The City of Mirrors
Page 184

“Caaay…leb! Ruuuuunnnn!”
The lip of the gangway halted. It had lodged against a cleat at the edge of the pier. Under the pressure of the ship’s accelerating mass, it began to twist on its axis. Rivets were popping, metal buckling. Caleb and Greer were steps away. Pim was waving, shouting words she couldn’t hear but felt—felt with every atom of her body.
The gangway began to fall.
Still chained to the ship, it cantilevered into the side of the hull. Bodies plunged into the water, some wordlessly, their fate accepted, others with pitiful cries. At the bottom of the ramp, Caleb had hooked an elbow through the rail while simultaneously holding on to Greer, whose feet were balanced on the lowest rung. The Bergensfjord was gathering speed, dragging a roiling whirlpool. As the stern passed by, the ones in the water were dragged under, into the propeller’s froth. Perhaps a cry, a hand reaching up in vain, and they were gone.
In the bowels of the Bergensfjord, Michael was running. Deck by deck he ascended, legs flying, arms swinging, heart pumping in his mouth. With a burst he flung himself into open air. The point of the bow was passing the end of the drydock door.
They weren’t going to clear it. No goddamn way.
He took the stairs to the pilothouse three at a time and charged through the door. “Lore—”
She was staring out the windscreen. “I know!”
“Give it more rudder!”
“You don’t think I did that?”
The gap between the door and the ship’s right flank was narrowing. Twenty yards. Ten. Five.
“Oh, shit,” Lore breathed.
—
Peter and Amy were racing down the dock.
The ship was departing; she was gliding away. Gunfire spattered from the fantail, bullets whizzing over their heads; the virals had broken through.
A crash.
The side of the hull had collided with the end of the drydock door. A long scraping sound followed, the irresistible force of the ship’s momentum meeting the immovable object of the door’s weight. The hull trembled even as it failed to decelerate, thrusting forward.
The great wall of steel slid heartlessly by. In another few seconds, the Bergensfjord would be gone. There was no way to board. Peter saw something hanging off the side of the ship: the fallen gangway, still attached at the top. Two people were clinging to it.
Caleb. Greer.
With one arm crooked around the gangway rail, his son was calling to them while pointing at the end of the pier. The drydock door had been nudged away from the ship; it now stood at an acute angle to the moving hull. When the gangway passed the end of the door, the gap between them would narrow to a jumpable distance.
But Amy was no longer beside him; Peter was alone. He spun and saw her, standing a hundred feet behind him, facing away.
“Amy, come on!”
“Get ready to jump!” Caleb yelled.
The virals had reached the far end of the pier. Amy drew her sword and called to Peter over her shoulder, “Get on that ship!”
“What are you doing? We can make it!”
“Don’t make me explain! Just go!”
Suddenly he understood: Amy did not intend to leave. Perhaps she never had.
Then he saw the girl.
Far out of his reach, she was crouched behind a giant spool of cable. Strawberry hair tied with a ribbon, scratches on her face, a stuffed animal gripped tightly to her chest with arms thin as twigs.
Amy saw her, too.
She sheathed her sword and dashed forward. The virals were charging down the dock. The little girl was frozen with terror. Amy swung her onto her hip and began to run. With her free hand she waved Peter forward. “Don’t wait! I’ll need you to catch us!”
He raced down the drydock door. The bottom of the gangway was thirty feet away and closing fast. Caleb yelled, “Do it now!”
Peter leapt.
For an instant it seemed he had jumped too soon; he would plunge into the roiling water. But then his hands caught the rail of the gangway. He pulled himself up, found his footing, and turned around. Amy, still holding the girl, was running down the top of the wall. The gangway was passing them by; she was never going to make it. Peter reached out as Amy took five bounding strides, each longer than the last, and flung herself over the abyss.
Peter could not remember the moment when he grabbed her hand. Only that he’d done it.
—
They had cleared the dock. Michael ran down from the pilothouse and dashed to the rail. He saw a deep dent, fifty feet long at least, though the wound was high above the waterline. He looked toward shore. A hundred yards aft, at the end of the dock, a mass of virals was watching the departing ship like a crowd of mourners.
“Help!”
The voice came from the stern.
“Someone’s fallen!”
He raced aft. A woman, clutching an infant, was pointing over the rail.
“I didn’t know she was going to jump!”
“Who? Who was it?”
“She was on a stretcher, she could barely walk. She said her name was Alicia.”
—
A coiled rope lay on the deck. Michael pushed the button on the radio. “Lore, kill the props!”
“What?”
“Do it! Full stop!”
He was already wrapping the rope around his waist, having shoved the radio into the hand of the woman, who stared at him in confusion.
“Where are you going?” the woman asked.
He stepped over the rail. Far below, the waters swirled in a maelstrom. Kill them, he thought. Dear God, Lore, kill those screws now.