I can only pray now.

With two quick pumps of my legs, I break the surface again and immediately fling up my bare arm, waving it wildly back and forth. “Here!” I scream over the roar of the quadcopters. “Help! I’m here! Please!”

Their infra must detect me; the gun barrels go slack as the quadcopters pull up. The Minnow speeds away. Over the wave tops, I spot the narrow hulls of the Splinters peeling off and heading back my way as if they’re coming to collect me. I really hope they aren’t.

“Please!” I yell again. With the left-hand Otachi weighing me down, it’s getting harder and harder to tread water. I glance beneath my feet and find a familiar shadow rising fast. Up above, the copters start to sink. They’re coming for me.

No going back now.

I yank my left arm out of the sea, throwing the Otachi’s beams against the lowering hull of the quadcopter above me and twisting the dial to the aggression setting. I thrash my legs, trying to propel myself out of the way. The water beneath me swells.

I slide clear with inches to spare, caught in a tumult of water as Bao breaches clean out of the NeoPacific, his massive limbs slashing at the quadcopter above. With a crash like a freight train derailing, he bats the copter into one of its fellows, but I plunge back underwater before I can see anything else. I throw my arms up over my head, trying to protect it, trying to make myself as small as possible. In this clash of giants, I’m just a skinny blip, washed to the side by the force of the wave Bao produces when he splashes back down.

I choke on saltwater as I try to surface again. All around me is noise and sea, and somewhere out there, a beast is tearing into metal the way a tsunami hits a coast. My whole body feels bruised, pummeled by the waves that keep crashing over me. I kick and gasp, trying to push myself away from the chaos that’s been unleashed.

By the time I’m clear, one of the copters is inside out. Thick smoke clots the air, and tiny fires dot the waves. The second copter is limping back into the air, but Bao’s not letting it go that easily. As it spins, trying to compensate for the damage he dealt to one of its rotors, the Reckoner lunges up, his beak snapping shut on the mount of the machine gun chugging bullets into his hide. With one twist of his neck, Bao turns the quadcopter end over end, slamming down into the wreckage of its fellow as he falls on top of it, his claws ripping at its steel-plated hull.

The third copter’s a fast-retreating speck on the horizon.