“Ah, you’re awake, good.” He leans back out into the hallway. “ARIC, SHE’S AWAKE!”
“DON’T SHOUT IN THE PATIENT’S ROOM!” a voice echoes back, and a moment later Professor Silva shuffles into the room, followed by Jaesin and Ania. “Never trust a mathematician to have a good bedside manner, I suppose. How are you feeling, dear?”
I blink at all the faces crowded around my bed, sudden claustrophobia clawing at the inside of my chest.
“Fine,” I say, too sharp, then take a breath and force myself to relax. “Fine. But can I get out of this room? It’s feeling a little . . . small.”
Professor Silva looks around, then says, “Oh!” as if just noticing the crowd. “Everyone out! Let’s set up on the deck.”
Jaesin comes around to my bad side and gently scoops an arm under me, while Remi takes my good side and curls their arm around my waist. It takes a minute to get used to having my legs under me again, but I’m in surprisingly little pain, all things considered. More difficult is finding my sea legs, because we are, in fact, on a boat.
I relax. There’s no way MMC can get at us out here.
I’ve never been to the ocean before. Even during our brief time in Jattapore, we didn’t really have time to go down and explore. Now it’s all I can see, stretching out in every direction to the horizon line, and shining like firaz in the setting sun’s light. The boat rocks beneath me, gentle and soothing.
Well, soothing to me. According to Remi, Jaesin spent our first three hours at sea with his head overboard. His olive skin is still washed gray with sickness, and he chugs water to soothe the resulting dehydration, Ania rubbing a gentle hand over his back. Poor guy.
The source of the boat? Turns out this is the backup retirement plan the professor had in mind when he literally burned down his own house. That plan essentially amounts to “sail around the world on a giant boat,” and they were kind enough to let us hitch a ride for a while. Remi contacted Professor Silva using the information he left with them, they set up a rendezvous, and we apparently transferred to the boat before sending the drill on to its final watery resting place.
Weird. A lot to miss. I was half dead at the time, though, so I think I can be excused.
I drop to the ground at the edge of the deck, threading my legs under the railing and propping my good arm and chin on top of it. I’m already winded from the short journey from the cabin. Not great. Remi sits down beside me on my good side, close but not touching, while Jaesin and Ania share a deck chair facing away from the water, and the professor and John hold hands over a metal picnic table welded to the deck. It’s like a group sigh of relief, everyone resting against one another, hands seeking reassurance where words aren’t enough.
I take a deep breath of bracing salty air and let my mind go blank for a moment, willing my brain to catch back up with the present. Part of me is still back at station twenty-nine, baking in my own fear sweat, watching Remi dive into the Maz Sea, and seeing Davon lying on the ground, surrounded by bleeding and dying security guards, pale, sickly . . . ill?
My heart gives a painful clench.
Davon. My family. My cousin, brother, whatever, my closest anything. The betrayal aches just as badly now as it did in the moment, driving all that fresh sea air from my lungs and hollowing me out.
I pull up my notifications in my lenses and find two days of ignored messages waiting for me, including several from Davon. That eases my mind ever so slightly; he can’t have messaged me if he’s dead. His words superimpose themselves over the rolling ocean waters before me.
(private) Davon: Hey
I know you don’t want to talk to me
I just need to know if you’re okay, though
Please
I hate so much the way my heart reacts to that, the way I crave his attention, the way I need him to be here to hug me and make everything okay. I hate the relief that eases the iron bands around my heart. He’s alive, and he still cares about me. That’s something. Even with everything that went down, I can’t completely hate him. He’s my cousin-brother-thing. Always will be. But I’ll never trust him again.
In fact, I’m not even sure I ever want to see his face again.
I debate for a long moment about simply deleting the messages. Even confirming that we’re alive could be dangerous, if he’s still relaying information to MMC. Somehow I don’t believe it, though. He may have been an asshole in the end, but Davon always knows when he’s beaten. And ultimately, everything he ever did was to protect me. I don’t think that’s changed. I shoot a quick glance over at Remi’s profile, then subvocalize a short message back.
You: I’m alive.
And you?
Several minutes pass as Davon starts and stops his reply, the ellipsis appearing and disappearing repeatedly. Finally, he responds.
(private) Davon: I’m alive for now.
For now. My stomach lurches. I wish so much that those words didn’t hurt like they did.
You: I’m sorry.
It’s true. Complicated, but true.
(private) Davon: Me too.
I have no right to ask but
Will I ever see you again?
I bite my lip and look over to where Jaesin and Ania are laughing and telling Aric some kind of story with lots of big gestures and interruptions. Ania is practically in Jaesin’s lap, an arm curled around his neck. They look happy, happier than I’ve seen either of them in a long time. Mom and Dad, finally back together again. Warms my tiny heart.
We definitely won’t be back in Kyrkarta anytime soon. I need to recover. So does Remi. We need to give MMC’s executive board time to sort out their reaction to what happened, see if they’ll retract the warrants for our arrest. The professor’s sciencey friends say it’s far too early to tell anything about the state of the planet, but that there have been no new disasters in the past two days. I’ll take it. Apparently the conspiracy theorists on the net picked up on the news story about the drill before it got wiped from the feeds, and John has been systematically flooding every forum and news outlet with ten years of evidence. It’s all been taken down within seconds, like an automatic bot is crawling the net specifically to search and destroy any scrap of the truth. Something will make it through eventually, though.
Something always breaks through.
We’ve got more to do together, this weird little family of ours. Maz research with the professor, maybe even cure research if Remi feels up to it. Investigation into other MMC facilities around the world. Travel to every plague-affected city to see what’s been done to them, and how we can help.
I’ll miss Kyrkarta, no doubt. But I finally feel like I have a purpose, and I didn’t even need Davon to score a job interview for me to get it. Maybe we’ll be able to go home eventually. Maybe I’ll even see Davon there.
Do I even want to see Davon again?
You: honestly I don’t know.
And I can’t think of anything more to say than that.
(private) Davon: Okay
Well
Take care of yourself, Diz.
I smile the saddest smile of my life at that. His number one priority at all times. Take care of yourself. That’s always been the problem for both of us. Too busy protecting ourselves instead of living.
You: You too.
Because I know he doesn’t have anyone else to look out for him.