8

I WAKE TO DIMNESS. Smell of rust, rancid oil. Vision blurry, a figure takes shape. I am on the deck, in Caplain’s quarters, hands bound behind my back. Wrists at painful angles, numb.

Marston is seated at his desk, parchment laid out before him, three oil lamps lit, flames guttering.

He’s humming an energetic tune.

I try to move. Can do little more than lift my head.

“I’m finishing our final hymn,” he says, without turning or looking. He must have heard me stir. “What we shall sing as we descend. The final song we shall sing into the deep.”

He turns in his chair. About his neck hangs the missile key. The real one. In his hands, folded sheaves of parchment. He blows on the ink to dry it, then shows me the cover of the folio. Penned there, in ornamental lettering, the words Cantio Maris.

Song of the Sea.

“I’ve known you can read for some time—Latin as well,” he says, setting the folio on the desk behind him. Then he leans in close. “I know many of the secrets you and Caplain Amita shared. But the big one—I only just sussed that out a few years ago.”

“You knew?” I lick my lips. An arc of fire. I taste dried blood.

“He didn’t tell me—Caplain Amita. I figured it out on my own. I heard it in your voice, eventually. There’s a . . . unique quality to the castrati voice. Beautiful, yes. But a shade away from natural. Not yours, though.”

“And why have you kept me alive, then? So long after Caplain Amita’s death.”

“Because of your voice, child. Faith needs nurturing . . . our little flame, here in the darkness, in need of stoking,” he says, peering up, to an unknown height. “You have lifted us up for so long. That is why Caplain kept your secret, no doubt. He knew your . . . utility.

“My, my, but you have kept your own confidences and kept them well.” He looks down at the key hanging about his neck. “This, I did not know about. That Amita had kept the real key hidden all this time. That he gave the real one to you.”

“He didn’t trust you . . .” I say, throat dry.

“He was the one not to be trusted, Remy,” Marston says, standing now. So very tall from this position. Crooked. “He knew all along the missile would not fire. He had no intention of delivering the Last Judgment.”

“There is a world out there . . .”

“Sinners.”

“People. Good people . . .”

“People like this woman. Adolphine. She who lied to you, who took advantage of you to serve her own whims? She’s told me everything. About your plan for escape, for rescue. The message you sent.” He shakes his head.

“What happened to her?”

“You care? After all she has done? After her betrayal?”

Survive, she whispered to me.

“I do,” I say.

“She finished repairing the Last Judgment. Then she was returned to the sea. Where she belongs. God will decide the fate of her soul. Whether she redeemed herself.”

I close my eyes.

“She reprogrammed the missile,” I say. “It won’t strike where you want it to. It isn’t even targeted at Sydney any longer. Without her, you won’t be able to reprogram it.”

Marston laughs gently to himself, oddly.

“You think it matters where the missile strikes? It is the last. Blessed by God. It will usher in the end of days regardless.”

These words. I once believed them. How, now, is it that they sound so unfamiliar?

“There will be no rescue, dear Remy,” he says with a mock sympathy. “Even the closest Coalition ships are days away. And the Liánméng submarine that attacked has not followed us into these waters.”

I fight the urge to cry, even though a heat is building. A stinging.

“I see in you the same weakness as our beloved Caplain,” Marston says, staring down at me fixedly. Disappointed. “The same I saw in Brother Calvert’s eyes. Yes, I know he was the one who turned on us. Divulged the secrets of our order to the Topsiders. Oh, how you’ve been seduced . . . how easily, by his lies. The lies of your friend, Adolphine. You were ready to leave us . . . to abandon our order, after we have given you everything.”

“You’ve starved us . . . beaten us . . . mutilated us. Lied to us,” I say. I know now these are words I’ve wanted to speak out loud, to utter, for longer than I even knew.

“To try and purify you . . . but I can see that has not worked. Not for you or for Lazlo.”

“Caplain Amita gave me the key for a reason,” I say. “He wanted me . . . me to decide. To be able to say that no . . . the time is not right. Perhaps it would never be right. He knew that.”

“And he was a fool who had lost his faith in the end. Thank God I am here to enact His plan for the world. And we must ready ourselves,” Marston says, nodding, reveling in his own righteousness. “Your heart is corrupted, but you are too important to be rid of here . . . in these final hours.”

