6

When the Tide Rises

Sarah Gailey

There is a goby in my cupped hands. I don’t have to work very hard to keep it there, even though it probably wants to be back with its school. I just lifted up my hands around it in a bowl of latex-covered fingers and it committed itself to its new home, swimming in steady, unpanicked ellipses, lipping at the heels of my palms.

It is bright red and bright orange and vivid electric blue, the same colors as the Octarius Industries logo that repeats over and over across the entire surface of my wetsuit. The company is the only thing that stands between me and the ocean and these colors are the symbol of that protection. Maybe, I think, the goby feels safe in my cupped hands because it can see those colors. Maybe it thinks I’m part of the school. Maybe it sees that logo and says to itself here is the place where my friends and I stand together against things with mouths.

Or maybe it just doesn’t have the kind of brain that runs from things. I don’t know. I don’t really know how fish think. Or if they think at all. It isn’t my job to know that kind of stuff.

I spread my hands and the goby swims away fast, moving unerringly toward its school, faster than I could ever move in my dive equipment. As the school vanishes into the kelp forest, I flush hot with envy. Octarius gives us good gear—the vests and regulators are top-of-the-line, the tanks are always filled with the right mix for the depths we’re working at. I have my own mask and wetsuit, I don’t have to share with anyone, not like some other working farms I’ve heard of where you have to wrestle your way into someone else’s soaked suit the minute they’re done with it.

It’s not that I don’t like the gear. It’s not that I don’t appreciate it. Of course I appreciate it.

It’s just not the same.

My body isn’t made for this. In fairness my body isn’t really made for anything. It wasn’t made for topside, where my already-weak lungs couldn’t cope with the dust storms and wildfire smoke, and my swollen joints locked up every time there was weather, which was always. I’m better down here, where the temperature’s predictable and the air is cycled and processed. Still, I’m acutely aware that this place wasn’t ever supposed to be a place for humans to live. Even with state-of-the-art equipment I’m nowhere near as agile as a creature that was born for this environment.

There are solutions for that, but I can’t afford them. Yet.

Speaking of Yrene. She passes by me too close, swimming just as fast and agile as the goby did. She’s doing it to be an asshole. I know this because it’s Yrene and her primary occupation, besides defense at the Eastern perimeter of the kelp forest, is being an asshole. Also because I’m at the Western perimeter right now and it’s not like Rising Tide ever comes this close to the dome to steal kelp anyway so her patrol shouldn’t bring her over here. There’s no reason for her to be near me right now other than to be an asshole. The evidence stacks up is all I’m saying.

Yrene got comprehensive mods a few months ago, along with a promotion to the Eastern perimeter because you can only work that far from the dome if you can stay in the water for more than an hour at a time, and with the mods she can stay in the water for the rest of her life at a time. The mods are beside the point, she was an asshole before she got mods. But they’re also not beside the point because I am bone-deep achingly jealous of her and being jealous of someone is bad enough by itself but it’s just so much worse when that person is also an asshole.

Mods don’t make you psychic but Yrene can hear my thoughts somehow because she flips around and looks right at me. Her top exposes the lush frills of flesh that sit just below her collarbone. They flutter in the water as she breathes. Gills cost 750 credits at the Octarius surgical center in the East Dome, ₡500 if you’ve got a signed affidavit promising that you’ll get a promotion to the interior zone after you recover. So to her that’s ₡500 worth of fuck-you she’s fluttering at me, and to me it’s ₡750 worth of fuck-you, and that ₡250 difference is another thing I can throw on the pile of reasons I resent Yrene.

It’s a big pile. Other things in the pile include:

That last one is the most prominent grievance in my mind right now, because she’s showing off her speed and maneuverability by turning upside down to flip me the double-bird. The tail is in company colors but it doesn’t look tacky and loud the way my wetsuit does, it looks natural and kind of flashy like a goby or maybe one of the prettier sheepshead. It’s ₡1,700 without an affidavit, ₡850 with an affidavit, ₡600 if you have an affidavit and combine it with two other procedures so you can rehab faster and get back to work sooner.

Yrene was gone for six weeks. When she came back she was ₡2,400 in debt to Octarius, which sounds like a lot until you realize that between the promotion and the extra shifts she can work at depth, she’s quadrupled her salary. She’s going to work off that debt within two years, faster if she picks up extra shifts, which she can do without getting hassled by the company doctors because nitrogen’s not a problem for her anymore. Just two years and then her whole new body will belong to her along with all that perimeter defense money she’ll be making.

