I laugh. “Me too. Can we be friends?” I blurt out.
Because he seems to be the kind of man who can handle himself, maybe he’ll survive long enough for our meeting to matter.
“Depends. What’s in it for me?” he asks with a smirk.
“My affection.” Thinking of Beet, I say, “I’ve been told that I grow on people like a tumor.”
It’s his turn to laugh. “Sounds promising.”
“What’s your name?”
“Jude,” my new friend says.
And I wonder if I’m in for more heartbreak.
As it turns out, Jude is older than me by two years. He’s just strangely beautiful and looks younger than he actually is. His parents used to live on a boat before the Rise, with their seven kids. Their boat was sunk by the Leviathan, and they got stranded on the West Coast when he was four. When they captured him, the slavers figured that if they cut his hair close to the scalp, it almost looked blonde, and they could fetch a good price for him. It looks like we’re both in the same boat. Literally and figuratively.
“How long have you been in here?” I ask him at some point, gesturing at our floating prison.
“A week.”
I gape. “This yacht has been traveling for a week and no god has found it?”
Jude nods. “They only use the sails to navigate. They make as little noise in the water as possible. And when one gets too close, they send a prisoner on a motorboat as bait for diversion. I’ve seen it. They picked someone who had been taken with me when we first arrived. They threw him on the boat and told him to escape or get shot. He almost reached the coast.”
“Fuck…”
“Yeah,” Jude says. “It could have been me if they didn’t think I was worth more than him.”
“Are there many motorboats left?” I ask.
“I’ve seen a few. But I would not advise escaping by sea. We’ll just be easier to catch by men and sea monsters alike. We’ll have better luck on land.”
“And I have someone who’ll be looking for us on land,” I say with a little smile.
“That someone better be tough. Because if we don’t escape before we reach Bunkertown, it’ll be almost impossible to reach us.”
Bunkertown sounds like a stupid name for an underground city.
“Oh, he’s tough. Don’t you worry. Tougher than the devil,” I say with a grin.
13
Scylla.
“I don’t know who started the trend of giving mythical names to the monsters who rose from the earth, but it stuck, and the public started using them. It’s true that most myths certainly originated from them. The Kraken has been depicted in paintings and written in books long before our time. So did Quetzalcoatl and Nessie. Which raises questions. How many times have they woken before? And why did they go back to sleep only to come out en masse during the Rise? What changed?”
Extract of a handwritten journal, by Meredith Willis, January 2051.
The yacht travels along the coast for five more days, judging by the number of meals we’re given. One a day, usually in the morning. I came to realize pretty quickly that I’m seasick. The first two nights were nightmarish, and I couldn’t keep anything down. The way the boat sways smoothly is ten times worse than theBeetle’s sure-footed motion.
Jude tried to keep my mind off the nausea by telling me stories of his life. He’s a ruthless survivor hiding behind a pretty smile. He’ll charm his enemies under the sun and cut their throats at night. I admire him more every day we spend together.
I find myself telling him stories and secrets of my own. He knows about Oliver, my mother, my partners, and my heartbreaks. He knows about the people I’ve killed to survive. Only Griffin stays a secret. He’s my secret.
“Where have you been all my life?” I tell him on the fifth day.
“Running for my life,” Jude retorts.
