Page 17

golem

Scarlett

T he well-meaning crewmember's shots go wild, shocking precisely no one except maybe him. The speedboat approaches from the port side, well to stern, at an oblique angle. We all wait until they're closer.

As it closes within firing range, the speedboat cuts parallel, and muzzle flashes burst bright, sending rounds whizzing past us. I return fire, hearing the others now doing the same. I catch sight of a face behind a rifle as the speedboat cruises parallel past us, rounds dinging and cracking and ricocheting.

More gunfire rattles from the starboard side, and I whirl to see a second, identical speedboat cutting past, pouring fire at us. A crewmember takes a round to the chest and topples into the sea. Lorenzo moves to fill his place, and he drops an enemy right before the speedboat carves away to come about.

On our side, they've already come around and are cutting toward us for a second raking pass. Solomon is concentrating his fire on the stern near the waterline, hoping to disable the craft while Inez and I put down suppressive fire.

Another crewmember goes down.

Lorenzo takes a round to the arm, a graze that leaves him bloody but mostly okay. Another round nicks my earlobe, and Solomon takes a round at an angle from a distance—it hits his vest, knocking him to the deck, gasping as rain beads on his eyelashes. Only Inez seems to be immune, most rounds going nowhere near her even as she displays uncanny marksmanship, dropping several targets—an incredible show of skill since she's shooting at a moving target from a moving position.

A third boat appears.

The odds aren't looking super great. I lock eyes with Sol, and we share a silent moment of acknowledgment that this could be it.

And then Sol finally punches through the skin of the boat raking our port side, a hole belching fire and smoke as the sleek craft shudders and slows to a halt. Immediately, we concentrate our fire on that vessel as its occupants swarm toward the bow, away from the fire in the engine compartment. The hole takes on water as the craft bobs in the rolling swells and begins angling down.

It's not a time for mercy—Inez and I pick off targets as they jump into the water. A few moments later, the vessel is out of sight; bodies bob, staining the churning sea red.

Too bad another boat takes its place, and another behind it, swinging wide to come at us from the front, and now we're being circled by speedboats like sharks circling a chum dump.

Small arms fire rattles from every direction, chattering and barking. Rounds whizz and snap, buzz and sizzle, thunking into the deck and walls and ricocheting off the sides.

We're giving them hell, enemy after enemy dropping—the four of us are all combat-hardened and well-trained, whereas the crew tends to blast long bursts, most of which go high and wide and accomplish very little but wasting ammunition.

Now, three boats approach our starboard side, working in unison to distract the bulk of our attention. It works—we have to put the bulk of our people on that side just to keep their fire down; meanwhile, the fourth speedboat approaches our port side from the stern.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

The port side boat slinks closer; I’m the only one on that side, and they have me pinned down behind the doorway to the cockpit. The moment I roll out, a barrage of bullets sends me right back under cover.

I hear a metal-on-metal sound: they're getting ready to board. On the other side of the boat, I hear a shout of pain and a splash. Something explodes, and I can only hope it's an enemy boat.

I risk a brief peek—they've caught our side with grappling hooks on winches and haul themselves closer and closer until they're within range of a solid leap.

I swing out and lay down fire, drop one as he prepares to leap. "They're boarding!” I scream. "Starboard side!"

I hear boots thump down and I roll out—and almost catch a round to the face. It slices my cheekbone with a hot line of pain, which I ignore. Drop to my knee and angle out, put bursts down.

The cockpit door opens and the captain tosses a machete at me. "Cut rope."

Oh, just like that, huh?

No choice, though. I sling my AK around behind me, draw my pistol, and pick up the machete. Sol skids around the rear of the trawler and scrambles over to me, rounds walking along the deck at his heels.

"Some fun, huh?" he says, grinning. Leans out, pops off a couple of rounds, buying a moment of respite.

I sprint-lurch toward the ropes connecting the boats, hacking at them left-handed as I fire at the would-be boarders. Sol puts down covering fire, buying me enough time to hack through two out of the three ropes before I have to dive back behind the door.

"Reminds me of that op in the Indian Ocean," I tell Sol, panting. "Those pirates? Remember?"

Sol laughs. "That was a good one. That RPG round that went clear through the cockpit without exploding?"

Speaking of explosions, another one rocks the trawler, and the noise of gunfire is reduced.

"Get that last rope," Sol tells me. "I'll see if I can punch through the engine."

“Copy,” I say, switching mags.

