Orak rushed to Taalik and immediately went about inspecting his wounds. She nudged him, forcing him to rest on the ground while she licked the gashes at the base of his tentacle, keeping them free of pathogens so they could heal. Taalik knew not to argue with her. His fourth mate, Nong-wa, attended to Orak’s injury, a bite mark near her left pectoral fin. The three of them watched as the others killed the stragglers from the fleet. Zirsk and Asha ordered the Juggernauts to slice open their bellies. As Taalik promised, some of them released the eggs they had swallowed. After inspecting them, Zirsk and Asha claimed the eggs they knew to be theirs. The others cheered them on, clicking and chirping each time they ripped open one of their captives. Sometimes, the sharks would try to swallow the eggs again as the Sarcops extracted them, unaware that they died in the process.
Nong-wa, help with the eggs, Orak said.
Nong-wa got in a few more licks before swimming over to the others.
Taalik, the First of Us, Orak said. I was afraid you would not return.
I was afraid I would not find you when I did.
These fish cannot kill me.
No, Taalik said.
Another shark split open, but yielded no stolen eggs, only a small, undigested fish. The Shoots devoured both.
I must tell you something, Taalik said. I fear the others are not ready to hear.
What is it, my Egg?
I pulled that shark above the waves. The place we cannot go, from which none return.
Orak stopped licking for a second. And yet you returned.
Yes. The shark died. I lived.
Taalik described the enormous weight pinning him down, the thin, tasteless air that he nevertheless could breathe. He talked about the color, the brightness of it. The Queen chose me to break this barrier, he said. The place above the sea holds our destiny.
Lead us there.
We are not ready. Too many would have to be left behind.
That has not stopped us before. He knew she meant the gambit with the eggs.
There is something else, he said. He extended his claw and held out a shiny object. She reached for it with her tentacle.
What is it? she asked.
I do not know. I pulled it from the shark’s fin.
She rubbed her tentacle along the curve of the object, and then gently tapped the sharp end. A tooth? A claw, perhaps?
No. It is some kind of weapon, forged from the earth somehow. From the rock.
Who made it?
The monsters from my dream. Enemies of the Queen. They live above the surface. They tortured the shark, and his people. I saw the scars on his hide. I felt his fear. When I pulled him from the water, he thought I was one of them.
The monsters are at war with the sharks, just like us.
They are at war with everyone, Taalik said. They are more dangerous than the sharks. When the darkness passes over, I see millions of us, piled on the dirt, drying out under the sun. These monsters have hunted us for years. Destroyed our homelands. They hate us as much as they hate the Queen. Many of us will die if we proceed.
Orak returned the object to Taalik. Then we die, she said.
She swam around to face him. Behind her, the Juggernauts held another shark while Zirsk ripped him from his gills to his rear fin. You are the First of Us, Orak said. You gave us meaning and hope. But you cannot take it away. You cannot tell us what to do with it now. You gave us a choice, and we have chosen to follow you.
She continued licking his wounds, ignoring her own injury, as was her way. He wrapped a tentacle around hers, twisting several times until the suckers latched onto one another.
They would have to abandon Cold Trench, he told her. They would not survive another hibernation period, when their enemies were sure to strike. The Sarcops would move north, following the magnetic beacon at the pole. With luck, they would find a safe haven in the ice.
Before him, Zirsk and Asha nursed their eggs. Shoots and Redmouths tugged on the corpses of their prisoners until some of the sharks split in two. Taalik observed in silence. Tomorrow, he would point them toward their future.
CHAPTER 2
Ronin
Mort(e) steered the boat into the mouth of the river, aiming it upstream, into the valley where he and Sheba would find peace and safety. Where things would begin again.
Sheba spent most of their two-day voyage sleeping below deck, leaving Mort(e) to stare at the interior of the cabin. Before long, he memorized all of the junk left by the humans who let him take the boat. A troll doll, with crazy orange hair. An angry kabuki mask hanging on a nail. A flag with a red sun in a white field. A Seven Samurai poster. A calendar from before the war, with a red X on December 23 and a brief note: “Christmas party—Pat’s.”
As soon as Mort(e) revved the engine to fight the current, Sheba screamed like a human child. The ragged sound of it made him wince.
Mort(e) cut the engine. The boat tilted to the port side as the river returned it to the ocean. He called her name. She answered with another shout, accusing him of doing this to her.
He couldn’t afford to let the boat drift. They had used the last canister of fuel, and he still needed to get many miles north, past the dead towns on the riverbank. He restarted the engine. Searching the shoreline, Mort(e) spotted a rickety dock poking into the river, the only structure left on a piece of land where a mansion once stood. The house lay in ruin, destroyed by a fire. With Sheba screeching behind him, Mort(e) white-knuckled it all the way to the dock. When he was close enough, he switched off the power, exited the cabin, and tossed a line around one of the posts. Bracing his foot on the gunwale, he tightened the slack and tied the rope to a cleat. Sheba’s howling stopped long enough for her to take a breath. Then she began again.
“Hold on,” Mort(e) grunted.
