the rest of the world without worrying for their safety. Their very identities were a prison.
No more.
For Humphrey and the rest of the Scions, freedom would not come from running, hiding, and waiting for Jacey to solve their problems. Freedom would only come from seeing things through to the bitter end. First, the Scions had to stop being prisoners in their own minds.
No more running away.
“‘Athena of the flashing eyes . . .’” he said, reading aloud from a translation of Homer’s Iliad. The image made him think of Jacey, whose eyes shined like the turquoise Caribbean waters. Perhaps Jacey was an incarnation of the goddess.
And maybe that’s why she felt so distant to him—so unreachable even when she was in his arms. She was of another kind altogether. Jacey was a deity treading the earth in some cosmic, ever-repeating play, while mortals like Humphrey and Wanda covered their heads as the heavens fell.
Maybe that’s why Jacey couldn’t give all of herself to their relationship. Maybe that’s why Humphrey couldn’t, either. Maybe that’s why Wanda tempted him so.
Simply put, Wanda truly wanted him. Jacey wanted him, too. But only as a momentary distraction from the compulsion that drove her into reckless danger. She always thought such headlong action was the only choice, that her own life was a fair sacrifice.
And yet here Humphrey was, closer to Dr. Carlhagen—and Livy—than Jacey was. If she’d had any wisdom at all, she’d be here next to him, not running amok with Dante’s Progenitor and an emaciated “pop star”
somewhere out there in the wild world. So, no. Jacey was not an incarnation of Athena. She was just a courageous and foolish girl who didn’t love him quite enough.
Fighting back the burning in his eyes, he abandoned the Iliad and read an entry about Athena from Socrates’s database.
Aha. The goddess was associated with another great and terrible concept. And this one was appropriate for the ship that would carry her name, and carry him to Dr. Carlhagen’s island.
This was the time for Athena, goddess of warcraft.
18
I Don’t Like the World
Jacey’s throat burned from running, from thirst, and from the steam filling their tiny hideout.
The smell of frying meat, onions, and hot peanut oil bubbled throughout the restaurant. In the past ninety minutes, Meow Meow had led Jacey and Dante on a circuitous route—sticking to alleys and side roads as much as possible—until she’d shoved them in here, saying the lo mein was “to die for.”
Dante stood at the door, peering out.
“Get in here,” Meow Meow called from where she and Jacey sat in a booth near the kitchen. Jacey had never been in a restaurant before, so she didn’t know how it compared to others. There were four booths, a couple of rickety tables, and a counter in front of the kitchen. On one wall hung a few red fans, on the other a giant advertisement of an Asian woman sipping a beverage called Coke.
Their host, a toothless old man, smiled at them and bowed, all the while swearing at them in Chinese.
“Get your butt in here!” Meow Meow said.
The scrawny pop star had dropped her feline affectation. In its place was an accent Jacey did not recognize. But it was a glimpse of who Meow Meow must have once been. A normal person, apparently.
Dante did not obey. “There’s something going on at the end of the alley.”
The alley was a narrow passage between two large buildings, rank with unmentionable liquids and smelling of a trash bin left to bake in the sun.
Beijing Palace offered a picture menu of noodle dishes. The old man stood next their booth, pen and pad in hand to take their order. A gaudy porcelain cat figure sat on the counter behind him, staring at Jacey, one paw raised.
Jacey was about to reply to the man’s vulgarities, but Meow Meow interrupted her. “They’ll have tracked us to this block of the city. We need to move on. Soon.”
Jacey plucked a wad of paper napkins from a metal dispenser and wiped her forehead.
“Napkin for customer!” the old man shouted at her. An even older woman emerged from the kitchens, brandishing a stained wok.
“I’ll have a Number 3 with an extra egg roll,” Dante said, still halfway out the door and straining to see whatever it was he was seeing. “There’s definitely something going on down there. Drones.”
“They’ll see you,” Meow Meow hissed.
Dante pulled himself in and shut the door. The eatery existed in what was little more than a hallway opening into the side of a warehouse building. With the door closed, the room instantly warmed by several degrees. Without asking permission, Dante pulled a thin chain by the window to lower a shade.
“I don’t think they know we’re here. Those drones are in patrol-and-scan mode.”
“Number 3 and egg roll. That’s it?” the old man said, scribbling on his pad. When nobody answered, he tore off the sheet and slid it through a window to the kitchen. He turned and offered a gummy smile. “Fifty-three bucks.” He held his hand out, palm up. Dante dropped a green poker chip into it.
“Exact change only,” the man said, pocketing the chip. “Corporate policy.”
Meow Meow scowled at Dante as he slid into the booth next to Jacey. “We’re going to need all the chips we can get.”
“I’m hungry,” Dante said, flashing his usual careless smile. “Besides, that old guy will be less suspicious if we buy something.”
“He’s probably calling the IPA right now. We have to go.”
“You said these people were secretive.”
“They are. But I don’t think we should test it. I brought us here to catch our breath, not to have a nice supper.”
Jacey had had enough of their bickering. “Where can we go? You said there are cameras everywhere and that there’s an AI dedicated to spotting our faces. Aren’t we safer lying low for a few minutes?”
