Plastic Sea — What's Left, Page 25
By Inkroost · Published
Log in to see this page
Page 25 of What's Left is for signed-in readers. Logging in brings you straight back here — and an account is free if you do not have one.
Transcript
Panel 1: A long shadow falls over Roka, wrapped in a tarp against a barrel with the duck. Turp looms over him with his boat hook; Pancar stands behind. Turp: 'On your feet, stray.' Panel 2: Pancar hauls Roka up; the tarp falls away. Turp: 'Captain's rule.' 'What we fish out of the sea, works.' Panel 3: Turp points his boat hook down an open hatch glowing with orange light. Turp: 'You walk the wheels, you eat.' 'You stop walking, you don't.' Panel 4: Pancar pushes Roka onto the steel stair going down; Roka grabs the rails, the duck tucked in his jacket. Turp: 'Shift starts at the next bell.'
Image description
The guards haul Roka up and tell him the captain's rule: whoever is fished from the sea walks the wheels to eat; Pancar pushes him down the stair to the wheels.
About this chapter
In the dark at the bottom of the sea, something is counting. On Candyreef, a candy-coloured island of floating trash, Roka wakes to a water bag in the face from his street crew, lifts breakfast from the old woman who would have fed him anyway, and tells the kid who follows him that he doesn't owe anybody. Then the gulls lift all at once, and a Maw eats half the island. A day and a night alone at sea later, the Garden Ship fishes him out and orders him to walk its treadwheels for fish heads. Roka is nobody's slave, so he goes looking for something to steal instead, and breaks into a barnacled case dredged from the seabed. The silver dust inside climbs into his arm and says hello. It is polite. It is curious. It wants every human dead. And it has just started counting again.