Me? I can’t even take out a loan from the company bank because if you want to take out a loan from the company bank you need a fucking affidavit and I don’t have a fucking affidavit because I don’t have whatever it is that Yrene has that makes Octarius look at her and see potential that mustn’t be wasted. So I can’t even try for a job in the interior sector until I’ve finally saved up enough money to get my mods (₡3,750, all of which I have to pay in cash up front).

It’s taken me nine years to get almost-there. In six more months I’ll have enough to get it all done, one fell swoop. And then I have to recover and train and interview for a defense job like the one that Yrene got handed to her for no good reason.

It’s not that I care all that much about defending Octarius Industries’ property. It’s just that working on the defense team is the only way I can be in the water full-time. Octarius is strict as hell about how much time we spend outside the dome on account of Rising Tide trying to recruit Octarius employees. The company line is that Octarius invests a lot of capital in members of the OI family and it’s not right for some thieving Tides to benefit from that investment just because they can’t be bothered to commit to stable and productive futures in the kelp-farming industry like we do.

I mean I’m calling that “the company line” but it actually sounds pretty honest when you take out the part about stable and productive futures.

So anyway even if OI gives you a tail, you have to account for the time you spend outside the dome. If you’re on defense you can straight-up live outside the dome if you want and just call it “extracurricular observation.” If I save enough money and recover well enough from the mod procedure and excel in my training and ace the interview, I can give up dome life for good.

But for now I’m stuck out here, on the outskirts of the central branch of Octarius Industries’ Pacific coast kelp forest, on urchin duty.

I kick my feet up behind me and reach down to snatch yet another urchin—fist-sized, covered in purple spines, headed for the holdfast of the nearest towering kelp. If he was headed for the huge leaflike blades of the kelp, or even the stipes they grow off of, maybe he would have a different fate. Those are renewable and grow back faster than fast, which is the whole point of the kelp farm. I mean Octarius probably wouldn’t be delighted at a pest animal eating up their profits, but it would probably be okay to take a slightly less scorched-earth approach to getting rid of them.

But this urchin doesn’t want to eat the best parts of the kelp, the parts on the thallus. This urchin has never even heard of konbu. He wants to eat holdfasts, the ropy fists the kelp uses to grasp the seafloor. Because of that, he has to die at the hands of the OI canteen cooks.

He wanted to eat dinner, but instead he’s going to be dinner.

He’s on sand, headed from one rock to another, so I can just pick him up with my hands instead of prying him loose with a dive knife. I toss him into the stiff-sided bag at my waist then return to scanning the sand and rocks at the edge of the kelp forest. I’ve got forty-six urchins in this bag. I need four more before the end of my shift, which is in—I check my dive watch—three minutes.

Shit.

I find one nestled between two rocks and jimmy it loose with the dull edge of my Octarius Industries–issued dive knife and I have two minutes left. There are two more a little closer to the Western Dome, not too far off from a sunflower star that I’m sure is planning to eat them for dinner. Too bad for him. I’ve got a quota to meet. They go into the bag and that leaves me with fifty-five seconds, plenty of time to find one last urchin before shift is over.

Except that there are none in sight.

I turn in as quick a circle as I can, looking for a spiky silhouette, a purple shadow like a bruise on the seafloor, a patch of rock that looks a little too perfectly round. Nothing.

I signal Artie, who looks like he’s just waiting for the shift to be over—he’s faster than I am because he doesn’t spend as much time hating Yrene—and point to my eyes, then wave a flat palm at the seafloor, our abbreviated sign for help me look.

He swims over to help me search. That’s Artie for you, always helpful, always reliable. I met him on my first day in the dome twelve years ago now and he hasn’t let me down once.

There are only fifteen seconds left when we spot it. The last urchin from this swarm. I don’t know how it got past me, but it did.

Artie gives me a push as I start swimming toward it. He sends me rocketing toward the kelp and I kick hard to try to make it in time because that last urchin has gotten all the way up to the holdfast it craves and it’s probably chewing on that ropy root right this very minute.

I grab for it with clumsy fingers that immediately get clumsier because my dive watch lights up and buzzes sharply against my wrist. It’s the end of my shift. I’ve been out here under a hundred feet of water, where the pressure is almost four times that of the inside of the dome, for twenty minutes. That’s the max. That’s my shift.

It’s time to go inside.

I grab for the urchin again. This time when I miss my fist doesn’t just close around water—it closes around the holdfast of the kelp, just above where the urchin sits. I let go reflexively. I doubt I’m strong enough to yank up a whole thallus off the seafloor on my own, but it’s better not to risk it.

