Chapter 49
Rylan Cameron
Call sign: Minnow
Rylan flew out of bed as The Old Eileen tipped to one side. His water bottle and sketchbook slid off the bedside table, and he scrambled to his feet, tripping over
the sheets tangled around his body. The dull thud of The Old Eileen slapping against another wave sounded around him, and Rylan, along with anything loose in his cabin, toppled to the other
side. He managed to grab the edge of his bed and steady himself, fingers trembling.
Rylan looked to Tia’s bed in the dark for comfort.
Empty.
Rylan buried his head in his hands. He had thought, stupidly, telling his parents Tia’s secret would keep her in the family.
Instead, he was now sure that even if they stayed together, she would be oceans apart from him. He felt tricked and tired,
and more than anything, guilty.
He was so sick of feeling guilty.
Something warm trickled past his bare feet. Rylan dropped his hands. Water ran across the floor of his bedroom. He followed
it with his eyes, frozen in terror, and looked up at the dark corner of his bedroom.
Someone else was inside.
A monster with a head like a translucent veil and elastic tentacles as delicate as strands of hair loomed from the shadows.
The tentacles stretched out, reaching for him. Then she smiled.
Rylan screamed and jerked awake. He was still in bed. He grabbed a fistful of blanket to shield him from the creature that
lurked in the corner. There was nothing there. He almost relaxed, but the sheen of the wet floor caught his attention.
The flooding was real.
“Tia!” Rylan called, not bothering to keep his voice low. He struggled to stay calm. No answer. He looked over at her bed,
tearing his gaze away from the corner just for a second. She still wasn’t there.
He stood, hands shaking out of control. He smoothed them over his sheets and made his bed, counting to ten.
He picked his way across the wet room, making the mistake of glancing through the porthole. He’d never seen the ocean like
this, mountainous and sinister. It was an ocean that had sired the monster stories in Rylan’s books. If The Old Eileen found herself under the hand of even one of those waves, she might spiral into oblivion.
The shaking had become unbearable, throwing Rylan off-balance to the point that he slipped and fell to his knees. Where the
hell was his sister? He considered going out into the hall to find her. Maybe up on deck?
On deck where the waves could pluck him from the boat and devour him without a second thought? No one would even find his
body.
Rylan clambered to the bathroom and splashed water on his face.
One, two, three, four . . .
Tia had probably gone on deck to help handle the sails against the storm.
Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen . . .
They were all up there, wearing life jackets and working together.
Twenty-nine, thirty, thirty-one, thirty-two . . .
No one would let anyone go overboard. Rylan concentrated on things that kept him calm. Tia’s laugh. Nico’s warmth. Tiny fish
flitting through a tranquil reef. His sister would forgive him. The bomb would not go off. The storm would pass them by.
Rylan’s iron grip on the counter loosened. He breathed in the way Tia had taught him.
It’s just a storm.
And if he had gone back to bed right then without looking up, maybe it would have been just a storm. Maybe he would have woken
up on his birthday morning, happy and well rested. Maybe he wouldn’t have seen the first ugly thing the storm had revealed.
But Rylan did look up, and any chance of maybes washed away like sand in the surf, rattling against the two halves of a broken shell. He looked up and into the bathroom
mirror which held his own frightened face staring back at him.
And his sister’s message:
Save yOur Self
SOS. Rylan fell back, as if he could physically remove himself from the meaning behind the words. And God . . . was it blood? What the hell had happened in the time since he’d fallen asleep? Why hadn’t Tia woken him up?
Because she hated him.
Because she wanted him to leave. Alone.
But Rylan didn’t want to believe it because believing it meant leaving the cabin and venturing out into the storm to ready
the last-ditch escape. He hadn’t signed up for that on his own, he couldn’t do it on his own, but the message was clear, a
sickening edit to their original plan, their promise, to leave together.
He had severed any chance of together when he told their parents she meant to run. Or maybe it had been even earlier, when he failed to bring her home. He could
have prevented her from ever wanting to leave in the first place. He should have fallen to his knees and begged for her forgiveness.
Stupid, stupid, stupid . . .
Rylan stood paralyzed against the wall. Maybe he would never move and let the world dissolve around him.
Then he heard the scream.