The Abyss Surrounds Us (20 page)

32

The lasers blast from my wrists, and Bao's head wrenches up, forcing me flat against the plating. I'm lost against the surge, the line at my waist the only thing keeping me attached to his head. My ears swell and pop viciously—I can't equalize in time. A scream bubbles out of me, and we break the surface like a geyser.

There's no time for hesitation, no time for second thoughts. I point my wrist at the rearmost ship, whose guns are still trained on the
Minnow
's retreating aft, and twist the setting to
charge
. Bao obeys with a roar, lunging forward so ferociously that I lose my grip and tumble back against his neck.

It's too late for the people on the deck to do anything. They're powerless as Bao comes crashing over them like a hurricane, his claws sinking into the ship's rear as he closes his beak around the aft gun mounts.

Then their eyes shift to me, and they recognize who's commanding the beast. Me in my mirrored goggles. Me in my respirator and armor. Me with the Otachi on my wrists, tied to the back of the monster raining hell on them, fighting on the wrong side of the war.

There's no point in apologizing. I snap the Otachi to
destroy
and lean out over the side of Bao's head, throwing the beams against the engines that protrude from the boat's sides. Bao chases after them, but this time I keep my grip solid and sure in the plating, and my aim doesn't waver. His claws slash once, and the boat is dead in the water.

The serpentoid peels off the
Minnow
's tail, its arrow-like snout whipping around to find us, and I know that this boat must be its companion. It lets out a fell shriek and launches itself forward. Its winding body slices through the inky waves like they're nothing.

I crouch against Bao's neck, trying to make myself as small as possible as my monster wheels to meet the other Reckoner head-on. The serpentoid ducks beneath the waves, and Bao heaves toward it—and his beak closes on thin air with a crack that nearly knocks me senseless. My ears ring, but I can't waver now, can't let it get the better of me, because I've trained enough serpentoids to know exactly what the snake beast is about to do.

I flick the Otachi to
charge
and throw the beam out to our right. Bao veers, just as the first of the serpentoid's coils lash up around his midsection. He escapes its grip, but just barely, and the strike sends him rolling onto his back. I cling to his plating so hard that my knuckles creak. The water slams me flat against him, and I reach down and anchor another line-hook to his keratin. He rolls his head forward, fueled by an instinct I can't break him from, and this time the serpentoid's too busy recovering to get out of the way. Bao's jaws cinch around its neck.

The muscles snap taut underneath me as Bao bites down, and a sick, wet crunch rattles my bones. The serpentoid goes limp.

Two down. But in the frenzy of the fight, I've lost track of the other ships, and it takes me a minute to get my wits about me, my thoughts still stuck on the fact that I've just helped kill a Reckoner. The smell of the serpentoid's blood washes over me, thick and pungent, and I drink it in before I can tell myself not to. Bao lets out a roar that shakes the NeoPacific, letting his kill tumble back into the waves.

A spotlight flares from one of the ships, its light nearly blinding me as they aim it at us. Then the other ship's lights blast on, and I can't see the stars above me anymore. Bao roars again, but this time it chokes off in a confused warble as he tries to make sense of the new signals blazing across him. I squint through my goggles, searching for what I know must be coming.

The lasers carve in the wake of the spotlights, their bright beams coming to rest squarely on Bao's head.
Shit.
I throw up his
charge
signal, aiming it right back at the closest boat, but he shakes his snout from side to side, still confused.

“C'mon, c'mon, c'mon,” I growl into the respirator. It's no use.

The cetoid is the first to strike, coming up hard against Bao's underbelly with its plated snout. The hit sends me flying into the air as Bao shrieks in pain, and my fingers instinctively wind around the line-hook cables as my feet go sailing over my head. I land hard on my back, the helmet cracking against Bao's plates. A thick tentacle towers out of the sea to our left and lashes down around his neck, inches from my position. I grit my teeth, turn the Otachi to their brightest setting, and plunge them against the cephalopoid's soft flesh.

A scream echoes out from somewhere beneath Bao and the tentacle snaps back, a curl of smoke wafting up from the neat hole I've just burned in it. But before I can congratulate myself, the cephalopoid's limb slams down again, and this time I can't roll out of the way.

The world goes dark. I feel like I'm suffocating, like I'm spinning, like “up” and “down” are figments of my imagination, and then suddenly I'm back. I choke in a breath through the respirator and discover that we're underwater, that the blackness wasn't all imagined. My head throbs so viciously that for a second I think my skull has cracked. I've been tossed around far too much to get away intact at this point. Bao flexes underneath me, his jaws gnawing insistently at something, but everything else seems too still.