With the boat secure, Mort(e) raced to the stern, where Sheba lay on a pile of blankets, writhing, her snout buried under a fold in the fabric. Her tail stiffened like a third leg. Her muscles tensed, locking in some unspeakable pain that could not be released. Mort(e) placed his knobby hand on her side and stroked the fur. She did not seem to notice. Above them, the overcast sky offered no solace, the clouds so dense that Mort(e) could not locate the sun.
The Queen had given him the pill that would make Sheba into a creature like him. It would uplift her from a mere animal into something more. But the transformations were never like this. Typically, the Change took place while the animals slept, making their former lives feel like a dream. And now, with his only friend twisted in agony, Mort(e) considered the awful possibility that the Queen tricked him. That the pill would kill Sheba, and he would be doomed to watch it unfold. Maybe it was the Colony’s final revenge on those who resisted.
And why did he give Sheba the pill in the first place? All the selfish reasons cycled through his head. He had endured this change, and all these years without Sheba, and now she would become like him. That would set things right somehow. It all seemed insane at this moment, as the boat bobbed in the current, and his ears flicked at the sound of Sheba’s broken voice. She did not ask to change. She was one of the lucky ones, someone who wouldn’t have to remember the uprising or the war or the aftermath.
Mort(e) bent over her body, placing his ear on her ribs. His whiskers mingled with her fur. “I’m sorry,” he said. She continued to tremble and sob, the echoless sound going dead over the water. Mort(e) held her, the way he had when they were both still pets, when the world was nothing more than a single house. He whispered to her the things he couldn’t say when he was still an animal. “Don’t worry. Don’t be sad. I am strong. I will not leave you.”
Soon, the crying abated. Sheba’s voice descended to a low grumble, while the water sloshed against the hull.
He heard a sound within her, like knuckles cracking. Mort(e) clenched his eyes shut and immediately hated himself for his cowardice. Beside him,
Sheba twisted and contorted. Mort(e) felt her vertebrae rubbing against his stomach as her spine extended. Her howling began again, and then dissolved into a gasping sound.
She went quiet. Mort(e) placed his ear on her rib cage, trying to find her heartbeat. And then a hand came to rest on his, wrapping around the gnarled nubs where his masters had declawed him. Mort(e) opened his eyes to see Sheba transformed, sitting up and gazing over her shoulder like a human woman rising from a bed. Her face had grown longer, though the brown eyes remained the same, glistening and pleading. Pink hands extended from her furry wrists. Her tail flopped on Mort(e)’s legs.
She rolled over and faced him. Mort(e) gave her space, unsure if she viewed him as a threat. They faced each other on all fours, as they had years earlier at the home of his masters. She leaned in, sniffed him. Licked him once. She opened and closed her mouth as she tried to form the words. Like every other animal who endured the Change, she seemed most surprised by her altered vocal cords, an alien technology implanted while she slept.
“I,” she said.
Mort(e) nodded.
“I know you,” she said.
Mort(e) collapsed. He rested his face in his palms as he tried to keep himself from breaking down in front of her. Gathering himself, he stood up. He reached out his hand to her. She took it and unsteadily rose beside him.
“I know you,” Mort(e) said.
For the next few hours, they made their way along the river. Sheba crouched in the fisherman’s perch, staring at the water as it flowed underneath. She ran her fingers over the name of the boat, stenciled on both sides of the hull: Ronin. A word she could pronounce, but not yet understand. The human who let him take this boat told Mort(e) that the word referred to a warrior without a master. “Like you,” the man said, jabbing his finger.
The shoreline provided Sheba with some distraction. They passed the abandoned city of Philadelphia, the wasteland where Mort(e) had searched for Sheba years earlier. In the haze, the city resembled a forest in wintertime, the buildings stripped bare, no signs of life. The tops of two skyscrapers had been blown off, the metal beams poking out like broken bones. A breeze whistled through the streets. The arterial highways remained choked with stalled cars and trucks, their windshields caked in nearly a decade’s worth of dust. A few boats rested half-submerged in the harbor, including a cruise ship and a Navy destroyer. Many of the buildings had crumbled into ruin from the street fighting that took place during the war. Alpha soldiers and humans fought to the death among the shopping malls and restaurants. There were no corpses visible from either side—the Colony made sure that not a single scrap of flesh went to waste.
Sheba craned her neck as she tried to sniff, but the dried-out city yielded nothing. Mort(e) wondered how much of this she knew about, how much she remembered. How much the Queen may have tried to teach her. Sheba may have been the luckiest person in the world to have missed all this. And from all available evidence, she had not aged in the Queen’s captivity. Perhaps the Colony gave her the same chemicals that kept the Queen alive, so that Sheba would be there when Mort(e) fulfilled the prophecy by coming to her rescue.
More towns and villages rolled by. The entire area had succumbed to the Colony’s most recent quarantine, and what had not been destroyed was discarded. Part of Mort(e) wanted to find someone alive here. But part of him was grateful for the silence. He wanted this time alone with Sheba, to introduce her to the surface world without interference.