“Utility,” I say.

He nods.

“You should ask St. John to sing your hymn. He is very eager.”

Caplain Marston gives a short, dry laugh. “He is that. But even if he was in a place to sing, after you unleashed your . . . fury upon him, he does not have your gift. No, I wrote this for you.”

“But why would I sing now?” I say, trying to sit up. “Sing for you?”

“Not for me . . . for your brothers. For Lazlo. Don’t you want to give them some comfort before we descend . . . an exaltation of the spirit?”

I don’t answer.

He frowns.

“Sing the Cantio,” he says, “and I will let you see Lazlo again. I will bring him back from Engineering. You will spend your last hours with him.”

I search Marston’s face for sincerity. Indeed, he has said these words with the same intense conviction in which he has said everything else.

Lazlo. If he is with me, then perhaps we could still flee together. Find a way to escape. Like Adolphine said.

“But . . . I don’t believe anymore,” I say, honest as I can. Strong as I can. “I don’t know if I ever really did.”

“Ah, but you don’t have to believe in order to be a vessel for the Holy Spirit. Your dear Adolphine is proof of that. Look what she did for us—repaired the Last Judgment. Like Solomon, like Paul—a tool of God.”

He believes it. Everything he is saying, he believes.

“And when you were done with her, you killed her,” I say.

“We could not have an interloper on board during our final hours.”

“But you’ll have a woman aboard,” I say. “You haven’t told them, have you? The brothers? They don’t know.”

Marston pauses. Stands straighter. I’ve caught him out. The only time I’ve seen him flinch. “No,” he says, steely.

“All the lies you’ve built this place upon . . . you and Caplain Amita both—you know that if they knew about me, it would cause people to doubt. That I was conspiring with a Topsider, that I was going to escape.” The words keep coming. They won’t stop. “St. John knows. I saw the confusion when he discovered my secret.”

Marston bends down, pinches my chin, tight. Leans in. I couldn’t turn away from his narrow, yellowed face if I wanted. “St. John knows how important our mission is. He’ll be dutiful to the order. And if you will not—if you attempt to say a word—then I will take Lazlo’s life with my own hands. While you watch. I promise you that.”

Beady eyes, dark. Almost dead with resolve.

I swallow. My throat, thick.

Agreeing means that I will be let free. Agreeing means that Lazlo will be with me and that we still might possibly find a way out.

I nod once, silently.

“Tomorrow, then,” he says, releasing his grip, standing straight, smoothing out his robes. “Tomorrow will be our grand day. Our salvation. I suggest you pray, dear Remy. Pray that you might be forgiven your trespasses. He might just listen.”

* * *

The deck had been at an upward tilt. Now it levels.

The hammer throngs against the hull. Three resonant blows.

Call to Compline.

The final office in the liturgy of the hours.

We brothers were often asked, in this hour, to contemplate our actions and thoughts in the day. An examination of conscience.

This was common when Caplain Amita was still alive.

Have our actions and thoughts aligned with our moral code? The order by which we have all promised to live our lives?

Sometimes, I felt I had strayed. My thoughts had often bent toward those scant memories of my life Topside. Of sunlight. Of bright-tasting limes. Even though I knew I should not let them stray. To dwell on such memories was the same as wishing to live amongst the Forsaken. Amongst the sinners.

I often thought that my very existence was an aberration.

Me, a woman. A forbidden figure amongst the penitent men, living a lie.

Caplain Amita tried to assuage this guilt when I confessed it to him.

“You are doing God’s work,” he would say. “A vessel for God. And God will watch after you.”

But this was the same argument Marston gave.

Utility.

It does not matter what you think, what you feel, how you act, so long as it is God’s work.

An ultimate hypocrisy—this from the man I thought had taken care of me for so long. The man I thought loved me. The one who started all this—who helped to end the world, who tossed little girls screaming into the sea, and took the boys and cut them so that they might remain eternally pure.

I look at my hands, in the dimness of the officers’ quarters I have been locked in for the past day. Wash them in the bowl of rare fresh water brought to me in a chipped clay bowl. Splash my face. Taste the salty grit trickling down over my lips. I pull on clean, newly sewn robes. Marston has given me fresh linen strips for binding my chest. These, I don’t wear. If I am to die, I will go to God the way I was put into the world.

