Page 106 of Code Bound
He kneels back down, his hand curling around the sides of the metal boat for balance. “What’s that?” he asks, reaching for his weapon he’d set in the bottom of the boat again. “What the fuck is that?”
I force myself not to blink, the cold wind making my eyes water as I keep them open. I don’t want to miss it. My gaze remains locked on him as the first of the three creatures reveals more of itself.
A long narrow snout appears above the water, its body slick and grey. As it moves, I catch sight of a lighter gray color on its bottom and spots running all along its body. It’s large, much larger than the boat. It blows air out of its nose and dives back down.
Locke frowns. “It’s . . . cute?”
“It’s big,” I whisper. “There are three of them.”
“Maybe they’re just curious,” Locke hazards.
“They took out the propulsion,” I murmur, meeting his eyes. “They’re just playing with their food.”
Locke’s eyes widen and he turns back to the scene unfolding before us. None of us make a sound, not wanting to attract the attention of the three creatures circling Nate’s boat.
“Help me!” Nate says, waving at me. “Hey! You two! Come get me! Please! I’ll . . . I’ll give you my pistol! I’ll do whatever you want!”
We don’t bother answering. Why he thinks we could paddle into the middle of that and survive saving him, I don’t know, but assholes like him don’t think like that.
They only think of themselves.
I’ve met many “Nates” in Dross. Sure, Dross is all about survival. It’s brutal, and difficult, and you have to do things you don’t want to. But there’s a difference between people like me, who did it to survive, and people like Nate.
They enjoy the bad things they have to do. Get pleasure from it even.
Perhaps, we’re not much different in some ways, though. Because I’m about to get a whole lot of pleasure from watching this.
I don’t know what the creatures are, but I can sense their malignance even from here. They circle the boat, bumping it with their backs, teasing Nate as they play. He’s screaming threats at us now, angry that we would dare ignore him.
“You fucking rats!” he shouts. “I’m going to shoot you!”
He indeed points his weapon at us and fires off a projectile that goes past us and hits the water. Neither one of us moves, afraid to make any noise and attracts the monsters. One of the creatures hits the boat harder and Nate redirects the weapon toward them. He squeezes it one, two, three, four times. On the fifth squeeze, the weapon clicks and nothing happens.
“Oh, damn,” Locke whispers. “Looks like his weapon is limited on projectiles.”
“Yeah,” I whisper back, watching raptly.
The first creature comes crashing out of the water onto the boat. It’s large and thick, large flippers on the front that it uses to move. The boat immediately tips forward with the weight of the creature as it opens its mouth and reveals sharp, terrifying teeth.
Nate screams as he tips forward toward the creature, water splashing over him at the movement of the creature. He throws his apparently now useless weapon at the creature as a last resort. It bounces off the creature’s head and splashes into the water. He doesn’t pull another weapon, either too panicked to remember his inventory or not having anything else. He’s clearly spent most of his time in the Shatterlands. Items are harder to find here.
I lean forward, watching him as he clamors up the boat, trying to get away from the creature, but there’s nowhere to go. He’s in the middle of the Frostbit Sea, all structures too far away. While there are massive boats in the distance, they’re too far to reach with no way of moving through the water.
“Help me!” he screams at us. “Help me! Please!”
As if we could do anything. As if we wouldwantto.
We watch silently as the first creature slides off, back into the water, throwing Nate violently back forward across the boat. It rocks back and forth, water splashing into the boat as the creatures make large waves and making it sink lower in the water. They swim faster, hitting the boat over and over again, making Nate scream with each movement as he clutches the metal sides in fear.
We watch the creatures work Nate into a panic, watch them seem to enjoy his screaming, the tension in the air building as we float silently on the gentle sea, gently being pulled along by the current. Svetlana moves closer to my neck, as if offering comfort or seeking it. I’m not sure which, but I accept her touch. She needs the warmth.
The tension in the air breaks, and the creatures seem to switch from playing . . . to acting.
The next time they hit the boat, it capsizes and Nate goes screaming into the dark water. The scream cuts off abruptly before he comes sputtering back up above the water, coughing as he starts to frantically swim toward the sinking boat.
“Oh, look,” I murmur. “He can swim.”
The creatures swim around Nate, zooming close and then away, playing a vicious game. I know the moment the playing turns to hunger. Nate screams as something drags him under the water, the sound of water filling his lungs somehow poetic. We sit there for three seconds and I think, “That’s it. He’s dead.” It was a bit anticlimactic, but at least he won’t be hurting anyone else.
