Finn came back slowly, the way a man surfaces from deep water — first a twitch of his fingers against the damp wood floor, then a low, pained groan that made Zelene's chest seize with relief before she'd even finished turning toward him.
"Finn." She caught his shoulder, careful this time, mindful of the bruise blooming dark along his temple. "Finn, can you hear me?"
His eyes fluttered, unfocused, then found her face and held there, blinking hard like he was trying to convince himself she was real.
"Lynn," he rasped. Then, wincing, "Feels like someone used my head as a drum."
"You fought them," she said quietly. "Before they knocked you out."
"Did I win?"
"No."
"Figures." He tried to push himself upright, made it halfway, and stopped, one hand pressed to his temple, breath hissing through his teeth. "Where—"
"A boat," Zelene said. "Belowdecks. I don't know how far we've gone, or if we've even left the harbor yet."
Finn's eyes moved past her then, taking in the room properly for the first time — the huddled shapes along the walls, the low lantern light, the particular, heavy quiet of a space where hope had mostly worn itself thin. Something in his face changed, the last of the grogginess burning off fast, replaced by a focus Zelene rarely saw from him.
"That's a lot of people," he said, low.
"More than Old Fen guessed."
He was quiet a moment, processing that, jaw tight. Then, softer, almost to himself: "We came in here to find one woman. I didn't — I don't think either of us understood what we were actually walking into."
"No," Zelene admitted. "I don't think we did."
Beside them, Della had drawn her knees up to her chest, watching the two of them with a kind of desperate attention, like their conversation was the first thing in days that sounded like it might lead somewhere.
"You said you have friends looking for you," she said quietly.
"We do," Zelene said. "Ray. He won't stop until he finds this ship. Neither will the others."
"How would they even know where to look?" This from another woman nearby, older, arms wrapped tight around herself, voice edged with something between exhaustion and bitterness. "They took us from three different corners of that town. You think anyone's tracking a fishing boat in the dark?"
Zelene didn't have a clean answer for that. She thought of Ray's stillness, the particular, methodical way he tracked things that didn't want to be tracked, and found she believed in it more than she could easily explain to a stranger who'd already lost the right to trust in things like that.
"I believe they will," she said simply. "That doesn't mean we should just wait for them."
Finn glanced at her. "What are you thinking?"
"I'm thinking," Zelene said slowly, "that we should at least know what we're working with. The door." She nodded toward the far end of the hold. "Has anyone tried it?"
The older woman gave a short, humorless laugh. "Tried it the first night. Locked from outside. Doesn't budge."
"From outside," Zelene repeated, turning that over. "So it only opens when someone comes to us."
Finn caught the shape of the thought before she finished it, something sharpening in his expression despite the pain still etched across his face. "Which means eventually, someone has to."
"Food. Water. Checking on us." Zelene nodded slowly. "They have to open it sometime."
"And when they do," Finn said, "there's one of them, and there's a room full of us."
A ripple moved through the nearby women at that — not hope exactly, not yet, but something adjacent to it, wary and uncertain, the kind of feeling people were afraid to let themselves fully have after being disappointed too many times already.
"That's a big risk," the older woman said. "If it goes wrong—"
"It might," Zelene said honestly. "I won't pretend otherwise. But staying still hasn't gotten anyone out of this room yet, either."
Finn straightened further, wincing through it, and looked around at the faces watching them — some hopeful, some guarded, a few refusing to look up at all, too far gone into their own private grief to spend hope on strangers.
"This is you and me," he said quietly to Zelene. "That's the part I keep circling back to. We knew what we were walking into, more or less. They didn't." His eyes moved slowly over the room. "I don't think it's fair to ask them to fight for something we chose and they didn't."
"No one has to fight who doesn't want to," Zelene said, raising her voice just enough to carry. "I mean that. If this happens, and it might not happen tonight, I'm not asking anyone to risk more than they're willing to."