When the rusted, squealing latch is finally pulled aside, I stand. The door swings open, and a blazing amber, putrid light pours in. Every lamp and grease wick ablaze. Ex-Oh Goines and Brother Augustine await me to exit, and then escort me, standing on either side, to the chapel, down to the lower deck, past the radio room, which is empty, past the missile control room, which is manned by Brothers Elia and Cordova, both seated before a wide bank of electronic panels that are already lit up. They watch as I pass.

I am pushed forward, ducking through the hatch, and stand to find almost all the brothers lining the walls of the chapel, staggered between, around, and behind the missile tubes. All bow their heads in silence as I pass.

Brother Ernesto. Ignacio. Andrew. Callum. Jessup. Pike.

Do some of them know the truth? That I was conspiring with a Topsider? That I was planning on escaping? Brother Callum might. He knows this is madness. He might not have the words to express it, but he knows. I saw it the night I dosed his steep with the nostrum, when he recounted his story of first being brought aboard.

But he will not look at me. No, he will not act.

He will be complicit in all of this.

At the end of the long compartment, atop the driftwood dais, Caplain Marston stands, eyeing me intently.

And, before the dais, before the psalter, Ephraim. Mouth drawn tight, eyes weighted. St. John, face swollen, welted red and purple from my attack. He is staring directly at me. Yet I don’t find fury or contempt there, as I would expect after what I did to him. Not even coldness. It’s a vacancy.

And there, beside them all, Lazlo.

He, too, is looking directly at me, but his eyes are still very full of light.

Lazlo.

Did he, for a moment, dare to dream that there might be an escape for us?

There still might be.

If I could slip away. Take Lazlo with me. Marston said the Coalition ships might be an ocean away, but they also might be closer than that. It would only mean surviving a day or two on the open seas if they are indeed on their way to the rendezvous.

If.

Too many ifs.

The reality of it begins to drape over me.

A coldness.

That this is it.

I see now that both the hatchways at either end of the compartment are being guarded. The ladders down to the lower level. There’s no escape.

This is my fate. Our fate.

As I take my place beside Lazlo, St. John, and Ephraim, the brothers turn their attention to Marston, who, tall and energized, opens with the psalm.

“Ecce nunc benedicite Dominum.”

And then the Canticle of Simeon.

“Nunc dimittis servum tuum, Domine, secundum verbum tuum in pace: Quia viderunt oculi mei salutare tuum.”

Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace according to Thy word.

For mine eyes have seen Thy salvation.

I have no voice for the chant. No spirit. No, the light is robbed from me. Drained. What was once a freedom feels like the greatest, the weightiest of shackles.

I glance to Lazlo, standing just beside me.

His fingers find mine. Cold and thin. I entwine mine with his.

We don’t care who sees.

“My brothers, we are soon to launch the Last Judgment,” Marston says solemnly, with great dramatic effect, after the calls and the responses are complete. “When we do, we shall finish what was started some twenty-four years ago. And we shall dive to the deepest depth. We shall sing a song into that deep—a hymn I have heard in that darkness—the Lord has whispered unto me the words that will ready our souls for His glory!”

Before us, the psalter is opened.

Cantio Maris.

I see penned on the top stave of each page the descant that is meant for me. Just looking at it, I can hear the melody in my mind. Something exalting. Stilted.

What darkness we have lighted, one of the lyrics reads. They above shall know what we below have sent.

“Yes, we shall know salvation,” Marston continues. “Salvation, after these years of service. Of maintaining the order begun by our beloved Caplain Amita. We shall see him again, brothers. We shall see so many faces that we have long ago committed to the sea. And the sea shall give up her dead,” he says, eyes lit with a fervor, a passion.

“And the sea shall give up her dead!” the brothers respond.

“As below, so above,” Caplain says.

And the congregation answers.

When I glance upward, Marston is staring down to me. The others are watching as well. Expectantly.

Now is my time.

Here is my purpose. The very reason I was saved, eight years ago. The only reason.

I am to sing now.

In my brothers’ eyes, I am holy. Special. Caplain Amita has told me this all along. Fed me this lie.

But should I not ease their worry? Lighten their souls? If we are all to die. To sink down and down until, at last, the depths crush us.

And so, I sing.

