23
When we glide up to the docks, my smile matches Varma’s. I keep trying to hide it, to settle my face back into the neutral mask I’ve grown accustomed to wearing on the Minnow, but I can’t help it—I’m pumped up. As the claws snap around our hull and winch us up to the aft docking mounts, I shuck out of my armor with trembling fingers. With every piece that comes loose, my muscles rejoice. The adrenaline is wearing off, and the exhaustion is setting in. By the time the Splinter settles into its mounts, I have everything packed up in the duffle, ready for the inevitable training session tomorrow.
I left my radio on the trainer deck. I vault out of the copilot’s seat and scramble over Varma, the good news burning inside me. I want the captain to know exactly what we’ve accomplished here. I want to scream it from the roof of Fung’s palace.
But when I hear the thunder of running footsteps echo down the hall, my grin cracks in half. Swift skids into the Splinter dock, her hair wild. She gulps in a huge breath, then gasps, “Murphy. He’s here. They found him.”
My stomach turns. The noises that triggered Bao earlier—they weren’t backfiring engines. And I ignored them. I got so wrapped up in training. I throw down my duffle and break into a sprint, blowing past Swift as I rush for the Minnow’s upper levels. The thud of Swift’s and Varma’s feet chase me through the ship and up the ladders.
I spot the crowd the moment I break into the sunlight. A seething knot of pirates parades from the island to the docks, marching a barefooted figure in front of them. As I rush down the gangway and throw myself headlong at the approaching crowd, I get a good look at the man who single-handedly destroyed our oceans.
Fabian Murphy has seen better days. His gray eyes flash wildly as he’s shoved from all sides by hands and gun barrels, and he clutches his left arm with his right, staunching the flow of blood from a bullet wound in his forearm. He’s clad in nothing but a t-shirt and silk pajama bottoms, like he was lounging before the pirates found him. When he spots me running toward him, he freezes in his tracks.
“What the hell is going on here?” I roar over the clamor, and the docks go still. A jolt of surprise runs through me—I didn’t expect to be listened to. Before I can demand an explanation again, a familiar hand lands on my shoulder, yanking me back before I can charge at Murphy.
“They found him holed up in one of Fung’s private rooms,” Santa Elena says. “Apparently he’s been here since before the Salt convened, waiting for this all to blow over so he could make a clean exit.”
“He can forget about that,” one of the other captains chuckles, nosing his automatic into Murphy’s back. “We’re gonna hang this fucker from the docks.”
The IGEOC agent’s bulging eyes meet mine. “Please, Cassandra,” he pleads. “Don’t let them—” His next words are lost in a chorus of laughter that rises from the pirates surrounding him.
As the shock fades from my blood, I realize that I’m shaking under the captain’s steady hand. It takes me an extra second to name what’s doing it. Not fear—even if I weren’t riding the high of being strapped to a Reckoner, the chemical cocktail in my head is nowhere near fear. No, it’s like a destroy signal has been flared in front of my eyes. Pure wrath boils in my veins.
“I am a citizen of the Southern Republic of California. Under the laws—” But before he can finish, the pirates are laughing again. Murphy turns, seeking out the faces he knows. “Come on—Omolou, you can’t… Stern, please?” He lifts his eyes imploringly to each captain. “Elena, I know you wouldn’t—”
Her gun is out before he has a chance to finish his sentence. “You know nothing about me, Fabian Murphy, and you will address me by my full name or not at all.” She levels the barrel between his eyes, and some of the pirates surrounding him shrink back.
No. Before I comprehend what I’m doing, I’ve stepped into her line of sight, the barrel of her gun pointing right at my throat. The captain’s eyes widen fractionally, but she doesn’t let her cool mask slip. A familiar hungry spark lights up her gaze, the same look she wore when Swift took over in the fight to take down the cephalopoid. Santa Elena wants to see what I’ll do next.
I grab the barrel of the captain’s gun and rip it out of her grasp. She releases the weapon willingly, her hand dropping instead to the knife on her belt. “He’s mine,” I growl, low and serious.
Then I settle my fingers around the grip, turn on my heel, and point the gun at Murphy’s forehead.
The world goes still. Everything slows, and in the space between two heartbeats, clarity tries to sink its claws into me. Isn’t this what I’m supposed to do? Isn’t this why I forsook the shore and threw away any hope of redemption?
