Chapter 38
Chapter Thirty-Eight
MAREN
Three weeks after the Hadal Luxe surfaces as wreckage, evidence, and a lawsuit with pressure seals, I stand on the deck of the research vessel Morrow and watch the ocean pretend it’s always been this empty.
The ship doesn’t believe in luxury. That’s one of its better qualities.
The Morrow is steel decks, salt-streaked railings, stacked sensor crates, temporary labs bolted into shipping containers, and a galley coffee machine that produces something closer to legal threat than beverage.
The cabins are small. The showers are unreliable.
The walls don’t curve artistically around viewing portals.
The ship is honest about being a place people work.
I like it more than I expected.
The sun is low over the water, turning the surface copper in broken sheets.
Somewhere below that brightness are currents, canyons, dark shelves, deepwater cables, military sensors, fishing routes, migration paths, and one missing apex intelligence my official reports now call A1-KV unless I’m very tired, angry, or honest.
Kevin hasn’t been sighted.
Kevin has been everywhere.
Nothing the board can put in a press release without saying words like probable or anomalous and hoping no one notices how frightened the marine analysts sound.
But the sensor patterns are there. Pressure wakes in places that shouldn’t have them.
Deep-scatter movement where no known predator should be.
Two damaged research buoys. One acoustic array that recorded seven seconds of structured interference and then died with the dignity of a toaster in a bathtub.
Kevin is in open water.
My fault. My choice.
I breathe salt air until the old impulse to count oxygen load and pressure differential loosens behind my ribs.
Reyes’s hand settles at the rail beside mine.
His sleeves are rolled to the elbow, scarred hands bare, tablet tucked under one arm.
He still stands like part of him expects the deck to fail if he stops paying attention.
He sleeps more now. Not enough. But more.
I know because his bunk is across from mine, and Dutch has started keeping a tally on the whiteboard under ACCIDENTAL REST EVENTS.
Reyes hates the tally. That hasn’t discouraged anyone.
“Node buoys are live,” he says.
“Already?”
“Two hours ago.”
“Did you come up here to tell me that, or did you come up here because Dutch threatened to confiscate your tablet?”
He looks out at the water. “Both can be true.”
I smile.
My hand is mostly healed. Still tender in the center where the lever tore it open. The scar will be small. The doctor told me that as if scars have ever been polite enough to matter by size.
My shoulder still complains in damp weather.
My head has stopped aching unless I skip meals, sleep, hydration, or common sense, so naturally it remains an active area of concern.
Reyes glances down at me.
“No,” I say.
“I didn’t speak.”
“You were considering a medical observation.”
“Your color is bad.”
“My color is dramatic.”
“Your blood pressure was low this morning.”
“My blood pressure has hobbies.”
He exhales through his nose.
The sound isn’t quite a laugh. It’s still one of my favorite things.
Behind us, the deck door opens.
Dutch comes out, one hand braced against the frame despite pretending the motion is casual. His ribs are healing. His side is healing. He’s been cleared for “light activity,” a phrase he’s interpreted with creative ethics.
He’s wearing a black shirt because it hides the brace better, which would be clever if he didn’t move like every step sends a formal complaint through his torso.
Holden follows him with a mug in each hand. “Doctor said no stairs without assistance,” Holden says.
Dutch looks at the deck beneath his boots. “Good thing those were steps.”
“The doctor also said no unsupported deck work,” Reyes says.
“I’m supported,” Dutch says.
Holden hands me a mug. “You haven’t eaten.”
I take it and sniff. “This is soup.”
“Yes.”
“I was expecting coffee.”
“You’ve had three coffees and half a protein bar.”
“Are all of you in a club?”
Dutch leans against the rail beside me with exaggerated care. “Dues are mostly sleep deprivation.”
Reyes looks at him.
Dutch looks back. “Fine,” Dutch says. “And fear.”
Holden’s eyes move to the water.
The four of us stand that way for a while, shoulder to shoulder, each with our own injuries, our own ghosts, our own version of the thing below not staying below.
The ship moves under us.
The Hadal Luxe held itself rigid against pressure until pressure found the places it lied. The Morrow gives. Rolls. Adjusts. It survives by agreeing to move.
I’m trying to learn from that.
Holden’s comm tablet chimes.
We all look at it.
He checks the screen, then relaxes by less than a millimeter. “Board counsel requesting a clarification on the western perimeter sequence.”
Dutch says, “Tell them to clarify deez nuts.”
Reyes closes his eyes.
I drink soup to hide the noise I make.
