Page 27 of The Captain
I moved between the pens until the light changed and the facility took on that bruised-gold glow that turned everyone soft around the edges. We cycled fluids, checked eyes, kept the world from being too much. Miguel installed a shade rig over the Kogia’s pen. Becca’s timer chimed steady as a metronome. Tamika walked the perimeter the way only someone who had chased crowds off a beach could—friendly, unyielding.
Somewhere in the middle of it, I realized I was starving.
“Eat,” Miguel said, pressing a protein bar into my palm. “You get worse when you’re empty.”
I bit off a corner and chewed without tasting. “Be honest,” I said. “Am I impossible today?”
“You’re always impossible,” he said dryly. “That’s why we like you. Today you’re just louder.”
I let that sit, and it didn’t cut the way I thought it might. Loud meant I was still here.
Miguel, Tamika, and now Becca were more than just colleagues. They were my friends.
At 1600 I ducked into the back office, put McGuire on speaker for ten surgical minutes, logged our tonal, and pressed her—politely—for permit numbers and corridors. When the callwas done, I sent the updated chart to the network, texted McGuire a short list of follow-ups I intended to ask whether she liked it or not, and scrolled my own phone like a woman trying not to look for what she didn’t have.
No number. No text. No man.
I hadn’t asked Jacob for his number. He hadn’t asked me for mine. The way we’d taken each other last night didn’t feel like something that required the economy of digits.
I probably wouldn’t have called, even if I could. That didn’t stop me from wanting the option.
“Dr. A.” Becca again. “Tamika says if you don’t go off campus for an hour, she’s going to mutiny.”
“I don’t have an hour,” I said on reflex, the same way I always did.
“You do,” Tamika said from the doorway, one shoulder on the frame. “Because we’re about to make you—and we’re coming, too. Night crew just clocked in, intake’s covered, and hydrophones are logging. The animals are watched.”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Then let me convince you,” she said, unbothered. “Salty Mike’s. One hour. Beer and bar food.”
I opened my mouth to protest. Before I could, Miguel tightened the last clip on the shade rig and cut in. “Come with us, Doc. Monitors are set. If anything blips, they’ll ping.”
It wasn’t the word so much as the voice—steady.
“Fine,” I said, and the room exhaled. “One hour. If the Kogia dips?—”
“Night crew calls, we bolt,” Becca said, already grabbing her bag. “We know.”
“And if the Navy calls?—”
Tamika’s smile sharpened. “Night crew will tell them the doctor is otherwise engaged, and that you’ll call them back in thirty minutes.”
“Twenty,” I said, because I couldn’t help myself.
“Twenty-five,” she bargained. “Come on, Camille. Before you realize you’re human and have feelings about it.”
I rinsed my hands, ran a towel over my face, and looked in the small mirror we kept by the sink. I swapped my damp tank for a clean one, tugged on shorts and boots that had come honest by their scuffs. I told myself I looked like a woman going out for a beer on a weeknight.
Atlas’s detail sat where Ryker had promised—ten paces beyond the gate, eyes on the world and not on me. The smallest acknowledgment: a nod. I gave them one back and pretended it made me irritated instead of relieved.
When we arrived, the marina smelled like fried things and tide. Salty Mike’s deck caught the last of the sun. The neon buzzed. The “Open” sign was still the same stubborn red I’d walked under last night when I’d decided to let the ocean crawl into bed with me in the shape of a man.
“Look at you,” Tamika said when we reached the top of the steps, grinning. “You look like a woman who could teach a lesson without raising her voice.”
“Then let’s not make me,” I said with a laugh.
We found a high-top near the rail where the river put on a show—shrimp boats idling home, gulls organizing their petty little coup on the pilings. The four of us fit around the scarred wood like pieces that had been cut to measure. A waitress took our order without asking for IDs because she’d seen all of our faces too often to bother with a ritual.
