Dark Waters

prologue

Dark Waters

Prologue

The small plastic picture frame inside my work locker was the only thing the central authority could not regulate.

Every morning before slipping on my greasy technician coveralls, I spent a long moment looking at the photo. Maya was laughing, her bright eyes squinting against the harsh sun on the eastern beach, her small fingers holding a crooked blue seashell she had dug out of the natural rock. She was eight years old, a world away from the suffocating smog of the lower sector docks. Her mother had taken her across the border to the safe bedrock zone before the leaders tightened security and closed the transit lines last year, leaving me behind to work double shifts on a failing power grid.

I remembered the last night we spent together before the borders closed. Maya had curled up against my side, her small hand gripping my thumb as I told her stories about old, analog radios that could bounce voices off the clouds. She had made me promise to send her a message through the sky if the phones ever stopped working. I told her a father would always find a way to reach his little girl, no matter how wide the ocean was between them.