The Atabey Entertainment Complex stood on Denden's east platform, a beast of a building with a movie theatre, Virtua stadium, pocking pitch and bowling alley, named after the supreme Taino goddess according to Jodi.

Zaharah worried the edges of her pockets with her thumbs. The pocking pitch was one of the few places in Denden she actively avoided. When they had their family movie nights at the end of each month, she averted her eyes as they walked by it – the reminder of her life before Denden, the life she wanted to forget.

Yet, even though the thought of pocking put a bitter taste on her tongue, she missed it. The feel of the pocking ball in her hand, the way it gave just a little and pushed back when she squeezed it. The earthy smell of the grass pitch and the salty smell of the sand pitch. She missed sizing up her opponents, levelling her eyes with theirs as her bare feet dug into the ground. The little thrill racing up her spine—

She brushed the thoughts from her head. Denden was her life now. Finish art school, move her and Jade to the mainland—and Markus too if he wanted to come along—that was the plan.

They made their way through the complex's front garden, down pathways fringed with cocoplum hedges, and past benches hewn from pine. The HID lights overhead were the size of pins, a simulation of a starry night sky, and moths danced around the street lamps. A crisp coolness clung to the air as pleasant and refreshing as a cool drink of water after an afternnon in the sun.

At the centre of the garden, a man sat on a stone bench encircling a lignum vitae, rolling the stem of a red hibiscus between his fingers. People drifted by him, stared, exchanged whispers, yet he focused on the flower as though it was the centre of his world.

Zaharah drew her brows together and squinted at him. "Elliot?" Gone was his shoulder length black hair. He'd shaved it on one side and lightened it to a cinnamon brown, and instead of his dark blue suit, he wore jeans and a DJ Pharahdox T-shirt.

"Zaharah," he said, appraising her outfit. "Plaid's a bold choice. A bit outdated, but I think it suits you."

Again with the weird compliments. Anyone else may have knocked him upside the head, but, with the Director's request of patience in mind, Zaharah forced a smile. "I don't think you've met my family. This is Jade, my sister and Demarkus, our caretaker."

"And who's this?" He pointed to Skorpi who sat perched on Zaharah's shoulder.

"Our mechpet. Skorpi."

Jade signed something to Elliot, and he knitted his brows, a frown pinching his lips even thinner than they already were.

"I'm sorry. Sign language wasn't in my default programming." His cheeks turned a little red.

"She asked if you like DJ Pharahdox too." Markus said. "She's a huge fan. Never shuts up about it. Always begging me to take her to the Virtua concerts."

"Oh, yeah. I'm a recent convert. The director introduced me to her music." He turned around as cheers erupted from the pitch. "We should head in. The rush is starting."

A crowd of bodies choked the main foyer of the complex. People stood and sat around the fountain at the centre, chatting and munching on salty or sugary snacks. The glow bands and light up hair accessories turned the otherwise dim room into a psuedo rave.

Elliot led them through the crowd to a hall clouded with the scent of popcorn and heart disease on a stick, but instead of following it past the concession and into the stands, they took the steps up to the next level. Elliot guided them past a unisex bathroom and through a set of double doors to the skybox. On one side a buffet and a bar stretched the length of the room, on the other, theatre style seats lined the glass wall overlooking the parade.

The bright costumes and banners obscured of the grass pitch enough that Zaharah could imagine it as a big field to save herself some heartbreak. Sound engineers set up speakers on the stage at the back as one of Denden's three Junkanoo groups rushed around the perimeter.

When it came to Junkanoo, she preferred to be down in the thick of it, to feel the drums reverberate through her chest. The experience up in the skybox was akin to the meat substitutes Markus bought for her – fine for what they were but couldn't hold a candle to the real thing.

While Jade and Markus perused the buffet, she wandered to the wall of windows for a closer look at the parade. The goat skin drums blended with the cowbells and whistles while the brass blared out a fanfare. Her body bounced in time to the beat, and she hummed along with the brass. Someone laid a hand on her shoulder, and she jumped.

