The Abyss Surrounds Us (2 page)

2

When it comes time to say goodbye, I hug my brother first.

Tom tugs the end of my ponytail, and I thump him on the back in return. “If you never come back, I get your room, right?” he asks when he lets me go.

“If I never come back, you get my morning shift,” I tell him. He flashes me an impish grin and tries to ruffle my hair. Tom's two years younger than me, but he's six inches taller and he never lets me forget it.

The dock around us is choked with tourists, some waving to people already on the
Nereid
, others fiddling with their luggage. They're decked out in the season's brightest colors, all of them determined to make the last month of summer count. Apparently two weeks on a boat is the best way to do that.

I turn to Mom and Dad, who sweep me into a hug
before I can get a word in. “Be safe out there,” Mom mutters in my ear.

“Of course I'll be safe,” I tell them. “I have Durga.”

She releases me, but Dad holds on tighter. Over his
shoulder, I watch Mom shepherd Tom back toward the parking lot, and the anticipation pooled in my stomach swells.

Dad takes a step back, one hand still on my shoulder, and reaches into his pocket. He draws out a little blue capsule, and I feel every molecule in my body screaming at me to run. Dad must catch the panic in my eyes—he squeezes my shoulder and holds out the capsule. “Cas, it's fine. It's going to be fine. This is
just in case
.”

Just in case. Just in case the worst happens. The ship falls. Durga fails, I fail, and the knowledge I carry as a Reckoner trainer must be disposed of. That information can't fall into the wrong hands, into the hands of people who will do anything to take down our beasts.

So this little capsule holds the pill that will kill me if it comes to that.

“It's waterproof,” Dad continues, pressing it into my hand. “The pocket on the collar of your wetsuit—keep it there. It has to stay with you at all times.”

It won't happen on this voyage. It's such a basic mission, gift-wrapped to be easy enough for me to handle on my own. But even holding the pill fills me with revulsion. On all of my training voyages, I've never had to carry one of these capsules. That burden only goes to the full-time trainers.

“Cas.” Dad tilts my chin up, ripping my gaze from the pill. “You were born to do this. I promise you, you'll forget you even have it.” I suppose he ought to know—he's been carrying one for two decades.

It's just a rite of passage
, I tell myself, and throw my arms around his neck once more.

I board the
Nereid
with a suitcase full of trainer gear trundling behind me, a travel bag slung over my shoulder, and a growing sense of optimism as I spot Durga's shadow lurking beneath the ship. A trail of bubbles against the hull marks where she rests her snout against the metal, her body pressed up against the keel.

I don't think it's possible to love someone as much as a Reckoner loves her companion ship.

Once I reach the main deck, I lean against the rail and watch my family make their way back down the dock. As I look on, Tom turns, shielding his eyes against the afternoon sun as he tries to spot me. I wave my hand once, then tip him a little salute. Tom salutes back, and I can feel the jealousy radiating off him from here. Like me, he's been waiting his whole life for the day he gets to do this on his own.

A firm hand taps my shoulder, and I turn to find a mountain of a man towering over me. He's dressed in a smart uniform, but his gut tugs at the waist in a way the jacket clearly wasn't tailored to handle.

“Miss Leung,” he says, extending a hand as large as my head. “Welcome aboard the
Nereid.
We're very pleased to have you. I'm Captain Carriel.”

I take his hand and give it the firmest shake that I can manage. “Glad to be of service, sir.” I'm not sure if you're supposed to call the captain of a cruise ship “sir,” but I figure it can't hurt since the guy's paying my salary.

“I have a key for your bunk.” He hands me a card on a lanyard, which I loop around my neck as I gather all my gear back up. “I'm guessing you've got it all handled from here though, huh?”

I can't figure out if he's joking or if he actually has this much trust in me. It's difficult to tell when you've never seen a person do anything but smile.

The
Nereid
thrums to life as I drag my gear down to
the lower decks and find my assigned bunk. It's cramped, and the dull rumble from the ship's engines is constant down here, but there's a tiny window in my room that looks out on the sea. As we undock and turn for the open waters of the Neo
Pacific, Durga swims at our side. She lifts from the waves, water sloughing off her back
,
her forelegs carving through the sea as she keeps the
Nereid
's pace. She seems much more cheerful now that she's reunited with her companion vessel, and as I unpack, I feel even more of the worry lift off my shoulders
.

Once my phone connects to the ship's uplink, I post a quick status update to put my parents at ease. Then I gather my gear and make my way through the narrow service hallways to the trainer deck at the ship's aft. Up above, I can hear the thunder of feet, the shouts and shrieks of the passengers celebrating the start of their vacation. For me, the work is just beginning.