Isn’t this what the captain was supposed to shape me into?
Santa Elena makes no move to stop me. None of the pirates do. They must recognize that whatever is supposed to happen to this man, I’m the one with the right to dole out his justice. Murphy’s shoulders sag, and he closes his eyes like he knows exactly what he deserves.
My finger itches for the trigger. I think of the devastation his greed has wreaked on these oceans. The thin catch, the way the fisheries will struggle for years to come. The untrained Hellbeasts, hungry for an ocean that can never sustain them. Kurosaki’s crew and everyone else his bastard monsters have ever killed.
Electric green eyes. Santa Elena’s knife. A laughing crowd at the captain’s back, clamoring for blood. Femoral artery. Clean slice.
Justice.
My stomach turns. Every savage grin around me burns into my skin like a brand. I feel the steady pulse of that phantom destroy signal humming through my bones, but my hands start to shake on the pistol’s grip. Three months ago, I watched a traitorous boy get dragged to the edge of the trainer deck and carved open in retribution for the way he had wronged us. And I fought tooth and nail to stop it, even though no one would listen to me.
That girl is oceans away from the moment I’m locked in. And just by being in this moment, holding a gun to Fabian Murphy’s head, I know there’s no going back.
The disgust surges up my throat with an impulse on its heels. I lower the captain’s gun. Murmurs rise around me, but beneath them, there’s the lap of waves against the dock’s supports. The distant roar of the ocean. No matter where I stand.
The gun’s such a heavy thing. The metal drags at my shoulders, but my shoulders have been strengthened by the weight of the Otachi. And in the end, it barely takes more than a flick of my wrist to send Santa Elena’s pistol sailing end over end into the harbor waters.
I almost laugh to fill the silence that follows. What can they do to me? What can any of them do to me when I’m their best chance against the Hellbeast pack? I turn, expecting to see Santa Elena’s teeth bared, expecting to see the calculation in her eyes as she figures out how to punish me for pitching her gun into the harbor.
But she’s just staring at me. Her gaze is even. Hollow. Waiting.
“This does nothing.” My voice comes out shaky, and I glance around. I half-expect to see the pirates with their guns out, shifting their aims to me, and my words get stuck in my throat when I realize that none of them have. Some of them are even lowering their weapons. The momentum of their revenge has broken.
They’re listening.
“Killing him doesn’t do anything,” I choke at last. “We’re pissed off. We’re running out of time. We need to use that anger and that pressure, but not like this.”
Santa Elena’s eyes narrow. “Give me a solution then,” she says. “What do we do with this man? What does your justice look like?”
I turn to Murphy. He clenches his wound tighter, his eyes shimmering as he stares right back, silently pleading for my mercy. It’s less than he deserves. But death isn’t what he deserves either. “The ship you came in on. Is it yours?”
He nods.
“And it’s still on the island?”
Another nod.
I advance on him, squaring my shoulders and lifting my chin, trying to summon everything inside me that makes me look like the captain’s favorite. “Get in your boat. Put this place to your back and keep running until you find somewhere where no one knows your name or what you’ve done. I promise it’s going to be harder than it sounds. Word’s spreading on these oceans, and I can’t guarantee the same mercy from the next people who find you. Live out the rest of your miserable little life unknown. That’s my justice.”
Murphy lifts his chin, his eyes narrowing. He looks paler than usual, likely due to blood loss. But there’s a dangerous spark in him, one that would have made me shrink back the last time I saw him. “And what about the rest of your life, Cassandra Leung?” he spits.
The captain’s trained me into a passable liar, but I can’t stop the slight hitch in my voice when I tell him, “I’ll figure something out.” I lift my gaze to the pirates that surround us. “You’ll let him go, hear me? Or my beast might not be there when you need it.”
Some of them nod, others glare, but none of them stop Fabian Murphy from staggering down the docks to a private cruiser that we all assumed was one of Fung’s. No one makes a move until the boat’s disengaged from the docking arms and spinning up its engines. I turn my back on the pirates, brush past Santa Elena, and make my way up the Minnow’s ramp, where Swift and Varma are waiting. Murphy’s boat streaks through the horns of the crescent and out into the safety of open waters.
