Chapter 39 Chapter38

# Day 12 - 21:51

He cleaned the fish himself, dropped the scaled bodies in a bucket at the kitchen’s back door, and headed down the silent, sodium-lit hall to the treatment suite. The corridor was an icebox. The AC was working overtime, probably to keep the rot from taking hold. The hand-applied gold leaf on the mahogany-paneled walls—installed just before departure—was already tarnishing from salt air, the once-brilliant sheen now dulled to the color of an old wedding band.

He moved in half-light, step after step. He thought about the catch—how each time he reeled in a thrashing body, there was a moment when the line could snap, when the fish could escape with just a scar. There was a metaphor in there, but he was too tired to chase it.

Mostly he thought about Aida, and the way she hadn’t looked at him all day.

Why now? Why Vivienne? Aida had seen him with more women than he could count. She’d scheduled his encounters, watched the dawn meter dip with every desperate coupling. She’d even been there, some nights, beside him in the same bed while he knotted up with Mei-Lin. The first time he’d shared a bed with both of them, he’d been sure it was a test. But Aida hadn’t even flinched. She treated it like sleepover logistics, not sex, as if her only worry was who got which side of the mattress.

So why today?

He replayed the morning: Vivienne’s cheek pressed to his, her lips brushing his earlobe, the rush of contact. And the evening, Mei-Lin’s hands threading through his hair as she pressed her body to his, the gentle way she stole his pillow when she thought he wasn’t looking.

In the old world, he’d stab himself before doing any of this. But Aida had made the rules. She’d told him, over and over, that he was free. Now, with Vivienne, it was suddenly different.

He reached the suite. As he palmed the access panel, he felt a weird pulse behind his eyes. A small, sick part of him wanted the door to be locked. But it wasn’t. The hiss and click, and he stepped inside.

The room was pure, engineered comfort: Egyptian cotton sheets on a California king, the bed's mattress so plush it swallowed the body whole, a rainfall shower with six jets that could drown out the world, and the kitchenette—all gleaming marble and brass fixtures—where two handcrafted ceramic mugs waited beside the espresso machine, ready for morning rituals performed in pampered comfort.

Mei-Lin sat on the bed, a soft blanket draped around her naked body. She was folding towels, carefully aligning the edges so the stack looked like a single block of linen. She heard him and looked up, all smile. “You caught something,” she said, seeing the fleck of fish scale still clinging to his wrist.

He set the bucket down and washed at the sink. Mei-Lin padded over, still half-swaddled in terry cloth, and leaned into his side. She smelled like almond soap and sleep. He kissed her on the forehead, a thank you. She kissed him back, then went to lay out the towels on the edge of the bed.

He dried his hands, then scanned for Aida. She wasn’t in the kitchenette or the bathroom. But he saw her through the small glass partition, on the balcony, sitting cross-legged and staring into the pitch-black night beyond.

He knocked gently on the glass. Aida turned, and he saw the smile—the one she wore for patients, for people she needed to shepherd through something. It was a professional mask, and it looked ridiculous on her in pajamas. But it was there.

“Hey,” he said, voice tentative. “Can we talk? Just us.”

She hesitated, then nodded. She stood, tugged her shirt straight, and stepped inside.

“Should I go?” Mei-Lin asked, voice small, already wrapping the blanket tighter.

“No,” said Aida, too fast. She glanced at Zhao. “It’s not about you.”

Mei-Lin nodded, then left anyway, the door closing with a quiet click.

For a while, neither of them spoke. Zhao couldn’t tell if he was supposed to lead, or if Aida wanted to monologue first. So he said: “Did I do something wrong?”

She shook her head. “You followed protocol.”

He waited, but she didn’t continue.

He tried again. “Did Vivienne—did I—”

Aida interrupted: “It’s not about Vivienne.”

Another silence, heavier this time. He wished for a dawn crawler, anything to crash through the wall and end the conversation.

She said, finally, “I’m just tired. That’s all.”

He almost believed her. But the wall was up, and she didn’t want to let it down. That’s how she always was: strong, then distant, then nothing.

He tried one last time. “Please. If I did something, I want to fix it.”

Aida looked at him, and for a second the mask cracked. “You’re a good man, Zhao,” she said, as if the words hurt. “You’re too good for all this.”

He wanted to argue, but he could see she’d already decided the outcome.

She headed for the door, but he caught her hand. “Stay,” he said.

She froze, hand limp in his. He felt the smallest tremor, as if she was holding in a scream.

He whispered, “I don’t want to lose you. Not to the virus. Not to anything.”

She shook her head, but didn’t pull away.

“Let’s talk. Just us,” he said.

She looked at him—really looked, not the mask, not the doctor, but the woman who’d dragged him through hell and back. “Okay,” she said. Her voice was so soft he almost missed it.

He let go of her hand, and she followed him outside, into the black and the cool breeze, onto the deck.

