Page 33 of High Seas

Footsteps lumbered down a stone staircase that had been hewn into the bedrock. The butcher had worked for hours to clean and cut a pair of swine. He made a drain for the blood to flow down into this very space, placing a large bucket beneath the drain to catch it all. If I hadn’t drunk its contents periodically, the blood that poured in would have overflowed. Now it sat empty, the slats wet and stained crimson.

The butcher’s boots appeared, backlit from above. Then came a pair of stout legs. He ducked at the bottom step and hunched over, shifting a large hunk of meat from his shoulder into the cradle of his arms. Wrapped in white linen, blood soaked through the fabric. It smelled delicious, but not as good as what pulsed through the man hefting the heavy cut. The swishing sound coming from the large vein in his throat was glorious as it flowed to every single cell, throughout every part of him.

Keeping him alive.

His pale hair was gathered in a tie at the nape of his neck. He was young, strong from the looks of his muscled arms.

The priest was easy to take down. He was old, frail, and had no fight left in him. But this man would fight.

My heart thundered as he eased the wrapped meat into the darkest corner. He wiped his hands on his apron and turned around to find me standing behind him. His eyes widened. “What the…?”

I froze. “Titus?”

Titus drew a large knife I hadn’t seen tucked into his smock.

* * *

Enoch

Titus lightly knocked before easing the door open and ducking his head inside, seeing Eve asleep on the cot. He’d left for a time to attend to his business, but I couldn’t leave to do mine because I didn’t want to leave Eve alone. If Terah came back, I wouldn’t trust her to behave.

“Storm’s letting up,” Titus remarked quietly as he walked farther into the room. “How is she?”

“You tell me.”

He stopped a few feet away from where I sat. “I think we need to go home as fast as possible, Enoch. That’s what I think.” I was afraid of that. “In our time, doctors can work miracles, given the right supplies. Kael’s the one who figured out how to send us back in the first place. If anyone can help her, it’s him. I hate it, and him, but it’s true.”

“Was Kael the one from her nightmare?” I bristled with the thought that this Kael person hurt her.

“Yeah, it was him.” Titus’s back stiffened at the memory. “I didn’t know he refused to sedate her.”

“Did he sedate you?”

Titus sniffed. “Yeah. I mean, I don’t remember anything. The medicine didn’t completely block the pain, but at least it made the procedure bearable.”

“Do you trust Kael with her life?” I questioned, rising from my seat. “Because I’m not sure I do, Titus.” I raked my hand through my hair and then gestured to the chair I’d been sitting in. “Please, sit down.”

“I’m soaked,” he argued.

“This is a ship. It won’t be the first or last time the furniture has gotten wet.”

He sank gratefully into the chair and propped his elbows on his knees, grabbing the back of his head.

“She proposed the idea of taking the tech from her hand and replacing it with one from a clone.”

Titus shook his head. “Even if I wanted to, I’m not sure I could do it. I’m sure as hell not qualified for an operation of that sort. Sure, I can tinker with circuits, but whatever is wrong with her is a more complex problem, and one I can’t identify, let alone fix. I mean, I don’t get it!” he huffed. “The containment cell, which encapsulates her plutonium disc, is intact. It hasn’t been unsealed or damaged at all. I looked it over thoroughly. That means something else is faulty; I’m just not sure what. And I have no idea how to figure it out. I repaired a circuit that looked damaged in thirteen forty-eight, but it’s not damaged now. None of them are as far as I can see.”

“If you jump now, are you sure you’ll make it home?” I watched him agonize over the question for a long moment.

“I’ve been wracking my brain.” He tilted his head to look up at me. “I can’t figure out why it didn’t work the first time. From what we were told, it should’ve taken us straight back to our time. That’s what it’s calibrated to do. I just opened my own tech. My system set to take me back to the date from which we jumped. But hers? There is no data in hers at all. It’s totally blank. It’s like…”

I narrowed my eyes. “It’s like what?”

“It’s like they didn’t want her to make it back,” he finished.

“Why wouldn’t they?” I asked.

“Because Kael knows something’s wrong with me,” Eve answered. She looked from me to Titus.

---