The Extinction Trials(33)

Maya took out the tablet. “Let’s read, Blair. What do you say?”

Inside the suit that was far too big, the girl nodded, a hint of a smile forming at her lips.

If Maya’s reading over the suit radio bothered Alister, he didn’t say it. No one complained. They sat in silence, the occasional rapid whispers from Alister and Will over the shared line interrupting the storytelling.

Maya’s suit panel read 27% when the two men returned to the cockpit to try the engines again. This time, like the last, there was only a clicking sound.

Alister didn’t utter a word. He merely marched back to the lower deck, where Maya heard a furious banging. It sounded like the man was trying to beat the boat into compliance.

“Will you give me some room?” Alister yelled, his voice grating over the radio. “I can’t think with you breathing down my neck!”

In her peripheral vision, Maya saw Will step away from the engine area and drift toward the back of the boat.

“And I don’t like being watched like some animal in a cage,” Alister said. “Go. Get out.”

With that, Will climbed the stairs to the main deck and waited there, a resigned look on his face.

Maya kept reading, continuing to act like everything was fine.

Alister emerged from the lower deck again. At the cockpit, he jabbed the control panel and it lit up. Water churned where the giant outboard motors met the water.

“Hang on!” Alister yelled. He was trying to hide it, but Maya could hear the excitement beneath his words.

The boat lurched and slid into the water, the propellers sending waves into the beach as it dragged the ship from the shore.

Soon, the rocky, wooded island was drifting away.

They were free.

They had done it.

Maya stood and watched, taking the island in. It truly looked like the top of a mountain surrounded by water, not like some equatorial paradise. It looked, in a word, unnatural to her. As strange as it was, she wondered if what waited for them beyond was even stranger.

Owen clapped a hand on Alister’s back. “Never doubted you. Not even once.”

The older man bit off a laugh. “That makes one of us. I doubted me a lot more than once.”

“Congratulations, sir,” Will said, a serene smile on his face.

“Maybe you are good for something,” Cara said, hands on her hips.

Maya looked down and found tears running down Blair’s face. “Are you okay, dear?”

She nodded. “I thought we were going to have to stay there. I hated it there.”

Maya’s eyes met Owen’s as she said, “Well, we’re never going back.”





PART III





The Sea





Chapter Twenty-Eight





The boat sailed into the sunset. Behind it, the island shrunk, swallowed by the sea and the darkness that chased away the sun.

The group stayed on the main deck, their suits on, waiting, everyone knowing what would come next—and dreading it.

Owen glanced at his arm panel. His oxygen tank had 12% left and there was no way to replenish it.

On the island, clean oxygen had been their lifeblood. They had brought a finite supply of that clean oxygen with them in the tanks, and they were using it up as they moved away from the island.

Was the air out here breathable? It would have to be.

At some point, someone had to take their helmet off and see if they could survive. What hadn’t been discussed was who that person was going to be.

When his arm panel reached six percent, Owen stood and said, “Let’s move to the lower deck.”

The others complied. They knew it was time. There was no sense running the clock down. The island was gone. Night surrounded them. Only the ship’s lights lit their surroundings.

Owen waited, watching the others as they descended the stairs. When he was alone on the main deck above, he quickly removed his helmet.

Maya surged forward. Alister caught her, moving faster than Owen had ever seen the middle-aged man move. She struggled in his arms, mouth moving, the sound lost in the suit helmet.

Staring at her, Owen breathed in.

He waited, wondering if the hurt would start, if his fate would be the same as the man who had died in the cave passage.

He felt only a cold breeze on his face, the smell of saltwater in his nose, and fresh air in his lungs.

Maya reached up to remove her own helmet, but Owen held a hand up, urging her to stop. She froze.

He put his helmet back on.

“That wasn’t the plan,” she said over the helmet speaker, her voice angry.

“I couldn’t watch any of you be the first. This was the best way.”

Maya stared at him. “We didn’t agree to it.”

“It’s done,” he said simply. “Now, I’ll wipe down the ship. Then we’ll find out what’s out there.”





After Owen had removed the suit and tossed it down to the lower deck, he moved through the boat, wiping it down. One by one, the others came up and removed their suits and breathed in the fresh air.

In a strange way, to Owen, it felt like they were being born, taking their first true breath in a new world after being trapped in the dark protective bowels of that subterranean lair.

When Maya had shed her suit, she moved close to him, where the others couldn’t hear.