Then the cephalopoid's tentacles loom out of the darkness again, lashing down around Bao's body. He rolls his head and catches one in his beak, and thick Reckoner blood flushes into the water around us, blinding me. I flatten myself against Bao's skull. There's nothing I can do in this blackness but feel the power of the monster beneath my feet as he struggles, locked in mortal combat.

The only consolation is that the trainers up above are just as blind as me. With the fight underwater, they can't afford the refraction throwing off their aim, can't risk setting their beasts on each other. It's all down to the three Reckoners.

And Bao's giving it all he has. As the blood in the water clears, I see that he's managed to rend the cephalopoid nearly in half. The squid beast still flails, but it's mostly trying to get away from Bao's snapping jaws, which slice into its tender flesh like it's nothing. A twinge of pity rattles my bones as I think of all of the pups I've raised, of the sucker scars on my ankle, of how much pain the Reckoner is in.

Then Bao lunges forward and ends it.

But there's no relief, no time to catch a breath as the cetoid rockets out of the murk. Its flukes pump furiously and it slams into Bao, sending me flying to the end of my lines again. There's a horrible, muted scraping noise as somewhere its teeth rake along Bao's keratin plates, and he convulses underneath me, his forelegs flailing as he tries to kick the cetoid away.

I yank myself against his hide, close my eyes, and wait.

This, I imagine, is what a cow that's been sucked up by a tornado feels like. I can't cut myself loose, and even if I could somehow unlatch the line-hooks, it'd only increase my chances of being crushed to a pulp by one of the beasts. The tendons in my hand creak as Bao swings his head from side to side, but I keep my eyes squeezed shut. I don't want to know what he's doing. I don't want to know if the cetoid's made it through his shell, if Bao's gotten his razor-sharp claws into the whale beast's tough hide, if they've managed to tear each other's throats out in the same instant.

No matter what, it's beyond my control. All I can do is pray.

When stillness finally comes, my eyes drift open. I see the pieces. The two-pronged fluke of the cetoid looming out of the shadows above me. The meaty, pulpy mass of the cephalopoid's head to my left. My breath catches in my throat as I watch them sink past us. And beneath me, Bao's as alive as ever.

He did it.

A glow of pride warms through me, and I can't help but grin against the respirator. “Varma, you there? The Reckoners and one of the boats are down.”

But the piece in my ear only crackles in reply. The
Minnow
's out of range.

Which means the boats might be on its tail again.

Which means Santa Elena has a gun to Swift's head.

33

I pull the Otachi triggers, and my stomach lurches as Bao raises his head to follow the projections. A familiar stabbing pain shoots through my ribs. I get my feet underneath me and lash the line-hooks tighter, fingers fumbling over the cables. No matter what, I can't let those boats catch up.

If I'm too late—

I can't afford to—

But I feel the sensation start to curdle somewhere in the back of my throat, the urge to come crashing down, to become the reckoning that I'm owed after so long at Santa Elena's mercy. If she dares take my last good thing, there'll be no saving her. She thought that using Swift as a shield would protect the
Minnow
.

But she underestimated me. I played my cards, I laid in wait, I let myself be beaten and manipulated. If she keeps that promise she made to me, I'll show her the truth I've learned on her boat. I don't just raise monsters.

I am one.

Bao breaks the surface with a growl that shakes me to the bones, and I squint through the spray, searching for the lights of boats on the horizon.

I find them. Three of them. The
Minnow
's retreating shadow barely glows in the distance, but bound right for it are two keels that blaze brightly half a league's length from us. There's still time. I flick the Otachi to
charge
. There's no holding back now.

Bao lunges after his lights with every last ounce of speed he can give. The pursuit is defenseless, their Reckoners dismembered, their guns their only hope against me and my beast. If we can catch them in time, it's all over.

I point Bao under the water and we plunge beneath the waves again. This time I brace against it, keeping my feet firmly planted on his head. The night betrays the Otachi beams too much for us to stay above—it would tell them exactly where to point their guns. But in the shadows of the NeoPacific, their shots are uncertain, their aim thrown off by the refraction of the water. All we'll have to do is kill the engines.

With the water cutting over my face, with Bao's strength beneath my feet, I feel invincible. I nudge him upward, teasing us toward the surface until my head skims out of the sea, just enough to check our position and adjust before we dive again. No lasers sweep over the waters from the pursuit boats. They've long since given up on their beasts after they disappeared into the depths with Bao.

We prowl the night, every bit the ancient horror we were meant to be.

When I next edge my head past the surface, the boats have split off from the
Minnow
's tail, turning their bows toward us. Our approach is no secret. Their radar tells them exactly where we are every time we brush the surface, but once we take to the depths, we drop out of their sight on all frequencies. The darkness is ours.

