Chapter 3
Alice
The wind tangles my hair as we make our way out to open ocean.
It’s overcast, like it is most mornings, haze blotting out the horizon.
It comforts me like a blanket. Out here in the middle of the water, with such little visibility, I’m no one.
No target on my back, no fear of who I’ll see on the street, no scheming—finally the ghost I’ve always wished I could be.
Emily, it seems, is not comforted by the fog.
That, or her fear of the ocean is more serious that I realized.
For all that charm and all those muscles, she isn’t as brave as I imagined she would be.
She’s clearly trying to exude confidence, with her arm stretched out over the back of the cushioned-lined seats and her ankle crossed over her knee, but her white-knuckled grip on the railing gives her away.
She was chatty when she first turned up at the ticket booth, laden with a backpack and two heavy-looking black waterproof cases. But the closer we got to the dock, the more her smile seemed forced, and her answers to my logistical questions became shorter and more clipped.
I’m taking it slow for her sake, but it still only takes us a little over an hour and a half to get to the starting coordinates she provided me. It’s been a silent trip, and I’m pretty sure Emily’s keeping her mouth shut so she doesn’t puke.
“We’re here,” I say, killing the engine. The sudden silence makes Emily blanch, which I guess I can understand. Surrounded by mist, without the distraction of a machine pushing you along, you can feel very vulnerable out here.
Or so I’m told.
“Right, do you need to drop an anchor or something?” she asks, still gripping the railing tightly. She hasn’t moved a muscle.
“This anchor chain is about thirty-five feet,” I say, less gently than I probably should to someone who looks like they’re barely suppressing a panic attack. Emily swallows hard, donning a very wobbly smile.
“I assume the ocean is quite a bit deeper here.”
“Aren’t you a professional marine biologist?”
She laughs, a too-loud cough that seems to shake her of some of her nerves. She lets go of the railing and scrubs her face before shaking out her hands.
“Actually, I’m a toxicologist,” she says, almost like it’s a joke. “I specialize in cnidarians. Corals, jellies, anemones, stinging things. But most of my work so far has been in a lab. Field work is new to me.”
Something about her explanation feels…off. Sure, she seems afraid of the ocean itself, but she handles the equipment with ease. She fiddled with a lot of the gadgets as I prepared the boat, and she seemed pretty familiar with them to me.
I’m about to press, but I stop myself. There’s no point. She doesn’t owe me honesty, and I’m certainly not going to be able to provide it in kind. I’m the last person to judge someone for half-truths and omissions.
“A few nautical miles offshore, we hit the continental slope. It goes down almost three thousand feet, though we’re not at the deepest part.”
Emily breathes in deeply through her nose, that slightly crazed smile locked on to her face.
“That makes sense. Black Sea Nettles live all along the ocean column, but they like cold water because of the abundant food. In Baja they’re found closer to the surface, but here…well, that’s what I’m here to research, right?”
I really don’t know what she’s here to research, but I nod, and she seems to take that as encouragement.
She starts unloading equipment—sampling bottles, very fancy looking cameras, things I couldn't identify with a gun to my head. She lifts what looks like a drone out of the larger case. It has a long, umbilical cord-like tether attached, and she works like it’s muscle memory to set everything up.
Not familiar with field research. Sure.
I don’t ask any more questions. I shouldn’t have asked any to begin with.
I know they’re almost always returned, and I can never respond honestly.
But it feels so easy out here, in the heart of the sea.
No one can hear the words you whisper. No one could even hear you scream.
The thought should be terrifying, especially with a stranger who is clearly physically stronger than me.
Instead, like everything the ocean offers, it puts me at ease.
I sip from my water bottle, listen to the waves roll against the hull, watch the GPS to ensure we don’t drift too far from Emily’s coordinates. She hums to herself. Turns things on and off and back on again. Checks and rechecks her equipment.
The sun rises a bit more, and the haze slowly starts to burn off. In the distance, I spot the spout of a whale. My fingers twitch instinctually to move toward it, but I grin at the little puff of smoke dissipating into the air.
“I’m going to drop the ROV now.”
Emily’s voice is like lightning in a rainstorm, and I startle enough that I drop my metal water bottle, which thunks so loudly it makes Emily trip over herself. We’re both apologizing, talking over each other as we lean to grab the bottle.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to…” she starts, getting to the dented bottle first and holding it out to me.
“No, I dropped—” I reply, avoiding her gaze as I snag it from her, accidentally brushing over her hand as I do. We both apologize again, and I grip my beloved water bottle even tighter to stymie the tingling feeling in my fingertips where my skin touched hers.
Excitement and guilt tangle themselves up in my chest again, and I shove the nausea-inducing feeling deep down.
Not because I’m ashamed of my attraction to her this time—she’s objectively gorgeous, and I’m a human being with eyes—but because we’re both working.
And from what I can tell, we’re both lying to each other.
And to top it all off, I’m putting her at risk by letting her be this close in proximity to me for so long.
It’s complicated.
After a few beats of silence, Emily gestures to the little robot balancing on the edge of the railing.
“I’m going to drop the ROV into the water, and then I’ll have to optimize the depth and confirm the settings. Then I can monitor the feed for the rest of the time,” she explains slowly, like she’s trying not to spook me.
“So you just watch that screen?” I ask, looking at the tablet-like device she’s set up on one of the bench cushions. “You don’t have to do anything else?”
“Well, I’ll collect some water samples. And if we had any jellies come up close to the surface, I could theoretically place an acoustic tag, but I doubt we’ll be that lucky,” she explains, hovering her hands over equipment and resources as she talks. “But yeah, it’s mostly watching and recording.”
So hours of sitting here, staring at a six inch screen in silence. Perfect.
