Cameron Stracher - The Water Wars

“Who shut off the light?” I asked.

“I threw the switch,” Will said. He’d been leaning against a box that controlled power for the floor. He cut the voltage as soon as he’d heard Nasri’s voice.

“Quick thinking,” Sula remarked. She leaned over to pull the harpoon from Nasri’s chest. I covered my eyes in the crook of Will’s elbow.

“Where are they?” I asked, my voice muffled by Will’s arm.

“Not here.”

But Sula was wrong. A low moaning interrupted her efforts to retrieve the harpoon. In the dark corner of the small room—hard to believe we could miss it—a pile of blankets stirred. I ran over and tossed them aside.

“Ulysses!”

His face was battered and bruised; dried blood caked his beard; his trousers were sheared at the knees and crusted from his wound—but he was alive. His eyelids fluttered, but he couldn’t open them. He tried to speak, but no words emerged.

I put my lips next to his ear. “It’s okay,” I whispered. “I’m here. We’re going to take care of you.”

I wasn’t sure Ulysses understood me, but I kept repeating the words in the hope that he would.

Sula reached into a pouch on her belt and withdrew a syringe. I jumped to my feet and nearly grabbed it. “Adrenaline,” she explained. “His body needs energy.”

I tried to relax. I had to trust her, just as I’d trusted Ulysses. I helped Sula roll up Ulysses’s sleeve. Then Sula injected him. Nothing happened at first, but in a few moments he stirred, then moved his head and opened his eyes. They fixed on Sula.

“Who are you?” he asked gruffly.

“She’s Sula,” I said, stroking Ulysses’s bearded cheek.

“Where are we?”

I explained that we were still inside Bluewater. We had rescued him from the torture chamber, and Nasri was dead. “Sula knows how to escape.” I turned to her. “Don’t you?” I asked.

“Getting in is easy,” said Sula. “Getting out will be more difficult. If they see us boarding the skimmer, they’ll catch us. The boat is slower than anything they’ve got.”

“So we can’t let them see us,” I said.

“We’ll need to take out their eyes.” Her smile was lined and hard, but, like Ulysses’s, hid mischief.

I nodded.

“It won’t work,” Will said. “They’ll catch us on the beach. We need something faster.”

“Yes, and it’d be nice to have some commandos while we’re dreaming,” Sula muttered.

“You said you could drive anything,” Will continued. “They have jets.”

Sula’s eyes brightened.

“They’ll never expect it,” he went on.

“But we can’t leave Kai here,” I protested.

Sula frowned. “Who said anything about leaving without him? He’s worth too much to leave behind.”

“You’re not going to sell him!” I said, horrified.

“Sell him? Do I look like a merc?”

I hesitated. But her violet eyes made me trust her. Whatever suffering she’d endured had made her unblinking and resolute.

We helped Ulysses to his feet. He was weak, but the adrenaline helped. Sula quickly examined him and confirmed nothing was broken.

“I could have told you that,” Ulysses growled.

“Oh, Ulysses, she’s just worried about you.” For the first time since we had left home, I felt a surge of optimism. Our group of three had grown to four, and soon, I hoped, we would be six.

Sula led us out of the cell into the dim hallway. “So you’re the great pirate king?” she asked.

“Not a king,” he said. “I’ve explained that.”

“I always wondered what pirates did with all that water they stole.”

“We don’t steal water. We take it from people who don’t deserve it.”

“Ah, you mean from the pipelines that irrigate crops for innocent children?”

“And I suppose you deliver the water you’re skimming from this abomination to orphans and widows?”

They bickered like this for a while, but I could tell they admired each other. Two fighters; two survivors. Sula, the loner. Ulysses, the leader. Where she was impulsive, he was measured and deliberate. Where she would strike first, he would strike back. Their differences, however, were less important than their common enemy: Bluewater.

“The boy will be in the presentation room,” said Ulysses.

Sula put her hand on her harpoon. “We’ll need more weapons.”

“I don’t care how quick you are with that spear, you’ll not outfight the security forces of a half-dozen nations.”

“I’ve fought twenty men and killed them all.”

“Were they armed?”

“Of course they were armed!”

“Listen to me. You’ll not beat these people by killing them. For every one you kill, there will be two more coming at you. And what about the children? What do you plan to do with them? Give them weapons?”

“I can fire a gun,” said Will.

Sula turned to him as if she might consider it, then she swung back to Ulysses. “You have a better idea?”

“We’ll need a distraction.

“Such as?”

“Bluewater needs water. What if it were dammed?”

“That’s impossible.”

“Easier than killing hundreds.”

Sula was not a listener, but she remained silent while Ulysses outlined his plan. Soon she was nodding while Ulysses scratched a rough schematic in the dust.

“It will be a race to get out of here,” he concluded, “You’ll have to prepare the skimmer for all of us.”

“Sula can fly jets,” said Will.

Ulysses stared at her with newfound admiration. “Bluewater has jets.”

“What was your first clue?” asked Sula as if she were talking to an infant.

I watched Ulysses recalibrate this information. His brow furrowed, and the bird tattooed on his neck dipped its wing. “The jetport will have a security detail.”

“They’ll be looking for us on the water,” said Sula.

“It won’t take long for them to figure out their mistake.”

“I’ll need five minutes.”

Ulysses nodded. I knew that pirates worked together, their groups small but well-coordinated. I surveyed our group. Two of us had never handled a weapon, three of us were injured, and the four of us were badly outnumbered. Yet our survival—and Kai’s—depended on our collective effort. Ulysses divvied up the tasks. Sula and I would cause the diversion. Ulysses and Will would make their way to the presentation room. If everything went as planned, we would meet on the roof, where the jets were parked.

“Be careful,” Ulysses instructed. “Stay low, and keep to the corners. Avoid the open halls. If there’s shooting, don’t engage; keep moving.”

“You be careful too,” I said to him. The drug Sula had given him was wearing off, and he flinched when I took his hand. His skin was sallow. Beads of perspiration lined his forehead. But his grip was strong, and his eyes were focused and intense. He pulled me closer, and his warm body and pirate smell enveloped me: wood smoke and sand.

“After this, no matter what happens, no more rescues,” he said softly to my ear. “Promise me that.”

I nodded solemnly. If we didn’t rescue Kai, there wasn’t going to be a second chance. We would never see our parents again.

As if he sensed my fear, Ulysses said, “I’ll get you home. Word of honor.”

“No one’s going home if we don’t hurry,” said Sula. I gave Will a hug, but there was no time to linger. Sula moved swiftly for the stairwell, and I hurried to catch up.

The steel steps glistened, but rust had already begun to wear through on the risers. Like everything else about Bluewater, the shiny surfaces hid corrosion and corruption. The entire edifice was a monument to ignorance. The truth was that butterflies could not disrupt an entire ecosystem simply by beating their wings. It took willful neglect and deliberate blindness, the refusal to see the obvious even as the land grew toxic before our eyes. But I still held out hope that we could change our ways.