Everyone else on board had lifted their rifles and crouched into position.
Reeves cursed. He had to make the choice: everyone aboard Perseus, or the mermaids. The answer should have been obvious. A teammate had gone down. But how could he pull the trigger on the entire North Pacific Ocean? He couldn’t do this.
He turned to Larson, adrenaline pulsing. He would be relieved of duty for this. He would prove her doubts correct and be a failure to himself and his team.
“Oh, for God’s sake!” she shouted.
She stomped the lever into place.
“Larson!”
The ship shuddered. Beneath the hull, all twenty torpedoes would be launching in tandem.
Reeves’ pulse pounded. It was too late. It couldn’t be fixed.
“Brace!” bellowed Larson.
Reeves and the crew gathered in the centre of the deck and crouched at the railing, wrapping limbs around the poles and each other—because the proper safety equipment had not yet been installed.
The first torpedo exploded. Perseus rocked in all directions. An icy spray slammed down over Reeves. He gasped, taking long, slow breaths that tasted of brine and seaweed. Water thundered across the deck. The shockwave had not yet settled when the second torpedo went off.
Each one was designed to detonate at a different range than the previous. With every explosion, shards of iron would be blasting in all directions, driving shrapnel into any creature it could reach. That included mermaids, mermen—and wildlife. Nothing within miles had a hope of surviving.
The third explosion rocked Perseus more violently. The waves churned like a maelstrom. Reeves focused on holding his body tightly to the deck, thinking he might vomit. He had never been one to get seasick, which was fortunate considering his career—but the rising nausea had nothing to do with choppy waves. He squeezed his eyes shut, clinging to the railing, and for the second time in his life, he began to pray.Forgive me.
He waited for the fourth explosion, determined to count each one and mourn the deaths he had let happen. How was it possible that this was only the fourth missile—out oftwenty? He should never have agreed to that many. There would be nothing left in the Pacific.
The time for the fourth explosion came and went. Reeves opened his eyes to find Larson staring at him, her brown eyes enormous, pupils dilated.
“What happened? Is it faulty?” she said.
Crack.
The ship lurched with such force that everyone was lifted into the air. Reeves watched the deck fall away. He seemed to hover in mid air for a second, and then the deck flew back up to meet him at sickening speed. He flailed, as if trying to swim, and got his hands under him in time to stop his chin hitting the deck first.
He smelled blood. He tasted it, thick in his mouth.
Thuds echoed around him as the others hit the deck, coughing and gasping.
A siren wailed. The hull had been breached.
“Larson … find … out—” Reeves coughed.
He sat up and clutched his chest, trying to get the wind back into his lungs.
He tried again. “Find out what’s—”
A thunder rose over everything else. The deck tilted. Reeves slid down it, reaching wildly for something to hold onto. He found a cleat barely big enough to wrap his fingers around.
Waves frothed beneath him. Bodies hit the water. The spray stung his eyes as he looked around. A few crewmembers hung from the deck beside him, and beyond that, he saw only the gaping insides of the hull.
He blinked, trying to process what this meant.
It dawned on him with the same feeling of an icy swell crashing over his head. The ship had broken in half.
They were sinking.
The sky darkened. Reeves looked up and saw something else, something infinitely worse than his broken ship, which sent a chill from his spine down to his dangling legs. His brain clouded over. He was going to pass out.
