The Abyss Surrounds Us (The Abyss Surrounds Us #1)(19)

I wonder how much these guys know.

As the captain’s lackeys, they must be privy to her dealings. Maybe even present for them. And even if they have good reason to want me dead, they’re friendly and happy right now. There’s a chance that if I ask about this, they’d answer.

And I almost do.

Before the words escape my lips, I catch myself. There’s a lot I can gain from this information, but there’s so much more I can lose. If they get an inkling of the plan that’s curdling in the back of my head, my chances of enacting it will plummet. I need them to continue underestimating me. I can’t draw attention to myself by asking questions.

But Varma has noticed that I nearly said something. His eyes sparkle expectantly, waiting.

“Why do you call him Code?” I blurt. A harmless question, one that gets me nowhere.

Varma chuckles. “It’s ’cause that’s what he thinks in. He gets to sit up in the navigation tower with Lemon all day, whispering to the little machines while the rest of us are out here busting our asses.”

Code’s lips twist into something that’s not quite a smile, but not quite a scowl either. He tolerates Varma’s easy grin for a second, then crosses back over to where Lemon and Swift are hauling Chuck back in by the bungee lines.

“You don’t gotta act so skittish around us, shoregirl,” Varma says, giving me a playful shove on the shoulder.

“Yeah,” I tell him. “I kind of do.”

He shrugs as if it’s my loss and jogs over to the edge of the deck, stooping to offer a hand to Chuck as she crawls out of the churning water. She’s doing most of the grunt work herself, but she takes it to humor him. He pulls, yanks, and tugs until she rolls onto the deck, cackling like a lunatic. Swift and Code are already at her feet, prying the board off while Lemon unclips the bungee lines.

“My turn,” Swift declares, wrenching the board out of Code’s hands. There it is again—that little note of authority, like she might actually be cut out for leadership. The rest of the lackeys get her suited up in seconds flat, and something else strikes me. From the way Swift talked before, it seems like they shouldn’t trust each other with this. Anything could go wrong. Something should go wrong. But the five of them ignore the fact that they’re supposed to be cutthroats in competition.

They’re just here to have a good time.

Swift leaps off the deck, and when she lands on her feet, that stupid hair whipping in the wind as the bungee lines snap tight, it’s really no surprise.





11


Weeks pass. I become practiced in the art of quick naps, stealing sleep whenever Bao will let me. I forget what the rest of the Minnow looks like. All I know is the trainer deck, every inch of it. Bao eats voraciously, and it’s not long until he’s the size of the leatherback turtles that make up part of his genetics. He’s finally big enough to swim alongside the ship.

Santa Elena claps me on the back when I tell her.

We flush him in the morning, just after the sun rises. Two pirates haul down the partitions separating Bao’s tank from the channel that washes out into the sea, and out with the bathwater goes a seven-hundred-pound, monstrous baby, squalling almost as loudly as the day he came into the world. He plunges into the NeoPacific and bobs up immediately, his blowholes flaring as he takes in his new environment.

I toss a fish at him, hitting him in the side of the head. Bao blinks, snaps it up, then looks to see where it came from as I scoop another one out of the bucket at my side. When he spots me, fish in hand, he gives an impatient thrash of his tail. At his current size, a single fish is enough to get his attention, but that will soon change.

“Give it to him,” Swift mutters from behind me, but Swift doesn’t know shit. Now that the trainer deck is vacant, she’s been assigned to full-time guard duty, and she’s probably pissed because tonight she’ll have to share her bed with me again.

Santa Elena’s somehow furnished a working beacon for me to train her beast on—no surprises there. It takes some fiddling to get its signals off the factory defaults and on to something unique. There’s one signal set I know by heart, one that no other beast on the NeoPacific is going to respond to, so I futz with the dials until the device communicates in those low tones and pulsing blues that make my heart ache with loss.

The beacon hangs on hooks that jut from the edge of the trainer deck, allowing me to stand over it as I issue commands. I kick on the homing LEDs and hold the fish out toward Bao, wiggling it back and forth. He pumps his stubby legs, swimming closer until his nose brushes the flashing patterns of lights. Then I drop the fish.

And that’s lesson number one. Come to the beacon, get a reward. I snap off the LEDs and step back into the recesses of the trainer deck, waiting to see what Bao does. Some pups don’t take kindly to sharing waterspace with their companion vessel, but this is an interesting case, since the Minnow is the only thing he’s ever known. So far, he seems to be comfortable. He knocks his beak against the ship’s hull a few more times, then turns and begins nosing farther away.

Now comes the real test of whether he’s ready to start bonding training. I nod to Swift, and she plucks the radio off her belt. “Swift to navigation, get us moving at a slow clip,” she orders.

The Minnow’s engines are right below us. They roar to life, kicking up a steaming froth in the water as the boat crawls forward. Bao lifts his head, shuddering as the heat hits him, then starts to paddle after us. It could be simple curiosity driving him, though. We need to set a pace and see if he keeps it.