And if I can’t escape, if I can’t get myself back to shore, it will all be by my hand. The possibility of failure hits me like a bullet to the chest, and all of a sudden I can feel it—I can feel the slug that’ll be put in me if I do anything to sabotage the captain’s plans. My heart thunders and my jaw locks tight. If it comes to that, I’ll have to keep going along with her orders. I’m too scared to do anything else.

I slump to the floor of the trainer deck. Dampness soaks into my shorts as a small wave breaks against the side ports.

“What’s eating you, shoregirl?” Swift drawls from her perch.

A twinge of annoyance rattles through me. “Don’t play that game. You don’t want to know what I’m feeling.”

“I’m bored as shit—I’ll listen to anything.”

I consider. She’s the closest thing I have to a friend on this boat, even if she does want to gut me most of the time. And after today, I have to move back in with her. “I’m thinking about home,” I lie.

“You’re SRCese, huh?”

“Yeah,” I say, crossing my arms. “We’re based just outside of New Los Angeles.”

“Never been,” Swift shoots back.

“It’s nice. Good beaches. Of course, it’s empty three quarters of the year. The coast’s lined with summer homes and hotels, so there’s not much in the way of permanent residents. But during summer it comes alive.”

She wrinkles her nose. “Gimme open sea any day. Couldn’t stand living on a beach.”

“Oh yeah? You’ve never tried it?”

Swift grins, stretching her arms behind her head. “Nah, shoregirl. Flotilla, born and raised. Didn’t touch solid land until after I’d started my bleed.”

Of course she’s from a floating city. Now that I think about it, that’s the only place that a crew like this could come from. Those behemoths thrive on piracy, unregulated by any state as they drift with the currents cycling the NeoPacific. They’re too big to be taken down by a military force, and no state has the balls to try. The last attempt was twenty years ago, when a Filipino armada tried to blockade a floating city and starve out the pirates supplying it. The retribution was ruthless. Pirates across the NeoPacific began wrecking any ship flying the flag of the Philippines, and their ocean trade is still struggling to put itself back together in the aftermath.

It suits Swift to be from such a volatile place.

“How long have you been on the Minnow, then?” I ask. My gaze flicks to the ocean outside, and I’m relieved to see Bao continuing to keep pace.

“Captain took me on when I was thirteen, started me off as a deckhand. So, uh, five years?”