Fragments.
Each one is as sharp as a piece of broken glass, lancing into my mind. They only last a moment before vanishing, leaving no trace. No memory. Nothing.
Carver is in front of me in the water. I can just make out his shape, see his arms and legs moving, his hand reaching out for me.
The sky above us, the grey clouds hanging low. Air. Searing my lungs, burning a million time worse than the cold water.
The ocean. How could there be this much water in one place? It’s unimaginable. Made up. It’s a dream I’m having, and any second now it’ll be gone.
Something looming up from the water in front of us. The seaplane. Harlan reaching down from it, reaching towards me. How is it here? How did it know how to find us?
I’m half in, half out of the plane. Harlan has me under the arms, and Carver is pushing me from below.
We’re moving over the surface of the water, high above it. I can see the ship, dropping away behind us. And then we’re on the ground, surrounded by people. Hands and faces everywhere. Harlan is there, and Eric, but I can’t see Prakesh, or Carver. I want to find them so badly. But even keeping my eyes open is beyond me. It’s like trying to hold the entire world across my shoulders. I let my head drop, close my eyes.
When I come back, there’s something wrapped around me. A blanket, or a coat. It doesn’t seem to matter. It’s thick and warm, slightly scratchy against my cheek.
“Give her some water.”
There’s a pressure, under my head. A hand lifts me up, and another one brings the lip of a water canteen to my mouth. The water is tepid, slightly salty, but I drink and drink.
The canteen slips away. I want to tell whoever is holding it to keep it there, but at that moment pins and needles explode across my body. My muscles clench involuntarily, and that just makes it worse.
The pressure on me increases. It’s someone lying on top of me.
“Stay still,” Eric whispers in my ear, as he squeezes me tight, giving me as much heat as possible.
It’s some time before I open my eyes again. Eric is gone. I’m wrapped in a thick, dark brown coat, curled up on the damp ground. My wet clothes have been removed–I’ve still got my underwear, but that’s all. I’m shivering uncontrollably, my teeth clacking together.
There are people everywhere. Workers from the ship. There are dozens of them–they’re ragged and worn out, but it’s impossible not to see the relief on their faces. They’re moving in small groups, shouting orders, marshalling supplies: food and blankets and containers of fuel.
The shore itself is made up of black dirt and jagged rocks. The seaplane floats in the water, a few yards away. There are the strangest things piercing the surface of the sea, and it takes me a minute to realise that they’re buildings. Or what used to be buildings, anyway. The hulking Ramona is beyond them, a distant black shape.
“Hey.”
It’s Harlan, crouching down next to me.
I stare at him for the longest time. Then I crawl over, doing my best to keep the coat on my shoulders, and wrap my arms around him. I can’t stop shaking.
“How?” I say. It’s all I can manage.
He looks perplexed, but then his eyes light up. “Oh, the plane? We got hit, but not nearly as bad as we thought. Eric put her down upriver, up on the Knik Arm. Nearly went into the drink. He bossed me around some when we tried to fix her, but we got the bird up in the air again, no sweat. Eric always was good at that kind of shit. I told you how he read all those books, right? When we were kids?”
“You came back.” The words are coming a little more easily now.
He looks guilty. “Almost didn’t. We thought you and Finkler were done. But then we took off, and saw that gun tearing up the bridge on the ship. That’s… kind of not what we expected to see, so we thought we should get a closer look. And then we saw you running across the deck like your feet were on fire.”
It takes me a minute to process his words. I’m still doing it when the memory of what happened to Prakesh broadsides me.
I look round, and this time I find him almost immediately. He’s lying on his back, one arm flung out to the side. His face is so pale, his dark walnut skin gone bloodless. There are people on their knees around him, bent over him, and there’s too much blood. Way too much blood.
I can’t describe the sound I make. It’s halfway between a moan and a scream. A memory surfaces: Prakesh, kidnapped by Oren Darnell, sprawled out on the floor of a disused storage facility off the Outer Earth monorail tracks. I was in the ventilation system in the ceiling, looking through a gap in the panels. But the panic I felt then is like a cup of water, and what I feel now is an ocean, stretching out in front of me to an endless horizon.
I don’t remember getting up. The coat falls from my shoulders, leaving me almost naked, sprinting across the shore. Sharp rocks dig into my feet, slowing me down.
Eric materialises at my elbow, his strong hands falling on my shoulders. I have to make myself pay attention to what he’s saying.
“You need to stay warm,” he says. “Get back there, wrap yourself up.”
I try to push past him, but I’m not strong enough, and he holds me in place.
“We think he’ll be OK,” Eric says. “One of the people off that ship has some medical training.”
He indicates a grey-haired man, his blood-soaked hands pressing down on Prakesh’s chest. “Right now, infection is the big worry. We’ve got supplies in Whitehorse, so we’ll get him back there.”
I look back at Prakesh, at his blood soaking into the sand. Frustration and helplessness boil inside me, and I try to push past Eric again.
“No,” Eric says, blocking me with an arm across my chest. “You’ll just be in the way. Let them work.”
I can see the Ramona in the distance, over his shoulder. The ship is a black, smoking hulk, squatting on the horizon like a bad dream. But it’s still there. We saved it. Carver and I.
Carver. I swing my head around, so suddenly that the muscles in my neck creak, sending a fresh wave of pins and needles down my back.
“The man I was with,” I say. My throat is parched again, and I swallow, sending razor blades dancing across it. “Where is he?”
Eric says nothing.
“Eric?” I say.
But then I catch sight of something over his shoulder.
A tarpaulin, spread out across the filthy sand. There’s a shape underneath it. A person, lying on their back.
I shake my head. “No.”
“He pushed you out of the water,” Eric says.
“No.”
“You were unconscious, and he was still swimming, and he made sure you were in the plane first. Riley, he was already hypothermic—”
“No.”
I’m running. Sprinting across the sand. I’m going to tear that tarpaulin off him, shake him, wake him up. He’s not dying on me. Not after he came back. Not after I told him that I’d made my choice. Not happening. No way. I won’t let it.
But when I get there, my hands have stopped listening to me. The damp tarpaulin is too heavy, and I can’t move it. I try to grip the edge, but my fingers keep slipping. And then Eric has his arms around me and I’m trying to get away but I can’t, and all I can hear are my screams.