Plastic Sea — What's Left, Page 33
By Inkroost · Published
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Transcript
Panel 1: Close on Roka's chrome right hand, raised, its eye swivelling to look around the dim hold. Tohum: 'No lights. No machines.' 'How long did I sleep?' Panel 2: Roka scoots back against a junk heap, holding his chrome arm away from himself. Roka: 'How should I know?!' Tohum: 'Did it work?' Panel 3: Close on Roka's confused face. Roka: 'Did WHAT work?' Tohum: 'Are the humans all dead?'
Image description
The eye on Roka's raised chrome right hand looks around the dark hold and asks if it worked; Roka, backed against a junk pile, has no idea what it means.
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.