The Abyss Surrounds Us (6 page)

And I hate him.

He's my charge, and he's the reason I'm being used by a bunch of pirates. My life is tied to a beast that's already done his best to end it, and for a moment I find myself wishing that they'd just killed me on the
Nereid
.

But that wouldn't have done any good, because the pirates would still have this pup, this equipment, and no one on shore would be the wiser. It's on me to survive. It's on me to get this information back home, even if there's no place for me there anymore.

And then something comes to me, something I can
use
. These pirates don't know what Reckoner pups are like. They've only been on the bad side of the fully-grown beasts.

I could play this to my advantage.

And the idea is so deliciously present that I can't believe I didn't think of it before. Anything this pup does will be blamed on his nature before my training. One little slip of the knife made it so that they see him as a wild beast that I'm taming rather than a blank slate that I'm programming. They gave me a shield when Santa Elena tied me to Swift. Now they've given me the sword. They want me to teach him to hunt.

But they also gave me the power to turn them into the prey.

9

That night, Santa Elena locks me on the trainer deck. I roll down the three massive doors to keep the sea winds from ripping through the space and make a small nest out of towels on the counter where I keep my tools. The pup watches curiously as I hop up on the ledge and curl up. “Go to sleep, you little shit,” I tell him.

If I'm not careful, he'll start thinking that's his name. I've already called him that at least twenty times today. I do actually need to name him, need to give him something that identifies and differentiates him. I've never gotten to name a Reckoner before. Usually that's up to the shipping company that commissions them. The
Nereid
's owners were Hindu; they named their beast after a goddess famous for killing demons. But what do you name a creature meant to rip the NeoPacific apart, to upset the equilibrium we've worked so hard to establish?

My thoughts jump to villains, to demons and devils, to ancient monsters and evils that never sleep. That's the kind of name this Reckoner deserves.

But I'm not going to give him what he deserves.

He's small and fat and round, and my mind lands on the steamed buns my mom makes on the days when she needs to get out of the lab. A smirk twists my lips. I'll name him something small and harmless. I'll give him a name that will contradict every gene hacked into him.

“You're Bao,” I tell him.

Bao snorts.

The next days pass in a haze. The trainer deck hatch is kept locked tight, and my twenty-four-hour supervision begins. I sleep in bursts, woken by the pup whenever he gets hungry and starts to squall. As my scalp starts to heal, I cut the rest of my hair short to even out the damage. My ribs ache constantly.

Every morning the ship's cook, a giant Islander woman named Hina, comes down with a new barrel of fish caught by the
Minnow
's trawler. The entire trainer deck starts to reek of what goes into Bao and what comes out. I have to flush out his filthy tank water every day.

It's hell. There's no lighter way of putting it. I realize after the first week that I wouldn't have a chance if someone decided to come and kill me. I'm too exhausted to put up a fight.

And if Swift was on my side after watching me birth the pup, that ship has sailed. She brings me food and escorts me to the head on my breaks, but I can tell that her patience with this game is running thin. If her life didn't depend on it, she'd probably be first in line at my throat.

Once a night, I let myself grieve Durga. I let myself imagine that I trusted my instincts, that I never let the
Nereid
depart with a dying Reckoner as its escort, that I'd figured out what was wrong with her. I don't know what caused her body to fall apart like that, but it's clear as day that the pirates were behind it. Someday I'll figure out exactly what they did to her.

Until then, I curl up on my counter with my head in my hands and cry until there's nothing left.

One night, I wake up to the hatch swinging open, and for a second I'm certain that a bullet is about to find my brain. In the darkness, I can't make out the figure that steps through the door.

Bao sleeps on. The little bastard is actually snoring.

Only three people on this ship have the key to get into the trainer deck. One of them just drops off fish, one doesn't want anything to do with me, but the third …

“Captain?” I ask.

“Just checking in on things,” Santa Elena replies.

I want to ask her why that's necessary in the middle of the night, but if I've learned anything on this ship, it's that Santa Elena is beyond questioning.

She hits the dim lights, filling the deck with a warm glow as she approaches the pup's tank. The captain is dressed in a red bathrobe, which she hugs tighter around herself as she peers over the edge at the slumbering baby Reckoner. “It's always hardest at the start,” she says.

I should probably warn her to step back from the tank. I've seen pups pretend to sleep, just to trick people into coming closer to them. Bao's playful side is still developing, and I don't know if he'd take Santa Elena's arm off or just try to startle her. But I want to see how this plays out, so I hold my tongue.