“She’s got a point,” Dante said. He waved the old man over. “Bring us three Tsingtaos, please. And I’ve already paid enough for a truckload, so don’t hold out your hand for more chips.”
The man uttered a vile comment in Chinese about Dante’s manhood, but he didn’t refuse the order.
Jacey muttered, “bìzuǐ” at his back as he went to fetch whatever Dante had ordered. The man craned his neck to glare at her over his shoulder, but he said nothing else.
“You know Chinese?” Dante asked, astonished.
“Mandarin, Spanish, Russian, Urdu, Italian, Portuguese, Arabic, Bengali. Blah, blah, blah. I don’t know. I learn them pretty quickly when I have the time to focus and memorize.” She flicked her fingers, dismissing the topic and returning to the issue at hand. “I agree with Meows. We can’t stay here long. But we need think for a minute before we do something rash.”
Unbidden, Humphrey’s face appeared in her mind, laughing that Jacey was the one suggesting they stop and think.
Meow Meow leaned across the table, eyes flashing. “I’m all for lying low. But not here.” She pointed to something unseen beyond the kitchen. “We need to get thirty blocks that way to be remotely safe from the IPA.”
“But then we’ll be in gangland, so . . .” Dante tilted a hand side to side. “It’s dicey either way.”
“Can we even get past the drones?” Jacey asked.
Their Chinese host brought the Tsingtaos, which turned out to be bottles of beer. Jacey made a face at the smell, but she gulped down a few swallows anyway. It cut the itch of her thirst somewhat.
“Not if they’re police drones,” Meow Meow said. She pushed her lensless glasses onto her blue hair and rubbed her face. “We just might be cooked this time.”
Dante swallowed a huge glug of beer, shaking his head. He smacked his lips. “Those aren’t cop props. Too small. They’re personal swarms. Probably followed us from that hotel lobby.”
Jacey remembered Meow Meow’s personal swarm, a collection of tiny aircraft that hovered around the girl and broadcast her image to fans all over the world.
“Everybody is a celebrity these days,” Meow Meow said, yanking the glasses and wig off her head and stuffing them into her bag. Her natural fawn-colored hair was matted with sweat. She scrubbed it loose with her fingers. “A place like The Two Seasons, there are bound to be half a dozen people in every crowd broadcasting their lives on the net. But Dante couldn’t have seen personal drones all the way down the alley. Way too small. The whole point is that they’re discreet . . . ish.”
Dante shrugged. “Well, it wasn’t big ones like the cops use. But when there’s enough little ones, they make sort of a cloud. I used to ban personal swarms at my parties because of that.”
Jacey blew out a long breath. “So those aren’t the IPA’s drones. That’s good, right?”
“Not really.” Meow Meow looked toward door, head ducking between her shoulders like a cornered animal. “The people in that hotel know who they saw. So their drones will be broadcasting on international sites by now, earning their owners a tidy fortune. If they spot us again, their pay will go up ten ex. At those rates, I ought to deploy my own.”
Jacey’s mouth opened in outrage, but Meow Meow smirked her to silence. “I was joking, Little Jackie.”
“And the IPA’s surveillance AI will be watching those public feeds with great interest,” Dante said, a sickly smile on his lips. “The cops don’t even have to dispatch their drones to look for us. The citizens of Chicago are doing it for them.”
“The little drones are better at it, anyway.” Meow Meow tapped her fingernails on her beer bottle. “A personal swarm
has six drones. When you go into a place that doesn’t allow them—basically all restaurants—you typically split the swarm to cover the exits. If I’m in a playful mood, I’ll go out the front and run the gauntlet of fans and paparazzi. If not, I’ll slip out the back and step right into my car. Either way, my swarm catches the action for my fans. The drones are programmed to operate in teams of three. You have your wide shot drone, your medium shot drone, and a pest drone.”
“Pest?”” Jacey said. “They’re all pests.”
“It’s a technical term. The one that hovers close to your face is called a pest. You get used to it after a while, but they do invade your personal space.” She held a finger a few centimeters from her nose. “Wide angle lenses, short depth of field. Beautiful shots.”
Dante’s noodles and broccoli arrived on a white plate. The old man clunked a bundle of silverware wrapped in a paper napkin onto the table.
“Chopsticks, please,” Dante said, rubbing his hands in anticipation of what Jacey expected would be his last meal ever if they didn’t figure out their next move soon.
“You use fork.” The man walked off, waving his hand and swearing some more.
“That dude is really throwing shade,” Dante said.
“Throwing shade?” Meow Meow said, absently. “You sound like my great-great-grandmother.”
“So the drones,” Jacey said, steering the topic back to the problem at hand. “You said they aren’t allowed inside. That’s good, right?”
Meow Meow tilted her head side to side, “Not if we don’t get going. If they find out we’re here, they’ll wait out there forever. We’ll be trapped.”
“Until their power cells die,” Dante said around a mouthful of noodles.
“They’ll automatically hover in shifts to allow their mates to recharge. But it won’t come to that. The IPA would be here within a few minutes.” She glanced at the old man, her eyes squinting with suspicion. “If he hasn’t already called them.”
Jacey considered her options. The longer they stayed there, the more likely the swarms would find them. Even with the window shade down, there were gaps along the sides. A peeping drone could easily see them.
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