Page 18 of Currents of Desire

He flinches, then nods. “Yeah. Better.”

He walks past me, keeping a wide berth, and heads for the sliding glass door. He unlocks it, and the sound is a gunshot in the silence. He slides it open and steps out onto the veranda.

I follow.

The air outside is strange. It is warm, humid, with the smell of crushed leaves and wet earth, and the pressure is incredibly low. It pulls at my eardrums, a sensation not unlike rising too quickly from the deep.

Jack grips the railing and looks out at the devastation. The yard is gone. In its place is a lake of debris. A corrugated iron roof from a shed sits in the middle of where the lawn used to be. A massive gum tree has been uprooted, its roots clawing at the sky like the fingers of a drowning giant.

“Jesus,” he whispers. “It’s all gone.”

I move to stand beside him. I do not see tragedy but power, and the ocean reclaiming what was stolen.

“It is merely rearranged,” I say. “The water moves things. It cleanses.”

He laughs, a bitter, sharp sound. “Cleanses? Look at this, Nerida. It’s ruined. Everything I built… everything I tried to fix…” He gestures to the waterline, which is creeping dangerously close to the veranda’s floorboards. “It takes everything.”

I look at the water. It is brown and ugly, choked with silt, not the clear, crushing black of my home. But it is still water. It calls to me.

“Why are you here, Jack?” I ask. “You fear the water. Yet you live on its edge.”

His eyes searching my face. The blue sky above casts a strange, heavenly light on his features, softening the lines of worry.

“I don’t know,” he admits. “Maybe I’m waiting for it to finish the job.” He turns back to the flood. “What about you? You said you were… hunting. But you were hurt. You were running.”

I hesitate. The truth is a dangerous thing to share. Information is leverage, but he has fed and sheltered me. And last night… last night he gave me more than just shelter.

“There is a war,” I say softly.

He frowns. “A war? In the ocean?”

“Not your ocean,” I correct him. “Deeper. In the trenches, where the pressure would crush your submarines like aluminum cans. There are… factions. My people. We are not all the same.”

I look at my hands, the webbing between my fingers translucent in the sunlight. “I was a soldier,” I continue. “A specialized unit. We were bred for stealth. For assassination. We strike in the dark, where no light reaches.”

“And?” Jack prompts.

“And I was good at it.” Old pride, cold and sharp rises within me. “I was the best, but my commander… he grew ambitious. He wanted to expand our territory into the thermal vents. Forbidden, sacred ground.”

I pause, the memory of the betrayal tasting like ash in my mouth. “He sent my unit in as a distraction,” I say, my voice hardening. “He knew the guardians of the vents would wake. He knew they would slaughter us. He used us as bait so he could flank them.”

Jack is silent, watching me.

“My sisters died,” I say. “Torn apart. Eaten. I was the only one fast enough to escape the thermal blast. I deserted. I swam up, past the crush depth, past the twilight zone… until the pressure headache nearly blinded me. I swam until I hit the storm.”

“You’re a deserter,” Jack says. It is not an accusation but a recognition.

“I am a survivor,” I hiss. “There is a difference.”

He nods slowly. He reaches into his pocket, pulls out a packet of cigarettes, realizes they are soaked, and throws them into the water with a curse.

“I was SES,” he says suddenly. “State Emergency Service years ago.”

I tilt my head. “A soldier?”

“A rescuer,” he corrects. “Or… I was supposed to be.” He grips the railing tighter. “There was a flood. Not a cyclone, just… rain. Days of it. A family was trapped on a roof. We took the boat out. The current was… it was like a living thing. Angry.”

“We saved the mother and father, but the kid… he slipped.” Jack’s voice drops to a hollow whisper. “He just slipped. I had his hand...” He slowly looks down at his own hand, still clamped around the wood.