My wrist buzzes again, sharper this time, sharp enough to make me grunt. Octarius doesn’t fuck around with shift limits unless you have a signed affidavit saying you’re okay for overtime, and I don’t have an affidavit so this watch is going to keep buzzing me harder and harder until I go inside.

But I can’t go inside without this urchin.

I grab my dive knife. I don’t want to risk grabbing the thallus again, but I should be able to use the dull side of the knife to pry the urchin off fast. I wedge it under one edge of the creature and give a wriggle. I can feel it coming loose and I know that with just one hard jerk of the knife I’ll have it and then I can go inside and there will be too much gravity but at least I’ll be another few credits closer to what Yrene has.

My watch buzzes again and this time it sends an electric jolt up my arm. It’s not supposed to send a shock like this, not until the fifth warning, but I don’t know, maybe I missed a couple of warnings or maybe I didn’t put enough contact gel between my skin and the electrode or maybe it’s malfunctioning, or maybe this is just more of my shitty luck because the current that it sends through me rattles my bones and makes my vision blur and my jaw clench and my knees and elbows lock out straight.

It only lasts for a second.

But that’s long enough. Once it’s over, I look to where the urchin is and see that my knife has gone right through the holdfast of the kelp. Clean fucking through. I’m not usually strong enough to do that in one stroke, not at this pressure and definitely not at the end of a shift, but that shock locked my joints out hard and fast and now this kelp is hanging on by just the thinnest fiber.

As I watch, my muscles twitching in the aftermath of the shock, that fiber pulls taut, stretches, and snaps.

An entire hundred-foot-tall thallus of kelp begins to drift toward the surface. I grab for it but I’m weak on account of being fucking electrocuted and before I can even get close to catching the kelp, a bare hand closes around my wrist.

The next thing I know I’m being tossed across the threshold of the decompression airlock.

The watch lets out a soft chime as it registers that I’m inside. The airlock doors close behind me, and as they do, I catch a glimpse of Yrene’s retreating form, the yellow underside of her tail flashing as she vanishes back into the kelp forest.

She threw me inside like it was nothing.

The decompression airlock is my least favorite place. It’s about to become my second-least favorite place because as soon as this thing is finished cycling I know I’m going to get called into Eustace’s office.

I hate this part of the dome because it slowly brings me back to the environment where humans are supposed to be happiest—one atmosphere of pressure, air instead of water. But it’s trying to replicate ideal surface conditions, which is a problem for me. The gravity is too much and it’s bright and noisy and while being at pressure in a human body isn’t great, I miss the way the water presses in all around me, hugging my body and holding it together. Sometimes, in the dome, when I feel like I’m going to fly apart if just one more person talks to me, I imagine the water keeping me in one piece.

Right now I savor that embrace for just one more minute as I swim to the benches at the far end of the chamber and clip in. Artie is already waiting for me there. I kept us at pressure for a few minutes longer than the maximum recommended amount of time, so we have to stay in this little tube for eight minutes instead of the usual three, which means that he’s going to be kind of pissed at me because he’s hungry and doesn’t want to have to wait for dinner.

There’s a heavy thunk as the magnets in my station release the gear from my back, then a soft chime as the chamber, recognizing that both of us are seated, starts to drain. Gravity creeps in around me and pain settles into my joints as it does. Once the water is below chin level the same magnets release us from our vests. Artie stands up to strip, but I stay where I am, trying to keep myself in the water as long as possible.

“Damn it,” Artie says once his mask is off. He doesn’t add “I’m starving” or “why did you do that” or even “what happened out there,” probably less to be gentle with me and more because he can’t choose between them.

“Sorry,” I say reflexively. The joint of my jaw crackles as I flex it.

He starts to strip, unzipping his wetsuit and peeling it off with impatient, jerky motions. “Damn it,” he mutters again. He gives up with the top half of his wetsuit hanging loose around his waist like a partially shed exoskeleton, runs his hands through his wet hair. He closes his eyes, working his jaw to try to get his ears to pop even though the water isn’t even drained yet so there’s no way the pressure will be low enough for that. “Did you get that last one? Did you make quota?”

I shake my head before realizing he can’t see me with his eyes shut. “No. I almost had it but then my watch got me.”

“Good thing it did. You were four minutes over.”

That can’t be right. Four minutes? It felt like two at the most. “Are you sure?”

