“Stand,” he says to me. “On your feet.”
Every part of my body says sit. Crawl. Bite. I stand. The ship hums, as if pleased with the obedience. It hurts to breathe but I inhale deeply anyway, wrap my arms around my waist, and hold that breath.
Hold myself.
The man studies me like a purchase—or a sale—he’s considering. It’s not a leer. It’s worse. A valuation. Like he’s measuring me for something or someone.
“You’ll walk,” he says. “You’ll keep your hands visible at all times. If you run, another of my men will shoot you in the leg. If you fight me, I will allow it once. Not twice.”
I don’t nod. I don’t speak. I look at the gun, then at Danner. Blood spreads under his hip, slick dark. The bullet took him somewhere ugly—pelvis, maybe. He’s dead, but that doesn’tseem to matter. The calm man has already moved him to the ‘write-off’ column in his ledger.
“Why should I go with you?” I hear my voice, proud that it’s even. “You shot him for breaking rules you set. That doesn’t make you a rescue for me. That makes you a manager.”
Something flickers in his eyes. Approval? Amusement? It smooths away.
“Because your alternative,” he says mildly, “is to test whether you can swim back to shore from here. Can you?”
Salt burns the back of my throat. Ocean flashes behind my eyes. The deck, the stacks, the horizon with no land in sight. I don’t look away.
I squeeze my eyes shut against the tears and shake my head once. “No.”
“Then we understand each other.” He gestures with the gun—not at me, but to the door. The muzzle never sweeps my body. That, somehow, is more unsettling. “After you, Ms. Jones.”
“I’m not turning my back on you.”
“Clever.” He inclines his head, a small show of respect that feels like a trick. “Walk beside me, then.”
I glance down at Danner’s body and wish that I had been the one to pull the trigger.
The man in the coat adjusts half a step to give me space to pass. He doesn’t crowd. He doesn’t threaten with his body. The threat is in his complete ease.
“Move,” he says, soft.
I move.
At the threshold I stop and reach back for the cup I left under the faucet. It’s half full now. A foolish thing to value. I take it anyway and drink, because owning my mouth in this room feels like a victory.
He lets me.
“Good,” he says. “You need to stay hydrated.”
We step into the corridor. Two men wait there with rifles held low. One of them is the man who was laughing from the deck, now very sober. They take me in with quick, trained glances and step aside when the man nods.
As we walk, he speaks as if he’s discussing a schedule. “There are rules aboard. Danner chose to test them. You will learn them without repetition. It will make this easier.”
“For who,” I ask.
“For everyone,” he says. Then he shrugs. “For you.”
We pass a stack of coils and a drum of something that smells like oil. The ship’s heartbeat moves through my feet into my bones.
I count my steps so I don’t fall apart between them. One. Two. Three. The screw is gone. My cheek throbs. My ribs ache. But I am upright, and I am unraped.
Yet.
I steal a look at him. His profile is clean. There is a shadow of a scar near his ear, old, thin. His mouth is a line. I know him. I cannot place him. The not-knowing scrapes like sandpaper against the inside of my skull.
“What’s your name,” I ask.
