Seaswept (Seabound Chronicles Book 2) (18 page)

Chapter 23—The
Guardian

The merry tune tripped
down the tunnel and echoed off the rocks. Esther
wondered if she’d hit her head after all. There was still no hint of light,
except when she turned on her flashlight in brief bursts. Where was the song
coming from?

She felt her way
further along the passageway. She made one more turn and reached a dead end.
Her boots scuffed against the dirt as she groped around a shallow bowl forming
the end of the tunnel. All was quiet. Had she imagined the sound? Then the tune
began again, coming from over her head.

Carefully, Esther
reached upward. Her fingers met wood. It was rough and damp but solid. She slid
her hands over the grain, pulling away when a splinter caught in her finger.
She scraped it out in the darkness, then reached up again, moving slowly until
she found an edge. She hoped whoever was singing on the other side of the wood
couldn’t hear her. She felt along the edge to a row of old-fashioned hinges. It
was a solid oak trapdoor.

A rough layer of
rust met her fingers where the wood joined the iron, but the joints themselves
were clean. Esther smelled oil on the hinges, mixed with the heavy musk of the
damp wood. A search to the other side of the door revealed no clasp of any
kind. As far as she could tell, the trapdoor had no lock.

Very slowly,
Esther pushed upward on the trapdoor. It was extremely heavy, barely shifting
at all. At least the hinges didn’t squeak. Esther wished, as she had half a million
times before, that she were taller so she could get better leverage.

The singing grew
louder. The heavy thud of footsteps approached above. Esther held her breath.

“Shoobeedoobeedoo.
. . and a something something tells me just what to do . . .”

The singer was
male, and his voice had a nasal quality through the garbled words.

“And my pretty
lass a something something with me-eee-e-e-eeee!”

The thud of feet
turned to tapping, and then the man was dancing a jig directly above Esther’s
head. She kept one hand on the door, and the vibrations jolted down her arm
with each step.

She made a snap
decision and pounded her fists on the wood.

“Let me up!” she
shouted, pitching her voice as low as she could. “Quit your cawing and open the
door!”

“Well soak me in
oil and call me a cat! You’re back early!” the man shouted.

Esther heard
grunting as he heaved at the door. She was ready.

As soon as a foot
of light appeared above her head, Esther grabbed the edge of the opening and
vaulted out of the passageway. She caught a brief glimpse of an overcrowded
storeroom before she flipped open the small knife and pressed it to the
singer’s throat.

“Say another word
and you die,” she hissed.

The man made a
gurgle in his throat like a sea lion with a cold, but he didn’t move. He still
held the trapdoor at a forty-five-degree angle above the black hole Esther had
come from. He was a large-boned man, and his skin sagged off his features as if
he’d recently made a drastic transition from pudgy to slim. He was bald, and a
big white mustache twitched uncertainly beneath his bulbous nose.

“Lower that door
slowly,” Esther said. “That’s it. Now sit down and tell me if anyone else is
likely to come into this room soon.”

“It’s just me
working down here,” he croaked. “What are you?”

“Huh?”

The man’s eyes
were dilated and rolling. His shriveled hands shook as he sank to the ground
and folded them over his long knees. He looked like a giant pale crab crouched
above the trapdoor.

“Are you a sea
demon?” he said. “I heard some men seen them when they was sinking, but I never
get that effect normally. Are you really here?”

“Of course I’m
here. I—”

“If you’re a
demon, I swear I’ll never touch the stuff again. I use it to pass the time, you
know? It gets boring down here.” The man gestured around the room, which was
stacked with barrels, crates, and buckets, a seemingly endless supply of motley
storage containers.

“What’s the matter
with you?” she said, feeling uneasy.

“I never had one
like this. Please let me go!”

“Shh. Not so
loud.”

“I was just havin’
a sink. Nothing wrong with that.”

He stared wildly
up at Esther. If her knife hadn’t still been pressed to his neck, she got the
impression the man would be rocking back and forth.

“Keep quiet. I
need information,” she said.

“I swear I don’t
usually do it when I’m working. Please forgive me!”

The man made a
sudden lurch as if to throw himself to his knees.

“Stop! Don’t move.
Rust, are you drunk or something?”

Esther glanced
around the room for some sort of restraint. There was a coil of rope in one
corner, but it was so thick—thicker than her wrist—that it probably
wouldn’t hold the man well.