“Sure, I’m sure. I was fucking stuck in here the whole time because I’d clipped into the bench already. The mags had my vest and wouldn’t let me go. What kept you so long?”

I shake my head. “I don’t know. I thought . . . I thought I had more time than that.” No wonder the watch shocked me.

“Well, you didn’t.” Artie’s voice is sharp but not angry. “You want a hand?”

The water is around my knees now, so gravity more or less has me. I do this every shift and it’s senseless—waiting for the water to drain before I stand up, so I can stay in it longer. It just makes it harder to get up, in the end, because I have to fight full grav instead of letting the water lift me to a standing position. “No,” I say, because I’m stubborn, ask anyone and they’ll tell you. Artie frowns like he knows I’m just being stubborn, but he doesn’t help me because he knows better.

We spend some time not talking. Artie and I are great at not talking. Fresh water rains down from the ceiling in a comprehensive waterfall, stripping the salt from our bodies and our equipment. Once the deluge ends, the drylock compartment in the wall pops open so we can towel off and put on domewear. We’re stuck here for so fucking long that we have ages left after we’re dressed. We let our ears pop and we let the air get lighter a little at a time and we breathe out nitrogen and breathe in oxygen and there’s not even a hiss as the mix changes but the little lights along the wall of the chamber slowly shift from red to orange to yellow to green, and after a whole ten minutes (I can hear Artie’s stomach bellowing) there’s a friendly little chime and the door at the far end of the chamber lets out a pneumatic crack-hssssss.

Eustace is waiting for me outside the door, just like I predicted. That chamber used to be my least favorite place, but once I see Eustace’s grimacing face, it slips down in the rankings.

We walk to his office in silence. Artie takes both of our urchin bags to the weigh station, and I know he’ll get me a plate at the commissary so I don’t have to worry about showing up so late that there’s nothing but wakame and room-temperature oysters left.

“So,” Eustace says, settling into the chair behind his desk. There isn’t a chair on my side of the desk. I have to stand there, my hair sending little drops of water slithering down the back of my neck to soak the collar of my Octarius-yellow sweatshirt, marinating in the silence that follows that “so.” It’s not a pleasant silence.

I like Eustace more than Eustace likes me so I’m careful with how I answer. “What do I need to do to make things right?”

Eustace leans forward on his elbows. “This is pretty serious.” He’s still not saying which thing I’m in trouble for—losing the kelp or staying at pressure past the end of my shift. Probably both.

“I know,” I say, because I do, and then I add “I’m sorry,” which I know won’t be enough but maybe it will.

“I like you a lot,” he lies. “But this isn’t up to me.”

Fuck. Shit. Fuck. I take a halting half step toward his desk, lifting my hands in a gesture that could mean anything but in this case means please don’t fire me. “I’ll do whatever I have to do. Please, I really need this job, I love this job, I love Octarius and I’ll do whatever it takes to fix this, please, Eustace—”

He holds up a hand to silence me. “I’m not firing you.” I start to thank him but he points at me and I shut up quick. “But you’re on probation. And I’ve gotta take the next couple of shifts off your schedule. That’s company policy for anyone who ends up having to spend more than eight minutes decompressing.” He sees my skepticism and adds, “Without prior authorization. You know what I mean. It’s dangerous. You could have gotten really hurt.”

I only sort of know what he means. Lots of people spend extra time in the decompression chamber after they work overtime. Lots of people go back in the water the next day and the day after that too without taking recovery time or seeing the company doctor for a sign-off, and they don’t get lectures about how it’s dangerous.

But Eustace never approves me for overtime or extra shifts. Maybe it’s because my joints and bones are messed up enough as it is and he thinks he’s doing me a favor by keeping them from getting worse. Or maybe it’s because he’s friends with Yrene and has to prove his loyalty to her by dicking me over. I don’t know. The part of this that matters is the part where I’m already earning the absolute bare minimum and now I’m losing shifts.

I try to negotiate. “What if I go see Stan?” I hate visiting the company doctor but I’ll do it if it means I don’t have to stop working. I can afford to wear a paper gown while a hack doctor pretends to examine me. I can’t afford to stop working, not when I’m this close to getting my mods.

“Oh, you’ll go see Stan,” he says. “You got zapped pretty good. He’s going to want to check out your heart, make sure you can still dive.”

I stifle panic, trying not to lose my shit in front of Eustace. “Of course I can still dive,” I say, my voice cracking halfway through the sentence.

“We’ll see,” he says, frowning.

