Chapter 61

# Day 17 - 2:36

The night held its breath over the sea. The fire on the horizon was the only light—the Red Solstice, still burning, its corpse reflected on every flat inch of water between here and the ends of the earth. There were seventy-seven survivors on Blue Oasis, but the crowd gathered at the aft deck was a single animal: knotted together, silent, every face caught between the flicker of fire and the cold flash of floodlights.

No one said a word for the first five minutes. The wind whipped through the lattice of the railing, snapping hair and loose fabric into staccato lines. At the center of the deck, beneath a taut white sheet lashed down with medical tape, lay what was left of Captain Verne.

It was a worse kind of ceremony for the absence of any proper script. There was no priest; no tradition to stand behind. Instead, each of the dead captain’s inner circle circled the shrouded form. Some moved with slow dignity, others with a twitchy haste, like they wanted the thing over before their resolve failed.

Maggie took the lead. Her face was a wreck, eyes swollen but dry. She stood square at the head of the makeshift bier—a slab of Blue Oasis hull plate, its edge still pocked and bent from the night they’d run the blockade and broken free of the infected. “Anaïs never hesitated,” she said, not reading from a paper, just talking like the words needed out. “There were times when the rest of us did. Sometimes she was wrong, sometimes not. But she never once froze up. That’s what saved us, every time.”

Next came Vivienne, her hand resting on the shroud. Her voice was clear but hollowed. “Captain Verne never believed in fate. She said the only way forward was through the next hour, and the next after that. She hated being called a hero. She said heroes are the ones who don’t make it out. So I guess this is her first failure.” She paused, the words landing harder than she'd intended. A ripple of dry laughter. “And her last.”

Iqbal stepped up, hands laced behind her back, posture rigid as a fence post. “She let me argue with her. That’s more than most people ever did. She always listened, then did the opposite. But I think she liked being challenged. Or maybe she just wanted to make sure she was stronger than the people around her.” Her mouth twisted, and for a second, she seemed on the edge of some larger revelation, but she only said: “She didn’t have to save me. But she did.”

Elena, her blouse still smeared with old blood, knelt by the shroud and pressed a hand flat against the metal slab. “We were at sea for days before the first break in the storm. Verne stood on the bridge the entire time, except for three hours when she collapsed in the galley and we thought she’d never get up. She did. I asked her how. She said, ‘Someone has to.’ That’s all.” Elena blinked, and let her hand linger there for another second.

Kim didn’t approach, just raised her voice from the periphery. “Verne yelled at me more than my mother ever did. But she never yelled unless it mattered. She was scared of nothing except losing people. I’m sorry we couldn’t bring her back, but maybe she’d have been pissed if we tried.” A snort, half-laugh. Then silence.

Linh was next. She stood straight, feet together, the same way she had on the bridge. “I never liked the ocean. It’s too empty. But Verne made it a place with rules, and I could live with that. I wish she’d let us do more, but now we get to.” She looked at the wrapped form, and her jaw flexed.

Victoria took longer. She circled the slab, hands behind her back, then finally squared off with the rest. “She once told me: ‘If you can’t stand the smell of fear, get off the ship.’” Her eyes swept the deck, stopping on Zhao. “But the real secret was, she was scared every minute. She just decided to be useful anyway.” She jerked her chin at the shroud. “Let’s not forget that.”She stepped back before anyone could see her face.

Aida supported Zhao at the far right. He was barely upright—his knees buckled every few minutes, and his jaw was clenched to keep his teeth from chattering. The pain in his hips had settled into a cold, deep ache, but there was no way he was missing this. Aida’s arm was the only thing holding him vertical.

It took all eight to lift Verne. Maggie and Zhao at the head, Victoria and Vivienne anchoring the center, Kim and Linh and Iqbal and Elena flanking. The shroud had been triple-taped to the hull slab, and every corner was weighted with heavy chain. As they hoisted her to waist height, the deck vibrated with the strain.

The crowd inched back, opening a path to the rail.

