It’s taken me hours, but I finally managed to open one of the cuffs without causing an explosion big enough to take my own head off. A magnet of the right strength was all it needed. Coalies must’ve figured we wouldn’t be able to find the right equipment in here, and they didn’t much care how many of us died trying to work it out. Take that, Coalies.
I throw the open cuff on to the desk. It clatters into the remains of the fifteen others I accidentally set off. The skin on my face is itchy and singed from the time I didn’t get behind the shelves fast enough.
That thing Enid said about me ignoring everyone else’s pain is gnawing at me. Partly, I’m pissed off because I don’t want people thinking the worst of me. Partly, I’m pissed off because it’s true, and no one likes having the cold light of truth shone on them. I got swallowed by grief after I lost May. I couldn’t handle seeing the people I love suffer. So I pretended none of them existed.
And then there was the other thing that I’ve done my best to pretend never happened –
No. I’m not going to think about it now.
I’m back. Even though I’m not planning on sticking around long term, I also don’t want to live with this hanging over me for the rest of my days. Don’t want people hurt and angry and thinking I abandoned them. Much as I don’t want to admit it, there’s someone in this camp that was hurting just as bad as me. Someone who I didn’t even say goodbye to when I left. I’m ashamed of that.
I grab the digimap from the wall above the workbench. Time to put things right.
Even though we’re heading for spring, the air’s crisp as frost as I walk from HQ down towards the waterfront. Enid told me Esther’s been going by the name Kara, one of her classmates who died when Hadley attacked the market last year.
I unfold the digimap as I’m walking. It shows everything in the camp from the air, but it’s short on detail. The Arcadia’s labelled, obviously, and the warehouses are numbered. But the coastguard station Esther and Corp have been living in is nothing more than a rectangle, and the area occupied by Silas and his people is all but blank. A week after the Arcadia crashed, my mother negotiated a no-surveillance clause into the ceasefire agreement. Enid spent weeks shooting down every drone that strayed inside the camp. Eventually, the Coalies took the hint, but not before we’d brought down about fifty of the things.
My mother’s endgame is still a mystery, and she’s not willing to bring me in from the cold until I pledge my allegiance to the rebellion again.
We are in danger, Nikhil. It’s time to come out of exile. That makes me shudder every time I replay it in my head. The way she looked at me when she said it. It was like she was vulnerable – and I can count on one hand the number of times that woman has let anyone see that part of her.
The quayside’s up ahead. A seagull flaps out of my way as the water comes into view. I turn left at the bottom and there it is. The Arcadia up close. Suddenly I can’t face looking at it so I lift the digimap and watch the dots moving.
May lived there and died there, and in my nightmares that’s where she still is. Skin the colour of bruises, swollen and rotting –
The name Kara lights up over a dot on the map.
I freeze, squinting at the tiny mark on the plan. Can’t be right. I flick the refresh button and watch the camp disappear and reappear. Esther’s bright white spot isn’t in the camp. It isn’t on land at all. She’s on the Arcadia. Nobody should be aboard that ship now. My mother got off everyone she could, then sealed it up. Too dangerous. Too unstable.
Esther wouldn’t be that reckless, would she? Last time I checked, she wasn’t an idiot.
Then I remember how she acted when May died. How wild she got when she didn’t have anything left to lose. I remember her being fearless and stupid, and altogether too unconcerned with her own safety. Hyper-focused on completing our mission.
She’d be exactly that stupid.
I break into a run, stuffing the map into my coat pocket as I go.
There’s a group of Neaths sitting on the broken rubble by the ship’s prow. Laughing and joking like hyenas. And, further away, a kid I don’t recognize in a medic’s uniform, arms folded, chewing the corner of his mouth and listening to one of the old-style comgloves.
‘What’s so funny?’ I say when I get close to the Neaths. I was right: Silas’s people.
‘Hey, it’s Nik Lall. Nobody’s seen you in months.’
‘I’ve been busy. What’s going on?’
‘Silas has sent a girl in there.’
What the hell has she got herself into now?
‘Tell me why, fast, or things are gonna get difficult for you around here.’
Silas’s people get to their feet and walk towards me menacingly. ‘Oh yeah? Who’s going to make things difficult for us?’ one Neath says. ‘Cos I heard you’re a nobody. I heard your own mother won’t even give you the time of day.’
‘Hey, you know who I am?’ the guy in the medical uniform says.
‘You can get lost as well. Silas’s given us permission to cap you if you step out of line.’
‘You’re obviously a new recruit, so I’m going to let that slide. My last name’s Huang. Recognize it?’
The smile drops from the Neath’s face.
‘Thought so. My family isn’t afraid of anyone, not even Silas. Unless you want to meet one of my cousins on a dark night, I suggest you answer his question, and we can all go back to minding our own business.’
The Neath gives me a momentary blank look before deciding he’d better talk. ‘He sent her to look for something in one of the cabins. Was told to give her a couple of hours and then call her done.’
I turn to the medic. ‘Is she on audio?’
He scowls at me. ‘You’re Nik Lall?’ he says, like he knows exactly who I am. Not only does he know who I am, he already hates me. Is this the someone new Enid was so eager to tell me about?
‘That’s right,’ I say.
‘How about you shut your mouth so I can hear?’ He holds the comglove to his ear. The only sounds are incoherent fragments of Esther’s voice, then static, then splashing.
In the five seconds I’ve known him, I’ve already had enough of this guy. I snatch his hand and mash the audio button on the palm of his comglove. ‘Esther? You there? Dammit, Esther,’ I say.
The guy pulls his hand back, squares his shoulders like he’s ready to fight me. Couldn’t care less. Esther’s gone aboard a ghost ship, and he’s standing here, watching.
I shrug off my jacket and take hold of one of the ropes that stretches from the quayside up to the Arcadia.
‘This is none of your business, Nik,’ the medic says.
‘Esther is always my business,’ I say. I start to cross the rope. It scrapes the skin on my hands, and I feel the burn in my arms before I even get halfway.
Without warning, the ropes bob lower. Esther’s boyfriend is climbing up after me.