Life at sea moves in a strange rhythm. I wake early in the morning to check on Durga, drawing her up to the trainer deck at the rear of the ship with an LED homing beacon the size of a suitcase. The deck is right above the engines, low enough that she can tap the beacon with the tip of her beak.

Each Reckoner gets trained on a signal set assigned by the IGEOC, a unique collection of lights and sounds that ensure we alone control our beasts. Some are grating, but Durga's is one of my favorites: a pulse of blue lights and a low humming noise. During the day, Durga tends to wander away from the ship, hunting neocetes and whatever else she can scarf down. I carry a tracker on my belt that lets me know if she strays too far, but of course she never does.

While she's away, I wander the upper decks and mix with the tourists. They don't pay much attention to me—my trainer uniform makes me as invisible as the waitstaff. But on the third night of the voyage, that changes.

The old man finds me on the main deck, reclining on one of the pool chairs and staring out at the ridge of Durga's shell, highlighted by the moonlight. At first I don't realize he's there—I've gotten so used to being ignored—but then he clears his throat and says, “You're quite young.”

I bristle at that, and not just because he's quite old, his face cracked with lines, his hair barely a wisp. “First time,” I tell him as he settles on the chair next to me.

“Big responsibility,” he says, nodding toward the Reckoner, then remembers to introduce himself. “Hiro Kagawa. I was a Senator in the Southern States of America back in the day—I was actually on one of the subcommittees that authorized Reckoner justice in our waters.”

It takes me a second to connect the dots. The Southern States began the Reckoner trade long before the Southern Republic of California did, their hand forced by the swollen Gulf that was already choked with pirate strongholds. They had started raising monsters within years of the Schism. Which means …

“You lived in the United States, huh?” I ask.

“I was elected right after the Schism,” Mr. Kagawa says, his eyes sparkling in the low light. “But I lived through the worst of it, right before the world started to split.”

I figure it's only fair to let him do what old men do best. “What do you remember?”

He sighs, rolling his head back toward the stars. “Oh, mostly rhetoric. ‘Smaller Governments, Bigger Hearts,' all those catchy phrases being tossed around. Names too. Midwestern Republic. Southern States of America. Things with heft that people could get behind and trust to look after them. The seas were swelling, the floodwalls—” His voice cracks, and he blinks. “Well, you know the rest.”

I know enough. I know that one by one, the world governments started divvying up their lands, running algorithms, optimizing the care they could provide for their citizens, until the lines had been redrawn. No more United States, no more China, no more India, no more accounting for thousands of miles and billions of people under the rule of a single power.

It was so long ago that the world had already gotten used to it by the time I was born.

Mr. Kagawa blinks again, his gaze dropping to Durga's distant form. “The floodwalls. That's my story, that's the best one I can tell.” He bows his head. “I lived in … well, you know them as the drowned cities. New Orleans was one of them. The floodwalls had stood for years, but that didn't matter in the end. I was eight years old the night it happened, and I've never forgotten a moment of it. The screaming, the roar of the skiffs as they rushed up the canal streets and under the supports of the apartments. My mother grabbed me and my sisters and threw us into our boat. But my father wouldn't budge. He'd lived his whole life in the shadows of those floodwalls, and I guess in the end he decided to die with them.”

He runs one hand absently over what's left of his hair. “My mother knew him well enough to let him. We were three miles out when the walls came down.”

The sea is still tonight, and the decks are silent. “I'm sorry,” I tell Mr. Kagawa, meaning it wholeheartedly. He came on this ship to relax, not to relive the memories that haunt him.

But he waves off my apology, a tense smile cracking over his face. “It's one of the greatest gifts you can give someone, knowing their stories.”

Off in the black, Durga's blowholes release a long-held blast of air, sending up a spray of saltwater cut by moonlight.

Durga's tremors are getting worse. On the first days of the voyage, I barely noticed them, but now her legs shudder like the engines beneath my feet. She's begun to lag behind the ship, forcing the
Nereid
to slow. I spend an entire afternoon sitting on her back, scouring her plating for any sign of an infected wound that would explain her worsening condition. There's nothing but old scars. Reckoners don't get sick—they get injured, but it's been months since the last time she fought off a pirate attack.

The stench of carrion hangs heavily in the air around her, and it lingers on my clothes as I make my way to the
Nereid
's navigation tower.

Captain Carriel's face goes taut when I step through the door. “Miss Leung,” he says, turning away from the ship's instrumentation panel.