Sophie Laurent did not approach. She stayed at the stern rail, a solitary figure, her hands clasped so tight the knuckles whitened. Her face was an exercise in self-control—cheeks hollow, jaw squared, eyes fixed on the horizon where the Red Solstice continued to burn. She said nothing, but the shake in her shoulders broadcast the truth. If anyone thought she was untouched, they were wrong. She was just better at hiding it.

At the edge, they set the slab down with a metallic thud. For a moment, all eight caught their breath, then repositioned their hands for the final lift. The waves were calm, but the acrid scent of melting fiberglass and scorched lithium batteries from the dying Solstice carried over the water. No one flinched.

Maggie turned to the assembled, voice hard but steady. “By her own order, we don’t use a prayer. We just say: Thank you, Anaïs. For getting us this far.”

The eight bent together, muscles straining, and pushed the slab over the rail. It hit the water with a flat splash, and the weight of the metal took it down in one clean, diagonal line. The sheet flared once on the surface, then vanished. Aida gasped—barely audible—but most just watched in silence as the waves closed over the spot.

Zhao could not look away. He expected some kind of relief, or at least a finality. But all he felt was the hollowness growing wider. Aida squeezed his arm tighter.

As the crowd broke up—some wandering back to the warmth, others lingering at the rail—Zhao noticed Sophie still standing, her eyes following the line of the sinking slab. She did not move, even as the fire on the horizon flickered lower. He wondered what she was thinking. Maybe she was counting her losses, or maybe, for the first time, she was actually mourning.

He couldn’t ask. Instead, he looked at the place where the slab had vanished, and let the cold wind press the moment into his memory.

This was what they had now.Each other, the Blue Oasis with her wounded hull still breathing beneath their feet, and the hope that tomorrow's work would mean something.

When Aida finally guided him away from the rail, Zhao glanced back. Sophie was still there, hands frozen, gaze locked on the abyss.

She did not move, even after everyone else had gone.

# Day 17 - 2:59

For a long moment after the body vanished, no one moved. The survivors of Blue Oasis lingered at the rail, every face glazed and raw. The sky above was void-black, the sea below in perfect dead calm, and the only evidence that time still passed was the orange flicker of the Red Solstice burning itself to cinders on the horizon.

Then Kim, voice cracked from salt and adrenaline, said what everyone else had been thinking: “So, who is the new captain?”

The words cut through the stillness, stilled every head, set the entire aft deck in a single direction. Seventy-seven sets of eyes, sharp with grief or flat with exhaustion, locked onto the little huddle near the edge: the old bridge crew, the survivors, the blood-bonded kin of the lost.

A pause, as if everyone expected a reply from the dead.

Sophie Laurent answered instead, gliding from her place at the rail to the center of the deck, her suit somehow still immaculate in the wind. She didn’t raise her voice, but it traveled, clipped and crystalline. “As the legal owner and final executor of Blue Oasis, I will take guardianship of the vessel,” she announced. “AURA can be programmed to handle navigation and helm. I will manage affairs until an appropriate chain of command is confirmed.”

It was almost a relief, the familiar chill of her control. But the deck bristled in response. It was Isabelle Grant who stepped forward first, arms crossed, chin out. “No. Not you.” Her voice was low, thick, but impossible to ignore. “You left us in that sub. You put me in the aft with the others, knowing it was a death sentence.”

A rumble started in the crowd, a scatter of voices—“She left my sister on the line,” “We’re not property,” “She’d throw us overboard if she had to.” Someone spit on the deck.

Sophie didn’t blink. “It was a necessary decision,” she said, hands folded at her waist. Sophie's eyes swept across the faces of the survivors. "We had to make difficult choices to ensure our collective survival," she said, her voice softening slightly. "Every person aboard this vessel represents our best chance at a future."

Kim’s hand shot up, trembling. “That’s not what Verne would have said.” She looked at Zhao, then at the cluster of Mei-Lin, Aida, and Vivienne propping him up. “It was them, not you, who kept us alive.”

