The sleek hydrofoil glided gently across the surface of the water. Apart from the rushing of its wake and the faint sound of droning servos somewhere within its elongated hull, it made absolutely no noise at all. Without lights, and with all illuminated instruments shielded from the windows by cowlings, it was very nearly invisible.

The only real light that illuminated the whole of the helm compartment came from the imperceptibly gibbous waning moon that hung half-way up the sky. The scarce beams that entered through the windows reflected off the floor and cast odd highlights on the ceiling.

One of these highlights lit Ember's face, seated as she was in the middle-right of one of the four other bucket seats that were arrayed around the cabin, behind the helmsman's chair.

The Myna Bird would be woken up, eventually, by the gently wavering beam of moonlight crossing repeatedly in front of her eyes—as the effects of whatever drug had been given to her wore off, the light would have more and more effect.

She would wake to discover that she was bound, hand and foot, to the chair. The handcuffs chaining her ankles had been looped around behind the base of the seat, and her hands had been similarly cuffed to a bracket on the back of the chair. Ironically, and perhaps somewhat nastily, someone had also taken care to do up her seatbelt.

Seated in front of her, the gargantuan eagle that had presumably attacked her in the jungle hunched over at the helmsman's controls, his massive bulk wedged awkwardly between the bucket seat and the console. He was wresting both his elbows on the console, and his chin—such as it was—was rested on the backs of his fists as he faced out the windows. He seemed either asleep or in a deep state of concentration, as the moonlit water rushed headlong towards them, and then vanished past on either side.

Out one of the cabinet windows, to the front-left (or, possibly, off the port bow)—rising just over the surface of the water—could be seen a noxious pale glow, as if a city populated almost entirely with chalk green lights was reflecting off the sky.

Without any action by her, the three of them—the boat, the eagle and the Myna Bird—would continue racing silently across the south seas towards its unknown destination.




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"Hrm?"

The massive eagle's bulk hove upright as he sat up in his chair and looked around at her.

"Oh. Hah," he barked a short laugh, "sorry about that. Really, sorry. I mean, obviously not sorry enough, or—" he gestured, loosely, at the hand-cuffs chaining her wrists and ankles, "—you know—but if it makes any difference, the only other option, at that point, was killing you, ssso…"

He let the pause hang in the air, accompanied by an idle shrug and a wry grin.

Coop stared pensively at a screen on the console as the boat hurtled on.

'Updated depth is average 35.7 meters.' —chirped a very small, female voice from the left side of the console.

As Ember finished talking, Coop laughed again, somewhat shorter, this time.

"Hah, well, you're not going to find out where we're going until we figure out what to do with you."

He paused, and looked back at her again.

"You know," he asked, "what were you doing out on Prison Island? Really."

This time, Coop actually did laugh. His previous laughs had been more like short coughs, but this was one, good, long, deep chortle.

"There are better ways to make bombs than that!" he guffawed.

"What," he went on, "what were you trying to blow up?"

"Hm," the eagle appeared to consider something, "not really aiming to be a professional, huh? Nah, fair enough, we all gotta start somewhere."

"Hah, you know what I started out doing? I'd light paper, covered in candle wax, on fire. I was a reaaaal little kid back then; all I could get were, you know, candles and stuff like that. So I'd melt 'em down, and soak stuff in the wax, and see what kinda fire I could get going—you know when I really took off," he added conspiratorially over his shoulder, "was when I figured out I could kinda make firecrackers outta the stuff. Right?"

He grinned—his evident enjoyment of the conversation growing by the second—and turned back to the the console.

"Ehhhh-heh-heh-heh-heh..."

"Tch! Nice," Coop said with what seemed to be genuine admiration in his voice.

"Watching a fresh match for the first time, right?" He leaned back to look at Ember again, "Heh, it's alll about th…"

He trailed off, and stared critically at her for a few seconds.

"Did you recognize anything out that window?"

"Hmm," he arched one eyebrow at her, and stood up in the chair. He reached up to tops of the windows—which were all situated around the front of the cabin—and flipped a switch. With no audible sound, the windows went opaque.

In the subsequent blackness, there was a faint 'click', and a bank of lights in the cabin came on. Coop's face crinkled up in a squint as he stood, adjusting to the light.

"Okay," he said, after a few moments, "I don't know if you watch the news much. Did you hear about that attack on the GUN-secured vault in Central City, today?"

When the lights came on, Ember quickly closed her eyes shut. "Aw dang that's bright." she muttered to herself as she slowly opened her eyes to re-adjust to the light. When she realzied the windows were now dark, she felt her hope sink some.

Before she had set out earlier, there had been someting on the news about GUN. All she saw was a wreck of a building in flames. It had stopped her for a moment, but she hadn't listened to what was being said.

"Heh, let me guess. Your cousin did it?" She gave a small laugh at her own joke.

"Nah," Coop said, smiling a big, long, slow smile.

"I did it."

"Pretty nice, huh?" he went on, the smile breaking open into a grin, "I mean, all things considered, it turned out pretty well, right?"

He stared at her and cocked his head, the smile tightened somewhat.

"Problem is," he went on, "you just about burnt down the island we were hiding on. The government was on red alert, and that place would've been crawling with drones in about, oh..." he paused, and brushed a hand lightly against his chin, before going on, "half an hour. So, I whacked you on the head, and now—" he threw his hands out in a shrug before letting them flop back, "now you're here."