As we rush toward the surface, the fire reignites, the bullets blazing around us, the lasers doing their best to steal my sight, but I hold true with everything in me. I can’t lower the Otachi, can’t change course. This is the final blow. This is what’s going to save her, save all of them.

When he hits the boat, I don’t hold him back. Bao’s claws rake the hull far past the engine mounts as he rolls onto his back, bringing his massive rear legs up to kick the ship. His beak closes around a twisted piece of metal, and I brace myself as he rips it clean from the ship. I squeeze my eyes closed, lunging forward until I’m pressed flat against his skull and praying that his bulk shields me from the bullets strafing the water.

He keeps going.

It’s pure, relentless savagery, the sort I learned aboard the Minnow, the sort that’s so innate to Bao that it’s a crime not to release it. And just like that, the third boat is dead in the water.

I pull the Otachi triggers to force my beast to fall back, and there’s a certain amount of reluctance to it. I want to see how good I did. I want to see how far he’ll go.

And it brings me around.

It brings me all the way around, and as I sink into the deep, dark waters, leaving the chaos above and descending into the black, I realize that there’s no way to explain what I’ve just done to the people rescuing me. They didn’t see a lost girl, a prisoner, a victim. No, they saw me for what I am.

And what I am doesn’t belong where I came from. What I am doesn’t even deserve to go back there.

A chill sinks into me, or maybe it’s just the waters. All I can see is the beam of light dropping endlessly below and the faint outline of Bao’s head that the glow catches. The pressure sits uncomfortably on my shoulders.

I could still make an attempt to communicate with the ships I’ve just disabled, to win them over. To go home.

But that feels like denial. The industry I fought so desperately to save all these months is rotten from the inside, and there’s no way I can go back there knowing what I know. I could bring the truth about Fabian Murphy to shore, but all they’d see is the girl who spent three months on a pirate boat, raising a pirate-born monster. The girl who wrecked the quadcopters. The girl who trashed the pursuit boats and shredded their companions. They wouldn’t take my word for it.

But out here, maybe I can find a way to show them. I click off the Otachi, and Bao drifts to a halt.