The captain's lips curve into a soft smile. “When I had my boy, I don't think I ever really slept for the first month. People always tried to tell me that motherhood was this beautiful, sacred, precious thing, but god as my witness, motherhood's nothing but a hot mess.”

“I'm not a mother,” I say as I sit upright, pushing off the musty towels that cover me.

“You sure as shit look like one, Cassandra.”

It's not untrue. My scalp is still patchy and misshapen from where Bao tore out my hair, my shirt is covered in stains from fish guts, and though I haven't seen a mirror in ages, I can feel the weight of dark circles under my eyes.

“I miss the days when my boy was small, though,” she continues. “I was stranded out on a floating city with a newborn baby, but it felt like the beginning of something, you know? When I took this ship, it was with him strapped on my back. People will tell you differently. They want me to be a demon in their stories, and a demon carrying a baby doesn't fit that image, right? Now it's the middle of the story, and it's monotonous.”

I can't wrap my head around monotony in a life of piracy. I can't understand how she could consider raising a Reckoner pup that could upset the balance of the NeoPacific monotonous. There are so many ways she could have an unfortunate accident on this deck, and I know the triggers to at least three of them.

“You're thinking about killing me right now, aren't you?” she asks.

My head snaps up.

“Don't look so surprised. I developed an instinct for this sort of thing years ago. You'll find it's a very useful skill on a boat like this.”

“I'll work on it,” I deadpan. Bao chooses that moment to heave a snore so thunderous that he wakes himself up. Santa Elena leans out farther over the tank. Some sort of thrill lights up in her eyes, and I wonder if this is her break in the monotony.

Bao regards her with one beady black eye, stretching his stubby legs until his keratin plates creak.
Go on, you little shit
, I urge him.
Do it.

But he doesn't.

Of course he doesn't. She's doing nothing to provoke him, nothing to make him see the worth in lunging for her. And somehow I doubt Santa Elena is slow enough to let herself get caught by him.

I know what really stays Bao, though. It's something that's instinctive to every monster I've ever worked with—the recognition of when you're overpowered. Bao sees the hurricane behind Santa Elena, and he respects it. He sees no storm in me.

Not yet.

“You're going to do great things someday, you little beast,” the captain tells him, She leans back and grins. “You and me, we're going to take the seas for our own.” Her gaze flicks to me. “You named him after steamed buns.”

“If you'd like, you can call him Bao Bao instead,” I tell her, shifting the vowels slightly as I speak.

“Is that any different?”

“It means ‘precious baby.'”

Santa Elena nods, her teeth bared in a smile that edges on consternation. She knows I'm playing games—she's watching all the little tricks I pull. They're nothing compared to the grand game she's set up that ties me with this Reckoner and with Swift, but they're enough to get under her skin, and that's all I need from them.

“Enjoy motherhood,” Santa Elena tells me as she turns and shuffles back for the hatch, her bathrobe swishing around her.

“I'm not a mother,” I repeat.

“You're living to keep something else alive, Cassandra. What else could that make you?”

10

My next set of visitors comes crashing onto the trainer deck a few days later, lead by Swift's vicious smile. I'm in the middle of measuring Bao, which is a monumental task on its own. He squirms away from me every time I try to yank him close enough to the tank's edge to loop the measuring tape over the back of his shell, and I've just about lost my patience when all five of Santa Elena's lackeys tumble through the door.

“What—” I start, but then falter. They're a pack of wolves, all tooth and bond, and even though they've just intruded on my world, any word toward them feels like I'm intruding into theirs.

Chuck holds something huge and flat and plastic over her head, and it takes me a second to recognize it as a cobbled-together wakeboard. “First ride's mine!” she declares as she throws it down on the deck.

The clatter makes Bao snort, and I jerk my hand away from him as his beak snaps shut. Varma slides up to my side, a curious twinkle in his eye. “What're you up to?”

“Nothing, now,” I huff as Bao shies underwater. Reckoners get testy when they feel crowded, and five new people on the deck is more than enough to make him retreat.

Swift leans hard on the control panel, and the back door rattles up. She flips her hair out of her face and stretches her arms out over her head, a smirk teasing over her lips, and for one shining moment, she's the leader that the captain sees her becoming. Then the moment passes; she slouches her shoulders and pads over to where Code and Lemon are tying down lines to the deck's handholds.

