I am the monster, she thought. The voice is mine.
Part the Third
THE VOYAGE BETWEEN
“God save thee, ancient Mariner!
From the fiends that plague thee thus!—
Why look’st thou so?”—“With my crossbow
I shot the Albatross.”
—SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, “THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER”
21
SHE SHOULDN’T HAVE BEEN SO HARD ON him about his boat—Nat felt a little bad about that—because even with her inexperienced eye, she noticed that, like the LTV, Wes had improved upon its structure to fit its new environment. He had upgraded the hull, attaching layers of steel and carbon fiber paneling over the old aluminum shell, and every inch of the craft was painted—splattered, really—with shades of gray and black paint, a camouflage meant to mimic the dull sludge of the ocean.
The crew cabin was outfitted with bunks, the beds nothing more than metal mesh hammocks strapped to the walls, each with a blanket. The room next to it had a big plastic picnic table bolted to the floor, near a black charcoal grill. The ceiling above the grill was open to the sky, so the smoke could escape, and piled next to it were a few wood crates filled with food stores they had brought on board for the journey.
The ship offered little privacy and no amenities, but what else was new. Unless she was tossed in solitary, back at the center she had had a cot in the middle of a room the size of a gymnasium. She found a corner bunk that looked unclaimed and threw her pack on the rough blanket. She peeked through the dirty porthole. Outside, the gray sky was nearly indistinguishable from the gray waters of the Pacific. The toxic sea never froze but seethed with poison, occasionally glistening in the dim light of day, glowing in iridescent colors. It could be beautiful if it wasn’t so deadly, its shimmering waves swirling with clouds of orange and green, the waves dancing on occasion with slim wisps of fire, yet another product of the ocean’s unknown chemical cocktail.
She heaved herself up on the hammock and rested her head against the wire mesh. But after a while, she felt claustrophobic in the cabin and wandered out to the upper deck. She found Wes leaning against the rail, staring out at the dark water.
“Find something?”
He pointed to a distant spot in the middle of the ocean surrounded by large black ink dots.
“What are those? Island groupings?” she asked.
“No—those are trashbergs.”
“Trash—oh, like icebergs?”
“Made of trash, yeah.” Wes smiled. “The ocean’s full of them.”
Nat had seen it on the nets, how the pre-Flood oceans had once been flat and blue and empty. Now the Pacific was packed with junk, clouded with chemicals, dense and cluttered with trash, a floating Garbage Country. It was a briar patch, the perfect place to hide, the perfect place for slavers to loot and prey on pilgrims and refugees.
“Think we’ll make it?” she asked, almost as a challenge.
“Sure hope so,” he said, with that signature grin of his. “I need those credits.”
She smiled at that. “Sorry about freaking out about the boat earlier . . . I was just . . . anyway, it was rude of me,” she said.
“No harm done.” He smiled and scratched the scar on his face. She hadn’t noticed it before, the thin white line above his right eyebrow.
He must have noticed her staring. “Souvenir from Texas. I fell in the avalanche, and Shakes accidentally hit me with the ice pick while digging me out. I thought he was going to kill me instead of save me.” He laughed.
“Nice one.” She smiled, liking the way the scar made him look at once more dangerous and more vulnerable. “Sounds like that happens to you a lot. Bet your girlfriend wasn’t thrilled, though.” She wasn’t sure why she said it, but it came out before she could think.
“Who said I had a girlfriend?” he said, raising his scarred eyebrow. His dark eyes crinkled.
“No one,” she said.
“Well, I don’t anymore, if anyone’s interested.”
“Who’s interested?”
“Are you?” He looked her straight in the eye.
“I could ask the same of you,” she scoffed.
“So what if I was? Interested, I mean.” He shrugged.
“It wouldn’t be a surprise,” she said. “I’m sure half the crew has a crush on me.” She rolled her eyes. She wasn’t sure what she was doing, but it was fun to rile him up a little. So he was interested, was he? About time he admitted it.
