Read Virus for Free Online Page B

didn’t really believe they were going to sink, that he hadn’t accepted it as a likely outcome in spite of the facts. Watching Hiko so intent on his work made him realize that he was being foolishly naive.
    Come up with a smile, Squeaky, he pleaded silently, and went back to watching the bubbles.

    One by one, all of the crew assembled out on the deck to wait for the engineer to give them the word—except for Captain Everton, but Foster wasn’t particularly surprised. A little curious maybe, but not surprised.
    Probably off mourning the loss of his money, she thought. What an asshole. His ship was sinking and he was off crying about lost merchandise, maybe hiding from the crew that he may have doomed to a watery grave; some captain.
    She sipped at her coffee and waited quietly with the others, feeling pretty good, all things considered. Neither Richie nor Woods would look at her, but Steve had given her a friendly nod and Hiko had smiled when she’d walked out on deck.
    Terrific. We may be going under, but at least I’m not a social outcast anymore.
    She knew it was stupid, but it didn’t affect her good mood; the Sea Star was in easy waters, at least for a while, and she had a strong feeling that everything was going to work out. Just being alive after the night they’d had felt like an omen; surviving a typhoon was a miracle all by itself.
    There was a sudden rush of bubbles over the side of the deck and the engineer surfaced, treading water easily. He lifted his face mask up and looked at them, his expression grim behind a dripping beard.
    “It’s bad,” he said, and Foster felt her good mood melt away at his tone of voice—there was a finality to it, cold and unconditional.
    “Define bad,” said Steve.
    Squeaky shook his head and caught on to the deck. “We’re sinking.”
    “That’s bad,” mumbled Richie. Even from five feet away, Foster could smell the heavy scent of marijuana on his breath.
    Hiko turned towards her, his mild brown eyes unhappy. “How far to the nearest beach?”
    “Eighteen to twenty hours to the Kermadec Islands,” she said quietly.
    Steve frowned. “I can squeeze an hour out of that engine, tops.”
    Hiko stared out at Leiah’s churning wall in the distance, his low voice hollow and bleak. “We’re never gonna make it.”
    Richie turned his stoned, red-rimmed gaze to Foster. “So what do we do now? You got a suggestion, princess?”
    He didn’t even sound malicious, just scared, and Foster looked at the empty mount where the lifeboat had been and shook her head slowly.
    So much for women’s intuition.
    The long-range was down, the engine was going under, and Leiah wasn’t going to sit still while they floundered. It was no longer just a possibility; unless they came up with something fast, they were going to die out here.

    Hiko Alailima stared out at the storm and was afraid, but he refused to let that fear get the better of him. He sat cross-legged on the deck, alone; the Pakeha had gone inside, to search for a solution to the problem of death. They were afraid, too, and he hoped they would find an answer—but death would still be there, whether the sinking boat made it to land or not. Hiko knew it and wanted to be at peace with the prospect, especially now that it was so close. Besides, he was a deckhand; there wasn’t anything he could do on the bridge that would make a difference.
    It wasn’t death that frightened him, it was how he died. His parents had both drowned off the north coast of Aotearoa when he was still a child, leaving him and his sister, Kukupa, to be raised by their grandparents; both of his tipuna had been warm and loving, instilling a strong sense of cultural pride and history in their wards, but Hiko had never forgiven the sea for taking his mother and father. And he had grown to believe that the moana wanted to take him, too; he’d suffered terrible nightmares as a child, of being dragged down into the silent, terrible dark, unable to