I nod, biting the inside of my cheek hard to try to keep from crying. “Okay. Thanks, Eustace.” I don’t know what I’m thanking him for but it seems like the thing to say. I turn to go, eager to be out of sight so I can freak out.

But before I can go, Eustace says “Hang on.” I’m hoping it’s the kind of hang on that means I’ve reconsidered and actually we can make this all go away, but when I look back at him I know it’s the other kind of hang on, the kind that means this is about to get worse. “We have to talk about the damage you did to company property.”

It knocks the wind out of me. Doing damage to company property is bad. It’s really bad. “Right,” I breathe. “I’m really sorry about that. It won’t happen again.”

“It had better not. And . . . look, I’m sorry, but I have to ask. It’s company policy. Let’s just get it out of the way: Do you have any relationship with Rising Tide?”

The question is so startling that I can’t answer right away. “Do I what?”

He says it again, slower this time. “Do you have any relationship with the terrorist organization Rising Tide? Is there any reason at all for me to go through the immense headache of reporting you to the defense team for possible sabotage and collusion?”

I laugh and then I stop laughing fast because maybe laughing will make me look guilty instead of incredulous. “No! No, I can’t—I don’t even know how I would—terrorist organization?” He gives me the kind of patient stare that communicates restraint. “I thought they were just . . . I don’t know. A nuisance, taking kelp and stuff. Fucking around with experimental surgical mods. Not anything serious.”

The weariness drops from his voice for a moment and he grows stern. “You don’t think stealing from the company is serious? They sabotaged a defense monitoring system along the Southern Perimeter last week. You don’t think that’s serious?”

I am suddenly aware that there was a right answer to give him a minute ago and I didn’t give it. “No. I mean yes, of course it’s serious, and no, I’m not involved with them. Not at all. What happened, what I did, it wasn’t sabotage. It was an accident.”

Just like that, he’s back to the Eustace I know how to navigate: tired, overwhelmed, eager to have me out of the way. “Good. That lines up with what Yrene had to say.”

“When did you talk to Yrene?” It’s not important but the words just kind of fall out of me.

“During your ten-minute decompression cycle,” he says pointedly. His gaze is steady and not all that sympathetic. “Look, I’m supposed to write you up for this . . . but if I do, and the defense team finds out that you stayed out past the end of your shift and uprooted an entire thallus of kelp, they’re going to bring you in for questioning. I don’t think you’d enjoy that.”

“No,” I agree. I don’t know exactly what questioning involves and I don’t want to find out.

“So here’s what I’m going to do instead.” He activates a keyboard in the surface of his desk and types something, his eyes flickering as he reads something on his private display. “I’m going to tell the company you bought the thallus for personal recreational use.”

“Bought? A whole thallus? Do people do that?”

“All the time,” he replies distractedly, still typing. “For parties or whatever. Usually C-level execs, not fieldworkers, but whatever, maybe you won a sweepstakes and wanted to celebrate. They don’t need to know and it’s not like they’ll investigate. As long as it looks like you compensated them for the thing instead of just losing them income, they’ll be happy.”

I run my fingers through my still-dripping hair. “Wow. Thanks, Eustace, I—I don’t know how to thank you. This really means a lot to me.” I mean it. Maybe I’ve been wrong about him. Maybe he likes me as much as I like him, after all.

“Don’t mention it. Ever. To anyone.” He finishes typing and his eyes focus on me again. “Okay. You’re all set.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it. I transferred the funds out of your Octarius account. You’re lucky you’re such a tightwad. You had enough to buy the thallus and still have enough credits left for your appointment with Stan.” He points at me, a dismissal and a warning put together. “Don’t let this happen again.”

Something in what he’s saying buzzes at me like the end of a shift. “Wait. Wait, how much did this cost?”

He lets out a humorless laugh. “A lot. Don’t worry,” he adds, seeing my face fall. “Your savings covered it, easy. And hey, at least you made your quota today, right? It’s not like all that was for nothing.”

I drift out of the room, almost numb but not quite. That warning buzz starts to rise in my chest and fill my throat. He transferred the funds out of my Octarius account. My Octarius account, which I’ve been slowly (so slowly) filling over the course of nearly a decade. When I looked this morning, it had an even ₡3,400 in it. I have no idea how much a thallus costs. I try to do worst-case scenario math in my head before looking at my account, hoping that I’ll come up with something worse than what it turns out to be, so I can be relieved.