For a moment, nobody spoke. The lantern swayed gently with the boat's motion, throwing long, uneven shadows across tired, uncertain faces.
Then Della, still hugging her knees, lifted her chin. "I'm with you."
Zelene looked at her, something tightening in her throat. "You don't have to—"
"I have a daughter waiting for me," Della said, voice trembling but steady underneath it. "I'm not sitting in the dark hoping someone else fixes this. Not when there's a chance to do something myself."
A younger woman near the wall, who hadn't spoken once since Zelene woke, shifted forward slightly. "I want to go home too," she said, barely above a whisper. "I don't know how to fight anyone. But I can help. However I can."
One by one, quiet and uncertain, a few more voices joined — not all of them, not even most, some too frightened or too worn down to offer anything beyond silence, and Zelene understood that too, didn't push it. But enough. Enough that something in the room had shifted, subtly, from a space full of people simply enduring toward something that at least resembled the beginning of a plan.
Finn looked at Zelene, something steadier in his face now than the fear that had been there minutes ago.
"We can't just wait for them" Zelene said, after a long stretch of silence had settled over the hold, broken only by the creak of the hull and the occasional shift of someone trying to get comfortable on the hard floor. "If the door only opens when someone comes to check on us, then we give them a reason to come sooner."
Finn's brow furrowed, still wincing slightly whenever he moved his head too fast. "Meaning what, exactly?"
"Meaning we make noise," Zelene said. "Something they can't ignore."
The older woman — Zelene still didn't have her name, though she'd clearly appointed herself the room's resident skeptic — gave a dry, tired laugh. "And what happens when they open that door angry instead of careless?"
"Then we make sure it doesn't sound like trouble," Finn said, already working through it, some of his usual quickness returning despite the bruise still throbbing at his temple. "Not a riot. A crisis. Something they'll want to handle fast and quiet, not something that makes them call for more men."
"Someone collapsed," Zelene said slowly, the shape of it coming together. "Someone needs water, or food, urgently — something that sounds like a problem for them if it goes wrong. Dead cargo doesn't sell."
A ripple of dark, uncomfortable understanding passed through the nearby women at that phrase — cargo — and Zelene regretted saying it plainly the moment it left her mouth, though nobody corrected her. It was, after all, exactly how these men had been treating them.
"I can do it," Finn said. "Pass out. Or close enough to convincing that whoever opens that door believes it." He managed a thin, exhausted grin. "I've been told I have a talent for dramatics."
"You already have the bruise for it," Zelene said. "That helps."
"See, silver lining."
Della shifted forward slightly, voice quiet but steady. "I'll call for them. A woman screaming for help draws less suspicion than a man's voice through that door."
"Are you sure?" Zelene asked.
"I've been quiet for two days," Della said. "I'd like to be loud about something, for once."
They arranged it as best they could in whispers — Finn slumping against the hull near the door, limbs loose, eyes closed, playing dead weight convincingly enough that even Zelene felt her chest tighten looking at him. Della knelt beside him, ready. The younger woman who'd spoken earlier positioned herself a few feet back, out of the immediate doorway, along with two others who'd quietly agreed to help however they were needed once the door actually opened.
Zelene took her place near the wall beside the door itself, out of direct sightline from anyone stepping through it, pulse hammering hard enough now that she had to breathe carefully to keep it from showing.
One chance. Make it count.
Della's scream, when it came, tore through the hold loud enough to startle even the women who'd known it was coming.
"HELP — someone's not breathing! Please, she's not breathing, PLEASE—"
For a long, terrible moment, nothing happened at all. Only the boat's steady creak, the distant slap of water against the hull, the ringing silence after Della's voice cut off.
Then, footsteps. Heavy, quick, descending fast toward the hold.
The lock scraped. The door swung inward.
Zelene's whole body went taut, every sense narrowing down to the sliver of lantern light spilling in around the frame, the shape of a man filling the doorway, already moving toward Finn's slumped form without so much as glancing sideways.
Now.