“Only half?”
“Well, I don’t like to brag,” she said coyly.
They stared at each other and Nat felt the pull of those warm brown eyes of his, the color of honey and amber, playful and glinting. She faced him so that they were inches away from each other, their bodies almost touching. They were outside in subzero weather, yet she had never felt so warm.
“What are you doing?” he asked finally.
“Same thing you are,” she replied.
He shook his head. “Don’t start something you can’t stop,” he warned.
“Who says I want to stop?”
He stared at her and there was a long, fraught silence between them, and for a second she was scared to breathe. Wes turned to her, leaning down, his face so close to hers, it looked as if he was going to kiss her, but instead he changed his mind at the last minute. He wasn’t looking at her anymore; he was staring at the stone she wore around her neck.
He pulled away and looked back at the churning waters, tossed a pebble from his pocket into the ocean. “What do you want, Nat?” he asked.
“I could ask the same of you,” she said, trying to keep the hurt from her voice. Did he know about the stone? Why had he stared at it like that? You can’t trust a runner. They’ll sell you up the river for a dim watt.
He frowned. “Listen, let’s start over, can we do that?” he asked. “Why don’t you tell me something about yourself, something that’s not in the official records, something Farouk couldn’t dig up about you.”
“So you can get to know me, you mean? Why?”
“Why not? Like I said, it’s a long road ahead of us.”
Maybe he was lying and he did have a girl back in New Vegas. Maybe he had more than one. Or maybe he really only wanted to be friends. Nat couldn’t figure out which possibility bothered her more.
“Go on, tell me something,” he said. “Tell me about the first time you were in the Pile.”
“How did you . . . okay, fine.” She inhaled. “You’re right. I’ve tried to get out before. This isn’t my first trip through the G.C. I was an orphan, just like you’d guessed. I was living with Mrs. Allen then—the lady who raised me. It was her idea to try and get us out of the country when I was six years old. She wanted a better life for both of us, lost her faith in the RSA.”
Wes leaned his chin against his hands. “What happened?”
“The runner who’d taken all our money didn’t pay the right bribe at the first checkpoint, so after the guard waved us through, he called in the border police and we got hauled in for not having visas.”
“In our business, we call those donkey men,” said Wes. “Clueless guys who don’t know the deal.”
“They took her away, and I never saw her again,” Nat said softly. Mrs. Allen wasn’t her mother, but she was the only mother she’d ever known. Her eyes misted a little. “Mrs. A found me when I was a baby. She says I was a DFD,” she said, hugging herself tightly. Dumped for Deployment.
“Your folks were soldiers then.” Wes nodded.
“That’s what she told me.” Mrs. Allen had explained to Nat that it happened a lot, people leaving their kids, not wanting to take them wherever they were stationed, thinking it was kinder to leave them than to bring them to the front lines; abandonment as a form of love. “I guess they were army. I don’t know. I have no idea who they were.”
“So what happened to you?” Wes asked.
She shrugged. “The usual. Ward of the state. I grew up in a grou
p home.” She didn’t mention the real reason her mother had abandoned her. The reason Mrs. A had tried to hustle her out of the country.
“And I thought Shakes had a sob story.” Wes smiled.
“Worse than mine?” she asked.
“Ask him to tell you later, it’s a doozy,” he promised. “Must have sucked, growing up like that,” he said. “Group homes are no joke.” He shot her a sympathetic glance.
“Yeah, well.” She nodded. “At least it’s over now.” She was touched by his concern, even though she was sure there was an ulterior motive behind it, especially with the way he ran hot and cold toward her. She was a card player, she knew the deal. “Now it’s your turn. Tell me, Wes, why’d you take this job? I’m not paying you enough—not for the risks that are out there. What’s in it for you?”
“Maybe I want to see what’s out here, too,” he protested. “If there’s such a thing as paradise—I don’t want to be left behind.”