I retreat to my counter while Varma helps Chuck into the straps that bind the wakeboard to her feet. Lemon tosses a buoyancy vest over her shoulders, then clips a bungee line to it. Clutching Varma for support, Chuck waddles over to the edge of the deck, where Code waits with a set of handlebars attached to a rope. The whole operation is smooth—they've obviously done this hundreds of times before.

“All set?” Chuck asks as she takes the handle from Code.

He replies with a tug on the lines and a curt nod.

Chuck screams and launches herself off the back of the boat. She turns over once in the air, her mane of wild black hair whipping behind her, and plunges into the waves three feet below the deck's lip. The lines on the deck snap tight, and a moment later, her head bobs out of the froth. She cuts through the water as she heaves against the handlebars. A breathless second passes, and then the board is under her.

Varma's fists are the first in the air. He whoops and howls like a wild dog, and the rest of the lackeys join in. The sun cuts through the spray the board kicks up, silhouetting the four of them against the bright afternoon. They're wild, they're dangerous, they're reckless.

But they're free, and that's what matters. That's what sends a little twinge of jealousy vibrating through my muscles as I press harder against the wall behind the counter, fingers crimped on the edge.

“Hey, pet project. You want a ride?” Code shouts back over his shoulder. He comes up and leans against the counter, peering out between his dark bangs. “It'll be fun, I swear. On my honor as a pirate.”

I glance at Swift before answering, unsure if it's even my place to be talking to him. She doesn't seem to object—her attention is fixed on Chuck. “Ribs are still healing,” I tell Code, which is only half true. It's been long enough that I only get the occasional twinge when I stretch myself a little bit too far. I'm less worried about what the strain of wakeboarding would do to the healing process and more worried about who's offering. It would be so easy for something to conveniently break in the harness, for something to go horribly wrong in a way so innocent that anyone on this deck could be implicated.

“Code, quit bothering the shoregirl,” Varma says as he approaches us. “Doubt you're even her type.”

He's not wrong.

“Just seeing if she wanted to have a bit of fun, yeah?” the other lackey replies.

I glance down at the measuring tape, at the other training accessories scattered across the counter. They've all been chosen so carefully, but it's more than that. They've been chosen with specific knowledge of what it takes to raise a Reckoner pup, knowledge beyond what they'd pick up from rumors, research, or observation. Santa Elena has a source in the industry—that much I know for sure.

I wonder how much these guys know.

As the captain's lackeys, they must be privy to her dealings. Maybe even present for them. And even if they have good reason to want me dead, they're friendly and happy right now. There's a chance that if I ask about this, they'd answer.

And I almost do.

Before the words escape my lips, I catch myself. There's a lot I can gain from this information, but there's so much more I can lose. If they get an inkling of the plan that's curdling in the back of my head, my chances of enacting it will plummet. I need them to continue underestimating me. I can't draw attention to myself by asking questions.

But Varma has noticed that I nearly said something. His eyes sparkle expectantly, waiting.

“Why do you call him Code?” I blurt. A harmless question, one that gets me nowhere.

Varma chuckles. “It's 'cause that's what he thinks in. He gets to sit up in the navigation tower with Lemon all day, whispering to the little machines while the rest of us are out here busting our asses.”

Code's lips twist into something that's not quite a smile, but not quite a scowl either. He tolerates Varma's easy grin for a second, then crosses back over to where Lemon and Swift are hauling Chuck back in by the bungee lines.

“You don't gotta act so skittish around us, shoregirl,” Varma says, giving me a playful shove on the shoulder.

“Yeah,” I tell him. “I kind of do.”

He shrugs as if it's my loss and jogs over to the edge of the deck, stooping to offer a hand to Chuck as she crawls out of the churning water. She's doing most of the grunt work herself, but she takes it to humor him. He pulls, yanks, and tugs until she rolls onto the deck, cackling like a lunatic. Swift and Code are already at her feet, prying the board off while Lemon unclips the bungee lines.

“My turn,” Swift declares, wrenching the board out of Code's hands. There it is again—that little note of authority, like she might actually be cut out for leadership. The rest of the lackeys get her suited up in seconds flat, and something else strikes me. From the way Swift talked before, it seems like they shouldn't trust each other with this. Anything could go wrong. Something
should
go wrong. But the five of them ignore the fact that they're supposed to be cutthroats in competition.

They're just here to have a good time.

Swift leaps off the deck, and when she lands on her feet, that stupid hair whipping in the wind as the bungee lines snap tight, it's really no surprise.