The most expensive thing I’ve ever paid for is my hips. All my joints are bad but for a while there my hips were the worst and it was getting to the point that I couldn’t stand up off the bench in the decompression chamber without Artie’s help, stubbornness be damned. So I went to Stan and he injected some kind of goo in there, something with a steroid to bring down the inflammation and a genetically modified coral synthate to restructure the places where my bones were trying to fuse. I usually only have to give this to old-timers, he said as he slid the needle in, and I clenched my teeth and said something about my arthritis being ambitious, and he laughed and then he charged me ₡75. That’s a little over two months’ pay, before what Octarius takes out to charge for food and rent and equipment.

That injection pushed my plan to get mods back by six months.

I squeeze my eyes shut and tell myself that the thallus probably costs twice that. It’s ₡150. Four months wages before expenses. Between the shifts I’m losing and that amount coming out of my account to pay for my fuckup today, my plan will get pushed back by a year. That means a whole extra year of working tiny shifts, scraping together a little money at a time, watching Yrene swim circles around me.

Another year of gravity. Another year feeling the creaking of my knees and hips with every step I take. Another year in the dome.

I wait for the crush of it to fade, like waiting for my ears to pop when I’m in the decompression chamber. It only takes a few minutes. Once my heartbeat stops pounding in my temples and I stop feeling like I’ll die if I have to spend a whole extra year down here, I open my eyes. I’m ready to look at my balance.

I tap the face of my dive watch three times to pull up my Octarius account. The facial recognition is old and slow, but after a few seconds it flashes green, and then my account summary comes up.

My heart sinks. This can’t be right. I must be misreading, missing a zero somewhere. It was just one thallus of kelp out of the entire forest. One thallus out of a forest that’s big enough to change the oxygen levels in the ocean, big enough to reduce the carbon levels in the atmosphere, big enough to save the world. It was just one thallus.

But no matter how long I stare, the number doesn’t change.

Of the ₡3,400 I had when I woke up this morning, ₡567 is left.

I move into Artie’s place because I can’t afford my own anymore and he feels sorry enough for me that he doesn’t say no even though he probably wants to. His place is spacious—tall enough to stand up in, wide enough that both of us can stand next to our hammocks without needing to be inside each other. I hang my hammock just below his. My ass brushes the ground when I lie down but that’s okay.

The ventilation system in the dome is no joke—it keeps us from suffocating on our own carbon dioxide and also it does a great job mitigating the more fragrant concerns that arise when you’re in an airtight dome full of people. It’s also noisy as hell, which is to my benefit right now. I try to cry as quietly as I can so I don’t keep Artie up all night but I’m not that quiet and I’m counting on the ventilation system to cover for me.

I think I’m doing an okay job until Artie’s hand drops off the edge of his hammock. His fingers flex in the air until I grab them.

“Sorry,” I say, my voice thick and wobbly and miserable. “I didn’t mean to keep you up.”

He doesn’t say anything for a long time and I figure he’s probably either mad or falling back asleep until he makes a disgusted noise. “Fuck’s sake.” I’m about to get indignant because hey, I don’t think I’m being that bad of a roommate already—but then he squeezes my hand hard. “We gotta quit this rig.”

It startles me enough that I stop crying. “What?”

“We have to get out of here,” he says. “This place is gonna kill us both.”

I don’t really know what to say to that. Artie was born here and I’ve always assumed we would both die here and that means working for Octarius. You can’t exactly live in the company town if you don’t work for the company. This is our best option: stay in the water, away from the surface, away from the weather, and work until we stop breathing. “What would we possibly do if we quit?” I ask. “What, you wanna go live topside?”

He lets out a breathy, angry laugh. “Come on. I’m serious.”

“So am I. Where would we go?”

“It’s not like Octarius is the only place in the water where people can live.”

I hesitate. “You’re talking about Rising Tide.”

“They’re not what you think they are.”

“I know. Eustace told me today. They’re not just biohackers,” I whisper. “They sabotage company equipment too. He made it sound like they’re dangerous. And they’re thieves.”

He answers fast enough that I know he’s been thinking about this a lot and I wonder how much he’s been thinking about it and why he hasn’t said anything sooner. “How can it be theft if it’s something that should belong to everyone anyway? The international subsidies that got Octarius off the ground were intended to fund projects that would benefit everyone. Rising Tide is just taking what they’re owed.”

“The kelp forest does benefit everyone,” I whisper. “It’s a sustainable—”

“Come on,” he interrupts. “Food and fuel being sustainable doesn’t matter if you get shot with a harpoon gun for trying to get your hands on some of it.”

