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One
Zali
T
he ocean was crystal clear, shafts of late-spring sunlight filtering through to me even a few metres below the surface. The aquamarine of the water against the sandy bottom morphed into a deeper royal blue as the current carried me over the rocky reef.
The Broadwater was busy, engine noise from the hundreds of boats traversing the waterway a constant hum in my ears against the rush of the outgoing tide. A familiar rumble started overhead, the inboard motors of my yacht—the Noble Steed—turning over as Ryder moved my baby down current from me.
It was a rare day that there were no divers at the rocky reef, leaving me alone in the water. Conditions weren’t ideal, despite the pristine clarity of the water and the picture-perfect day. A king tide, care of the full moon the night before, had reached its crescendo half an hour earlier. The outgoing tide was now rushing from the nineteen-kilometre estuary through a two-hundred-and-fifty-metre-wide bottleneck, sucking everything except the strongest of swimmers out with it.
I liked to live on the edge.
Being alone out here, the rush of the water surrounding me as I kicked, descending ever deeper, was my kind of freedom. I rarely got to swim like this so close to the main hub of the Gold Coast. Apparently, there were some rules even I had to follow.
Like not being naked in public.
Clothes were overrated.
But now, blessedly alone, I was free.
I loved the ocean. The serenity of it, despite its constant motion. It was the place where my personalities converged. Where the multiple personas I had to maintain fell away, leaving me at my most honest.
I’d never leave if I had the chance. Just me, my scuba gear, and speargun were the only things I needed. There was a sense of freedom in being surrounded by salt water, a detachment from the real world. Sometimes I needed that. Sometimes I needed to pretend that the pressure and the memories weren’t waiting to catch me off-guard and drown me. Sometimes I needed to forget the shitty people I came across online too.
There were very few people who ever got close enough to see any kind of vulnerability from me. I had a reputation to maintain. Professionally, I was known as Queen. To the handful of people who knew me personally, I was Zali. My personas had been an uncomfortable fit for far too many years. As a kid, I’d been sweet and always smiling. My preteen and teenage years were almost the complete opposite. I’d rather forget my past, but it was imprinted on my very soul.
Queen had become my shield, but she’d also trapped me too. I’d become hardened. A loner too, except for the handful of people who wouldn’t let me walk away from them.
I was the infamous hacker. A queen by name and status. I was untouchable. Uncatchable. Unstoppable. I’d taken down Australia’s largest internet service provider when I was thirteen because they were mean to my dad.
I’d done far worse since.
I could get into anything, do anything with a computer.
Boundaries didn’t contain me the way they corralled the rest of the world.
Like the chess piece, I went anywhere I desired. It wasn’t that I didn’t respect boundaries and security measures others set. They were just meaningless to me. I lived by my own rules, my own moral code. If I wanted something, I took it. Data was the most important currency to me. Knowing how to access it and use it for what I determined was a good cause had served me well thus far. I had no intentions of changing any of that.
Clearing my mind, I concentrated on the task at hand—dinner. Ryder probably already had a feast planned like he always did, but I was in the mood for freshly caught fish.
My legs were burning, already tired from the exertion of swift-water swimming. I inhaled slowly, preserving myshort supply of oxygen in my mini scuba tank. I only had a twenty-minute window, but it was all I needed. I swam deeper, the blue landscape enveloping me as I neared the bottom of the plunging hole.
The rocky reef was a shelter from the current, providing cover for the palm-sized baitfish that called it home. They were still prey though, a school of jewfish, each half as long as my arm, darting between the rocks to gorge on them until their bellies were full.
A nylon net was hooked around my wrist—easy enough for me to detach if I had to fight a shark for the fish I was about to catch. In my other hand, I gripped my speargun, aiming it at the largest of the nearby fish.
Depressing the trigger caused an instantaneous chain reaction. The spear launched, whizzing through the depths before piercing the fish straight through its gills. Baitfish scattered, zipping into crevices between rocks while the school shot away from the impaled jew, then regathered outside of my range.
I bagged the fish. It was a good size, plenty big enough for me to eat. But I was in the mood for company tonight. Having a second fish for Ryder would at least encourage him to stay on deck after he’d cooked for me.
My oxygen was getting low, and I was now holding a ticking timebomb. Bull sharks frequented this spot almost as much as divers, and the smell of fish blood in the water would make them curious. A curious, hungry bull shark was a dangerous one.
But I wasn’t a quitter.
Reloading my spear as smoothly as possible, I tried to avoid startling the school again. Keeping an eye on my surroundings was easier in the slower currents but more difficult in the lower light.
Two jewfish were edging closer, choosing food over the apparent safety of the seagrass. I aimed, lining up the shot.
