by Kyla Stone
The Oceanarium. He and Gabriel had joked about its aphrodisiac qualities. That was exactly where Gabriel would go. There were a few passenger entrances still under construction, and a crew entrance on the starboard side. And Micah didn't have to pass through any passenger areas to reach it. He raced along the narrow corridors until he came to a set of metal doors shielded by a sheet of construction plastic. He tore it away and heaved open the door.
His uniform was damp with sweat, though the air was chilly. He walked down the aisle on legs still trembling with adrenaline. He straightened his glasses, blinking to adjust his eyes to the dim light of the Oceanarium.
He took in the vast Plexiglas viewing area, the floating hologram sea creatures, the stadium seating. The Oceanarium wasn't empty.
Amelia stood on one side of the platform in front of the viewing window, resplendent in her white Grecian gown, pale hair glowing silver-blue in the shadowy light. Gabriel stood on the other side of the platform, about ten feet from her.
Micah’s brain refused to take in the signals it received. There must be some mistake. This couldn't be real.
His brother held a gun. And it was trained on Amelia.
Micah stumbled, his leg bumping against one of the stadium seats.
Gabriel swung toward him. The gun swung with him. “Welcome to the party, brother.”
26
Willow
Willow's legs and lower back cramped. Her eyes burned. There were no windows in the Galaxy Lounge. She had no idea what time it was. The lights blared on, minute after minute, hour after hour. Hundreds of people sagged in the round sofas and tufted arm chairs or slumped on the ground, using the seats as backrests.
Six armed men patrolled the perimeter of the room with two more on the stage, the purple curtains closed behind them. They used walkie-talkies to communicate, most of them speaking in languages she didn't recognize, other than a few passing phrases in Tagalog, Chinese, Spanish, and English. At least one of them spoke with a Boston accent.
She couldn't stop shaking. Calm down. You need to calm down. Her mind felt shredded. She couldn't even make her eyes follow the gold geometric patterns in the carpet.
Zia was in here, somewhere. Willow refused to believe she was anything but alive. Zia must be out of her mind with terror. She was just a kid, all alone in a sea of chaos and fear. Her sister was alone because Willow deserted her. Now Willow couldn't even think of the reason why, couldn't figure out why it had ever seemed important. Guilt ate at her, the words she’d hurled at Zia echoing in her head. I don’t want you around!
People murmured in low voices on either side of her. Some of them called the attackers terrorists, others used the term pirates. She didn't care. They were the enemy. And they were killers.
Through shouts and gestures, the attackers made it known they wanted wallets, purses, earrings, bracelets, watches, SmartFlexes—whatever they could get their hands on. They carried pillow cases among the rows, demanding everything—even wedding rings. People pleaded, whimpered, tried to argue and reason. Someone offered the men six hundred million dollars each to let him and his wife go free.
“You have the money now, yeah?” The attacker laughed, struck the man in the face with the butt of his rifle, and moved on. The men kept shouting, waving their guns in people's faces. A few babies wailed. Both men and women wept.
“Don't move. Don't speak,” the woman next to Willow said, after the terrorist dragged Willow in and slammed her down at the end of one of the middle rows. She clutched a squirming, wiggling little girl in her lap. The girl wore a lemon-yellow bathrobe, and her inky hair stuck to her scalp in damp strands like she’d just gotten out of the bathtub.
“Don't scream,” the woman whispered over and over, gripping her daughter's hand so tightly, her fingernails dug into the little girl's skin. “Don't scream, don't scream.”
Passengers tried to rush the terrorists three different times. Once someone had a pocket knife, another time two security officers had tasers. Three times they failed, the bodies left where they dropped. A middle-aged brunette lady started a terrible keening wail that wouldn't stop. An armed man stomped up to her, shouting. He thrust his rifle in her face.
Everyone watched in mute horror. Willow wanted to look away but she couldn't, her mind screaming, Stop, stop, stop.
But the crazed woman kept wailing. The terrorist pulled the trigger. Two shots slammed into her. The woman's body jittered, then slumped over.
The little girl moaned deep in her throat and went still. After that, no one screamed anymore. Once the screaming ceased, the terrorists stopped shouting. An eerie calm descended over the room.
The only sounds were strangled whimpers, hushed crying, the gurgle and spit of the walkie-talkies, the constant thud of black boots. And every few minutes, the distant chatter of gun fire. With it, screams so muted they could've been any other low sound, like muffled shrieks at a party.
Willow shivered uncontrollably, tried to close her eyes, but couldn't. All the dead bodies wafted in front of her vision like those light bursts when she pressed her fingers against her closed eyelids.
She wanted to cover her ears, curl into a ball, and push out every horrible sound and image. If only she were back home, where at least she had her own bed and her own comforter. Where at least she and her family were safe, where she still had her mom and Benjie and Zia.
Find Zia.
Willow sat up straighter, pushing down the horror and the shock. Somehow, someway, she had to find Zia. Her mom would know what to do. She'd know how to find Zia and rescue Benjie, the best places to hide. She knew this ship. But her mom wasn't here. There was only Willow.