I open my mouth, find my voice. Find an energy that was not there before.

But I do not sing Marston’s hymn.

I sing my own Song of the Sea. A song the leviathans have taught me. No words. Just melody. An odd, sorrowful strain that leaps and dives in pitch, that slides into bitter notes and then resolves.

I close my eyes while I sing. Let the melody take its own form. Like when I have sung during Terce. Improvisation. But more than that. I think of that one whale, searching for the other. Its lover, its friend, its child. Whatever it is. It’s a song that seeks out. That searches. That mourns. That hopes.

And when I have finished the song and open my eyes, I find the chapel utterly silent. And yet, I feel the weight of all sixty-seven pairs of eyes upon me, can almost hear sixty-seven hearts thrumming in some kind of unity.

Then I glance up to Caplain Marston. Gaze narrowed, piercing. Face tight with fury.

“It’s time, my brothers,” he finally says, hollowly, shattering the silence. “Watch, are we at depth?”

“Ready, Caplain. We need only finish bringing the targeting computer online,” Brother Marcus says.

“Good. Cantor Remy,” Marston says through gritted teeth. “You will follow me.”

St. John flicks a quick glance my way. Ephraim.

Where is he taking me?

Is this punishment for my betrayal?

I glance around at the room, at the faces of my fellow Choristers, the brothers, all watching, eyes twinkling in amber light. Faces bent in some emotion I cannot read. Cheeks wet.

I release Lazlo’s hand. I must. No other choice. I try telling him everything I want to with just a look, should this be the last time I ever see him.

Marston commands St. John lead the brothers in the singing of the final hymn, and then I’m immediately led back through the center of the chapel, between brothers and the column-like missile tubes, back through the hatch, to the missile control room.

The small space is hot with the humming equipment, with the several bodies crammed inside.

Six of us with Elia and Cordova, and Ex-Oh Goines and Brother Augustine, both of whom will not leave my side, and Caplain Marston.

On the main panel, two rows of square indicators, eight in each, each numbered, are lit. Fifteen of them glow red. One of them glows green. The Last Judgment.

“Missile is ready for launch, Caplain,” Brother Cordova says. Before him, on the desk console, the red CAPTAIN indicator switches to green. Beneath this indicator is a round, metal slot for the missile key.

Ex-Oh grabs hold of my arms from behind, grip tight.

Caplain Marston turns to me. “I wanted you to see this, Cantor. To understand that God’s will cannot be undermined. Cannot be changed.”

I glance at the others, at Brother Augustine. He shares a tense expression.

From the chapel, I hear the hymn being sung now. “The Heart of the Leviathan.”

“And the sinners shall know fire once more.”

“Tube pressurized, Caplain,” a crackling voice calls from the squawk box. “Missile door open. Ready to fire.”

I watch as Marston feeds the stem of the key into the slot, as he turns it.

The launch indicator for Missile 1 flashes.

A siren chimes throughout the boat.

The singing has ceased in the chapel. Silence now, save the normal thrumming of engines and fans and the hiss of stale, oily air from the vent.

Caplain’s eyes are closed, in prayer, finger hovering over the plastic button marked “Launch.”

I couldn’t stop him if I wanted to, not with Ex-Oh holding my arms back.

Will the world end?

It already has. Been ended and then reborn. Were we ever on the edge of peace? No, I think not. Not now. Not ever.

Maybe the world will never be saved.

“Woe! Woe to you, great city, you mighty city of Babylon!” Caplain Marston begins. His voice is being amplified throughout the boat, over the squawk.

Won’t anyone step up and stop this? Anyone? I look to the old, weary elders. To Brothers Carrington and Goines. Neither will Brother Dormer or Augustine or Callum. No. They haven’t stepped in before now. During all the horrors and atrocities that have occurred these long years. None of them tried to stop it.

So, I pray.

“The seventh angel poured out his bowl into the air, and a loud voice came out of the temple, from the throne, saying, ‘It is done!’”

I pray that the electricity will wink out. That the ballast mains will burst. That the Liánméng will attack us.

“And there were flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, and a great earthquake such as there had never been since man was on the earth.”

The pipes continue to pressurize in the underworks. I hear the high-pitched whine.

“The cities of the nations fell, and God remembered Babylon the great, to make her drain the cup of the wine of the fury of his wrath.”