“Don’t be naive,” I snap. “It’s not like OI can just give kelp away. The company has to make money somehow.”

His reply is so soft that I almost don’t catch it. “Why?”

“. . . Why what?”

“Why do they have to make money?”

I don’t have a response to that. It’s like he’s asking why we need air in our dive tanks or why I have to lie down to sleep. I know there has to be an answer, but the harder I try to figure it out the more lost I feel.

I have a sinking feeling that he’s already made up his mind about some things.

“We could get out of here. They have their own dome and we could go live there. They could give you mods that you wouldn’t have to work a decade to save up for, and I could do something more interesting than collecting sea urchins,” he insists. “We could go together.”

Longing gnaws at me like an empty belly when he mentions the mods. “The mods they do can’t be safe,” I say, and even to my own ears I sound unconvincing.

“They’re exactly as safe as the ones you’d get here.”

“How do you know?” He doesn’t answer me, which makes me think the answer is probably not one I’d like anyway. I try to keep my voice measured but of course I can’t keep it measured because Artie is my best friend. “It sounds like you’ve been planning this for a while.” More silence from the hammock above me. “When were you going to tell me?”

He sighs. “I wasn’t.”

I feel like my lungs are collapsing. “You were just going to leave me?”

His reply is painfully gentle. “Well, no. You were gonna get your mods and apply for Defense and go live in the water. I figured . . .” he trails off.

“Figured what?” It comes out in a whisper because I can’t reach full volume, not with this much shame crushing the air out of me.

“I figured this was always just temporary anyway. Me and you. But now you won’t be able to get your mods here for a long time.” The last part of that sentence comes out reluctantly. Artie isn’t great at being delicate but I can appreciate that this is his best effort. “So instead of waiting for you to leave me behind, I thought we could leave together.” He squeezes my hand hard. “You can get the things you need now. Come with me. Please.”

Here’s the part where I’m supposed to say something that proves that I had thought this through. Something that will let Artie know that I had considered the fact that I’d be leaving him behind when I got my mods. But the truth is, I was only focused on the fact that I’d get to be in the water full-time.

I haven’t been thinking about who I’d be leaving behind.

And now he’s trying to take me with him into a new life, and instead of saying yes, I’m frozen. I feel like that little goby, cupped in the big, gloved hands of Octarius. If those hands fall away, will there be a school waiting for me to swim with it?

Or will I just be on my own in an ocean that’s big enough to make me disappear?

I’m quiet for much too long, longer than indecision alone would merit. “Artie, I’m—”

“Forget it,” he says, letting go of my hand. “It was a stupid idea anyway. I didn’t think it through.” He shifts above me. “Let’s just go to sleep.”

I wrap my arms around myself tight, imagining the water holding me together. “Okay,” I whisper. “Goodnight.”

He doesn’t say anything back. I lie there in the dark, waiting to hear his breath get slow and even and steady as he falls asleep. But it never does.

I go to the doctor and pay him to give me an affidavit saying I can still dive. I attend a probationary training in which I am handed a packet about the dangers of staying at depth for too long and told to read it. I eat breakfast and dinner with Artie when he’s not working and it’s no more or less awkward than usual.

He doesn’t bring up Rising Tide again until the end of my first week of probation. We’re eating dinner—miyuk guk with chunks of preserved mackerel—and he’s sweating a little because he overdid the chili oil again.

“You gonna survive?” I ask as he mops his brow with the hem of his shirt.

He grins at me. “Never felt more alive.”

“Say what you will about Octarius,” I say, shucking an oyster from yesterday’s harvest with clumsy fingers, “they know how to feed us.” It’s the kind of thing we always say, the kind of thing that should land easy, but it doesn’t land easy at all. It lands hard and sits on the table between us panting and writhing while we both try to figure out what to do with it. I shoot my oyster in one awkward swallow, then wipe my mouth on the back of my wrist. “I didn’t mean—”

“I know you didn’t,” he says, putting his spoon down and frowning at the beads of red oil that shimmer on top of his soup. “But you did, though.”

“That was careless of me.” I reach for his hand and he doesn’t reach back but he doesn’t pull away either. “I’m sorry.”

His eyes are the saddest eyes in the whole world. “Them feeding us shouldn’t be a compliment,” he whispers. “We shouldn’t have to be grateful that we get to eat every day. Not when it’s food that we harvest and pay for.”

