Tidelands: III-One (35)

Inmates. Airlock.

Tidelands is a weekly sci-fi & fantasy serial that publishes every Friday, emailed straight to your inbox. Part 1 is free to read, but you can keep up with the story by signing up for exclusive access, or buying ebook or paperback editions of the collected instalments as they appear.

Mostly, Squirrel sleeps.

Fished from the waves – as they must have done, though she cannot now remember that – she wakes shackled, one hand, one foot, rattling the bed frame with the last dregs of panic. Gradually, her body blindly reports back the damage: a dull ache in her left forearm, another in her right thigh, a throbbing thickness to one half-closed eye and a stab to the ribs when she tries to sit up. A visual survey reveals the bandaging of lesser scratches and scrapes. She’ll live. But what of her blue-eyed giant?