I pray that the blue, hot reactor will suddenly blow, will end all this right now.

“And every island fled away, and no mountains were to be found. And the Lord rose up, with the wicked stricken from this place, forever, finally finding a purified kingdom of heaven on earth.”

Please!

“As below, so above!”

And then the cabin goes dark.

Just like that.

The main lights die, as do the consoles, the missile control. Auxiliary lights flash on.

Yellow lights spin now.

Warning lights for contamination.

This is no attack by the Topsiders.

The reactor.

“Caplain,” a crackling voice cries out over the squawk box, “Reactor coolant line just failed—it’s overhea—”

The rest of the transmission is cut short by a thunderous resonance emanating from aft. From engineering. A shudder through the very vessel. Then a roar.

A wave of heat and toxic fume wash through the cabin, through the chapel.

“Stations!” Caplain Marston shouts. The men in the room scramble.

Looking through the hatch, to the far side of the chapel, I see the glow of red flame. In the chapel, a mass of rushing shadows and shapes. Lazlo is among them, but I can’t see him—I am hooked about the shoulder by a powerful, cinching grip. Marston has ensnared me with his long reach.

“What have you done?” he demands, long face before mine. Long hands grappling my neck.

“Nothing . . .” I try to say, but the words are choked from me.

“You were sent by Satan, weren’t you?” he says, eyes blazing, face bent into a sneer. “Sent to ruin us. To thwart God’s will!”

I can’t breathe—can’t even gasp for the tightness.

Another pronounced bang causes the entire vessel to shiver. Then the world suddenly tilts, pitches downward. The caplain releases his grip, is knocked off his balance, falls, slides down nearly the full length of the corridor.

I catch myself on the entryway to missile control. Many other brothers tumble past me, scrambling for a grip. Brother Andrew. Brother Ernesto. Marcus.

“Dive planes aren’t responding!” a voice calls out over the squawk.

The Leviathan cants severely to starboard. One of the trim tanks has failed.

We’re going down.

I begin scaling up the inclined corridor, gripping the bulkhead in order to pull myself through the hatchway into the chapel, which is a riot of shouting, a smoke-filled and dim chaos.

“Lazlo!” I call out.

Brother Callum swims into view, clinging to one of the missile tube hatches. “Brace yourself . . . we’re going . . .”

He is slammed suddenly into the bulkhead as the whole boat lurches, screeches. A deafening report of clashing metal.

Impact.

My grip is shaken from me. I’m knocked to the deck.

The Leviathan has struck bottom. Heavy. Hard. The Arafura Sea is shallow, though. Just like Adolphine said, we can’t be more than forty fathoms deep.

Now comes the unmistakable hiss of ruptured pipes followed by a roaring torrent coming from deck below. The hull has been breached.

The klaxon blares.

The hatch to engineering is closed, sealed. The only entry to the tunnel. The fate of the Forgotten is now sealed. How many souls will be lost?

The deck has leveled. I push through the smoke, the confusion, past faceless, lurking, coughing forms. Brother Peter? Brother Jenner? I stumble over a fallen figure. I cannot see who, only that the shape is too big to be Lazlo.

Finally, I see a familiar figure in the flashing yellow lights. Ephraim. He is bracing a small, thin shadowed person.

“Lazlo!” I embrace him, his thin, emaciated body, so tight, I feel the breath go out of him. I feel his arms close around me.

“Come on,” I say, pulling both him and Ephraim along, forward.

“Where can we go?” he asks, coughing.

“We’re going to ditch,” I say.

The escape trunk at the top of the balneary. That’s the only way off this ship. The only way to survive.

We’ve pushed through the crowd, past Brother Alban, Brother Henry, bent over, kneeling, praying.

“Come on!” I shout to them. “Come follow us!”

But they do not.

Behind us, a wrenching burst. A watery roar.

The bulkhead to engineering has breached.

Two of the missile tube access ports have blown at the far end of the compartment. Frothing, boiling water floods, washing away the wooden dais. Electronics sparking, components hissing angry steam.

“Hold on!” I say, anchoring myself and Lazlo against one of the missile tubes. Ephraim does the same. When the first rush of seawater gushes forward, it almost sweeps us away.

But this is the direction we must go. And fast.