Once he’s out of sight, I let the weakness in my knees take over, slumping against the railing of the main deck. A shadow crosses me as Santa Elena steps off the gangway. She gives me a small, taut smile that I definitely don’t deserve. Her fingers are clenched around her radio. “Fung’s locked up in his glass house for the moment, but he’s ordering us all off the island before something goes sideways. We’ve got twenty-four hours to clear out—otherwise he’ll turn the harbor guns on us.”
“And once we’re clear?” I ask.
The captain’s eyes darken. “Thanks to Murphy, our situation is no longer stable. He apparently did a spectacular job of outing every single captain he sold to who’s on this island. The infighting is going to start up soon unless we give the Salt a distraction. Which means it’s best if we launch the assault immediately.”
Any last drops of optimism inside me evaporate in a flash. I only just cracked Bao—we need more time to get him truly ready for a battle. But from the way the captain stands, one anxious hand on her empty holster, there’s no way we’re going to get that time. The Salt gathering was never a stable situation to begin with. Striking out against the pack is the only way we can salvage this mess.
I give the captain a short nod.
She moves like she’s about to stride off, then pauses, leaning close. “Guns are replaceable, Cas,” she murmurs. “You aren’t.”
Instinctively I try to twist her words into the hardness I’ve come to expect from the captain. My skill as a trainer—my value—isn’t replaceable. That’s what she means. But there’s a flash of something softer in her eyes, something that tells me she meant exactly what she said. It guts me like a hooked knife, leaving nothing behind but a deep, persistent sense of shame. Santa Elena sweeps across the deck to the navigation tower. “Varma, with me,” she says at the base of the ladder.
He turns to follow her, pausing only to glance between me and Swift and then waggle his eyebrows.
I should have let Bao eat him when I had the chance.
And then we’re alone again, and just like every other time, it feels completely different. Alone with Swift is never the same thing twice. There’s always something new in the mixture, some event that flavors the air between us. We don’t have a “normal,” I realize as I push myself upright on the railing. Maybe we never will.
“That was… that was a hell of a thing,” she says at last. She stares at a point in the harbor—probably the spot where the captain’s gun went beneath the waves—then raises her eyes to meet mine.
“I…” What am I supposed to say? I’m still trying to process what just happened, and the thing between us is so uncertain. “We made progress with Bao today,” I blurt. “He might be ready.”
Wrong answer. She turns, her shoulders squared, and makes for the ladder to the lower decks.
“I called my brother this morning.”
That gets her. Swift spins back, shock written over her face. “You… How did that go?”
I give her a weak smile. I’m not entirely sure where it comes from. “There was some shouting. A lot of shouting, actually. Mostly from him, which I kinda deserve. And crying too. Mostly from me.”
“Mostly?”
“Hey, I swear he had something in his eye.”
She chuckles. Takes another step closer. The tightness in my chest lifts with every inch that collapses between us. I can’t let hope start now, not with the Hellbeasts ahead. The question of the future, which used to be so terrifying, is now so utterly simple. The only future ahead of us is the one where we run headlong into that Hellbeast pack, and whatever comes next—I can’t even think about it, can’t dare to wish that it happens.
But because it’s so far off and impossible, it’s so easy to let this time be what it is, an awkward pocket between now and the moment that decides our fates. And in this little bubble, there’s room for her coming closer. Room for her putting her arms around me, even though we’re out in the open. Room for the small, desperate laugh that I breathe into her shoulder. I wind my arms as tight as they’ll go, sinking into the solidity of her, the sureness in this moment.
The moment I remember what lies ahead, I feel her tense up as if she’s been hit by the same thought as I have. Her fingers dig into my waist, and she whispers those familiar words: “Cas… what are we doing?”
But she’s not letting me go. She’s not pulling away. There’s no room for secrets between us, no room for much of anything, but I’m not pulling away either. Her question hangs in the air, and I don’t have a good answer for her. The only response I have is the push of my forehead against her shoulder as my knees get a little weaker. She understands—I can tell by the way she breathes in, sharp and sudden.
What breaks us apart at last is the snap of the all-call. Santa Elena’s voice announces that we’ll be shoving off in an hour, and suddenly there’s three feet between me and Swift, as if the captain’s here instead of up in the navigation tower.
And just like that, we’re going. The sound of the all-call fades, leaving the main deck eerily quiet. From deeper in the ship, I can hear the muffled sounds of crewmembers rushing to stations, getting the preparations underway. There are things both of us should be doing.
A look from Swift tells me we’re better off doing them.