By Caroline Jones
“Rivers! Over here!” Cohen yelled from somewhere in the jumble of people and cargo that was strewn over the docks. It was just barely audible over the din of shouting and banging and waves crashing. Keiran spun around, squinting as the sun hit his eyes. He put up a hand to shield them as best he could.
“Yeah?”
“Over here! We need your help with the boiler room.”
Keiran let out a puff of breath and started weaving through the stacks of crates. Cohen waved him over, his bald head slick with sweat from the sun. Keiran folded his arms across his chest. “What about it? Plans for the boiler room were finished months ago. They were supposed to be, at any rate,” he said. Cohen shook his head. His eyes darted across Keiran’s face. Keiran’s expression faded into concern, a frown creasing his forehead. “What’s wrong with the boiler room?”
“We don’t know. Maybe nothing. But Piper was going over the calculations last night and she found an error in equations. We’ve gone over it a couple hundred times at least and we keep getting the same thing she did.”
Keiran cursed under his breath and motioned for Cohen to follow him to the warehouse that had been the planning center for the organization of the steamboat project for the past five years. It was a large, crumbling building with broken-in windows and ivy climbing up the walls.
They would have rented a better building, but it was a minute’s walk from the docks and they barely knew how to scrounge up enough money to pay for the cost of making the ship as well as surviving day-to-day. A better building was low on their list of needs.
Keiran flung open the door and bolted to the old wooden board on legs of concrete and broken crates that they used as a desk and meeting table. Four of the designers sat around it, all yelling at once. He couldn’t make out any of what they were trying to say.
He stormed to the edge of the table and slid the blueprints and calculations towards him. A pencil rolled off the table. He caught it before it hit the floor.
He could feel Cohen behind him.
“Where’s the error?”
Cohen pointed to a certain area. Keiran scanned the figures, juggling numbers and operations in his head. The pencil twirled over and under his fingers.
Multiply it out, distribute the four.
The pencil danced faster, weaving from finger to finger.
Add the two, carry the one.
He could feel the air in the room tense, like someone had pulled it taut. They were watching him.
Divide by negative six—
The pencil clattered to the ground and rolled under the table.
The room was perfectly still. Keiran stopped. Rolled back. Add the two, carry the one, divide by…
He looked up, dread knotting itself around his throat like a noose. The air seemed too tangible to breathe in. He glanced from face to face. Each one had the same resigned terror that screwed their jaws shut too tight. He swallowed.
“How bad is it?” he whispered. Piper’s eyes flitted away from his gaze.
“We don’t know, but based on what we’ve calculated…it could be really bad.” She wet her lips and looked up. “Fatally bad.”
Keiran barely restrained from screaming a curse into the air. He forced himself to take a measured breath. In. Out.
“When were they going to do the first test run? We need to get everyone away from the ship.”
“That’s not for another week,” Harper said. Keiran stared at him.
“We changed the date, remember? We were ahead of schedule. The test is today. Soon.”
The words hung in the air for a split second. Almost in unison, they all began running towards the door.
Cohen was the first to reach it. He flung it open and sprinted towards the docks. Keiran followed, almost tripping over his heels.
“Get back from the steamboat! Clear the docks!”
The words rang in the air. The people bustling around the docks paused. All six of the designers were screaming at once.
“Get back! Clear the docks! Don’t start the ship!”
The crowd began to stir, glancing at the perfectly intact steamboat in confusion as they shuffled away from it. Keiran’s heart pounded.
“Harper, Piper, get everyone off the docks!” he screamed. They nodded and broke away, still shouting at the crowd. He turned to Cohen. “Co—”
There was a blast of light. He realized his feet weren’t touching the ground, but he felt a hot, numb force against his chest launching him backwards. The air was still, eerily silent. And then he hit the stone. And it was deafening, the…the sound. Nothing but a steel-sharp roar that he could feel in his chest.
And then the pain, burning through his face, blazing down his arms and legs. Ricocheting through his back. He couldn’t move, but his insides were writhing. He didn’t know who was screaming. If he was screaming. If that was just the ringing in his ears. He just knew that he hadn’t expected death to be so painful. If this was death. Death would have a feather touch compared to this torture.
That was his last thought before he blacked out.