“Come!” I shout, letting go my handhold, trying not to be sucked through the hatch. Bracing the edges of the entryway, I duck through, then swing around to catch Lazlo as he shoots in. Then Ephraim.

“We should seal the compartment!” Ephraim shouts.

But the force of the water is too great. I’ve lost my grip. The jetting current carries us down the corridor, past mission control, past the radio room, into the mess hall, where flailing bodies and debris have been pushed by the current. The hatchway to the balneary is just ahead, through the chaos of screams and choking and coughing. The water is up to our waists and rising.

I look back to find Lazlo still behind me, and Ephraim.

Lazlo’s hand is thin, slippery in the cold water, but still I pull him along, not letting go, grabbing pipes, cables, anything along the ceiling to grab to keep our heads above the fast-rising water.

“Follow us,” I shout, seeing Brother Dumas’s face in the near darkness. “A way out.”

But he doesn’t seem to hear. He is swimming aft, in the opposite direction, toward the ladder to the upper deck.

The Leviathan groans, squeals. A fresh influx of water tells me there’s been another hull breach.

We’re almost to the balneary hatchway when I hear Lazlo shriek behind me.

I spin around to find that he’s being pulled under, being pulled back. I struggle to keep my grip on his hand. It’s Marston, face bloodied. He’s latched onto Lazlo, is forcing his head beneath the water.

“I told you what I would do!” the old man spits, his chin only just above the rising, frothing seawater.

I fling myself at him, the tall man, trying to pull at his arm, grappling, scratching. But his grip is strong and his reach so long. He is both able to hold Lazlo under and keep me at a distance.

“Let him go!” I hear Ephraim shout. He’s tackled the caplain as well, has wrapped his arms around the older man’s neck.

This has surprised Marston. He loosens his grip. Lazlo surfaces, sputtering, gasping, blinded by the salty water. I reach out, pull him away from the caplain’s reach, push him through the hatchway to the balneary.

I see Ephraim still struggling with Marston, unable to overtake the man. The caplain is able to keep his nose and mouth just above the surface of the water, while Ephraim is not.

“Let him go!” I shout, about to swim into the fray once more when a sound like the tolling of the hammer against the hull but louder, deeper, rings out. The water level suddenly recedes. The Leviathan’s position on the sea floor must be shifting, sliding. Marston and Ephraim are swept backward, downward. I cling to a pipe on the ceiling and reach out. Ephraim reaches for me but does not find my hand before he is sucked away.

The lights go completely out now. Batteries blown. Total darkness.

Chaos. Cacophony and darkness.

“Remy!” Lazlo calls out.

“Here,” I say, turning. If we’re going to survive, we have to leave now. I know it.

I hate it, but I know it.

The water level, momentarily lowered, is rising again, the torrent of cold seawater still spilling in through the breaches on this level, and now from above.

Into the balneary. I see two bodies floating, both facedown in the water. Both with shorn heads. Matching robes. They could be anyone. Any of the brothers.

Something else is floating in the rising water. The inflatable life raft from the Janus. New life vests, also pillaged from Adolphine’s ship.

“Climb!” I say, forcing Lazlo up the ladder first, into the open hatch of the escape trunk. I follow behind him with the uninflated life raft in hand, seal the hatch behind me.

Inside the tight compartment, an auxiliary light still glows. Casts us both in lurid red.

I think back to the lessons that Brother Calvert taught me—how to escape. How to equalize the pressure in the hatch in order to make the water level rise to the level of the escape hatch at the top of the compartment.

I turn the red valve that controls the pressure. There’s a hissing, and water begins flooding the compartment.

“Remy!” Lazlo says, fearful.

“We have to flood the chamber if we want to escape,” I say, trying to calm him.

All the while, the boat continues to shift beneath us, groans, pops, hisses—the water line tilts.

“I . . . I can’t swim,” he says, gasping.

“Neither can I. Here,” I say, fitting a life vest over his head, fastening it around his middle before securing my own. “Remember what Brother Calvert told us. These will keep us afloat. These will send us to the surface. We’ll shoot right up!”

He stares at the rising water, breathing fast.

“Just remember to blow out . . .” I say, panting myself. “Blow out all the way up. You’ll have more than enough air in your lungs.”