And soon we're right underneath them. The harsh cut of their hulls looms above us, outlined by the scant lights they've left on. Bao tenses below me. With the
Minnow
almost out of range, he's growing more and more nervous by the second, the strength of his imprint urging him to fall back on his companion's tail. But he holds true to the Otachi's direction when I give it, and when at last I blaze the
destroy
signal at the hull overhead, he rises from the depths like a freight train.

A blast of heat hits me like the summer sun as we run up against the engines, but Bao's claws are there to mitigate it. The ship bucks upward when he strikes, and the muted shriek of rending metal makes my ears ring.

But before we can call it a job well-done, the clatter of gunfire echoes out to our left, and suddenly the murk is alive with heavy machine gun rounds that punch through the darkness with impunity. Lasers carve through the water, learning us as they trace, and I duck my head to avoid being blinded. A shriek rings out from above, and a small explosion rocks Bao's side.

We have to get deeper. We have to get deeper
now
.

I point the Otachi down, or at least my best guess of down. The Reckoner underneath me is tossing his head and rolling his shoulders far too much for me to tell which way it is for certain. In the confused tangle of beams, Bao picks out his signal and charges after it.

Then something punches me in the back, and all of the air in my lungs flushes into the respirator with a scream. My head throbs savagely as we sink farther into the depths and I pitch forward, desperately trying to draw in a breath that keeps running away from me. For a moment, I think I've been shot.

Then I realize that I've definitely been shot. I twist my arm around my back, fingertips rushing over the armor, and find a dent right between my shoulder blades. My heart hammers against the plating on my chest as if it realizes just how close it came to being destroyed. I try to look over Bao and see how much damage he took, but in the darkness all I can pick out is the slow curve of his heavily-armored back.

One more run. One more run and it's all over.

I twist the Otachi skyward again, and Bao reorients himself with a roll that sends my stomach swooping and my head spinning. This is it.

I find the hull of the last boat, find the glow of the engines that power it, and point my beams. Bao surges up.

As we rush toward the surface, the fire reignites, the bullets blazing around us, the lasers doing their best to steal my sight, but I hold true with everything in me. I can't lower the Otachi, can't change course. This is the final blow. This is what's going to save her, save all of them.

When he hits the boat, I don't hold him back. Bao's claws rake the hull far past the engine mounts as he rolls onto his back, bringing his massive rear legs up to kick the ship. His beak closes around a twisted piece of metal, and I brace myself as he rips it clean from the ship. I squeeze my eyes closed, lunging forward until I'm pressed flat against his skull and praying that his bulk shields me from the bullets strafing the water.

He keeps going.

It's pure, relentless savagery, the sort I learned aboard the
Minnow
, the sort that's so innate to Bao that it's a crime not to release it. And just like that, the third boat is dead in the water.

I pull the Otachi triggers to force my beast to fall back, and there's a certain amount of reluctance to it. I want to see how good I did. I want to see how far he'll go.

And it brings me around.

It brings me all the way around, and as I sink into the deep, dark waters, leaving the chaos above and descending into the black, I realize that there's no way to explain what I've just done to the people rescuing me. They didn't see a lost girl, a prisoner, a victim. No, they saw me for what I am.

And what I am doesn't belong where I came from. What I am doesn't even deserve to go back there.

A chill sinks into me, or maybe it's just the waters. All I can see is the beam of light dropping endlessly below and the faint outline of Bao's head that the glow catches. The pressure sits uncomfortably on my shoulders.

I could still make an attempt to communicate with the ships I've just disabled, to win them over. To go home.

But that feels like denial. The industry I fought so desperately to save all these months is rotten from the inside, and there's no way I can go back there knowing what I know. I could bring the truth about Fabian Murphy to shore, but all they'd see is the girl who spent three months on a pirate boat, raising a pirate-born monster. The girl who wrecked the quadcopters. The girl who trashed the pursuit boats and shredded their companions. They wouldn't take my word for it.

But out here, maybe I can find a way to show them. I click off the Otachi, and Bao drifts to a halt.

There's something out on the NeoPacific that I'm meant for, that everything in these past months have been aligning me to reach out and take. I glance up at the faint lights and the shadows of the hulls overhead.

They aren't for me.

But out on the horizon somewhere, there's freedom to roam the seas, to be the beast that I've found inside me, to stand up against the imbalance and find a way to make the oceans right again. Somewhere out there, the
Minnow
is finally free of pursuit.

I flash the Otachi on and let Bao's homing signal do the rest.