Plastic Sea — What's Left, Page 28
By Inkroost · Published
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Transcript
Roka steps off the bottom rung of a ladder into the dim teal Salvage Hold. Daylight falls through a ceiling grate onto a barnacled orange case on a wet blue tarp, kelp hanging off it; a rusted dredge claw hangs in the corner. Roka: 'Something they fished up...' '...must be worth something.'
Image description
Roka steps off a ladder into the dim Salvage Hold and eyes the barnacled orange case under a shaft of daylight.
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.