The Abyss Surrounds Us (The Abyss Surrounds Us #1)(67)

A blast of heat hits me like the summer sun as we run up against the engines, but Bao’s claws are there to mitigate it. The ship bucks upward when he strikes, and the muted shriek of rending metal makes my ears ring.

But before we can call it a job well-done, the clatter of gunfire echoes out to our left, and suddenly the murk is alive with heavy machine gun rounds that punch through the darkness with impunity. Lasers carve through the water, learning us as they trace, and I duck my head to avoid being blinded. A shriek rings out from above, and a small explosion rocks Bao’s side.

We have to get deeper. We have to get deeper now.

I point the Otachi down, or at least my best guess of down. The Reckoner underneath me is tossing his head and rolling his shoulders far too much for me to tell which way it is for certain. In the confused tangle of beams, Bao picks out his signal and charges after it.

Then something punches me in the back, and all of the air in my lungs flushes into the respirator with a scream. My head throbs savagely as we sink farther into the depths and I pitch forward, desperately trying to draw in a breath that keeps running away from me. For a moment, I think I’ve been shot.

Then I realize that I’ve definitely been shot. I twist my arm around my back, fingertips rushing over the armor, and find a dent right between my shoulder blades. My heart hammers against the plating on my chest as if it realizes just how close it came to being destroyed. I try to look over Bao and see how much damage he took, but in the darkness all I can pick out is the slow curve of his heavily-armored back.

One more run. One more run and it’s all over.

I twist the Otachi skyward again, and Bao reorients himself with a roll that sends my stomach swooping and my head spinning. This is it.

I find the hull of the last boat, find the glow of the engines that power it, and point my beams. Bao surges up.

As we rush toward the surface, the fire reignites, the bullets blazing around us, the lasers doing their best to steal my sight, but I hold true with everything in me. I can’t lower the Otachi, can’t change course. This is the final blow. This is what’s going to save her, save all of them.

When he hits the boat, I don’t hold him back. Bao’s claws rake the hull far past the engine mounts as he rolls onto his back, bringing his massive rear legs up to kick the ship. His beak closes around a twisted piece of metal, and I brace myself as he rips it clean from the ship. I squeeze my eyes closed, lunging forward until I’m pressed flat against his skull and praying that his bulk shields me from the bullets strafing the water.

He keeps going.

It’s pure, relentless savagery, the sort I learned aboard the Minnow, the sort that’s so innate to Bao that it’s a crime not to release it. And just like that, the third boat is dead in the water.

I pull the Otachi triggers to force my beast to fall back, and there’s a certain amount of reluctance to it. I want to see how good I did. I want to see how far he’ll go.

And it brings me around.

It brings me all the way around, and as I sink into the deep, dark waters, leaving the chaos above and descending into the black, I realize that there’s no way to explain what I’ve just done to the people rescuing me. They didn’t see a lost girl, a prisoner, a victim. No, they saw me for what I am.

And what I am doesn’t belong where I came from. What I am doesn’t even deserve to go back there.

A chill sinks into me, or maybe it’s just the waters. All I can see is the beam of light dropping endlessly below and the faint outline of Bao’s head that the glow catches. The pressure sits uncomfortably on my shoulders.

I could still make an attempt to communicate with the ships I’ve just disabled, to win them over. To go home.

But that feels like denial. The industry I fought so desperately to save all these months is rotten from the inside, and there’s no way I can go back there knowing what I know. I could bring the truth about Fabian Murphy to shore, but all they’d see is the girl who spent three months on a pirate boat, raising a pirate-born monster. The girl who wrecked the quadcopters. The girl who trashed the pursuit boats and shredded their companions. They wouldn’t take my word for it.

But out here, maybe I can find a way to show them. I click off the Otachi, and Bao drifts to a halt.

There’s something out on the NeoPacific that I’m meant for, that everything in these past months have been aligning me to reach out and take. I glance up at the faint lights and the shadows of the hulls overhead.

They aren’t for me.

But out on the horizon somewhere, there’s freedom to roam the seas, to be the beast that I’ve found inside me, to stand up against the imbalance and find a way to make the oceans right again. Somewhere out there, the Minnow is finally free of pursuit.

I flash the Otachi on and let Bao’s homing signal do the rest.





34


We come up underneath them, paralleling their flight as the ship skims over the waves. Bao’s speed has sagged with the hits that he took during the fight, but the presence of his companion vessel invigorates him enough to keep the relentless pace they set. I raise a hand to my earpiece and pray as I speak into the respirator. “Varma, are you there?”

Static. Nothing.

But then a crack snaps through the comm, and a clear peal of laughter follows. “Cas? How the hell are you still in range?”

“Don’t look down.”