She was Ate, the eldest, the one in charge of her siblings. She was supposed to keep them safe. They're your responsibility. Take care of them. She hadn't. But she could make up for that now. She had to act, had to do something. She had to find Zia first, then go from there.
She took a deep breath. She turned to the woman next to her and introduced herself. The woman's name was Yuri. She was Korean, maybe in her mid-thirties, with her hair cut in a bob like Willow's mom. “Have you seen a tiny Filipino girl?” Willow asked.
Yuri stroked her daughter's hair. The little girl, Grace, still wasn't moving. “I saw a girl with short turquoise hair. I remember wondering where she was from. She was on the far-right side.” Her expression darkened. “But when they first rushed in, there was so much shooting . . . It was chaos.”
“Was she hurt?”
“I'm not sure. But—” The woman hesitated. “A lot of people died. They shot into those first rows, and those people had no protection . . .”
The iron knot in Willow’s stomach tightened. Beads of sweat gathered at her hairline. “But you didn't see for sure—”
“Be quiet!” hissed the man on the other side of her. He hunched in one of the orange loveseats, his hands splayed on the coffee table in front of him. He was a big white guy, his gut bulging against his tuxedo.
“Calm down, Marx,” said an older Mexican man with white hair. “They can't hear us unless they're close. Don't tick them off or draw attention. There won't be any second chances.” He rubbed his jaw. “I’m Enrique López. This is Bradley Marx.”
None of them mentioned their fancy titles or positions. None of it mattered any more. They were all just people trying to stay alive.
“They're just going kill us anyway,” Marx growled. His eyes were pinched and desperate.
“We don't know that,” Willow said.
“Hell yes, that's their plan.” Marx paused while two of the armed men passed by the center aisle, turned, and marched back the other way. “They're breaking us, just for fun. They're going to line us up against the wall and blow our heads off.”
López tilted his head. “If they wanted everyone dead, they would've kept shooting. Those are high-powered assault rifles. They've got enough bullets for every person in this room. They've got some kind of plan.”
Yuri rubbed Grace's bac
k, her face a mask of fear. Grace stared at Willow with dull, unfocussed eyes. Grace had gone somewhere else inside her head. Maybe it was for the best.
Tears stung Willow's eyes, but she fought them back. She would not cry. The terror rearing up inside her was harder to restrain. “What do we do?”
“They're pirates, not terrorists,” López said. “Look. They're taking people one by one. They're collecting money and jewelry. They need our biometrics to access the safes. When they get what they want, they'll leave. All we have to do is sit here.”
Two armed men flanked an old man in an expensive-looking tuxedo and led him out the side entrance to the left of the stage. López was right about the stealing, at least.
“No way, man,” Marx spat. “I'm not sitting here like bait.”
“Keep your voice down,” López said. “We do what they ask. We wait for Navy SEALs to come for us. Don't be stupid. Stupid gets people killed.”
“Who the hell are these people?” asked a skinny white guy with a goatee next to López. “North Korean? East Asian? Home grown terrorists?”
“Which one?” Marx gestured wildly, his voice rising. “The National Pride Defense League, Soldiers of God, the crazy Earth Liberation Army? If they can take down a luxury cruise liner—no one's safe!”
“Keep your voice down!” López glanced warily toward the stage. Two guards watched them. One slung his rifle over his shoulder and headed their way.
Yuri pulled her daughter's body to her chest. The girl moaned.
“You got something to say?” the guard said in perfect English, with no hint of an accent. In the holes of his ski mask, his eyes were bright blue.
“You're the same terrorist scum we should've strung up thirty years ago!” Marx spat, half-rising from his seat. He never got a chance to stand.
The shot blast was so close, Willow felt it thrumming in her teeth. She pressed her hands over her mouth, somehow managing to keep the scream inside. It echoed in every cell, shattering her bones.
27
Micah
“You don't have to do this,” Micah said.
Gabriel only grunted, tightening the straps around Micah's wrists. He bound Amelia’s and Micah's hands behind their backs. They sat against the bottom row of seats, facing the platform and the massive viewing window.
Beside him, Amelia didn't say a word. She barely moved, her shoulders slumped, her head down. Shimmering blue whales and manta rays drifted on windless currents above them. The dark, angry sea lashed the viewing windows.
“Please.” A thousand thoughts crashed against his skull. How was this happening? Where was his brother, the guy he'd grown up with? Who'd cared for him, teased him, protected him? Who was this grim-faced stranger in front of him? “Are you—are you one of them?”
Gabriel stood and wiped his hands on his pants. “I am a Patriot. We are taking back our country. A new civil war begins today.”
“I don’t understand. This is political?”
“No!” His mouth twisted. “This is life. Innocent people's lives. And innocent people's deaths. Hundreds of thousands, millions of lives. All dead or suffering because of a callous, corrupted government which no longer serves the people.”
“No.” Disbelief choked Micah’s throat.
“The people have been groaning under oppression for decades.” Gabriel paced the narrow platform. “Everyone knows we're sick because of the toxins these corrupt politicians release into our dwindling water supplies. Everyone knows there's less and less food for more and more money. The scorchers, droughts, and heat waves are because the government allowed corporations to poison the planet. Everybody knows, everybody talks, but no one acts.”
