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‘This is wonderful,’ I tell Ester. ‘Thank you.’
I throw the squid to Socrates, who snaps it up eagerly. I wish I could bring it down to him and feed him by hand, but we’re moving at a fast clip now, and so is he. I know he can easily keep pace with our boat, but I’m not sure whether he’ll follow us or not. Dolphins have their own priorities.
‘He can rest on board if he gets tired,’ Ester tells me.
It takes me a second to process that sentence. ‘What do you meanon board?’
‘Have you seen the captain’s room?’ she asks. ‘Harding-Pencroft has always had dolphin friends. It’s like Top.’ She scratches his ear. ‘There’s always been a Top at Harding-Pencroft. I mean, before Harding-Pencroft was destroyed.’
I don’t quite understand what she means about Top and the dolphins always being at HP, but when she mentions the school’s destruction, she gets agitated again. She starts tapping her fingertips on her thighs. The volume of her voice goes up several notches.
‘ANYWAY, I CAME TO GET YOU,’ she says.
‘I – Okay. What’s up?’
I’m not sure I want to know. It has been a very long day already.
‘Dr Hewett wants to see you two on the forward deck,’ Ester tells us. ‘He’s not well. I’m not an expert, but I would say he has diabetes and probably an additional underlying condition.’
Gem and I glance at each other uneasily. The idea that Hewett is ill doesn’t surprise me. He has looked awful since … well, always. Ester doesn’t have much of a bedside manner, but I trust her instincts. She once announced loudly in the middle of lunch that my monthly cramps might not be so horrible if I increased my intake of vitamin B1. For the record, she was right.
‘Okay,’ I say. ‘Is that why he wants to see us? Because he’s ill?’
‘No,’ Ester says. ‘I just thought about it, so I said it. He wants to see you because the prisoner is starting to talk.’ She looks at her palms. ‘Also, I have squid slime on me. I’m going to go wash my hands because that seems like the right thing to do.’
Caleb South is zip-tied to a metal folding chair. His wrists are bound behind him, his ankles fastened to the chair legs.
When I see him, my anger tries to harden into a suit of armour, but I’m so exhausted it’s more like a worn-out sleep shirt. It keeps falling away, stretching into an amorphous mass of grief and shock.
Caleb is still in his wetsuit. His mask and hood have been removed, revealing close-set brown eyes and a wedge of blond hair tinged green from chlorine. His broken nose is swelling up nicely. Blood has crusted on his upper lip.
He’s been positioned facing west, so he has to squint into the sun whenever he looks up at Dr Hewett. Dru and Kiya, brandishing their new Leyden guns, stand to either side of the captive. Kiya still looks grumpy from getting electrocuted. Behind Dr Hewett stands Linzi Huang, one of the Orcas.
I’m relieved to see Linzi. It means Dr Hewett is still following standard procedures. An Orca is supposed to be present at all important negotiations. Aside from being the school’s medics, they’re our recorders and witnesses, our school conscience. Having them around tends to keep everybody elseon good behaviour. I don’t really think any of my classmates would do something like beat up a prisoner to get information, but, after what we’ve been through, nerves are frayed. Tempers are high.
Considering Caleb’s broken nose and the fact that he was recently body-slammed by a dolphin, he looks pretty good. The only torture he’s endured is Harding-Pencroft’s trademark form of humiliation. Around his biceps are children’s inflatable water wings, bright yellow with pink duckies. A matching inner tube circles his waist. This is how upperclassmen treat chum-year kids who prove inept at their assignments. They’re forced to wear pink duckies for an entire day. Many kids never get over the shame. Why we had some inflatables on board, I’m not sure, but I’m also not surprised.
Caleb scowls when he sees me, but he offers no snide comments. The duckies must have broken his spirit.
Hewett leans towards the prisoner. ‘Mr South, tell Miss – tell Prefect Dakkar what you told me.’
Caleb curls his lip. ‘This boat is going to end up at the bottom of the sea.’
‘Not that part,’ Hewett says wearily. ‘Theotherpart.’
‘TheAronnaxis coming.’
‘Your submarine,’ I say, remembering my conversation with Gem.
Caleb lets out a broken laugh. ‘TheAronnaxis a submarine the way a Lamborghini is an economy car. But yes, genius, it’s our ship. You’ve got maybe an hour if you’re lucky. They sent us to take you alive …’ He spits a flake of dried blood from his lip. ‘Since we failed and never reported in, they’ll follow. They’ll torpedo this hunk of junk and confirm the kill afterwards.’
Confirm the kill.
I feel a coldness in my belly that’s as sharp as the edge of a fillet knife. I wonder if theAronnaxcrew talked about Dev andme this way before they destroyed our school, as if we were nothing more than impersonal targets.
I want to slap him. I hold back the urge. Linzi’s presence is a calming reminder:That is not who we are. We don’t stoop to their level.
‘Why the attack?’ I ask Caleb. ‘Why me? And why did they send a bunch of students who couldn’t do the job?’