“Look, you’d
better cooperate. I need to know what’s outside this storeroom and how many men
are on the Island.”

“The whole island?
I don’t know. They come and go. The ships are always out. I don’t know! Please
forgive me!” The singer’s voice broke, and his shaking intensified.

“Any idea how many
ships are around right now?” Esther pressed.

“All I know is
extra patrols is out ’cause there was a ship spotted not far away. Some kind of
scrape. There’s prob’ly only one or two at port right now. The patrols should
be back soon.”

Esther nodded. She
had to hurry.

“What’s outside
this door?”

“Just rooms and
hallways. Staircases. Food. People. I don’t know what you mean! I was just
sinking! It don’t hurt nobody.”

Tears leaked from
the singer’s eyes. He seemed to be on something, and Esther wasn’t sure it was
alcohol. She took pity on him and eased the pressure on his neck.

“Hey. Calm down.
You got any more of that stuff?” she said. “Why don’t you have a bit and get
some rest? That’d be good for you, right?”

He sniffed. “I’m
on duty.”

Esther patted him
awkwardly on the shoulder, feeling the loose skin slide over his bones. “Don’t
worry about it. I’ll keep an eye on things. Do you know where they’re holding
the man they took from the
Amsterdam
Coalition
?”

“The chatty one?
He’s on the third level.”

The man pulled a
worn canvas bag from his pocket and dug through fragments of some sort of
grayish-green substance. Esther had never seen it before, but hopefully it
would keep him occupied, even if it didn’t knock him out. With any luck he
wouldn’t remember meeting her.

“Who’s guarding
him?” she asked.

He shrugged,
making him look even more like a crab. “Probably Harrison. You know how he
likes his cards. He and Chatty Cathy in there sometimes play all night.”

“Great. Stay here.
Oh, and you probably shouldn’t tell anyone you saw me. You wouldn’t want them
to know you were sinking on the job.”

The man nodded
solemnly. As Esther made her way to a steel door on the far side of the
storeroom, he was already humming again.

Outside the door
was an empty corridor that could have been inside any ship. Esther had to
remind herself she was actually standing on real, solid ground. A scattering of
identical doors lined the short hallway. Esther walked quickly to the one at
the end, praying her luck would hold a little while longer.

The lights in the
corridor were on despite the hour. It was still very early, but Esther had been
climbing long enough that the sun could be in the sky already. She wondered
what sort of power source the Calderon Group was sitting on if they could waste
lights like this. Even land-bound power had to come from somewhere, though she
couldn’t shake the impression she’d grown up with that energy and light had
been available in abundance on land, and it was only on the sea that they had
to scrimp, save, and innovate.
My energy
tech had better still be worth something to these guys. It’s my only hope to
save David.

The door at the end
of the corridor led to a stairwell. It was unlocked. Esther listened for a
moment before entering. She seemed to be at the very bottom of whatever
facility she’d found herself in on the Island. The number nine appeared beside
the door she had come through. The angles in the stairwell hid how high the
building extended.

As
Esther put her boots on the first step, the stairs rang with footsteps above.
She froze. Voices drifted down the shaft, but she couldn’t make out their
words. After a moment, the voices cut off as a door slammed. The sound echoed
and faded away. She steadied herself on a cold railing coated in chipped white
paint and began to climb.

Chapter 24—The
Captive

It took close to
fifteen minutes, as far as she could tell, for Esther
to make her way up through the facility. She stopped to peek in the doors off
the stairwell every few levels, catching glimpses of more empty corridors,
lights blazing. Once a man wandered down a hallway with a towel wrapped around
his waist, but he didn’t see her.

The level markers
appeared in descending order as Esther got closer to the top: seven, six, five.
So the structure had at least nine levels (she couldn’t help but think of them
as decks). There were no windows, and she didn’t know whether or not she was
above ground yet.

The Calderon Group
couldn’t have built this facility themselves. There were too many signs of the
old world: the paint on the rails, the light fixtures in the hallways, the way
the numbers were printed by the doors rather than scrawled. Whatever this
facility was, it had been here for longer than sixteen years.

At the doorway to
the Level 3 corridor, Esther waited, catching her breath and listening for
footfalls. Nothing.

The Calderon Group
didn’t seem to be early risers, if they lived here at all. Vacant, well-lit
hallways didn’t provide much insight into how they were using the Island. She
was going in blind. She pulled the knife from her belt and pushed open the
door.