The air was sharp, and the sea was a sheet of glass, reflecting nothing. In the darkness, the only light was the flicker of LEDs from the wrecked freighter, and the faint, dying stars overhead.

He waited for her to speak, but she just sat beside him, the silence stretching between them, unbroken, until it was something almost solid.

He wondered if maybe this was what she wanted—a world where no one ever said what they felt, but everything was understood anyway.

But he also knew she’d show up, anyway.

# Day 12 - 22:24

On the bow of the ship—what used to be a helipad but now was just a hard, black disc rimmed with old red strobes—Aida and Zhao sat shoulder to shoulder, legs outstretched, staring at a sky so clear it looked printed. The Milky Way ran in a crooked vein from horizon to horizon, burning so bright the satellites blinked and vanished behind it. The only other light was a pair of cigarettes smoldering somewhere aft, maybe two decks below, their cherry-red dots the only other living thing for a hundred nautical miles.

They didn’t talk, at first. The deck was too cold for comfort, but neither of them moved to get a blanket. The silence was the good kind—loud, but safe, all the same.

Zhao wanted to ask, Are you okay? But the question was so stupid he almost laughed.

He asked it anyway.

Aida exhaled, her breath ghosting into nothing. She wanted to say yes, but her chest hurt, right at the middle, and if she said it she’d have to keep lying. She glanced at him, saw his outline in the starshine: hair swept back, eyes fixed on some distant disaster only he could see.

“No,” she said, her voice so quiet she wondered if he’d heard it.

He nodded. “I’m not, either.”

She let the silence gather again, growing denser, but she didn't reach for her old tricks—the half-smile, the pivot to business, or the hand on his thigh that would normally slide higher until conversation became impossible. It would be easier to pull him down on the cold deck right now, to let their bodies speak instead of her voice. But she didn't want easy. Not tonight.

“I promised to tell you everything.”

He waited.

She took a deep breath, lungs aching with the cold. “I kept putting it off. Because I was scared, or maybe because I didn’t have time to be scared.” She looked at the sky, found a constellation she used to know. “It all happened so fast. Less than two weeks ago, we were in port. Now we've fought off those things with their twisted faces, watched the harbor burn behind us, held each other through storms that should have capsized us. I still hear the gunshots when I close my eyes. The screams of our security team when they fought that monster. I can't remember the last time I slept all the way through a night."

Zhao shifted, just enough that his knee brushed hers. “You don’t have to talk if you don’t want to.”

She shook her head, a tight little motion. “I do. I need to.” She made herself look at him. “Ask me anything. I’ll answer.”

He searched for the right words, then gave up. “What are we?” he asked. “Are we colleagues? Friends? Lovers?” He swallowed. “Are we just survivors?”

Aida considered it, really considered it, and for the first time in her life, the right answer didn’t snap into place.

“In the old world,” she said, “it would be nothing. You were a student. I was…” She barked a laugh. “What would people say? That we were broken?”

He smiled, lopsided. “They’d say worse.”

She nodded. “I know.”

“But it’s not the old world,” he said.

“No,” she agreed. “It’s not.”

The wind picked up, lashing her hair across her face. She didn’t flinch.

"I don't know what this is," she said, voice catching. "Sometimes I want to protect you like—" She stopped, unable to say it. "And other times I want..." Her fingers tightened around his, the confusion in her chest both tender and desperate. Fifteen years between them, and she couldn't tell which hunger was worse.

He was quiet a long time. When he finally spoke, his voice was low, almost reverent. "I care about you. Not just as someone to protect or someone who protects me." His fingers twitched against hers. "Sometimes I wonder if you see me as a child you need to guide, but even if you do—" He swallowed hard, Adam's apple bobbing in the starlight. "I don't care. What I feel is real. I want to be with you. Why I followed you onto the ship…and that is the best decision of my life."

She shook her head. “Someone put us here on purpose, Zhao. You know that. Maybe I was the bait, and you were the test subject.” There was no bitterness in her voice, just the dull realization of being manipulated, again, by fate or by men in dark rooms.

He took it in, then said: “Maybe that’s true. But it doesn’t change anything.”

She turned, looking at him now. “Most men, when they found out what I really did—what I was—ran. Or they tried to use me.” She tried to laugh, but it caught in her throat. “I haven’t had a real relationship in twenty years.”

He heard the capital R in Relationship, and let it hang.

She pressed on: “I never saw the point. My father hated my mother. All the men I knew either hit or abandoned the women in their lives. Even when I was a girl, I didn’t understand why women would ever want men at all. They were… what’s the word? Unnecessary.”

He nodded, not sure if he was agreeing or just wanting to let her talk.

“You’re not like them,” she said, almost accusing. “You don’t want anything from me.”

He shrugged, a little embarrassed. “I want you to be okay.”

Her eyes went wet at the corners, but she didn’t wipe them. “Men like you don’t survive, in the old world. The world only rewards predators. You’d disappear. Maybe marry someone equally invisible, then die with no one to notice.”