"Hey." Director Sanders smiled at her.

Zaharah opened her mouth to speak, but her throat dried up. The Director is not your friend. The words flashed through her mind, and her phone turned into a dumbbell in her pocket, threatening to drag her to the ground.

"Is something the matter?"

Zaharah shook her head and tried for a smile. "You caught me off guard, that's all. Uh... you look different, almost didn't recognise you." The last time she saw the Director in anything but a crisp pantsuit was when she woke up from her third surgery.

"Ah." She stuck her hands in the pockets of her leather jacket, the turquoise and pink decals bright under the lights. "I don't get to let my hair down often, but I love Junkanoo too much to miss it." Her gaze went to the windows, and the mound of curls atop her head obscured her face. "Ever rushed before?"

"No." Zaharah looked out at the parade too. If it didn't cost upwards of a thousand dollars for a costume, she'd give it a shot. The rushers twirled around, showing off their craftsmanship. She couldn't pull off that level of confidence.

"I've always been more of the science type," the Director said. "But I could never understand how anyone could look at something so beautifully expressive and say it's not as important. Who are we without our cultural identity? A soulless people adrift on this cursed ocean."

Zaharah's grip on her phone tightened. I should say something. Director Sanders had never given her a reason not to trust her, yet here she was entertaining some fool hiding behind a screen.

"That's why people like you are so important, Zaharah. We have enough future scientists; the STEM programmes at the university are full every year. We don't have nearly enough cultural icons." The Director turned to her. "Do you think your art can shape the cultural landscape of the Bahamas?"

She wasn't about to bare her insecurities for the Director. "I don't know. I can't predict the future." Silence settled between and she kept her eyes on the glittering costumes. Still, the director's words sat on her shoulders, a weight bowing her spine. Her expectations made Zaharah feel like she was squandering her potential. Like she wasn't doing enough, wasn't good enough.

How could she think otherwise when her life amounted to stumbling through art school and chasing dreams of playing house on the mainland? Stupid. 

She kept her lips pinned and toyed with her phone until Jade and Markus wandered over from the bar. The former pressed an opened vitamalt into her hand--a drink to everyone else, but an excuse to not talk for her.

"Director Sanders," Markus said. "Thanks for presidential treatment."

"My pleasure." The Director smiled at Jade in that amicable way that made her look less authoritative and more like an old friend. "Jade, it's been a while. How are you?"

I'm good. She pointed to the Director's jacket. Is that a DJ Pharahdox design?

Director Sanders grimaced. "I... I'm sorry Jade. My sign language has gotten rusty. Can you slow it down for me?"

Jade signed again, with slower precise movements, the BSL equivalent of enunciating every letter in every word of a sentence.

"Ah, yes. This is one of Pharah's earlier designs. Are you a fan?"

She spun around and showed off the pink and turquoise glitter decal on the back of her shirt. I love her music, and her style.

"Well then, you're in for a treat." The Director nodded to the windows. The last costume disappeared into the walkway under the stands and the stage lights flicked on, accented by bright pink and turquoise lasers.

Jade dashed to the windows so fast, Zaharah had to jump out of the way or risk getting bowled over. She pressed her hands against the glass, a grin splitting her face.

Markus rolled his eyes. "Here we go." Zaharah would've told him to stop being dramatic, but she never had to endure the screeching of hundreds of fan girls.

Fog flooded the stage, tinged pink and turquoise by the laser lights. The air shook as the crowd stomped and cheered. With luck, they'd wreck the pitch so Zaharah wouldn't have to look at or think about it ever again.

Pharahdox rose from the haze like an apparition, her form a silhouette bathed in glitter and topped with twisted wooden horns. Her sparkling pink dress and neon striped tights may have looked ridiculous on anyone else, but she pulled off her signature colour splash combo well. Zaharah didn't care for EDM, but damn the girl had style. She'd sacrifice her first born to those tights.

