The Abyss Surrounds Us (The Abyss Surrounds Us #1)(4)
Life at sea moves in a strange rhythm. I wake early in the morning to check on Durga, drawing her up to the trainer deck at the rear of the ship with an LED homing beacon the size of a suitcase. The deck is right above the engines, low enough that she can tap the beacon with the tip of her beak.
Each Reckoner gets trained on a signal set assigned by the IGEOC, a unique collection of lights and sounds that ensure we alone control our beasts. Some are grating, but Durga’s is one of my favorites: a pulse of blue lights and a low humming noise. During the day, Durga tends to wander away from the ship, hunting neocetes and whatever else she can scarf down. I carry a tracker on my belt that lets me know if she strays too far, but of course she never does.
While she’s away, I wander the upper decks and mix with the tourists. They don’t pay much attention to me—my trainer uniform makes me as invisible as the waitstaff. But on the third night of the voyage, that changes.
The old man finds me on the main deck, reclining on one of the pool chairs and staring out at the ridge of Durga’s shell, highlighted by the moonlight. At first I don’t realize he’s there—I’ve gotten so used to being ignored—but then he clears his throat and says, “You’re quite young.”
I bristle at that, and not just because he’s quite old, his face cracked with lines, his hair barely a wisp. “First time,” I tell him as he settles on the chair next to me.
“Big responsibility,” he says, nodding toward the Reckoner, then remembers to introduce himself. “Hiro Kagawa. I was a Senator in the Southern States of America back in the day—I was actually on one of the subcommittees that authorized Reckoner justice in our waters.”
It takes me a second to connect the dots. The Southern States began the Reckoner trade long before the Southern Republic of California did, their hand forced by the swollen Gulf that was already choked with pirate strongholds. They had started raising monsters within years of the Schism. Which means …
“You lived in the United States, huh?” I ask.
“I was elected right after the Schism,” Mr. Kagawa says, his eyes sparkling in the low light. “But I lived through the worst of it, right before the world started to split.”
I figure it’s only fair to let him do what old men do best. “What do you remember?”
He sighs, rolling his head back toward the stars. “Oh, mostly rhetoric. ‘Smaller Governments, Bigger Hearts,’ all those catchy phrases being tossed around. Names too. Midwestern Republic. Southern States of America. Things with heft that people could get behind and trust to look after them. The seas were swelling, the floodwalls—” His voice cracks, and he blinks. “Well, you know the rest.”
I know enough. I know that one by one, the world governments started divvying up their lands, running algorithms, optimizing the care they could provide for their citizens, until the lines had been redrawn. No more United States, no more China, no more India, no more accounting for thousands of miles and billions of people under the rule of a single power.
It was so long ago that the world had already gotten used to it by the time I was born.
Mr. Kagawa blinks again, his gaze dropping to Durga’s distant form. “The floodwalls. That’s my story, that’s the best one I can tell.” He bows his head. “I lived in … well, you know them as the drowned cities. New Orleans was one of them. The floodwalls had stood for years, but that didn’t matter in the end. I was eight years old the night it happened, and I’ve never forgotten a moment of it. The screaming, the roar of the skiffs as they rushed up the canal streets and under the supports of the apartments. My mother grabbed me and my sisters and threw us into our boat. But my father wouldn’t budge. He’d lived his whole life in the shadows of those floodwalls, and I guess in the end he decided to die with them.”
He runs one hand absently over what’s left of his hair. “My mother knew him well enough to let him. We were three miles out when the walls came down.”
The sea is still tonight, and the decks are silent. “I’m sorry,” I tell Mr. Kagawa, meaning it wholeheartedly. He came on this ship to relax, not to relive the memories that haunt him.
But he waves off my apology, a tense smile cracking over his face. “It’s one of the greatest gifts you can give someone, knowing their stories.”
Off in the black, Durga’s blowholes release a long-held blast of air, sending up a spray of saltwater cut by moonlight.
Durga’s tremors are getting worse. On the first days of the voyage, I barely noticed them, but now her legs shudder like the engines beneath my feet. She’s begun to lag behind the ship, forcing the Nereid to slow. I spend an entire afternoon sitting on her back, scouring her plating for any sign of an infected wound that would explain her worsening condition. There’s nothing but old scars. Reckoners don’t get sick—they get injured, but it’s been months since the last time she fought off a pirate attack.
The stench of carrion hangs heavily in the air around her, and it lingers on my clothes as I make my way to the Nereid ’s navigation tower.
Captain Carriel’s face goes taut when I step through the door. “Miss Leung,” he says, turning away from the ship’s instrumentation panel.
“I’m sorry—” I start, but he raises his hand to cut me off. He already knows exactly what I’ve come for.