Hopeless Doom

Chapter 7 Refraction

Sarah sat down, her chair scraping harshly against the teak deck. “The medical kits are dry, Franklin. The gel is gone, and the electronic locks on the cabinets won't budge. We’re down to vinegar and prayers.”

Franklin finally pushed a piece of hotel stationery toward her. The sun hit the glass, casting a shadow that looked... wrong. “Look at the refraction, Sarah.”

“I’m a doctor, Franklin, not a physicist. I have twenty people with blown-out eardrums waiting for me.”

“Look where the shadow hits.” He marked the paper with a blue pen. “Light bends when it hits water. It’s a rule. But this… the math is off. The space around us—the air itself—it’s thicker. When that flash hit, it didn't just kill the power. It changed the medium we’re floating in.”

Sarah stared at the shadow. Thicker, she thought. Like we’re in a jar. “You’re saying the laws of physics took a day off.”

“I’m saying it wasn't a flare. Solar flares don't box you in with a hard boundary.”

Before she could answer, the heavy crunch of boots signaled Matt Jane’s arrival.

“Doc,” Matt said, his grip tightening on a heavy flashlight.

“I need a crowbar for the infirmary, Matt. Not an escort.”

“Captain wants you both. On the bridge. Now.”

“I have patients,” Sarah snapped.

“It wasn't a request, Sarah.” Matt’s voice was flat—the tone a man uses right before he stops being polite.

Sarah looked at his hands, then at Franklin. They stood up.

The bridge was a tomb of dead technology. Every screen was a slab of black glass, reflecting their own tired faces. The silence was absolute—no hum of fans, no pings of radar. Just the sound of the ocean, which suddenly felt much closer now that the engines were dead.

Captain Nathan Josh had his hands planted on the navigation table. He looked small without the glowing monitors behind him.

“You lied to them,” Sarah said as the door clicked shut. “Local anomaly? Power back in an hour? You’re giving them a fairy tale while Robert is downstairs trying to bash into the food lockers.”

Nathan didn't look up. Deputy Captain Nelson Nahum tossed a charred green circuit board onto the table. It was a melted lump of copper and slag.

“The wiring didn't just melt,” Nelson rasped. “It fused. Every solid-state drive is gone. The starters on the backup diesels are inert. Even the spark plugs won't catch. The material inside them… it’s just dead.”

“You’re blind,” Franklin said, rolling his blue pen between his fingers.

“Completely,” Nathan admitted, finally turning around. “I saw you with the water glass, Leigh. You were checking the light.”

“The flash was targeted, Captain. Something knows our tech well enough to turn it off without sinking us.”

“A weapon?” Nelson asked.

“If someone wanted us dead, we’d be at the bottom of the Atlantic,” Sarah said. “They want us right here.”

The room went quiet. Sarah looked at the Captain. He’s not a leader anymore, she realized. He’s just a man on a very expensive piece of driftwood.

“I have food for a week,” Nathan muttered, his voice dropping. “Desalination is dead. When the sun goes down and those emergency lights don't kick on, they’ll tear this ship apart. They’ll fight for the lifeboats.”

“The lifeboats are electronic,” Nelson added.

“They don’t need to know that yet!” Nathan snapped, his jaw tight. He looked at Sarah. “Keep the infirmary going. Blame the heat on the fans. Buy me time.”

“Time for what?” Sarah asked.

Nathan reached into a rusted drawer and pulled out a leather box. He unlatched it and lifted out a heavy brass sextant. The metal was dull—a relic of a century they thought they’d outgrown.

“I’m going to find out where they put us,” Nathan said.

He didn't wait for a reply. He walked out onto the bridge wing, holding the old brass instrument like a weapon.

The lower galley was a sweatbox. Robert Holmes didn't bother wiping his face anymore; the salt just stung his eyes and stayed there. He jammed the iron crowbar into the freezer’s seal.

“Push, Stan! Do something besides standing there!”

Stan Hansen leaned into the bar, his boots sliding on the ceramic tiles. “I’m pushing! It’s a magnetic lock, Robert. The power’s gone, but the magnets don’t just quit. They’re holding.”

“We’ve got four tons of beef in there,” Robert grunted, his palms screaming as the iron bit into his skin. Four tons of rot waiting to happen, he thought. If that door stays shut another six hours, this whole deck is going to smell like a morgue.

“We need a torch,” Stan panted, letting go of the bar.

“Igniters are dead. Everything’s dead, Stan. It’s just us and the iron.” Robert yanked the bar out. It hit the floor with a hollow clang. He looked at the black temperature display. It looked like a tombstone.

Up on the pool deck, the air was thick—heavy enough to chew. The Poseidon wasn't moving, and without the breeze, the heat just sat on the teak like a lead blanket.

Janice MacMillan clutched a bottle of lukewarm water. She felt the sweat pooling under her linen skirt and ignored it. She walked toward the umbrellas, her stomach turning at the sight of the passengers. Mona Betsy was fanning herself with a magazine, staring at the empty tumbler on her table.

“This is tap water,” Mona said, her voice sharp enough to cut. “I asked for sparkling. With ice. Real ice.”

“Jeffrey spoke to the Captain. He said the backups were automatic. It’s been twenty-four hours, and my suite feels like a furnace.” Mona tossed the magazine onto the table. “Find the manager. Tell him I want to move to the shaded side. Now.”

Janice looked at the magazine—some glossy rag full of people who didn't exist anymore. You don’t get it, do you? she thought.

“The manager is busy,” Janice said, setting the plastic bottle down. It made a cheap, pathetic sound on the glass. “Drink it or don't. It’s the only thing you’re getting.”

She turned and walked away before Mona could start screeching.

The bridge was a graveyard of black glass. No pings, no hums. Just the sound of breathing. Captain Nathan Josh stood over the nautical chart, using brass weights to keep the paper from curling.

Sarah watched him from the doorway. She held her clipboard like a shield. Forty people in the infirmary, she thought. Forty people waiting for a miracle I can't give them.

“You haven’t used one of those in years, have you?” Sarah asked.

Nathan was holding the sextant. The brass was dull, looking heavy and useless in his hand. “The Academy. I thought it was a joke back then. A backup for a backup that would never fail.”

He walked to the window, peering through the eyepiece, trying to line up the sun with the horizon. The gears clicked—a tiny, mechanical sound that seemed too small for the vastness outside. He walked back and drew a tiny, faint cross on the map.

Sarah stepped closer. The cross was a speck in a sea of blue ink. It looked lonely. “Where are we, Nathan?”

“Same place as yesterday,” he said.

“The passengers think the power’s coming back. Janice is out there promising them AC and cocktails.”

“Let her promise,” Nathan muttered.

“I’ve got people in the infirmary who are going to go septic if I can't clean the tools, Nathan. We can't sit here for a week.”

Nathan placed his hands flat on the map, his weight leaning on that tiny pencil mark. “There are routes,” he said, tracing a dotted line with a shaking finger. “Cargo lanes. If we drift into one, someone sees us. A tanker. A freighter. Anything.”

“Are we drifting toward one?”

Nathan stopped. He lifted his hand. He looked at the sextant, then out at the flat, indifferent blue of the Atlantic.

“The current’s taking us south,” he whispered. South into the void. “The lanes are all north.”