I feel sour all over. I’m not mad at Artie but I don’t know who I’m mad at so I point it at him. “Spoken like someone who never went hungry on the surface,” I say, and I mean it to come out clever and world-weary but it comes out bitter and spiteful. “You were born down here,” I add. “You don’t know what it’s like up there.”

His eyes stop being sad. They stop being anything. “Okay,” he says mildly, picking up his spoon again.

“Artie. Come on.”

“No,” he says, not meeting my eyes. “You’re right. I don’t know what it’s like up there. It makes sense why you’d be satisfied with how things are down here, after all you saw when you were topside. I get it.”

He says it like I’ve settled an argument—he says it like I’ve won—but I can’t help feeling like I’m losing something.

My two weeks of probation end and I get a shift assignment and I can barely zip up my wetsuit, I’m so excited. I get to go back in the water. It’s been two weeks in the dome, two weeks of gravity, two weeks of pain. My joints are swollen and it’s hard for me to grip anything well enough to suit up but I manage. It’s worth it.

Before we clip in to our vests, Artie catches me by the shoulder. “Hey,” he says, “I’m really glad you’re going back in the water.” And then he grips me in a tight hug, just for a second. “I missed you.”

“I missed you too.” I’m relieved that he’s not holding our weird fight against me, that he’s still my friend. I don’t know what I’d do without Artie. I decide to talk to him about Rising Tide again tonight, to really listen this time. I want to be a better friend to him. He deserves that from me.

The pool fills slowly with water and then the airlock opens and we swim out. I’m giddy at the feel of it—the way the water holds me and supports me and lets me move freely. Together, we head toward our assigned sector for the day, where a fresh urchin herd has started to move in on the forest.

We’re ten minutes into the shift when they arrive.

It happens just like anything happens in the water: they’re not there until suddenly they are. I startle and drop the two urchins I’m holding, then swim backward and away from the strangers. Two of them, in dark green gear that keeps them invisible right up until the moment they melt out of the kelp. One is in a diving rig like mine. The other has a long, slender tail that’s covered in the same dark green pigment as their skin.

They look back and forth between me and Artie. My heart is pounding because they’re in camouflage, which means they’re probably from Rising Tide and they don’t look dangerous but Eustace’s voice echoes in my skull saying collusion and sabotage. Defense is probably already on the way. I need to be anywhere but here and that needs to happen fast.

I reach for Artie to pull him close to me so we can get out of this together.

Only, when I reach for him, he isn’t there.

He’s swimming away from me. He’s swimming into the kelp. And that’s when I know the thing I didn’t want to know. That’s when I know I’ve run out of time to talk, to listen, to be a better friend.

He’s leaving with them. He’s leaving me here. He’s given up on me.

Only he hasn’t, because he turns around and gestures to me, a gesture that isn’t a sign but that transparently says Come on. Come with me. Don’t stay here without me, come with me and these strangers and let’s lead a different life.

I hesitate. I hesitate because in that moment when I thought he was abandoning me I wanted to go with him, I wanted it bitterly, I wanted to leave this place and find what else there might be in this ocean I’ve lived in for over half my life but barely seen. And now it turns out I can have that. I can go with him.

And it freezes me, just for an instant. The sudden flush of enormous, terrifying possibility.

It freezes me just long enough for something to flash through the water, past the left side of my head and toward Artie. One of his new companions—the one with the tail—shoots through the water and grabs him, yanking him out of the way of the thing. I twist to look behind me and see Yrene coming toward us, bullet-fast, her harpoon gun drawn.

The Tides tug at Artie, pulling him into the kelp. He thrashes, fighting them, and they let him go and start to swim away, the one with the tail glancing back to see if Artie’s following.

He isn’t. Not yet. He’s staring at me. He’s waiting.

And then Yrene is next to me, her spent harpoon gun holstered at her hip, her hand on my wrist gentler than it was when she shoved me into the decompression chamber. I look at her and because of her mods I can see her whole face, unobscured by a diving mask or goggles. Her eyes are bright and urgent and sadder than I’ve ever seen her.

She lets go of my wrist and signs to me, fast in spite of the drag of the water. Are you leaving?

I sign back with both of my hands, slow and clumsy. I don’t know.

She stares at me for a moment longer, nodding slowly even though I haven’t given her anything to agree with. Then she draws her harpoon gun, presses it into my hands, and swims past me. She doesn’t look back. She just vanishes into the kelp forest, after my best friend and the people he’s decided to follow. The weight of the harpoon gun in my hands makes me certain neither of them are planning to come back.

The ocean presses in around me on all sides, holding me together.