“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!”
CHAPTER 30
Kara
The Gulf water wasn’t exactly cold, but it was still shocking, black and endless.
I kicked hard to regain the surface then had to fight the waves to stay there, gasping every time I broke the surface. My limbs were heavy, my throat raw, and salt burned my eyes until everything blurred.
A spotlight swept across the sea, blinding for a heartbeat. Then?—
I heard it.
That sound. That beautiful, roaring, impossible sound.
Engines. Fast ones.
The light came closer, cutting through the spray. The boat surged toward me like a dark beast made of thunder and salvation. A voice shouted my name, fear and desperation in the syllables.