I lean back in my chair and watch as she unwraps the umbilical cord thing from its reel, glancing over her shoulder at the monitor again and again.
When she’s satisfied with the slack, she grips the robot gingerly and leans over the railing, placing it gently on the surface of the water.
I stretch so I can observe as the little thing bobs in the gentle waves, tipping side to side before small oxygen bubbles create a skirt around it, and it begins to sink beneath the surface.
And then there’s nothing. The cord slips further over the edge, and it takes a very long time before it is taut. The monitor flickers in strange shades of green and blue. The boat sways, the haze lifts, the birds call.
And Emily sits across from me, staring at her screen.
At least the silence is peaceful. And while still gorgeous, Emily is significantly less intimidating now that I know she’s terrified of the sea.
Who could be fearful of something so limitless?
Sure, it’s natural to be wary of the unknown, but I’ll never understand how others aren’t calmed by the knowledge that we’re nothing more than a speck of dust in comparison to the vastness of the ocean.
“So, how’d you get into boats?”
When I turn to her, Emily isn’t looking at me, and I wonder if I hallucinated her question. After a few beats of silence though, she glances up from her screen, eyebrows raised.
“Me?” I ask, fiddling with the mouth of my water bottle.
“No, the ROV,” she scoffs, leaning over to the control panel to adjust something. “Yes, you.”
“Right. Um…” I stutter, rolling my neck out and I decide how much of the truth to tell her.
Lies are easier to keep the more reality you imbue them with.
“My mom loved the ocean. She used to take me out to sit on the docks and tell me stories about mermaids and pirates. Said I should learn to sail, because she never got to.”
That’s about ninety-nine percent true. She never told me to learn to sail. She knew better than to inspire me to dream of things I couldn’t have.
“That’s cute,” Emily says, glancing over the edge of the railing and balancing. “No offense, but I can’t imagine enjoying this.”
I bristle a little, but try to brush it off. People don’t need to love things as much as I do. Not even the people who are paid to research the things I love.
“I understand why some don’t like it. The vastness can be intimidating,” I admit, though I can’t keep the sliver of wonder from my voice.
“ But that’s really what makes me love the sea.
The mystery, the endlessness, the knowledge that you’re only a tiny, unimportant organism in the marine web of life, floating like the rest of it. ”
“Really comforting, thanks,” Emily grumbles, sounding less congenial than before. “You could work on your bedside manner.”
“I was trying to commiserate," I huff, annoyed at her change in attitude. I get that she’s afraid, but she doesn't need to be so pushy about it. “And also, I’m not your nurse, I’m your chauffeur.”
“Are you always so combative?” she questions, her knees buckling as a particularly strong wave rolls us. I barely have to shift my weight.
“Are you always this much of an ass to the people you hire?”
She whips her head back at me, shock that almost looks like betrayal on her face. It takes her a moment, but she soothes her features, looking down at her shoes and breathing deeply.
“Sorry, caged animal syndrome, you know?” she explains. I get it, I really do. I’m familiar with the urge to bite back with venom when things attack. But it’s not me that she’s afraid of, and I’m certainly not the reason she’s here.
I could continue to be pissed, but it’s not worth the effort. I twist in my seat, readjusting my posture to relieve the pressure in my back.
“Have you always been afraid of the ocean?” I want to make a joke to cut the tension, ask her if she almost drowned or морской змей nibbled on her fingers as a kid, but she doesn’t seem like she’s in the joking mood. And I can’t remember the English word for aморской окунь.
“It’s more the fear of the unknown. Or not being in control.
” Perhaps subconsciously, she adjusts one of the settings on the monitor.
Something she can control. “Humans have explored approximately one percent of the ocean, so we have no idea what’s lurking beneath us.
Storms can come out of nowhere. Boat engines can stop functioning correctly.
And we’re out here alone, with very few resources. ”
“With that mentality, you’d have to be afraid of airplanes. And eating at restaurants. Actually, you’d have to be afraid of pretty much everything…”
Emily is staring purposefully at the screen, like she can will away my conclusion by sheer force. I think she’s biting the inside of her cheek.
“Are you really? Afraid of everything?” The concept is foreign to me. Sure, I’m afraid of some things. I truly hate snakes. And obviously I fear my father and Ilya, and what they will do when they find me. But to fear anything I don’t have complete control over?
“It’s complicated,” she mutters, unwilling to look directly at me. “And obviously I face the fears. I’m here, aren’t I?”
“Yes, but constantly combating your fight or flight instinct has to be exhausting,” I say, for the first time feeling bad for the woman across from me.
“It makes me stronger,” she says, mostly to herself.
“Survival doesn't make you stronger, it just makes you survive,” I argue, mostly to myself. “You work out, right? Muscles need rest and care to heal and grow. If you keep working them to exhaustion, eventually they’ll fail.”
Emily looks at me like I slapped her across the face. Something flits across the screen, but it’s not a jellyfish.
“Not everyone has the luxury of avoiding what they’re afraid of,” she bites out, something like resentment flickering across her face. I nearly choke suppressing a laugh. Yes, a life of hiding from Ilya and my father has been nothing short of opulent.
“Who said you should run from them?” I argue, my eyes catching on another spout in the distance. “There are differences between avoiding your fears, facing them, and overcoming them.”
Emily’s incredulous expression doesn’t change, like my words don’t have any meaning to her. If I hadn’t had to search for the English word overcoming, I would have thought I accidentally slipped back into Russian.
I don’t say anything else, and neither does she.
For the next three hours we watch the monitor in silence, not a single sea nettle to be found.
Eventually, she looks down at her watch, and without explanation starts reeling in her ROV and packing up her materials.
I put the boat in gear and let the roar of the engine fill the silence thick between us.
And when I’m roping the boat to the bollards, I remember the word I was looking for. морской змей. Sea snake.