The Abyss Surrounds Us (The Abyss Surrounds Us #1)(58)

I choke on saltwater as I try to surface again. All around me is noise and sea, and somewhere out there, a beast is tearing into metal the way a tsunami hits a coast. My whole body feels bruised, pummeled by the waves that keep crashing over me. I kick and gasp, trying to push myself away from the chaos that’s been unleashed.

By the time I’m clear, one of the copters is inside out. Thick smoke clots the air, and tiny fires dot the waves. The second copter is limping back into the air, but Bao’s not letting it go that easily. As it spins, trying to compensate for the damage he dealt to one of its rotors, the Reckoner lunges up, his beak snapping shut on the mount of the machine gun chugging bullets into his hide. With one twist of his neck, Bao turns the quadcopter end over end, slamming down into the wreckage of its fellow as he falls on top of it, his claws ripping at its steel-plated hull.

The third copter’s a fast-retreating speck on the horizon.

I float on my back, watching it get smaller and smaller, a sinking feeling overtaking my stomach. That bird carries people who saw me alive. Saw me throw myself from the Minnow. Saw me turn the Otachi on the copters.

Saw me summon a beast from the depths to crush the people trying to bring me home.

I flash the Otachi at Bao, and the Reckoner’s head snaps toward me. His vast, reptilian eyes narrow to slits, his blowholes flaring as he lets a slice of the copter’s hull slip from his mouth. I can see the gears in his brain working. He’s flushed with rage, filled with the need to savage, but the lights that blaze from my wrist are calling him in a way he can’t ignore. I silently plead with him not to reconcile the two impulses on me. If I can attract him, if I can just pull him away from the wreckage, there might be survivors.

I might be able to spare a few of the people I just tried to slaughter.

I never meant for it to go this far. My stomach twists and surges, and before I can swallow it back, I’m emptying my guts in the ocean. I struggle to keep the Otachi level as I retch, but Bao’s losing interest in the beams. He lowers his beak back into the water, prowling closer to the quadcopter’s ragged hull.

“Get over here, you little shit,” I choke, and slash the lights over his eyes.

Bao roars, rearing up again. With two quick strokes of his back legs, he drifts toward me, and as he draws close, I can smell the acrid smoke and gasoline fumes that roll off him. His beak snaps shut impatiently, and I shut off the Otachi.

For a moment we regard each other, one monster to another. The one who took down the quadcopters and the one who made him do it.

Then I twist a knob on my wrist, and the dive signal flashes out into the depths, the noise of it ringing in my ears. Bao hauls in a deep breath through his blowholes, then slips silently under the surface, sinking fast, but not fast enough to avoid brushing me with his singed keratin plates as his shoulders rush beneath my feet. I flinch when my toes skim over a scorching-hot bullet hole.

It doesn’t seem worth it to go back to the Minnow. For a moment, I fantasize about crawling into the wreckage of the quadcopters, about trying to pull out whoever’s left alive in there, as if I can undo some of the damage that Bao’s—that I’ve—done.

But that doesn’t seem worth it either. If there are people living and breathing in those twisted remains bobbing on the waves, my face is probably the last thing they want to see.

My best option at this point is probably just to follow Bao. Let myself sink. Let the ocean take me, let the water fill my lungs like it’s been trying to do. It would be painful, but then it wouldn’t, and I would never hurt anyone again.

No, that’s not true. That can’t ever be true. If I let myself sink, it would kill Swift, and I can’t abide that. I wrecked these quadcopters without hesitation, and it saved her life, but now even that doesn’t seem like it’s enough. Was her life worth the lives I just took? Is she worth that to me?



I’m still stuck on those questions when Varma’s Splinter comes to collect me. Chuck leans out of the copilot’s seat and scoops me out of the NeoPacific. There’s no fight left in me; I let her drop me on the floor like a rag doll. They could easily kill me now, but I don’t think they’re in the mood for favors.

“Holy shit, girl,” she says.

“I’ve never seen anything like that,” Varma agrees. “Is that what your job is always like, huh? Damn, that’s some beautiful carnage.” He leans back in the pilot’s seat, smirking as he gazes out over the sea. Something quick and low escapes his lips. It sounds like a Hindi prayer.

Chuck checks him with her shoulder. “Quit dawdling, lelemu. We’re running again.”

“Right,” he says, and guns the engines.





28


The Splinter sidles up to the Minnow, and the ship’s claws snap around our hull, winching us up to the cradles on the second deck. Our breakneck pace hasn’t slowed. This was only the first attack—the SRC will try again, and next time it won’t be just quadcopters. But I don’t feel ready to think about that. As it is, I’m not even sure if I can walk on my own when the Splinter finally settles into its mounts.

Varma and Chuck clamber out before we’re properly docked, and I try my best to crawl after them, but my arms shake as I haul myself over the ship’s side. My breath comes in unsteady gasps, and darkness seeps into the corners of my vision. The ocean has a funny way of sapping your strength without you noticing. Once you’re out of the water, you’re shattered.