A new wave, this time of shouting. “Zhao!”—someone yelled it, then three more picked it up, and in less than a minute, half the deck was chanting: “Zhao! Zhao! Zhao!”

He wanted to laugh, or maybe crawl away and never return, but there was nowhere to go. Aida and Vivienne guided him forward, each gripping a shoulder like they were his arms and legs. Mei-Lin flanked with a wobbly strength that seemed to surprise even herself. The crowd parted, not with reverence but with a kind of desperate hope.

Sophie held up a hand. “Please. We need order. We need—”

But Zhao was already at the center. The pain in his hips was a furnace, every step a calculus of agony and determination. For the first time, he understood why Verne had needed to stand tall: no one could believe in you if you looked ready to fall apart.

He braced both feet, drew a slow, shaking breath, and spoke—not loud, but with the authority of absolute exhaustion. “Thank you,” he said. The crowd stilled. “I owe my life to every single one of you. I know what it’s like to be written off as cargo. I know what it’s like to be alone. I promise you—I won’t let that happen again.”

A cheer, the kind with no air left behind it. Zhao let it settle, then continued. “But I can’t be captain,” he said. A hush. “I barely survived this. I have no idea how to run a ship. My job, my curse, my responsibility is this—” He tapped his chest, then his crotch, and more than one person in the crowd snickered. “Only I can do it. And I will keep doing it until there’s no one left to save. That’s all.”

He turned, and the effort nearly put him on his knees. "Vivienne should be captain," he said. The gasp from her nearly toppled her backward, but Mei-Lin caught her. "She's smarter than me. She's done the work." His gaze found Vivienne's, held it with unexpected intensity. "I'd put my life in your hands without hesitation. After everything we've been through—you're family now." Then he looked at Sophie. "But I want you to guide her. To teach her. To not forget what you did, but to do better. For all of us."

The crowd was stunned, then a ripple—first nervous, then genuine—of applause. Even those who had booed Sophie seemed to get it: If Zhao wasn’t captain, the next best was someone who had earned their trust—not because she had nothing to lose, but because she had everything to fight for. The same family they were all building together.

Sophie’s face didn’t move, but her eyes did: they flickered with anger, then something softer, almost pride. Almost regret. It was impossible to tell which.

Zhao nodded, then let his legs give way. Aida and Mei-Lin caught him, guided him to a bench, where he sagged with the relief of someone who’d finally let go of something heavy.

Sophie walked up to her daughter, the movement so precise it could have been a ballet step. “Your first order, Captain?” she said.

Vivienne hesitated—only for a second, but Zhao caught the calculation on her face. She looked at Zhao—seeking something. Permission? Validation? He nodded, just once. She looked out at the burning Solstice, then at the huddled ranks of her people. “Full speed ahead,” she said. “Site 34, no stops. Prepare for battle when Carmona returns.”

Sophie nodded, a micro-tilt of the chin, and then turned away, already pulling up her sleeve to access the comms band.

The crowd began to scatter—first in clumps, then in purposeful lines, like they'd remembered there was work to do. The new order took hold in real time: shouts of "Council at ten hundred!" and "Sick bay needs inventory!" Department heads gathered briefly around Vivienne, nodding as she outlined her first command: a leadership council comprising herself, Sophie, Zhao, and the eight section chiefs: Maggie, Victoria, Isabelle, Elena, Kim, Aida, Linh, Iqbal. Even those who'd muttered against her moments before found themselves straightening their shoulders, buying in.

Zhao closed his eyes. He let himself drift for a second. Aida’s hand was still on his shoulder, her thumb stroking a lazy pattern in the fabric of his sleeve. Mei-Lin perched next to him, arms wrapped around her knees, head leaning into his. Vivienne’s footsteps rang down the deck, clear and steady.

Above them, the sky was still dark, but the Red Solstice had nearly burned out. The sea was empty again, except for the trail left by the ship as it gathered speed.

He felt it, even through the pain: a shift. Something new. Not hope—he didn’t believe in that anymore—but something almost as good.

For the first time, he let it carry him forward.