He looked back at the stars. “I’d be fine with that.”

Aida's voice dropped to a whisper. "What do you see in me?" She looked away, fingers tracing invisible patterns on the deck. "This ship is full of women with cleaner pasts, smoother skin, brighter futures. Why choose someone with all my years and scars?"

Zhao's gaze drifted to the horizon before returning to her face. "When everyone else turned away, you were there. The others see me as... useful. You see me." His voice softened. "I noticed you long before this ship, Aida. He reached for her hand. "Everyone else saw your wall. I always saw you. your kindness, your strength and your beauty. For years, you've been the face I search for when I close my eyes."

Her face crumpled then reassembled itself, eyes searching his as years of practiced control gave way to something raw and unguarded. “Where are we now, then? What do you want from me?” Her voice trembled on the last word, almost a dare.

He answered honestly: “I want to keep you safe. I want to be close to you. I want to make you happy, if that’s possible. I want to grow old with you, if the world lets us.”

She laughed, a sudden, hiccupping laugh, then clapped her hand over her mouth. “You’re an idiot,” she said in Japanese. “You know that?”

“Yeah,” he said, grinning.

She blinked hard, wiped her eyes with the heel of her palm. “What about Vivienne? Are you going to tell her the same thing?”

He hesitated, feeling the weight of the truth he couldn't quite voice—that when Vivienne touched him, something essential was missing. "If she asks, yes," he said, but his fingers tightened around Aida's almost imperceptibly, betraying what he couldn't admit: that in the silent architecture of his heart, Vivienne occupied a different chamber altogether.

Aida tried to make a joke, but couldn’t. The ache in her chest flared, real and hot. “I’m jealous,” she said, and the word was so alien it made her shiver. “I never thought I could be, but I am. She’s better than me. Younger. Smarter. Prettier.”

He scooted closer, put his arm around her. She let him. “She’s not better,” he said. “She’s just… Vivienne.”

Aida's voice was soft but direct. "What is it about Vivienne that draws you to her?"

Zhao considered this, his gaze fixed on the horizon. "She reminds me of you in many ways," he said finally. "There's a strength in her that doesn't bend, even now. When everyone else was panicking, she stepped up." He paused, choosing his words carefully. "But it's more than her beauty or kindness. She carries this weight—the responsibility for everyone's survival—without complaint. Just like you do." His fingers tightened around Aida's. "I can't turn away from that kind of courage. Not when all our lives depend on it."

Aida let her head fall onto his shoulder. The tears came again, silent but steady.

He kissed the top of her head, a soft, trembling press of lips.

She whispered, “If you want to be with only me, you can. Just say so. I’ll never ask you to be anything else.”

He looked at her, then at their joined hands, his fingers laced with hers. “I would, if that’s what you want.”

She considered it, felt the impossible relief of knowing he meant it, then shook her head. “I don’t think it would work. Not for us. We’re not built for the old world. We need a new one.”

He nodded, then said: “What do you want?”

She laughed again, watery. “I want to keep feeling this. Even if it’s painful. Even if I have to share you.” She looked at him, eyes fierce. “I want to be part of you. I want you to remember me, even if the world ends tomorrow.”

He squeezed her hand. “I will. I promise.”

She smiled, then leaned over and kissed him, a real kiss, their mouths pressed together, the warmth pushing back against the night.

They sat that way for a long time, the sky spinning overhead, the deck cool beneath them.

Finally, she said, "We should go back. Mei-Lin will think we fell overboard."

He nodded, but didn't stand. He hesitated, then asked, "Why aren't you jealous of Mei-Lin? You mentioned Vivienne, but never her."

Aida's fingers tightened around his. "Mei-Lin understands boundaries. She doesn't want what I have with you."

Does she? Zhao thought about it. The way Mei-Lin looked at him sometimes, when she thought no one was watching—there was hunger there, carefully controlled but unmistakable. "Maybe not now," he said finally, "but what if she does in the future?"

Aida's eyes met his, steady and unafraid. "Then we'll face it together. I've spent my life planning for every contingency, Zhao. But this—" she gestured between them, "—isn't something I can strategize. We'll adapt. That's what survivors do."

She let herself relax, breathing in the salt air, feeling the lines of her body drawn against his.

“I’ll hold your hand,” she said. “Even if someone else tries to pull you away.”

He laughed, the sound small and perfect. “That’s all I want.”

She closed her eyes, letting the hum of the engines and the soft thump of his heart lull her.

Above, the stars didn’t care. But maybe that was the point.

They would go forward, hand in hand, into whatever came next.

One deck below, Captain Verne rapped twice on Sophie's door before entering. Sophie sat perched on the edge of her desk, silhouetted against the porthole window, a half-empty wineglass dangling from her fingers. The air between them crackled with unspoken tension—decisions that would alter everyone's future hung in the balance.