“The drugs,” Micah said in an awful blaze of clarity. “You used the drugs to—”
“We smuggled the guns in beneath the drugs. That’s why we needed them. I told you it was for a good cause. The drug ring's been set up for years, so it was simple to sneak the guns in. The right people were already paid off. They never looked too closely. They never considered they might be letting in something worse than drugs.”
Micah could have done something. He should have stopped this. Would have, if he'd reported the drugs to the captain. The investigation would have revealed the guns, too. If the bridge had been alerted to a possible internal attack six days ago, none of this would have happened.
Guilt and grief strangled him. He’d turned against his own conscience. He let his brother off the hook. And in doing so, he’d doomed dozens, if not hundreds, of people to death. The images of the sprawled and broken dead in the Oasis dining room ripped through his mind. “They're killing people.”
A shadow passed over Gabriel's face. His mouth tightened. “All wars have casualties.”
“This isn't war! This is terrorism.”
Gabriel shook his head. “The loyalists called the Sons of Liberty terrorists in the seventeen-hundreds. Now we call them our forefathers.”
“I understand. I do. But violence isn't the way—”
“You've never understood, Micah. You’ve never tried to understand.”
“That’s not fair.”
Gabriel squatted in front of him. “This is why I couldn’t tell you before. But Micah, we’re making a difference here. We’re really going to change everything. This is the beginning of a rebellion that will be heard around the world. The people will stand up. Don’t you see? We’re taking back our country.”
“But why here? Why now?”
“It’s symbolic. We take down the shining symbol of the elite’s waste and excess. While the country is starving, they’re eating caviar! And Declan Black and his cancer cure represents the epitome of their greed and hubris. We destroy him and everything he stands for—the politicians in his pocket and the corrupt CEOs—and the people will see that we can win. They will rise up behind us. And a true revolution will begin.”
“What about the rest of the ship? Were you—were you going to kill everyone?”
“No. Of course not. We’re taking the ship hostage, making ransom demands, raking in billions for the cause. Only a few will die.”
‘But that’s not happening! You didn’t see Oasis. You didn’t see the dead.”
Gabriel’s mouth contorted. “If this is the price for freedom, true freedom, then I’m willing
to pay it.”
“And who else will pay with you?”
Gabriel reached out and touched Micah’s face. “You don’t know how much I wish you were here beside me.”
Micah flinched. “What would Mom think if she saw you like this?”
“If not for these people and their greed, she would still be here. I’m doing this for her. And for everybody else like her. The rich don’t get to decide who lives or dies. Not now, not ever.”
“Mom would never approve of this and you know it. She taught us to turn the other cheek.”
“Her faith made her weak.”
“No.” Micah shook his head fiercely. “Never say that. Her faith gave her strength. She died with dignity.”
Gabriel clenched his jaw, a muscle jumping in his check. “She died needlessly, pointlessly, her life not even valued above an animal’s. That’s not dignity.”
Micah was only making his brother angrier. He tried a different tact. “And Dad?”
“Dad would’ve been a part of this.”
“How can you say that?”
“Why do you think he was such good friends with Simeon? He was part of the New Patriots when it was just a political protest group. You were too young to remember. He was angry, too. Until Mom died. Then he just gave up. But I’m not Dad. I’m not giving up.”
A dull roar filled Micah’s ears. His dad would never be part of something like this, no matter how angry he was. Gabriel believed whatever he wanted to believe, whether it was true or not. Who knows what lies Simeon had filled his head with for all those years? “Gabriel, please. You can still stop this.”
Gabriel shook his head. “Not this time.” The w
alkie-talkie strapped to his waist spat static. He turned and strode up the center aisle, out of earshot.
Micah jerked his arms, trying to pull free. The straps dug into the skin over his wrists. They were strong, and there was zero give. He adjusted his weight, a sharp pain jabbing his thigh. The knife. Gabriel hadn't bothered to frisk him.
Beside him, Amelia remained silent. Her legs were stretched out in front of her, the fabric of her dress bunched around her knees. She hung her head, unmoving. “Miss Black,” he whispered. “Amelia.”
But she didn't answer.
Panic bloomed in his chest. He had to think. He had to be smart. His brother wouldn't hurt him. But the other terrorists would. Gabriel had always been naïve like that. If someone else shared his ideology, he didn't bother to look any closer. He didn't know what these people were capable of. But Micah had seen it. They intended even more death and destruction.
“I was with your mother in the Oasis dining room,” he said, soft and urgent. Gabriel would only be out of earshot for so long. “Terrorists attacked. They took your parents hostage.”
Her head moved slightly.
“They're taking over the ship. That's why all the communication went down earlier. But there are still ways we can call for help. The lifeboats have GPS distress signals we can activate, if we can reach them. There's a mayday signal somewhere. But we need to get out of here. I need your help.”
“We're prisoners,” Amelia said in a dull voice.
The boat rolled and pitched, knocking Micah's shoulder against hers. She was trembling.
A holographic dolphin swam in the air above their heads. The ocean outside the windows was dark and snarling, like a huge, powerful beast hurling itself against the hull, desperate to claw its way inside.