“I'm sorry—” I start, but he raises his hand to cut me off. He already knows exactly what I've come for.

“We need to make it to our first island by tomorrow evening. If we slow the ship any more, we'll be putting this whole voyage drastically behind schedule.”

My face flushes, and I find myself stammering for my next words. No Reckoner should be a burden to her companion ship. “Sir, I'm sorry,” I manage. “But something's wrong. I don't know what's happening, and I'm severely concerned for Durga's health.”

He raises an eyebrow. “You've never seen anything like this?”

I shake my head. “I've been talking to my pa—the
other trainers on the uplink, and they don't have any theories. As far as we know, nothing like this has happened to a Reckoner before.” The last time I spoke to my mother, we'd both been crying. Me from concern for Durga and her from the frustration of being unable to figure out why one of her monsters has suddenly fallen ill.

From somewhere behind us, a keening groan rings out. Durga rarely vocalizes, but today she's been making all sorts of noises.

Captain Carriel runs a hand over his beard, his eyes darkening. “Give it one more night. We'll drop anchor for her scheduled rest, and in the morning we'll make a judgment call.”

I don't know what that kind of call would entail, but I nod along. The captain claps me on the shoulder, steers me out the door, and leaves me in the hall, stewing in the ever-present smell of rotted flesh.

That night, I can't sleep.

The next morning, the entire ship awakens before dawn to Durga's unearthly screams.

3

I spring out of bed and struggle into my wetsuit as fast as I can. My heart aches inside my chest as I sprint for the trainer deck. I've been hearing Reckoner noises all my life, but never like this. This isn't a groan of discomfort, a roar of fury. No, this is a shriek of pure agony.

I burst onto the trainer deck and snap on the LED beacon. It flashes her homing signal into the dark, and immediately she surfaces, her shadow looming against the glow on the horizon. I grab a spotlight and shine it on her as she approaches.

A wave of nausea threatens to overtake me, and I have to fight to keep the spotlight pointed at her as she draws near.

Durga is bleeding all over. The sickening stench of her blood washes over me as if it clots the air. Sores dot her back, some of them burst and ragged-looking, and I realize with a jolt that several of her keratin plates have fallen off. She groans again, the noise causing the deck underneath me to shudder, and I watch, horrified, as the plate protecting the top of her head slides forward, pulling free with a meaty
snap
. It plunges into the NeoPacific, sending up a spray of salty, gory water in its wake.

I know I should call Mom and Dad immediately, but I can't leave her side when she's like this. “It's gonna be okay, girl,” I call out to her. It's a lie.

“Miss Leung!” A deckhand stumbles out onto the trainer deck, his uniform askew. “Carriel wants to know what's going on.”

My lips struggle to find words that aren't there. Nothing in my training has prepared me for this. This voyage was supposed to be effortless. Easy. And now Durga is dying, and I can't do anything to stop it. “I … ” I start, but can't finish. She's hurting so much. The water that surrounds her is clouded with blood, and I don't have the tools to put her out of her misery.

The ship's all-call crackles on. “Ladies and gentlemen,” Captain Carriel says, a slight tremor in his gravely voice.

No.

“Our radar has picked up a pirate vessel heading our way.”

Not now.

“We ask that you please stay calm and remain inside your cabins until an all-clear is given. Locks will be engaging on the doors in five minutes.”

Any time but now.

“In the meantime, the ship's companion will see to the threat.”

A chill starts at the base of my spine and works its way up until I feel like my brain's been plunged into ice water. Durga can't fight. Not like this. I spin, running my hands through my hair as I scan the trainer deck for something,
anything
to end her suffering. But Reckoners were made to be nigh impossible to kill, and there's no humane way of ending the life of a beast this size.

I'm suddenly acutely aware of the pill in the collar of my wetsuit.

When I turn back to Durga, they're on the horizon.

The boat comes screaming in from the East, the rising sun at its back as it swings wide around the
Nereid
. It carves the water like a butcher's knife and looks like it's been cobbled together from bits of yachts and warships, the unholy bastard of some pirate colony junkyard. Its upper decks bristle with weaponry.

I've let everyone on this boat down. Without Durga, we're dead in the water against this sort of artillery. We'll be boarded, looted, and killed, and it's all my fault.

Which is what I'm still stuck on when Durga wheels, swinging her snout toward the pirate ship. Her blowholes flare, her tail thrashes, and she launches herself toward the boat, the sea churning around her.

Shit.