But Nat knew there was something behind his smile. Something he wasn’t being honest about. She tucked the blue stone underneath her shirt.
That made two of them.
22
WES WATCHED HER WALK AWAY FROM THE railing, then went back to staring out at the water. He wondered how much of her story was true. Who was she, anyway? She said she recognized him from somewhere, and Wes wondered whether she was right and he had just forgotten. But he was certain that he’d remember meeting Nat. He scratched the scar on his forehead. Funny how she’d wondered about it, just like Jules. That story about Shakes and the pickax was a lie. But maybe one day he would tell her the truth. The one he’d never even told Jules.
On his first date with Juliet Marie Devincenzi, she’d laughed when he’d told her the story of the avalanche, all that rigmarole about how he’d made Shakes feel guilty about the scar.
Wes was still on deck by the rail when Shakes found him, staring at a photo he’d pulled from his wallet.
“Put that away,” Shakes said with a grimace. “Let sleeping dogs lie.”
“I know, I know,” Wes agreed.
“Look, boss, Jules was all right, but . . .” Shakes shrugged.
“But?” Wes asked.
“You know why,” his friend reminded him. Shakes had never liked Jules very much and blamed her for some of their trouble.
Wes put away the photo. “You think she really died at the Loss?”
“It’s what I heard. What’s the problem, boss? She left us high and dry after that Dreamworks hit. I mean, rest in peace and all, I don’t like to speak ill of the dead, but she messed you up good.”
“No, man.” Wes shook his head. “That’s not how it went down.”
He’d met Jules right when he’d gotten out of the service. She was already running the cards then, a real pro, and she needed some muscle, a driver, a getaway car, and she’d picked him for the job, having heard that he’d made his name as a death jockey and knew his way around New Vegas. Jules had been a few years older. They hit it off immediately.
Wes had never been in love until Jules, didn’t even know that’s what he’d been feeling, until he was in over his head. She loved him, too—he would never forget that. He would have done anything for her at one point, but she’d asked for something he couldn’t give.
“I never told you, but she wanted to get married, get the license, the whole deal,” Wes told Shakes. “She wanted to get out, too. She always talked about escaping to the Blue. She believed in it. But she was willing to make a go of it anywhere, in K-Town, or Xian maybe, she had some friends who lived in Shangjing.”
“And you didn’t?”
“No.” Wes shook his head. “K-Town’s not any place to live, and since we wouldn’t merit visas, I didn’t think we’d be able to hack it as illegals in Xian.” But there was more. His sister Eliza was out there somewhere, and he couldn’t leave without finding out what had happened to her, whether she was even still alive.
Juliet had said she understood, she hadn’t pushed it. So they stayed in New Vegas, and slowly, imperceptibly, whatever love had existed between them began to fade, and they fell apart. Jules had wanted out—and he’d let her down. Wes found he couldn’t live with her disappointment. It stared at him in the face every day. He couldn’t choose between them. Jules or Eliza. It ate at him, destroyed the love he felt, left him furious and stymied. Shakes got it wrong; Wes had broken up with her, not the other way around, right before the Dreamworks casino gig. After that, they stopped speaking and never ran a job together again.
He pulled out his wallet and stared at her photo again. He hadn’t wanted to feel close to anyone else after that. The crew began to call him a priest and joke he was celibate. He didn’t care. He began to think that maybe the boys were right about him, that he’d given up on that sort of thing, that he was no longer interested. But something in him sparked to life when he’d met Nat, and he felt the beginnings of something familiar . . . not just an attraction, but the embers of an emotion he had suppressed for so long. She wasn’t his girl anymore.
Natasha Kestal.
He couldn’t be with another girl who needed so much from him. He had nothing to give. His heart was as patched together as his ship.
Nat.
Jules.
When he heard that Juliet had died at the bombing, he didn’t want to believe it, but it had been at least a year since he’d seen her. A long, lonely year.
