Chapter One



If you want to flood the city, we can handle it. The evacuation's already under way by road, we've got ships on standby, and this is a population that's used to emergency drills. They move when we say move. But that's the easy part. It's winter, and somehow we've got to carry enough equipment and supplies to create a giant refugee camp from scratch in the middle of nowhere, then sustain it for maybe a year. We're going to lose a lot of people, whatever happens. So let's start by accepting that.

(royston sharle, head of emergency management, jacinto.)

jacinto, one hour into the flood.

Dying really did bring its own moments of clarity, just like they said.

Bernie Mataki didn't see her life flash before her. Instead, she found herself weirdly detached, reflecting on the shitty irony of sailing halfway around the world only to drown in Jacinto.

Water. I bloody hate it. No bastard should have to drown in the middle of a city.

She could see a patch of whirling sea ten meters away, like a sink emptying down a plughole. Debris rushed toward it. Chunks of wood, vegetation, plastic, and even a dead dog-a little brown terrier thing with a red collar-raced past her on the surface to vanish into the maelstrom. A chunk of metal pipe bobbed along in its wake, clanging against her shoulder-plate and nearly taking her eye out before it spun away with the rest of the flotsam.

I'm next. Sink. Get it over with. Nowhere to swim to. Drown here now or there later . . . no, screw that, I'm a survival specialist, aren't I? Get a grip. Do something. I'm not dead yet.

"Sorrens? Sorrens?" All she could see was columns of black smoke and the occasional flash of sunl...