She's not strong enough to do this, but she also can't suppress the instinct ingrained in her. Durga is bonded to the
Nereid
. Reckoner imprinting behavior ties them to their companion ships, and she'll fight to the death to protect hers. But in her condition, there's no way she'll succeed. She's already dying. It'll only be more painful if the pirates have a say in it.

And she's only going to piss them off more. She's going to give them a reason to kill every soul aboard this ship if she goes after them.

I've got to stop her. I've got to do something.

I hoist the homing beacon onto my back and take off, back down the ship's tunnels, just as the gunfire starts. The deckhand runs after me, but I tune out the words he's yelling—I can't afford to think about anything but drawing Durga back to the ship. An explosion rocks the back of the
Nereid
and the floor lurches beneath my feet as the engines stop. We're dead in the water.

I round a corner and haul open a hatch, stumbling out onto the lowest deck on the ship where a foldout platform lies waiting. I yank the lever that extends it and leap on as the platform unfurls, landing on the ocean's surface with a wet slap. It rolls out in front of me, nearly fifty feet in length, and I sprint for the end of it, my fingers fumbling on the homing beacon as I go.

The LEDs snap on, nearly blinding me, and I slip, falling flat on my ass. I hold the beacon up, point it at Durga, and scream as loud as my lungs will allow, my voice harmonizing with the hum of her signal.

The pirate ship has already outmaneuvered her and docked with us, the crew swarming the
Nereid
like flies on a corpse. Durga's attention flickers to me, and she draws up short. The Reckoner shakes her head, letting out a deafening roar as she wavers between heeding my call and doing the very thing she was bred to do.

Maybe it's my familiarity, maybe it's just a merit of her training, but Durga turns again and surges for the platform, her beak pointed squarely at the homing beacon.

“That's right,” I rasp, dropping to my knees. “Good girl. Come here. It's okay. It's all going to be over soon.”

Then the pirate ship opens fire.

They aim for her eyes. The bullets riddle Durga, and blood sprays from her already-ragged flesh. She roars again, the sound rippling the ocean's surface, and turns on the ship. Smoke from the artillery pours out over the waves until all I can see is her looming shadow and the outline of the
Nereid
. Somewhere in the haze, her beak snaps shut, the sound rolling over the ocean like a thunderclap. I stumble back down the platform, still holding the beacon high, my eyes running. I can't tell if it's the smoke burning my eyes, or if I'm just crying.

A wave lifts the platform, knocking my feet out from under me, and I plunge into the water. My hold on the homing beacon slips, and it sinks away into the vast dark of the ocean below. Lungs burning, I kick for the surface and come up clinging to the platform. I choke in a breath as I feel the water around me thicken.

A shadow crosses me. Someone has strode out onto the platform, a wide-brimmed hat shading her features and a rocket launcher hoisted over her shoulder. She takes aim at Durga, braces herself, and squeezes the trigger. The whole platform vibrates from the recoil and I almost lose my grip.

The rocket explodes into Durga's side. She screams, her leathery skin rippling as she wheels to face the pirate, who only frowns, takes aim, and shoots again.

I haul myself out of the water and lunge for her, but a pair of arms grabs me from behind and holds me back. The second rocket strikes Durga's shoulder, taking out a chunk of flesh so large that her foreleg goes limp instantly. I struggle against my captor, but it's no use. I'm not a fighter.

Durga's the fighter, and she lunges for the woman with the rocket launcher even as a third shell barrels into her chest, right where her keratin plates should be. The sickening stench of Reckoner blood and decaying flesh fills the air with an increasing inevitability, overpowering the smoke of the guns.

The fourth rocket hits her head.

And …

I'm five years old and sharing a kiddie pool with a newly hatched Reckoner pup. I'm eight, standing on her back for the first time. I'm thirteen, and the only refuge from my first breakup is in floating alongside her, holding onto the ridge above her eye where my hand fits perfectly.

I'm seventeen years old, and I can do nothing but watch as Durga's thick blood paints the sea.

Now I'm sure it's not just the smoke. Tears roll down my cheeks, and I go limp in the grip of whoever's restrained me. They can kill me now. They can do whatever they like. Everything's gone still, and even though I can hear the chaos of the pirates taking the
Nereid
behind me, it sounds like it's on the other side of a glass wall.

I've failed.

The grip on me loosens, and I can finally twist around and look my captor in the face. She's about my age. Her blonde hair is desperately trying to recover from a sideshave, and she's got a feral grin on her lips. “Boss,” she says, and the woman with the rocket launcher turns. “I think we're going to want to bring this one along.”