He wondered what would have happened if he’d kissed Nat, if he had risen to the dare—he’d seen the look in her eye, the invitation—and more than anything, had wanted to accept. He was glad he had restrained himself, had not let her win; she was playing with him somehow, and he wouldn’t give in to that game. He was playing one of his own, as Shakes reminded him.
“So, boss, you ask her about that stone yet?” his friend said. “Ask her where she got it? What it is?”
“In time, my friend,” he said, thinking of the sparkly blue sapphire Nat wore. “In time.”
Maybe he should have kissed her. Wasn’t that what he was after? For her to fall for him so he could take what he wanted? So why hadn’t he?
23
AFTER THEIR CONVERSATION THE OTHER day, they avoided being alone together. Wes kept himself scarce, eating his meals by himself and hardly leaving the captain’s quarters. Nat tried not think too much about it, or why she had instigated that almost-kiss in the first place. She had hoped he would take a shine to her so that he would think twice before messing with her. That was all it was, so why did she feel so strange? He was nothing to her . . . and yet . . . she had wanted him to kiss her because she had wanted him . . . If only they were already at New Crete, so she would be rid of Wes and his ship and her confusion.
She took to reading her book up by the transom in the afternoons, and for the next few hours she was engrossed in the story. Daran and Zedric came up as well and sat away from her, at the bow of the ship, their legs dangling over the edge. Daran gave her his usual smarmy smile, and asked if she wanted to join them, but she shook her head and went back to her book.
After her eyes tired, she put it away and looked down at the ocean. It was black and oily as usual but underneath . . . she saw a glimmer . . . a flash of color? What was that?
A fin?
A fish?
But there were no more fish in the seas, everyone knew that.
But it was a fish. It had to be. She saw its brilliant red flash flit through the water. “Did you see that?” she asked, pointing.
Daran squinted at it. “A redback!” he said. “It’s got to be! I’ve seen photos of ’em from before. That’s crazy—nothing’s supposed to live in this water!”
“Nah, it’s not a redback. It’s one of those eels,” Zedric said.
“No, it’s a redback, jackass, that’s not an eel; that’s a fish, or you’ve got frostblight.”
Daran was right, it was a fish. It looked like pictures she had seen of salmon in facsimisushi restaurants.
Nat marveled at it.
“How did they get that coloring?”
“Got me,” Daran grunted.
“It’s camouflage,” Zedric informed him. “When the water was green-blue the fish were, too, to blend in, but now that the waters aren’t blue, neither are the fish. They’re changing along with the water.”
Daran chuckled. “I don’t know where you get this stuff, bro.”
The three of them sat in companionable silence. Nat was glad; the Slaine boys gave her the creeps, Daran especially. She was about to return belowdecks when she heard Zedric yelp suddenly. She turned and saw that there was a white bird perched on the ship’s antenna.
“What is it?” Zedric asked.
“It’s a bird,” Nat explained, wondering how he knew the name of an obscure fish and yet had no idea what a bird was.
“He’s never seen one,” Daran explained, a bit embarrassed for his brother.
“Neither have I,” Nat breathed. Aside from the polar bears, the only animals she’d ever seen were from the old newsreels on the nets, or in surviving picture books. Pets were an indulgence, a rarity, and zoos were nonexistent in New Vegas. Supposedly the government kept animal and nature preserves in the enclosures, costing hundreds of thousands of heat credits while the rest of the population froze, but she’d never been to one.
The small white bird was beautiful, its feathers fine and lustrous, its black eyes bright with curiosity. As it spread its wings, it suddenly changed color, turning pink, yellow, and turquoise, the swirl of colors bright against the gray fog. Magical. It jumped onto Zedric’s arm and began to dance on his shoulders. Nat smiled.
It was a miracle to find such vibrant life in the refuse and swill of the dark, polluted ocean. The bird hopped from Zedric’s palm to Nat’s and greeted her with a friendly peck. Then it unfolded its wings, puffed up its chest, and began to sing a wondrous song, echoing across the water.
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