A pixilated image of a rabbit with trees for ears on the jumbotron served as the only introduction. Pharahdox turned to her set and snapped her headphones over her ears without a word. The crowd grew so manic, their stomps and cheers almost drowned out the opening chords of the song.

Zaharah reclined her chair and let the music wash over her as she sipped her malt. The soft opening chords transitioned into that brutal sub-bass that made people want to break things. Not her speed, but it had an energy behind it she could appreciate.

Director Sanders nudged her arm. "What's Jade's favourite song?"

"Icarus." Zaharah remembered finding Jade bawling in front of her computer screen when the track dropped a few months back. The name stuck with her because the story of Icarus was one she'd heard many times over.

As the Director walked off, her phone vibrated, the tiny tremors settling in her stomach like frantic butterflies. Not an email from Cammi, but a message from Dwight. Three little words, and each hit her like a sledgehammer upside the head.

Call me. NOW.

Zaharah shot from her seat so fast, Skorpi almost flew from her shoulder. "Sorry." She set him on the chair, and made a break for the exit, but Markus stepped into her path.

"Hey, hey. We just got here and you're already running off?"

"Sorry, I just need to make a quick call," she said as she edged around him. She ran from the skybox as fast as her legs could carry her and didn't stop until she was outside. Her fingers flew over the keypad, the trees and hedges of the front garden drifting by as she found a place to sit.

"It took you long enough," Dwight answered. "Are you alone?"

"Yeah, what's up?" Only a few drunk stragglers ambled around the garden, none of them paying her any mind. She sat on a pine bench to catch her breath before the proverbial bomb dropped.

"I traced that email you got back to its source, and apparently it came from outside of Denden, somewhere on the mainland."

Her leg shook and she couldn't keep the quiver out of her voice when she spoke. "But that doesn't make any sense. I don't know anyone outside of Denden. How would they get my email?"

"That leads me to our bigger problem. Our servers were hacked, but so far it seems the only information that was compromised, was yours." He exhaled. "Whoever this Cammi person is, they're interested in information on you. They got into a lot of your shit. Your medical records, the beta testing reports, your computer, everything."

Zaharah swallowed the bile pooling in her mouth, the contents of her stomach boiling over. "What do they want? Why are they targeting me?" Is this about the accident? She left that question unsaid, but it lingered on the back of her tongue like a bad aftertaste.

"Your guess is as good as mine. I'm changing the passwords on all your accounts. I'll text the updated ones soon." He kissed his teeth. "This is a fucking mess."

"What about my bank account?" All those stipends she'd saved up. If she lost them, it would set her back so far.

"No, that system wasn't compromised, thankfully." Dwight exhaled. "I know you didn't want me to, but I have to tell Sanders about this. This isn't just a stupid prank anymore. It's a security breach."

Damn it. "I-I understand, but can you wait to tell her? She's here at the rushout too and I don't want to be around when she finds out."

"The teams are still scrubbing through the server to find whatever hole that rat crawled in through and patch it up. I wasn't going to tell her until we know all the facts. I gotta get back in there. I'll update you if anything comes up."

She nodded even though he couldn't see her, because she couldn't get any more words out. Her throat had tightened to the point of aching, and numbness tingled the tips of her fingers. She paced the garden, sat down, got up and paced more. Rinse and repeat.

The stragglers drifted away, carried their drunken ramblings with them, and the silence left behind amplified the ringing in her ears. Get it together. She beat the heels of her hands against her temples, but it didn't stop the past from encroaching on the present.

The garden blurred away, the tree trunks and branches morphed into wispy clouds of smoke, the leaves became tongues of fire. Crackling.

Cackling.

Zaharah squeezed her eyes shut, but the image remained. Get it together. The floor beneath her tilted, and the keening of metal on metal screech through her mind. She was on the boat again, on those black seas, capsizing, sinking, drowning. Soot coated her throat and mouth, sucking out all the moisture, and fire peeled the skin from her flesh.

There was no getting it together. Not this time.