"On three," Sol says. "One...two... THREE !"

We roll out in unison, Sol raking rounds across the speedboat from bow to stern, keeping heads down while I hack at the last rope. It snaps, and the enemy craft bobs away.

Sol drops to a knee as it guns its engine, pushing rounds at the rear of the boat, ignoring the return fire zinging over his head. There's no explosion, but the enemy craft halts, rocking with the swells; it's quickly left behind as the running gunfight carries us forward.

We both move to the starboard side to assist there—they've taken out two of the three boats, but the trawler's crew is almost entirely wiped out, leaving only one, plus the captain, and us four.

Lorenzo is bleeding from the arm and thigh, having taken a ricochet across the quad—it's shallow, but he's losing blood from two places, and we don't have time or resources for triage.

Inez is bleeding too, shrapnel from one of the explosions ripping across her throat, narrowly sparing her life; her whole front is painted crimson.

Working in unison now, we lay down a withering barrage of suppressive fire, depleting our ammunition at an alarming rate, especially since we have no clue how many extra magazines they have.

One of the boats falls behind, spewing black smoke. The other peels away and circles back for the survivors desperately swimming in the churning sea; we leave them behind.

Abruptly, all is silent.

Lorenzo slumps to the deck, panting raggedly. "Fuck." He groans, twisting to look at Inez, who leans against the side of the cockpit. "You good?"

Inez nods. "Looks worse than it is."

She looks pale, though, making me wonder if she's not being entirely truthful.

We help each other down into the mess area and patch up ourselves and each other with the surprisingly comprehensive med kit we find down there.

Lorenzo's thigh wound turns out to be the worst, a deep, gaping gash across the front of his thigh. He's lost a good bit of blood, and he's pale and dizzy. Inez's throat wound is shallow but bleeds profusely and resists efforts to staunch the bleeding. Sol and I are mostly fine, nothing either of us is too worried about.

A while later—could be ten minutes, could be an hour; my sense of time wobbles a bit from exhaustion and adrenaline—the captain comes down and pours himself a cup of coffee, accompanied by his last surviving crewmember, the Zodiac pilot.

Lorenzo addresses him in Spanish, which I translate for Sol. "I'm sorry about your crew, Captain Perez."

A laconic shrug. "I hired them for this and paid cash up front. I told them it was dangerous and not everyone would go home. Most sent their pay to their families." He indicates the Zodiac pilot. “He is my first mate. The rest were hired just for today." A sip of coffee, followed by a flash of a lighter as he sparks up a cigarette. "Will they return to finish the job?"

Inez shakes her head. "No. Not out here. He'll try again on the mainland, though. Not your worry."

“Then I suggest you rest while you can. Gonzales will keep watch." The captain takes his coffee and cigarette topside, leaving us with Gonzales, a short, stocky man with the dark, leathery, weathered skin of a man who has spent his life at sea out in the elements.

Gonzales says nothing, only smokes and sips, staring into space. When he finishes both, he goes topside without a word.

"Captain Perez is right," Inez says. "We need to rest while we can. This was a pretty big victory for us, and Rafael will not take it well. He won't care about the men he lost, but the boats will anger him."

"Charming," Sol says.

We all find places to stretch out, and within minutes, all of us are asleep.

The journey to Costa Rica from Galapagos is one of days rather than hours. The trawler we're on is a bit of a sleeper, though, with a more powerful engine than one would think, giving us a top speed of nearly eighteen knots, almost double the average speed of such a vessel. Which means we'll cover the eight-hundred-some miles in more like three or four days rather than a full week.

We hit more weather the second day after the assault, which blows us off course and adds time. It's smooth sailing after that, however, and we're left mostly to our devices—all of us being who we are, we're well acquainted with long hours of boredom during travel, and we pass it playing poker for bullets, resting, cooking, eating, and chatting.

On the third day, I find myself restless and unable to sleep. I pour coffee from the never-empty pot in the mess area and take it topside. Inez is at the bow, hands curled around a mug of coffee, her gaze distant and thoughtful.

"Hey," I say.

She gives me a chin lift as she swallows a sip.

"So, you and Lorenzo," I say.

She shakes her head. "No."

I laugh. "No?"

“No."

I laugh again. "Hey, I'm just trying to get a peek under that armor. We've been in gunfights together. I’d hope you know by now that you can trust me, at least a little."

She sighs, putting her back to the railing so she’s facing me more directly. "What do you want to know?"

