I Held The Rope Underwater While He Shouted She Was Trying To Escape...

The investigator slid his notebook back and tapped the timeline he'd drawn. A single horizontal line with two marks on it.

"Walk me back," he said. "Not the water. The ten minutes before."

I didn't want to go back. My hands were still raw from the rope, my uniform still damp under the blanket they'd given me. But I understood what he was asking. If I couldn't explain why I was at the rail in the first place, the other story would fill the gap.

"It was 0940," I said. "Maybe 0942."

That morning they had me on corrosion checks. Not my usual assignment — I was supposed to be in the aft stores inventory with Petty Officer Keller — but Chief Yates needed someone to log pipe seals along the starboard side near the dome. He handed me the clipboard at muster and said it would take twenty minutes. Check each joint, note rust, initial. Simple.

The deck was cold and gray. Overcast light flattened everything. The sea was calm enough that the ship barely moved, but the wind cut straight through my uniform. I remember pulling my collar up and tucking the clipboard under my arm so it wouldn't blow away.

I worked my way aft, past the railings, past the coils of line, toward the dome structure. The pipes ran low along the bulkhead there, elbowed up near a service hatch. I knelt to check the third seal. My pen wasn't writing right in the cold and I had to shake it.

That's when I heard boots behind me.

He didn't say my name at first. I just felt someone stop too close.

"Who put you here?" he said.

I stood up. It was Commander Rook. He wasn't my direct supervisor, but his collar insignia and the way everyone moved when he walked made rank obvious. He had his hands behind his back, shoulders squared. The chest pin on his uniform caught the flat light.

"Chief Yates, sir," I said. "Corrosion log. Starboard seals."

He looked at the clipboard, then past me toward the rail and the dome housing. His jaw tightened. He didn't check the log. He looked annoyed that I was there at all.

"This section's closed for a comms test," he said. "You need to clear out."

I hesitated. Yates had written the assignment down. I had the sheet.

"I was told to finish the row, sir. Four more joints."

Rook took a step closer. Not threatening in an obvious way — just enough that I had to tilt my head up to meet his eyes. His voice dropped.

"I said clear out. I need this rail private. That's an order."

Behind him, Seaman Alvarez had come around the dome corner with a coffee mug in his hand. He saw us and slowed down. Rook noticed. He lifted one hand without looking at Alvarez and made a short, sharp wave-off. Go. Alvarez stopped, glanced at me, then turned and walked back the way he'd come. He didn't say anything.

That was the moment I should have left clean. Instead I made it messy.

"I'll log it as incomplete then, sir?" I said. My voice sounded smaller than I wanted it to. I was trying to cover myself. If Yates asked why four seals were blank, I wanted it to be Rook's call, not mine. "So Chief Yates knows why I—"

"Log whatever you want somewhere else," he said. He cut me off before I finished. "You are not supposed to be near this piping. Understood?"

I nodded. My pen left a stray mark on the paper. I remember staring at that blue line bleeding into the fibers because I didn't want to look at his face.

"Nodding isn't answering," he said.

"Understood, sir."

He didn't move. He waited until I stepped back from the rail, until I had put a full three feet between my boots and the pipes. The wind pulled at my uniform pants. My hair had come loose from being pulled back and a strand stuck to my cheek. I pushed it away and felt my hand shaking.

"Now go wait by the aft ladder," he said. "Don't wander."

It was order layered on order, and I followed it because that's what you do. I walked six steps toward the ladder, clipboard pressed to my chest, and stood there with my back partly to him. I could hear him moving near the rail behind me — a metallic click, like a hatch latch or a box opening, then a low scrape.

I shouldn't have turned around. I know that. But the sound was wrong for a comms test, and I was still thinking about those four blank lines on the form and how Yates would write me up for incomplete work. I told myself I was just checking the seal number so I could write "access denied" instead of leaving it empty.