This was the
longest corridor she’d seen yet. The walls were a faded blue. Dozens of evenly
spaced doors lined the hall, like in the residential quarters on a ship. Chairs
sat beside a handful of the doors. Esther smelled something chemical.

She tried the
first door. It was locked. So was the next one. The third led to an enormous
bathroom with cracked tiles and empty stalls. There was a flicker of movement.
Esther jumped and jerked her knife forward before she realized it was just her
reflection in a full-length mirror. She scowled at the tangles in her dark hair
and the salt rings on her clothes.

Back in the hall,
her boots squeaked on the linoleum as she crept along, trying each knob. All
the doors were locked, the rooms silent. When she reached the middle of the
corridor, she put her hand on a doorknob, only for it to turn of its own
accord. She leapt back.

“. . . shouldn’t
let you keep me up like this, mate.”

Esther pressed
back against the wall as a man pulled open the door from the inside. He spoke
into the room with his back to the corridor. He had a shock of red hair and
narrow shoulders.

“You’re a bad
influence, for a prisoner,” he was saying.

Esther brought up
her knife but hesitated. She didn’t want to stab anyone. She yanked the
flashlight from her belt to crack the man on the head instead. But her
hesitation gave him time to turn around. He saw her coming, gave a strangled
yell, and pulled back from the blow.

“What the hell!”

Esther shoved her
shoulder against the door. She caught a glimpse into the room beyond: a
familiar shock of white-blond hair and a cable-knit sweater. It was enough. She
hurled herself into the red-haired man, knocking him to the ground. The
flashlight flew out of her grip. She swung her fists, keeping the man pinned
beneath her knees. For a moment it was all elbows and clothes and shouting.

Suddenly, she was
being lifted into the air and tossed aside. She yelped and rolled to her feet,
ready to face this new threat.

David Hawthorne
was holding the red-haired man on the ground, straining with the effort. Esther
quickly scanned the room, but no one else was there. David had been the one to
pull her off the guard.

“Help me,” David
grunted. “The bedsheets.”

The man pinned
beneath him hollered and swore.

Heart pounding,
Esther tore the thin sheets from a bed in the corner. Together they used them
to bind the guard’s arms and legs behind him. David ripped off a strip of
cotton and forced it between the man’s teeth.

“Sorry about this,
Harry,” he said.

The guard’s face
went as red as his hair.

David sat back and
looked at Esther. “Now do you mind telling me what you’re doing here?”

“Breaking you
out,” she said. “We can’t waste time. When will they change the guard?”

She darted to the
door to check that the corridor was still empty.

“Hold on, Esther,”
David said. “I need a minute.”

She turned back
and got her first good look at him. He’d been ill. He was always thin, but now
he looked positively skeletal. His wrist bones stood out in sharp relief
against the tattered cuffs of his sweater. Tackling the guard had clearly taken
a lot out of him, and he was breathing heavily.

Even so, Esther
was shocked at how handsome he was. The strong jaw and straight back. The
cracked glasses sitting slightly askew. Those eyes.

“You look awful,”
she said. “Why didn’t you let me deal with this guy? You look like you’ll need
to sleep it off for a week.”

“I was afraid you
were going to stab him,” David said with a shadow of his old smirk. “We’ve
become friends. Did you hear that, Harry? I don’t want you to get hurt.”

The red-haired
guard grumbled and tried to spit the wadded-up cloth from his mouth.

“What’s the
situation here?” Esther asked, scrutinizing the room. “Have they been hurting
you? Are the guards armed?”

Now that she
actually had David in front of her, Esther didn’t know how to behave. So she
babbled.

“I’ve got a boat,
but I don’t know if we’ll be able to get back to it. I left a guard somewhat
incapacitated in the basement. Where’s the nearest exit? How many people are
here?”

“Esther. Stop.”

David lowered
himself to a rickety chair between the narrow bed and a folding table. It held
a deck of cards and a flimsy metal ashtray. David was barefoot, and a pair of unfamiliar
shoes peeked out from underneath the bed.

“Are you okay?”
Esther asked, determined not to let her voice shake.

“You’re an idiot,”
he said calmly.

Esther felt a
white-hot flash in her chest. “Well, I’m an idiot that’s going to save your
ass, so if you don’t want me, you’d better say so now,” she snapped.