I shrug. "I dunno. Sol says he sees a different side of you than he's used to. Obviously, I don't know you from Adam. But I plan to take the brand and join you guys at whatever this club thing is." I watch an albatross coasting far overhead, its massive wings arched to catch the air currents. "You and I are a lot alike, I think."

Inez nods. "We are. You were on the list of prospects when we chose Solomon, but we determined you were not ready to leave everything behind yet. I think I told you this."

I nod. "You did."

Inez eyes me. "And you are ready now?"

I nod again. "I am."

"Why?"

I shrug. "There wasn't so much as a question in my mind that I'd go after Sol when I got that email. I didn't ask for leave, and I didn't tell my superior or any of my team. I just left. I could go back and face the consequences of going AWOL, but I guess I just don't know if I even want to go back. Not now. Not anymore. Sol and I have talked a lot since I sprung him from that camp. And I...I'm tired, Inez. I'm fuckin' tired . I've been fighting my whole goddamn life. I...I'm alone. I'm not close to anyone on my team—not really. They're good dudes, solid operators, but...they're not family."

Inez turns back to the railing. "That's not a good enough reason, Scarlett."

"So what is? Sol says I can't do it for him."

"You can't."

"So...what the fuck, then? I don't want that life anymore. I've fought and killed my way through life since I was twelve. I just...I want peace, I guess. The way Sol talks about you guys and life at the Club...it honestly sounds pretty great. I've never had a home, never had a family, never had anything constant. I want the life that Sol talks about. I know it'll take some time to adjust—Sol says he still is. I get it. But I want it."

Inez doesn't answer for a while. She looks at me, thoughtful and pensive. "May I ask you something?"

I nod. "Sure."

"Have you reconciled your past self with who you want to be?"

I frown. “I’m not sure what that means."

"Maria Rodriguez."

I blow out a breath. "Ahhh. No, not really. Sol...he says he sees some of Maria coming out, now that he...we...um..."

Inez gives me a wry look. "You spoke of trust when you opened this conversation."

I sigh. "I'm learning to trust Sol. Learning that I don't have to be tough and strong all the time with him. He...I can be myself with him. I can relax my guard."

Inez furrows her brow as if puzzled. "Yourself?"

I snicker. "Right? Like, what the fuck does that even mean?"

She shakes her head. "My sense of self is not something I’ve considered in a long, long time. I just...am."

"What I'm discovering is that I've lost who I really am,” I tell her. “I’ve lost sight of my self. Not myself, one word, but my self , two words. I don't have a self."

Inez frowns at this. "Everyone has a self."

"I bet you don't."

She blinks at me. "I do not follow."

"What do you do when you're not working?"

"Sleep."

"Right, because like me, all you do is work. Or get ready to work. What do you do for you ?"

She shifts, visibly uncomfortable. That is immaterial. My work is who I am. The Arrows. Club Sin. My employer."

"Okay, but take that away. What's left?"

Inez turns away from me, sips coffee and stares out at the water sliding past us. "A hole, I suppose. One that you would have me fill with Lorenzo."

I can't help a snicker of laughter from escaping. "Yeah, you need to let Lorenzo fill your hole."

She narrows her eyes at me. "You know what I meant."

I roll my eyes. "Obviously. That was a joke."

She sighs. "I've never been good at humor."

"What about Sophia?" I ask, earning a whip-around-and-glare from her. "Does Sophia have a sense of humor?"

She blinks at me a few times and then turns back to staring at the ocean. "I...do not know."

“Exactly. Sol has helped me see that I can sort of partition different parts of myself. When I’m on an op, I'm Scar, or Scarla. Scarlett is...someone else. I'm still figuring that out. But Maria? I have no clue who she is. I always felt like that part of who I used to be is dead and gone. But lately, with Sol...I'm starting to think maybe he was right when he said she's not dead, she’s just been...dormant."

Inez nods but doesn't look at me. "Ren insists on calling me Sophia. I don't know how to explain to him that it hurts. It physically hurts—I'm not her anymore. I haven't been her in a long time. I don't know how to be her."

"I get it, Inez. I really do."

She nods again. "I think if anyone could, it's you."

