Marina Soleil's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

The corridor ended at a steel door and a matron with a clipboard. Marina gave her name and was waved through to the wet room. The tank stood in the center under a rig of lights, glass on all four sides, water already high. Cameras hung on booms. The other contestants were lined up against the tile, robes on, faces set. Marina put her robe on the hook and walked to the ladder. She had the judges' tastes in her head. Stillness. Eye contact. Slow ribs. No panic. She climbed. The water took her feet, her hips, her chest. She let go of the rail and tried the first thing she knew how to do, which was smile at the head judge through the glass. The smile bubbled out of her mouth. Her hair floated up against the cord and stayed back. Her arms drifted wide. She tried to pull them in and her legs kicked to balance. The judge with the watch looked down at his wrist. The father judge closed his eyes. Marina understood in one second that everything she had practiced on dry floors was gone. Charm needed a face that moved. Under here her face was a held breath. She was going to lose in front of four men in under a minute. A hand closed on her wrist. Marina turned. The tattooed woman from the corridor was in the tank with her, hair loose in the water, eyes lit pale blue, tattoos moving down her arm like they were painted on the current. No one on the deck reacted. Zira put her mouth close to Marina's ear and the words came clear through the water. "Stop selling. The water shows what you are. Be less." She pressed two fingers flat against Marina's sternum until Marina's shoulders dropped. "Do not smile. Do not reach. Let your hands open." Marina let them open. Zira held her wrist a beat longer, and Marina felt the choice in the grip, hold or release, and then the release. Zira was gone. Marina hung in the water with her arms loose and her mouth shut. She found the head judge's eyes through the glass and did nothing at him. She let her ribs move on their own, small and slow, for the man with the watch. She kept her face flat for the father. A camera boom swung closer. She did not track it. When the buzzer went and hands pulled her up the ladder, the head judge was still writing. The woman on his left gave a short nod. The father judge had not closed his eyes. Marina stood dripping on the tile and knew two things at once. She had passed the tank. And a stranger with a grip that could have opened had chosen to close, and now owned a piece of her she had not agreed to sell.