He isn’t hearing me. Isn’t hearing anything, his eyes hollow and pale, shaking. In shock.

“It’s time,” I say, taking his face in both my hands, forcing him to acknowledge my words.

He nods once. I shut off the valve just after the rising water clears the hood for the hatch, leaving us a small pocket of air remaining at the very top of the compartment. Then I duck under and open the hatch, which swings down on its hinge. “Okay, you first,” I say after surfacing, wiping the water from my eyes.

The boat groans, tilts even more to the port. The pocket of air shrinks.

“Now!” I say.

He takes a deep breath, then disappears beneath the hatch hood.

I follow, first grabbing the life raft, then ducking under and out.

I’m shooting up, rocketing through the water, blowing out the air in my lungs, even though that seems like the most unnatural thing to do.

But my lungs do not deflate—no, there is more than enough to expel and still be full. The oddest feeling.

Up and up—my eyes burn from the water, but I keep them open, looking down, beneath me—this ocean is nowhere near as black as I imagined—I see the dim shapes, retreating in the darkness—the Leviathan—the massive black vessel, bleeding bubbles—and what must be the missile—the Last Judgment, its white shell seeming to glow in the dimness, expelled from its missile tube upon impact. It did not launch. It did not reach the surface.

I finally must close my eyes from the stinging, but even behind my eyelids, head now tilted upward, I see a light. A growing brightness. The water grows warmer on my skin. My ears pop—it feels as though my head may burst from the pressure, but, finally, finally, I breach the surface, splash into open air and open my eyes to daylight—the brightest light I have ever seen. My eyes, utterly blinded by it.

It should be night, I realize.

We had only just finished with Compline, the night prayer. But up here, it is day.

I cough. Suck in a breath of clean air.

A rush of wind upon my head, my cheeks.

Finally, after I blink away the burning, my eyes take it in—a blue sea, a clear sky, a sun resting halfway to the distant, distant line that must be the horizon.

“Lazlo!” I call out.

And I hear a weak answer.

Some twenty feet away, he bobs, gagging, panicking, thrashing in the water.

Paddling to him, I embrace him again, and he clings onto my arm.

I pull the release valve on the bundle still clutched in my hand. With a sudden burst and hiss, the raft inflates, exploding from the size of a small flat box to a vessel large enough to fit ten at least.

Another violent splashing behind us.

I turn to see a shape emerge from the sudden geyser of bubbles—a figure, bursting to the surface, choking.

Edwin. He is clinging to an empty jug.

At least one of the Forgotten has survived.

“Here!” I shout out. “Edwin!” I realize that he can’t see me. He’s still blinded by the sunlight.

He paddles frantically, squinting. “Remy?”

“Here!”

Another splash. It’s Jarod, also from engineering.

And another—a face I saw for the first time upon journeying into engineering. A tall, thin young man whose name I don’t know.

“How ever did you escape?” I ask.

“We were locked in our berthing, but that second explosion warped the door. Made it out the rear trunk,” Edwin says, coughing.

I turn in the water to see a shape emerge from another geyser of bubbles.

Ephraim.

He’s clinging to a net float. Blinking, stunned, like all of us—looking upon this vast, bright world the way I imagine a newborn babe would.

“Ephraim,” I shout, reaching for him. He finds my hand, and I pull him closer to the raft. “You made it.”

“St. John—” he says, hacking, spitting up water. “He guided me out. Through the breached missile tube.”

Another violent splashing behind us.

St. John. His pate split and bleeding. He spins, thrashes in the water, among the growing slick of oil and fuel, the flotsam of the wreck of the Leviathan, clinging to an empty water tank for buoyancy.

“Here,” I call out.

And he turns, still squinting. A curtain of blood spilling into his eyes.

“Here,” I say again.

He finally spots us, splashes over, grips hold of the lines edging the life raft and pulls himself up and inside in one go.

I fear, for a moment, that he might leave us here. Maybe he considers it to. But if so, it’s only for a moment. He helps me to get Lazlo into the raft, pulling him up by the tops of his life jacket.

And then he helps to heave me aboard. Ephraim. Together, we help with Edwin and Jarod.

After, we all gasp, breathing, sitting in silence in the raft, looking around us, at the cloudless sky, at the blue, blue sea.

We wait, amidst the churning water, for others to rise.

They do not.