Chapter 29
Kara
I’d always believed ships had heartbeats.
You just had to get close enough to feel the thrum of engines rolling through the ribs of steel, the steady churn of prop shafts, and the damp breath of the bilge. The cargo ship’s pulse pounded up through my boots, cocky and sure of itself.
I decided to stop it.
The catwalk bucked beneath me as the freighter took a swell. I cut left, back inside, and almost walked past a hatch marked Engineering—Authorized Personnel Only.
I jammed my stolen knife under the lower lip of the wheel, leveraged the handle like a crank, and put my full body weight into turning it. The hatch grudgingly opened with a loud squeal.
Stairs spiraled down into the dark below.
Shadows strobed red in time with the emergency beacons.
I slipped my thumb over the ring on my finger and gave it two quick squeezes.
If Demyan still had me on the grid, he’d know I was moving deeper into the ship.
If not, well, I didn’t want to think about that.
The engine room was a cathedral of hulking machinery with two diesel engines and a forest of pipes labeled with fading stencils. A lone motorman swung around, eyes widening. His hand flew to a panel on the bulkhead, whether it was an alarm or a radio didn’t matter.
I threw my knife.
It punched into the meat of his shoulder, and he staggered with a strangled shout.
I was on him before the echo faded, slamming him into the control cabinet.
He swung; I ducked; his fist cracked metal and he yelped.
I buried my knee in his stomach, and he folded as I yanked my knife free.
I snatched a crescent wrench from a magnet strip and clipped him behind the ear.
He sagged to the deck, out cold, but still breathing.
My heart pounded like a drum as I forced myself to focus.
Okay, think, Kara.
I slammed my knife into the first set of pipes I saw and twisted until it started to hiss.
The air suddenly filled with the sharp, oily smell of diesel fuel.
The deck vibrated beneath me, almost like the ship shuddered in pain.
I did it again and again, until the air was so thick it was hard to breathe.
Perfect.
A deep boom echoed overhead, shaking dust down from the ceiling. I froze. The low, rhythmic pounding that followed told me that the helicopter had closed in on us. I hoped it was Revenant’s and not ARCHEON’s.
Gunfire erupted above deck, muffled but close. I ducked instinctually, pressing my back against the wall, heart slamming in my chest.
Move, Kara. Move now.
I sprinted for the nearest door, boots pounding against metal. Two guards came rushing down the stairs, rifles raised. Their eyes widened when they saw me, and they shouted, their voices lost under the alarms.
I dove behind a tank as bullets ricocheted off the walls. One of them cursed. I waited for the pause—one breath, maybe two—then grabbed the nearest thing I could find, a loose wrench, and hurled it at the light fixture overhead. The bulb shattered, plunging us into darkness.
The guards hesitated. I didn’t.
I darted forward, low and fast, using the shadows as cover.
The first man never saw me coming. I slammed my elbow into his throat, then his head, grabbed his weapon as he went down, and swung it around like a club, knocking the second flat on his back.
He hit the floor hard. Before he moved to get up, I used the gun to bash him over the head.
“Stay down,” I hissed, and kicked his rifle away.
The whole ship jolted, a deep, terrible groan rippling through the hull and I gasped as I almost lost my footing.
Revenant wasn’t just here to scare us, they were trying to sink us.
I ran, taking the ladder two steps at a time until the next explosion nearly threw me off balance once more. Heat blasted down the corridor. Fire alarms screamed. My lungs burned, every breath tasting like metal and burning oil.
When I reached the deck, chaos had already taken over.
Crewmen sprinted across the slick surface, shouting orders no one could hear over the wind and gunfire.
The helicopter hovered overhead, its spotlight sweeping across the deck like a merciless eye.
Every time it passed, the world went blindingly white.
I ducked behind a coil of rope, the wind howling around me. Somewhere to my left, a rocket hit the ship’s rear. The explosion threw me off my feet, my palms scraping raw as I slid across the rough deck.
Fire roared to life, flames licking up the side of the superstructure. Screams echoed through the chaos, drowned by another round of gunfire.
“Kara, time to go!” I whispered to myself, pushing to my feet.
I sprinted toward the bow, slipping on wet steel, my heartbeat thundering in my ears. A guard spotted me and shouted. I didn’t look back.
A bullet struck the railing near my hand, sparks flying. Another pinged off the wall beside my head. I ducked, heart hammering. Three ARCHEON soldiers advanced toward me, guns raised, black masks gleaming in the helicopter’s light.
“Hands!” someone barked behind me. “Hands, now!”
I spun back to the rail. One of the men tilted his head like I was an interesting bug caught beneath his shoe.
“You’re done, Lennox,” he said through his mask, voice perfectly conversational over the chop of rotors and the roar of a ship coming apart. “On your knees.”
I smiled at him. “I don’t know you well enough for that.”
He lifted his rifle a fraction. “Now.”
Behind him, through smoke and sparks, I saw something impossible: a low flash of running lights cutting across the swell. A black shape hunting the cargo ship’s flank, its engine noise indiscernible amongst the wild cacophony around us.
Every cell in my body leaned toward that sound. The nearest ARCHEON operative glanced over for the briefest of seconds. I didn’t waste it.
I pivoted and vaulted the rail.
The world dropped out from under me, air tearing at my clothes, heat licking my face, the helicopter’s spotlight snapping to the lip of the deck a fraction too late.
For a heartbeat I was weightless over a churning slate-black sea, the ship’s side a towering cliff of steel sliding past me, livid with fire.
Then I hit the water feet first, toes pointed, trying to make my body into a vertical spear.
It felt like I’d dived into a concrete slab and I was dragged under by the pull of the moving ship.
The last thing I heard before the dark closed over my head was the hoarse, furious bellow of my own name from somewhere across the sea.
“Kara!”