I try to find the right words—a tough task when I'm still actively trying to sort all this out myself. "Trust is a choice. I think it's also a journey. And you know that saying about the first step being the hardest? I think that's true here, too. I have to choose to trust Solomon. Not just once, but consistently. For people like you and me, who've been through what we have, that's a tall fuckin' order. And it's hard as hell, Inez. Hard as hell and scary as fuck. He knows me. He could easily use the things he knows about me to hurt me. He could change his mind. He could betray me. And honestly, he probably will hurt me at some point."

Inez's gaze remains fixed on a point in the middle distance. "I do not know if I'm capable of that."

"If I can, you can."

She looks at me, finally. "Have you?"

I nod. "I have. Or at least, I’m starting to. I have no clue what that looks like for you, and it's not any of my business. For me, it means putting the warrior away when I'm alone with him. Part of the trust issue is trusting myself, though—that was a big realization."

"Trusting yourself?" She tosses the dregs into the sea, and the wind carries it away.

I nod. "I'm not weak if I let Solomon see how I’m feeling. It's not weak to be vulnerable with him. To soften."

"Soft things die in our world, Scarlett."

"I know. But Inez, I’m not soft all the time. That's the trust I'm talking about. I trust myself to be strong and hard when I need to be. I'm still me. I don't lose anything by giving that part of myself to Solomon. I trust him with it. I trust him to take care of it and still see all of me, not just that part. Sol respects me. He knows what I can do, and he trusts me to do it."

Inez nods absently. "I see." A long pause. "I suppose I trust Lorenzo. But trusting him like that? I have never been soft, Scarlett. My father didn't raise me that way. I was never a little girl. I was his protégé. His experiment. I didn’t have dolls; I had practice throwing knives. I didn't play tea party; I played Assassin. The first time I saw my father kill someone, I was six. The first time I killed someone, I was eleven. No part of my life has ever been soft . I do not know how to be that. I do not know what it looks like. I do not know how to trust. I do not have a...a soft side or a feminine side."

"You loved Lorenzo at one point, right?"

She shrugs. "I suppose. I cared about him. I...craved him, I think. I sent him away because the thought of him dying was intolerable. And then I walked away because..." she trails off. "After what my father did to me, I was...empty. Broken. Dead inside. I couldn't let him see that."

"And you never really recovered from that. You never healed. Never rebuilt yourself. You built a life and a persona—Inez. But that's not you. That's..."

"A golem," she whispers. "An artificial representation of a human."

I nod. “Yeah, pretty much." I blow out a breath that turns into a laugh. "God, that's a really damn good metaphor, Inez. A golem—a sort of...human-looking thing made out of clay, given life but isn't...a person. Not really."

"Not a person, not really," Inez echoes, her voice faint and thoughtful. "I suppose there may be an element of truth to that." She lets out a long, slow breath. "So then the task becomes figuring out how to become a person. A full human being, not just..."

"A task-completing automaton?" I suggested.

She nods. “Right."

I laugh. "I hope I'm not giving you the impression that I have any of this figured out, Inez. I don't. At fucking all. I'm just starting to understand this about myself. And I see a lot of similarities between you and me."

Another nod, this one absent and thoughtful. "I suppose allowing Ren to think of me and refer to me as Sophia is a good first step. Perhaps eventually, it will stop feeling like he's talking to or about someone else."

"I guess we'll see, huh?" I say. "It's been hard enough even talking about Maria, let alone trying to think of myself as that person again."

Inez frowns, running a hand down her braid. "Maybe...maybe the key is not thinking of that name as the person we used to be, but rather a representation of who we want to be."

"Hmmm," I say. "Like, when I take the brand, Scarlett Gutierrez is...set aside, or laid to rest, so to speak. And I become Maria again—but a Maria who is also all of the parts of me that will always be Scarlett. I mean, I've been Scarlett for longer than I was Maria at this point. So I can't just shuck that person. She's me. I'm just more than that. Does that make any sense?"

Inez shrugs. "I wouldn't be the person to ask, Scarlett. But it sounds right to me."

The men emerge with mugs of coffee, and the conversation turns to plans for getting to San José from the coast—a distance of thirty-some miles, depending on where the trawler drops us.

Twenty-four hours later, we're roused at first light by First Mate Gonzalez, who informs us we are approaching the coast. The plan is for the trawler to drop anchor a mile or two from shore, and Gonzalez will run us ashore in the Zodiac. We'll be on our own from there.

This is as far as Lorenzo's arrangements have gotten us—there's no one waiting for us in Costa Rica.

I still have a gnawing sense of disquiet in my gut, acidic as heartburn and heavy as a too-rich meal.