Two hours later, with the gas tank nearly empty, Mort(e) decided to ditch the boat. From there, he hoped to dock on the Pennsylvania side of the river and then hike into the mountains. They would search for a house or cabin left behind in the evacuations. It would not provide safety forever, but it would work for now. Besides, the areas to the north and south were suspect, with both New York and Washington destroyed, and countless animal settlements quarantined by the ants during the Colonial occupation. The forest provided the only refuge.
Mort(e) docked the boat on a concrete jetty, parking it next to a yacht named Karen’s Way, written in powder-blue cursive lettering. He estimated that they had landed somewhere south of the Delaware Water Gap, in an area sparsely populated even before the war. Only a few cabins, outhouses, and fishing piers remained.
He gathered as many things as he could—bottles of water, some beef jerky, a new backpack for Sheba. When he handed it to her, she took it without question, still dazed from her transformation. She let him load a first aid kit, flashlights, and other supplies into the bag before pulling the straps onto her shoulders. He stopped and looked at her. She stood taller than he, as expected. Her muscles were taut and veined, with a jaw capable of tearing off someone’s limbs. With her powerful hands, she tightened the straps on the bag. Like Mort(e), she must have wondered how she had gotten by without these extraordinary digits, both strong and nimble.
Mort(e) went through the rest of the cabin. He emptied several crates stowed in the corner, finding only ropes and life vests. By the time he returned to the deck, Sheba had lifted the seat cushions to expose the hidden compartments, all empty. She held an object in her hand—a long leather-encased cylinder. When he reached for it, she shielded it with her body.
“What is that?” Mort(e) asked.
He held out his hand. It took her a moment to accept that he did not plan to take the object from her, that he only wanted to see. She let him grip the handle. As he pulled on it, the handle came loose, revealing a metal blade within a scabbard. A sword. A goddamn samurai sword, hidden for no discernible reason on this boat. It even had an engraving on the blade, though Mort(e) could not read it. For the first time, Sheba grinned, as he imagined she would in all the years of searching for her.
“You want to keep it?” he asked.
“Yes.”
He still needed to show her how to fire a rifle. He did not feel qualified to teach her swordplay. But how hard could it be? Hit someone with the sharp side of the blade, and they’ll either die, quit, or run away.
They hiked for two days into the mountains. The landscape, with its bright greens and deep browns, provided a welcome respite from the searing monochrome of the river. The pine needles tickled his feet, and the soft dirt paths reminded him of long marches with his comrades during the war. Along the way, Mort(e) told her everything. He barely stopped, except for when they took a break to eat. The constant talking provided a refuge from her eerie silence. He could not help thinking that she judged him this whole time, that she blamed him for changing her, for making that decision without asking. Someday, he would have to explain to her that he did it simply because he wanted her to be his friend again. He told himself that that was reason enough, that he had earned it, that she would understand and, if need be, forgive him.
So he talked and talked as they made their way along the highways and rocky trails. He told her about the days they spent together as pets, spooning in the basement of the Martinis’ house. During this time, she asked only one question.
“What is your name?”
It made him stop dead. Sheba knew the sound of his voice and the smell of his fur, but did not even know his real name. “My masters called me Sebastian,” he said. She did not seem to recognize it. “But I call myself Mort(e) now.”
He continued, explaining how they lived next door to one another, and how their masters left them alone while they went off and did their human things. Mort(e) watched her reactions, but could decipher very little. She seemed not to notice that he was talking about her.
Mort(e) decided to leave out the part about her children. If she remembered what had happened to them, she did not need to be reminded. If she didn’t know, she did not need to learn. Not yet. Things were too fragile.
He told her about the war that separated them. The war between the Colony and the humans, in which the Queen recruited the animals to kill their oppressors. After Mort(e) murdered his owner, he joined the a
rmy, fighting for the Queen. He became good at it.
“I guess I should be glad you weren’t there,” Mort(e) said. “But I still missed you.”
Sheba did not respond.
He told her how, years later, he received a message telling him she was still alive, which put him on a journey to find her. He related all the events while they prepared a campsite in a clearing. As Sheba tested her new hands by trying to open a can of beans, Mort(e) described rescuing her from the Queen’s chamber. He told her about tossing a grenade at a swarm of giant ants, and how she chased the bomb into a tunnel, thinking they were playing fetch.
“I don’t remember,” she said.
He would have to save the rest for later. After they ate, they stretched out under the trees that muffled the light from the stars. In the dampness, Mort(e) shifted his body toward Sheba, hoping to catch some of her warmth without waking her. She rolled away from him. He curled himself into a ball and shivered.
The next morning, shortly after setting out, they emerged from the forest onto another dead highway. A sun-scorched road sign indicated that they were on Route 476, leading north into the Pocono Mountains. They were on track, and had been lucky to avoid any stragglers from the quarantine.
She would come around, he thought. Unless she didn’t. And then he’d be alone in this wilderness again. Someday, he would have to ask her to tell him how she got through those years. He needed to know if she thought of him, even if she remembered only his smell and not his name. Did she even realize how much it hurt him to wait for her to say these things? Was she so far gone that even the pill could not change her?
For a long time, Mort(e) kept his head down and watched his feet landing on the cracked asphalt. The monotony of it became soothing after a while.
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