Reborn: Apocalypse Tyrant Endlessly Pampers Her Sickly Lover novel · Chapter 2 of 24
Chapter 2: The Wave Deck
Veda clears the open decks and saves the lifeboat families while Tobias collapses; Celia says he has nine weeks of drug left.
The wave hit the side of the ship.
Veda grabbed the rail with both hands and the deck tipped under her feet.
Water came over the pool deck in a grey sheet, knee deep, and then it was gone, dragging deck chairs with it.
On Deck Four, the lifeboats screamed against their cradles.
One cradle snapped.
An orange lifeboat slid sideways, scraped across the open deck and went over the side, taking a section of railing with it.
The deck where forty families had planned to sleep was bare.
Nobody was on it.
"Oh my God," somebody said, behind her.
The whole pool deck stood frozen, soaked and staring up at the empty place where the lifeboat had been.
Then a boy's voice cried out from the stern.
"Mom! Mom, I can't find my mom!"
Veda had known this would happen.
Last time, forty-one people had died on that deck, and nobody had called it anything but an act of God.
Not one of them had been on that deck tonight.
But one boy was.
He was maybe nine years old, hanging from the stern rail by one arm, and the sea was coming back for him.
She ran.
Damon was already running beside her, and he reached the rail one stride ahead.
He caught the boy's wrist as the second wave lifted, and Veda caught the belt of Damon's jacket and threw all her weight backward.
For a long moment, the three of them hung on the same piece of railing.
Then the wave dropped, and the boy landed on the planks, coughing.
Damon laughed, breathless, with water running off his jaw.
"Well," he said. "That's one for you."
Veda said nothing.
Last time, she had killed this man's friends, and he had killed her.
Now she held the back of his jacket in her fist, and she felt how solid he was, and how warm.
It was the strangest thing in the world, being grateful to him.
She let go of the jacket.
"Where's the boy's mother?" she asked.
The boy pointed at the ballroom doors, and a woman burst out of them, barefoot, screaming his name.
Veda stepped back and let them have each other.
A voice behind her said, "Everyone inside! Now! Another one's coming!"
It was Damon, and he was using his big voice, the one that made hundreds of people move at once.
They moved.
He pointed at crewmen and passengers and gave orders, and Veda understood that he was doing it faster and better than she would have, because he had never lost a person on this ship yet.
She hated how good he was.
When the third wave came, the deck was empty, and the water ran harmlessly down the stairwells.
By two in the morning, the sea had flattened out into a heavy swell.
Nobody was dead.
On the ballroom floor, nine hundred people sat on mattresses, in blankets, shaking.
Some of them were looking at Veda.
She felt it.
A woman who had refused to move her children at ten o'clock took Veda's wrist and kissed the back of her hand, wet-faced, without a word.
An old man nodded to her.
A boy of nineteen, one of the crew, said, "Ma'am," and moved a chair so she could sit.
Veda knew this feeling.
She had felt it before, in the end, and it had not been good for anyone.
She walked out of the ballroom to get away from it.
She found Tobias in the corridor outside, sitting on the carpet with his back against the wall.
He had gone out on deck in the middle of the storm, she realised.
He had been carrying blankets to the families coming in.
His cardigan was soaked and his hair stuck to his forehead.
"You were right," he said, and smiled up at her.
Then he coughed.
It was a small, dry cough at first, and then it came up wet from deep in his chest, and he put his hand over his mouth.
When he took it away, there was blood across his palm.
"Tobias."
"It's nothing." His eyes were already going unfocused. "I'm just a bit tired."
"Tobias!"
His head hit the wall and slid sideways.
She caught him before he reached the carpet.
He weighed almost nothing.
She had forgotten that, in seven years of grief, she had forgotten exactly how light he was.
"Help!" she screamed. "Someone get the doctor!"
The doctor came running down the corridor, hair in a knot, bag in her fist.
Celia Fenn dropped on her knees beside them and put two fingers to Tobias's throat.
She did not look surprised.
She looked like someone who had been waiting for this call for days.
"Get his feet up," she said. "Hold his head."
Veda held his head.
Celia pushed a needle into the crook of his arm with practised hands, and Veda watched his chest begin to rise and fall evenly again.
Her shoulders came down, seven years of tension breaking at last.
"Is he going to die?" she said.
Celia sat back on her heels and wiped her forehead with her wrist.
"Not tonight."
"Then when?"
The doctor looked at Tobias's grey face for a long moment.
"I have nine weeks of his injection left," she said. "After that, I have nothing."
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