Both David and
Esther herself seemed equally shocked by her tone. She didn’t mean for it to
come out like that. She’d just voiced the question she’d been terrified to entertain
ever since they’d met.
Did he want her or
not?
She knew she wanted him.

“You shouldn’t
have come here,” David said. “The Calderon men are ruthless. You shouldn’t have
taken the risk.”

His voice lacked
its usual composure. It had a ragged edge that matched his thin, wasted face.

“Do you want to
come with me?” she asked, barely above a whisper.

David pushed
himself out of the chair and walked slowly to her. He just looked at her,
standing so close she didn’t want to breathe.

“Esther . . .”

Suddenly his arms
were around her, and she was burying her face beneath the ridge of his collarbone.
The rough knit of his sweater rubbed her cheek, and warmth seeped through the
fabric between his body and hers. She wrapped her arms around his too-exposed
ribs. He kissed her on the top of the head, then drew her gently away from him,
both hands cupping her face. “I’m glad you’re here. I—”

“Blegh, that makes
one of us,” Harry the guard said as he finally managed to spit the wad of
cotton out of his mouth. “Let me go, you rust-loving bastard.”

“Shut up, Harry,”
David said. “Esther, do you have a way out?”

“I came through a
cave in the base of the island. We can get out the same way, but we need to
hurry.”

It couldn’t be
this simple. Esther barely dared to breathe.

“You don’t think
they’ll let you get away, do you, Davey?” Harry said, struggling against his
bonds. “You know Burns. You’ll be dead before the Island is out of sight,
unless your girlfriend brought an armada with her.”

David raised an
eyebrow at Esther. “It wouldn’t surprise me if she’d managed that.”

“No, it’s just
me,” she said. “There’s a Metal Harvester ship that we may convince to come for
us once we’re away from the Island. I’ve got a satellite phone, but it works sporadically
at best.”

“Let me get my
shoes,” David said.

He swayed for a
moment as he turned to the bed. Esther caught his arm, feeling his bones
beneath her fingers.

“What’s wrong?”

“I shouldn’t have
stayed up all night playing cards. Just tired.”

David smiled, but
the color had drained from his face.

“That’s one way to
put it. Burns has been starving your boy here,” Harry said from the floor. “He
won’t make it far if you expect him to do any heavy lifting.”

Esther’s gut
twisted a little. “Why were they starving you?” she said, though she already
knew the answer.

“Because I won’t
tell them how to build my algae energy technology,” David said, shooting Esther
a warning glance as he tugged on his boots.

“We’ll get some
strength back in you along the way,” Esther said, faking a smile and a jovial
tone.

She stooped to retrieve
Harry’s gag so she could stick it back in his mouth.

The door flew
open.

Esther whirled
around, and Harry used that instant to roll forward and knock her off her feet.
The world blurred sideways. Esther hit the ground. Shouts and curses clattered
around the room. People rushed in, boots pounding the linoleum. Esther rose to
a crouch, but something smashed into her back. More shouting. Within seconds
Esther was facedown on the floor, pinned by an unseen captor. She struggled and
swore as a heavyset guard punched David in the stomach over and over again.

“That’s enough,
Zeke,” Harry said as another guard untangled him from the confines of the bedsheets.

“Where’d the bird
come from?” Zeke said, letting David slump to his knees beside the bed. He
didn’t bother to hold him down.

David spat blood
and saliva onto the floor.

“Apparently she
came through the cave,” Harry said. “Better send someone down to check on old
Monty.”

“On it,” said the
man who had untied Harry. “I’ll report to Burns too. He’s just back from
patrol.”

He dashed out the
door.

“Come on, you two
lovebirds,” Harry said. “I think Burns is going to like the bargaining chip the
sea-gods were kind enough to deliver this morning. You’re going to talk now,
Davey.”

Esther thrashed
against her captor as Zeke and Harry lifted David between them and dragged him
onto the bed. He was still struggling to catch his breath, and slumped back
against the wall. Then Esther was hoisted into the air for the second time in
ten minutes. Her captor dumped her onto the bed beside David, banging her head
into the wall and causing her vision to waver for a moment. As her sight
cleared, the man who’d set her down pulled a gun from his belt. He sat in the
rickety chair and pointed it in their direction.

“Don’t
move,” he drawled.