Holden chuckles. “I’ll be sure to include that in the official response.”
“He won’t,” Reyes says.
“No,” Holden says. “But I’ll want to, and that’ll sustain me.” He sends a short reply, then turns the tablet face down against the rail.
Holden Armitage, leaving an unanswered argument temporarily unanswered. The end times continue to surprise.
Below deck, somewhere near the temporary lab, a sensor alarm chirps once. Routine. A distant little machine clearing its throat because the ocean has opinions.
None of us move.
That’s new too. Three weeks ago, every beep tore us open. Now we have triage again.
Dutch sets his hand on the rail, close enough that his knuckles brush mine. “Dinner,” he says.
“Is that an order?”
“Yes.”
“I’m the lead scientist on this response vessel.”
“Good. Lead yourself to food.”
“I have soup.”
“That’s fluid with ambition.”
“He’s right,” Holden says.
“Betrayal continues to flourish.”
Reyes takes the mug from my hand and looks inside. “This isn’t enough.”
“You too?” I glance at all three of them.
They’re very obviously staged around me like a beautiful, infuriating safety committee with cheekbones.
And I love them.
The thought arrives without ceremony.
I love all three of them. The size of it does not frighten me. That’s either healing or new pathology. I’ll need more data.
Dutch’s gaze sharpens. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“Your nothing has a face.”
“My face has been through a lot.”
Holden steps closer. “Maren.”
An invitation to stop making the love stand alone in my mouth.
I look at Reyes.
The deck is public enough to be inconvenient and private enough to be dangerous. The crew’s learned not to come looking for us unless something is actively on fire, flooding, or board-related.
“I don’t want to be another system you three maintain,” I say.
Dutch blinks. Holden goes very still. Reyes looks down at the rail.
Then Dutch says, “Good.”
“Good?”
“You’re terrible at staying in spec.”
A laugh breaks out of me.
Holden smiles like he’s been waiting days to hear that exact sound.
Reyes lifts his eyes. “We’re not maintaining you.”
“No?”
“No.”
Holden steps close enough that his shoulder brushes mine. “We’re choosing the same structure.”
I turn toward the deck door. “Then maybe we should discuss load distribution somewhere with fewer railings.”
Dutch’s brows lift. Reyes says nothing, which for him is roughly three paragraphs.
Holden’s eyes darken. “Was that a scientific proposition?” he asks.
“It was a leadership directive.”
“Finally,” Dutch says.
We go below.
Not quickly. Dutch cannot move quickly, and anyone who mentions that discovers his elbow is still very accurate.
Reyes walks half a step behind him down the stairs, one hand not quite touching his back.
Holden walks beside me. I’m aware of all of them in pieces: Dutch’s careful breath, Reyes’s quiet vigilance, Holden’s hand brushing mine once, then staying.
The cabin we’ve unofficially turned into ours was designed for two people and has been badly negotiated into accepting four.
Two narrow bunks. One bolted desk. Gear bags under everything. A whiteboard full of watch rotations, sensor notes, medication times, and an increasingly elaborate doodle of what Tom would have called a wall angel if he’d lived long enough to see the sketches from the atrium breach.
I leave the doodle up. It hurts. It should.
The door closes behind us. The room becomes very aware of itself.
Dutch leans back against the desk because sitting too fast is still not his friend. Reyes takes the first-aid kit off the shelf before anyone asks, because desire doesn’t erase the fact that Dutch is an idiot in recovery. Holden locks the door, then turns around and waits.
That waiting does something to me. They’re all giving me space in a room that barely has any.
I take off my jacket and drop it on the chair. “If anyone asks whether I’m sure, I’ll answer. If all three of you ask in sequence like a very attractive ethics panel, I’ll throw someone overboard.”
Dutch’s mouth twitches. “Still you?”
“Still today?” Reyes asks.
“Still all of us?” Holden asks.
I look at them. “Yes,” I say. “All of you.”
Dutch moves first. Of course he does. Three careful steps that close the space between us and put his hand at the side of my neck. He kisses me like he did in the bay corridor, fear no longer sharp enough to cut but still remembered in the pressure of his fingers.
I touch his ribs lightly through his shirt.
He breaks the kiss and mutters, “Don’t be weird about the injury.”
“Impossible.”
“Try.”
Reyes appears at his side with the medical tape before I can answer.
Dutch looks at him. “No.”
“Yes,” Reyes says. “Before.”
“Bossy.”
Reyes’s expression suggests he’s heard worse lies from failing machinery.