“To swim,” he says in a low tone.
I look out at the water and then back at him. “You mean you can teach me to swim in the water that you tried to drown me in?”
“Yes.”
I shiver involuntarily. “No thanks. I’m good,” I say and take a few steps.
He grips my arm. “You will learn to swim. It’s not a request. You can’t have any weaknesses.”
I can’t square him or what’s happening here. Is he serious? He’s been hunting me for months, preying on all my weaknesses. Now he wants to teach me to swim so I won’t be weak? He’s as mercurial as they come. I shrug, noncommittal.
He continues the tour of the island, taking me to the boathouse. It’s constructed of huge timber logs and steel joints. Inside, there are four boats suspended in the air on hydraulic lifts. Two of them can probably carry forty people or more, and the other two are smaller, made to be fast, judging by their aerodynamic designs. Each has the capacity to carry only three or four people. He owns two black, bullet-shaped hydrocycles that resemble hovercycles, but they travel on the surface of the water. He also has a berth where a submarine floats on the lapping waves. It resembles a stingray with undulating wings and a slippery skin with marine mammal markings on it.
“Which one do you like the most?” I ask, gesturing to the menagerie of toys before me.
“Which boat?” he asks. “This one.” He points to the long rowboat with oars that’s shelved on the wall beside us. It’s silver with black rally stripes on the hull.
“Why?” I move closer to the sleek rowboat. It’s archaic in terms of Etharian standards, a kind of boat that someone who’s well versed in rowing would use to train. There are no automated parts to it. I run my fingertips over an oarlock. It feels like steel.
“Because it requires strength,” Kyon says behind me. “It can hurt you, but it can also set you free.”
For some reason, I wonder if we’re still talking about the boat. “What would someone like you need to be free of?” I wonder.
“Questions, for one,” Kyon replies.
“What’s wrong with questions?”
“You like questions? I have one. What did you see our first night here?”
“Excuse me?”
“You left me with just your body on the beach. You projected into the future. I want to know what you saw there.” His arms form a cage around me, resting on the hull of his favorite boat.
I stare up into his blue eyes. I find it hard to swallow all of a sudden. There’s no way I can tell him any of it. If I do, it would be as if I put a gun to the head of each person in Amster and fired. Kyon will slaughter them all with impunity.
“I didn’t see much,” I lie.
“You were gone a very long time. I think you saw plenty.”
“I saw your Alameeda Strikers stack wounded civilians in the streets of Rafe and burn them alive.” I hurl the statement at him. It’s my only weapon.
His eyebrows draw together as he scowls. “They’re not my soldiers. If they were mine, I’d be leading them out of Rafe.”
“What are you talking about?”
“They’re your soldiers.”
“How can you say that?”
“You have but to claim them as your own. By not doing so, every day you’re allowing Rafe to die. Only you.” He believes what he’s saying.
“I don’t understand what you’re telling me.”
“You will.” He turns away from me, toward the entrance. “I’ve had enough of you for now. You can see yourself back to the house,” he says over his shoulder.
“You think you have me tamed, Kyon?”
Kyon turns with a cold look in his eyes. “I plan to bring you to your knees again, Kricket.”
“I hate you!” I rasp. “I wish someone would just kill you!” Icy air exhales from my mouth like smoke from dry ice. I try to stay in my body. “Why is this happening?” I whisper as my spirit involuntarily leaves my body.
My consciousness rises up into the air as my body collapses onto the wide planks of the boathouse floor. My head bounces off the floor with a dull thud. Kyon runs to my side, kneels down next to me. I float above him, bewildered and silent, unable to stay in this moment.
Even separated as I am from my physical self, I feel fiery heat in my nonexistent bones. Thunderous air rolls under my feet, propelling me into the future. In less than one second, I’m on the other side of the island by the small thatched-roof cottages that crouch in the tree line just off the white-sand beach. Darkness falls like it would if viewed in time-lapse photography. The waves crash against the shore until they cough up dozens upon dozens of black wetsuit-clad swimmers. These men emerge from the surf and form a small huddle on the shore.