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Lori covered her face with her hands and dragged them downward, pulling at her cheeks. She smiled and shook her head. “I would have done the same thing. That’s why we’re friends, because we’re both fucking nuts.” She grabbed my hand and squeezed it. “Thank you for confiding in me.”
Footsteps.
Lori and I ducked down and sat on the wood floor. I pulled the cloth back to see the boys all sitting calmly. BeLew held hands. I reached my finger to my lips and let the cloth fall back. The storage shed shook as the door to chemistry slammed open and shut. Lori and I inched towards its adjoining wall.
“What do you let him get away with?” I whispered. “What do you know about him?”
“Shhhh,” Lori hissed. She pointed to a vent on the wall. It looked like a slotted furnace grate with screws on the sides. She put a fingernail on one side and turned the screw. I did the same on the other side. We gripped the ends once it was completely loose and pulled out the vent.
It gave us an unobstructed view of the chemistry building floor, and there were lots of shoes on that floor. Our eyes met in horror and excitement. I gulped, and we both maneuvered ourselves to our bellies to hear better. The storage room was pitch black compared to the chemistry building, so no one could see us. At least, that’s what I hoped and prayed for.
The room fell quiet when someone spoke. “It’s good to see all of you, but your visit wasn’t scheduled for several hours. We didn’t clear the decks or make the announcement.” I was sure it was Captain Matthews’s voice
Another man answered him. “Weather is coming in from the west faster than expected. It was now or never. Communications are shit and you know it. Make something up to the passengers or don’t. What are they going to do about it, leave? You have control of this ship, don’t you, Matthews?”
The Captain acknowledged his superior and the next twenty minutes of conversation almost put me to sleep. Not only was it in veiled acronyms I didn’t understand, but it centered on supply needs, surveillance, and next steps. Nothing out of the ordinary or nefarious came up in their conversation.
The helicopters were from another ship that was partnered with ours and, due to weather, they changed the schedule. Communications continued to be an issue, but navigation was intact. It was more important to know where to go than to converse with other ships. The voices introduced themselves from different factions of government. All male, which made me give an eye roll in the dark.
Dean’s voice boomed, causing me to jump. He was always glued to Matthews, but his presence in the chemistry building startled me. “What’s he doing here?” he barked.
“Rivera?” another man questioned. “He came up in the facial recognition system a few weeks ago.”
“Nico, it’s good to see you, brother,” another voice said. There were back slaps and handshakes.
My body trembled, and I lifted myself off the floor. “What the fuck?” I gasped. “What the actual fuck?” For a moment, I may have blacked out. My ears filled with a dull roar, and I saw spots in my vision.
Lori yanked me back down, begging me to be quiet. Blood rushed through my body, and I felt my heartbeat pounding in my skull. My hands trembled, and I stood up again, heading towards the door, trying to escape. Lori had wiggled in between me and the exit and pushed on my shins. “Stop,” she hissed. “What are you doing? You’ll get us all killed.”
“Mama,” I heard from below the wood bench. It stopped me in my tracks. My head spun and my pounding heart made me dizzy, but Lewis’s voice brought me back down to earth. I crouched down to the floor and sat cross-legged. I reached for Lewis’s hand and gave him a weak smile.
“Here,” Lori said and shoved a plastic baggy in my face. “Are you hyperventilating?”
“Are you trying to get me to suffocate myself by putting a plastic bag over my head?” I answered.
“Well, you did seem suicidal just now.” She crawled back to the vent, and I stayed put. My legs were like lead. Someone called him brother. Dean now knew his actual name. He’s not who he says he is.
Who is he?
Lori’s hand caught my eye, frantically waving me over. I willed myself to make the arduous crawl back to the vent, my body fighting me the entire way as if it were going into shock.
When I reached the vent, I heard Sam’s voice. “I’m not leaving Thalassa.”
“It’s not your assignment,” Captain Matthews answered. “And you’re lucky you weren’t thrown overboard. You were here under false pretenses. I want your file.”
“He was to reach an island jumper, and he did,” another voice snapped. “Remember your place in this, Matthews. You would also do well to heed that warning, Rivera. You don’t make the orders here.”
There was a silence, and I thought they would hear my heart thudding against the wood floor.
Sam cleared his throat. “I respectfully request a permanent placement on Thalassa.”
“Are you still injured?” another voice asked.
“Yes, but for clarity, I have personal reasons for wanting to stay.”
I saw Lori’s face in the shadows dart back and forth from me to the vent. She recognized his voice. She knew it was Sam. I saw her mouth, “Oh my fucking god,” and I covered my face with my hands, nodding yes.
I heard Dean’s laughter in the room, a snide cackle directed at Sam. He had to be crawling out of his skin to pipe up, but there wasn’t much he could divulge, given the situation. How bad this would be for Dean if Sam was cleaning toilets?
